Yes, well, there are programs that use the QuickTime framework (remember, it isn't just an application) that can go fullscreen that don't cost money.;p iTunes, for example, can play videos fullscreen without a charge. There's even a quick little AppleScript to do it:
tell application "QuickTime"
present front movie scale screen end tell
And that was the first result on a Google search for the words "QuickTime", "fullscreen", and "free".
Please note that iTunes at number 34 is also marked as a Media Player. Thus, the words after the link just describe what the product is rather than saying "This is the best _______".
Also, Windows Media Player 10 is much better than some of the previous ones with respect to interface. And compatibility, too.
Goodness it's hard to say that with a straight face. I mean, come on. QuickTime 7 beats it hands down in quite a few respects (Mmm. Decent H.264), and even then, QT7 isn't the best media player out there for everything.
And how, exactly, is this any different from the current situation? Other than the fact that there will be fewer versions of Vista than there are currently of Windows.
Windows xp Starter Edition
Windows xp Home Edition
Windows xp Pro Edition
Windows xp Tablet PC Edition
Windows xp Media Center Edition
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition
Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
From reading the descriptions of the different versions of Vista, Microsoft is doing away with the whole Windows Server bit and merging its capabilities with the other editions. For example, "Windows Vista Pro Edition will include domain join and management functionality, compatibility with non-Microsoft networking protocols (Netware, SNMP, etc.), Remote Desktop, IIS Web server, and Encrypted File System (EFS)." Sounds an awful lot like Windows Server 2003 to me. Really, more like a step between the current xp Pro and Server 2003.
Then, we get to Windows Vista Small Business Edition. It's got all kinds of features from shadow copy support to "castle networking", which seems to be a lot like an ad-hoc Active Directory system.
Windows Vista Enterprise Edition seems to have Virtual PC integration, which in the case of Server 2003, would be Virtual Server.
So anyway, I suppose that my point is that 7 9. If Microsoft announce a Windows Vista Server line, then I take all of this back and admit that it'll probably be a bad idea to have this many versions.
Having a secure default install means that the admins don't have to do nearly as much work to secure it. This means that you can get away with fewer administrators, and therefore, it has the potential of being cheaper for a company to get an OS that starts out secure.
A company would be foolish not to consider the security of the default install of an OS and comparing it with the security of others.
How about 19" racks? Surely you don't use 16" racks.
Do you use PCI-based computers, or did your company want to make its own bus technology?
SVGA or DVI-based monitors, or did you guys make your own display technology?
Do your computers understand ASCII?
Admittedly, those are all computer-based questions, so here's one that applies pretty much everywhere. Does nothing in your workplace use mass-manufactured bolts or screws?
I don't know where you work, but if it has no standards, then it must be under a rock or something.
If Vista Beta 1 doesn't have all of the features that will be in the final version (other than some potential new features incidental to the fixing of bugs), then it isn't a beta. From the Wikipedia article on software development stages:
A beta version or beta release usually represents the first feature complete version of a computer program or other product, likely to be unstable but useful for demonstrating internally and to select customers. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, as a technical preview (TP) or as an early access. Often, this stage begins when the developers announce a feature freeze on the product, indicating that no more features will be added to this version of the product, only bugs will be removed. Beta versions stand at an intermediate step in the full development cycle. Developers release them to a group of beta testers (or, sometimes, to the general public) for a user test. The testers report any bugs that they found, features they would like to see in the final version, etc.
So basically, Microsoft are trying to undo years of software development stage terminology. Sorry, but I don't care what they call it. Much of the rest of the software development world calls this kind of release an Alpha.
If you just do a long listing of the files (without the -e switch), you'll see things like this:
-rw-r--r-- + 1 admin admin 0 Sep 16 21:25 file1
Note the little + sign after the permissions. That indicates that the file has an ACL attached to it.
To alter an ACL, it's just 'chmod +a "someUser deny append" fileName' or whatever. You can even add ACLs to specific spots in the stack by using '+a#' followed by the number. '-a' and '-a#' remove access control entries just like their + counterparts.
It's a rather nice system. I like it more than "The Windows Way", since I like being able to do recursive chmod'ing, and I've not found a suitable equivalent in Windows.
On Mac OS X, there's a really nice application that adds a "Typeset Equation" system service. Basically, you select the TeX source and run the service, and the source is replaced by a PDF of the typeset equation.
Now, it isn't quite as integrated into Keynote or Pages as it could be, but it's easier for most people to edit the document as a whole in one of those two, and only use TeX when they have to. I certainly find it a nice add-on.
Actually, Microsoft was convicted of abuse of monopoly power due to the fact that they used threats and other means of coercion to prevent other corporations from bundling non-Microsoft operating systems on their products. Notice the "other corporations" bit.
Essentially, they used their massive market share to keep all of the computer manufacturers from throwing in competing products. It was an "I'm taking my ball and going to play with those other kids without you" sort of attitude. And technically, they weren't only using their own monopoly power to do this, but also the competitive power of all of the other computer manufacturers. If you can't sell Windows and everyone else can, then you go out of business. Microsoft used that to bully computer manufacturers into bundling Windows with every computer they sold and doing no business with Microsoft's competitors.
Apple is the company that produces both the software and the hardware. This means that they can't use their power to force other companies to not do business with Apple's competitors.
You're the kind of guy who also thinks that Sony has a monopoly on Playstation systems, aren't you?
General statements like that are really not helpful.;p If you've got specific examples, list them. Here are some specific examples I've got:
-- When talking about the non-server version of each, I can't think of anything that's easier to do on Windows than on a Mac. Changing network interface details is about the same on both platforms, as is altering the settings for the general way the OS looks, display preferences such as resolution or refresh rate, power settings, mouse and keyboard settings, date and time...
Macs have an easier time setting up basic sharing, but it's harder to set up more advanced sharing of specific directories. Then again, sharing only the ~/Public directory provides a rather concrete distinction between what's private and what's public. Both systems have benefits.
Basic user accounts are equally easy to create, and on a Mac, you have more options to tweak them.
Software update is nigh-trivial on Macs, and only slightly harder on Windows. They're about the same in terms of idiot-proof-ness (hooray for new "words"!).
Changing the startup disk and rebooting on a Mac takes literally five mouseclicks. On a windows box, you have to go into the BIOS or use some kind of bootloader. Macs have a bootloader, too, though it generally isn't necessary.
Macs have much more integrated support for assistive devices, though that isn't relevant for most people.
-- As for the server side... I've not really used any server version of Windows to do much of anything other than basic futzing around. I must, however, say that neither server OS seemed particularly "noob-friendly" in terms of configuring services or anything else.
-- With regards to remote management tools, I've not used any for Windows, so I gave examples of what Apple Remote Desktop does as a sort of "What more could you want?" example. I've never found myself wishing that it had such-and-such a feature or that it could do something easier. Or rather, I have thought repeatedly that faster network scanning would be nice, but that isn't exactly Apple's fault.
I very much like the ability to remotely install packages on user machines as well as the ability to run shell commands on entire batches of machines at once. The ability to share either the admin screen or a client screen with other machines on the network is quite a nice feature, as is the ability to lock screens remotely.
ARD's interface is as close to idiot-proof as any remote management tool can be.
-- I'd really love to hear if I'm wrong about any of this or if I overlooked anything.
I'd love to see a list of these features of Windows that make it easier to manage large numbers of machines. I honestly can't think of any. Mac OS X has Apple Remote Desktop which can send batch commands to entire networks of computers as easily as typing the command and selecting the target machines from a list.
It also has an absolutely fantastic method of networked booting that allows you to flush a machine's hard drive and restore it to a disk image on a server with only a few clicks. This can also be done with groups of computers and is handled with multicasting so as to save on bandwidth.
It's got all of the standard features such as Windows NT compatible ACLs; network software installs and booting; domain management and user authentication through Active Directory, Open Directory, LDAP, NetInfo, and just about anything else I've heard of; standard mounting of SMB shares as well as NFS, AFP, WebDAV, and FTP all trivially and with as strong authentication as the standard supports; Wake on LAN, of course...
In all seriousness, I'd love to hear what OS X is missing.
Interestingly enough, it was only same-sex anal and/or oral sex ("sodomy" sounds like such a euphemism) that was prohibited by the law. It was even specified to only apply to same-sex encounters. All of the oppositely sexed couples could do pretty much whatever they wanted to do.
Of course, at this point my comment is officially nowhere near the topic of the article.
I suppose I don't see the problem with OS X requiring a TCPA chip to run. After all, it isn't like they're doing anything to prevent other operating systems from running, they're just blocking the non-open parts of their OS from running on generic hardware. There are even developers who say they've installed Windows xp on their dev boxes, so competing operating systems don't even need to be recompiled. All this does is limit how much Apple can compete in the market.
If they were going for OS dominance, this would be shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, they don't sell just an operating system. They sell the environment as a whole, including hardware. If you don't like their hardware, then feel free to buy some different hardware and run the open parts of OS X (mostly Darwin) on that box.
Try moving one of the Apple-provided widgets to ~/Library/Widgets/ and reload the widget manager. Notice how it has the red Delete button next to it now. The button only shows up for widgets that the user can delete.
By default, all of the Apple-provided widgets are in/Library/Widgets/ and they're the only widgets that are in there. Nobody other than 'system' has write permissions to that folder, so 'system' is the only user that can delete widget bundles. The widgets that a user installs go into his home folder.
It has nothing to do with whether the widget is provided by Apple and everything to do with a user's permissions.
The red button only appears for widgets that you have permission to delete. Note that nobody other than 'system' can write to/Library/Widgets/
This means that normal users can't put anything in there, nor can they delete anything from it. Thus, they don't have permission to delete the widgets, thus the option doesn't show up.
Any widget that automatically installs itself can only go into ~/Library/Widgets/ so this widget manager can delete any automatically installed widget. If you know enough to put a widget into/Library/Widgets/ you should know how to remove it. Same goes for if you know enough to alter the permissions of/Library/Widgets/ to make it writable by wheel or something.
For the widget manager to delete widgets in/Library/Widgets/, said manager would need to run as root. I somehow think that most people who install their widgets by hand would like that even less than having to delete them by hand.
What I find interesting is that in this context, ignorance is quite literally no defense. Consider that unless this person plugged the AP in and never used it, then his own computer has to have connected to it at some point. Assuming the owner never changed any settings, who would expect anyone else to have a harder time connecting to the AP than he did?
Thus, not having read the manual doesn't help the case at all.
I guessed that you were saying that initial comment jokingly, I just thought that it bore pointing out that he's one of the greatest minds in technology in general. After all, a disturbing number of slashdotters seem to have never heard of him.
As for the singularity and ascension and all that, I remember reading some article by him where he discussed how, like a black hole's event horizon, "the singularity" is something that we cannot actually reach. Rather, it's something beyond which our models are no longer effective and we cannot make any sort of educated guess at what will happen. Newton indeed could not have predicted the discoveries beyond the renaissance, so to him, it would be a singularity.
Fairly often, discussions of "the singularity" involve technological change, but there are also social singularities. For example, a fairly short while ago, no westerners could imagine women owning their own property. After all, they were the property of their husbands. Now, we've got women not only owning property, but running huge corporations.
Really, I like it as a description of innovation and change. It's a wonderful idea.
Plus, it isn't every day that I get to discuss a N:S ratio of predictions relative to time being (-1/(t-q)) where 'q' is the "distance" from now to the singularity. </geek="math">
You realize that Kurzweil doesn't really need a job anymore, right? He made the Kurzweil reader (reads books aloud) from which flatbed scanners and omnifont OCR came and the Kurzweil synthesizer (the first to accurately reproduce the sounds of orchestral instruments). He's founded nine companies spanning everything from music and assistive technologies to cybernetic art to financial investment. From his site:
Ray Kurzweil was inducted in 2002 into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office. He received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the nation's largest award in invention and innovation. He also received the 1999 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He has also received scores of other national and international awards, including the 1994 Dickson Prize (Carnegie Mellon University's top science prize), Engineer of the Year from Design News, Inventor of the Year from MIT, and the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He has received twelve honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. He has received seven national and international film awards. His book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was named Best Computer Science Book of 1990. His best-selling book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, has been published in nine languages and achieved the #1 best selling book on Amazon.com in the categories of "Science" and "Artificial Intelligence."
So it isn't exactly his job to make these hypotheses, more like his hobby.;)
The point is that it's like a hash. As long as each fingerprint system uses different points to make the number, then getting your number from one of the systems won't allow that person to somehow reconstruct your fingerprint for use in, say, your bank.
I still hate the idea, since it seems terribly excessive to require a fingerprint to use computers in a public library, but at least this one value won't "open all the doors" if someone maliciously obtains it.
That sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how well it would work. Menu items need to be fairly visible to be usable, and it's somewhat difficult to keep them visible in any sort of usage-gradient scheme.
Consider a gradient from a low saturation of a color to a high saturation. For this to have any visual impact, infrequently used menu items would end up with their background colors getting pretty saturated. You could potentially have the mouseover of all items be consistent, but then you're left with the problem of OS X's Dock. Namely that you may not be able to tell what something is until your cursor is over it. This problem would be intensified in a menu, because menus tend not to have big, clear icons like the Dock has.
A size gradient is right out, since it would end up either making the menus really huge, or making the infrequently used menu items really small.
A color-rotating scheme might work, but from what color to what color? From beige to a pastel purple (or some other color) as the items range from frequently used to infrequent? That sounds useful without being horrible, as long as the colors used are fairly light. I doubt that everyone could agree on a single color system, so you'd end up with a dozen different applications all using their own color schemes. Though... this isn't really all that different from how Windows applications are now.
As for whether an app has tried any of these, I don't know. Out of the ideas I just threw out, the color gradient seems the most intuitive, but also the least usable. A color wheel system would take a lot of work to do well, and even then, it wouldn't be particularly intuitive.
Then again, I'm not paid to do UI design, so if someone feels he knows the topic better than me cares to comment, please do.
Personally, I use a multicast address. Specifically, 224.1.1.1. Sending an HTTP request to a multicast address doesn't make sense, so my IP stack blocks it. Meanwhile, my stack actually attempts to connect to 0.0.0.0. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a non-spec stack. Whatever.:P
The point is that there are plenty of nice addresses to use.
Uh... just so you know, the message isn't hidden from blind people. Or anyone with a screenreader, for that matter. I like to have my computer read documents aloud to me as I do other things. My screenreader read all of the "classified" portions without the least bit of trouble. It even prefaced them with the word "Unclassified" on each page.
Now, it could be argued that I was using it in an unintended way, but what of blind people? Are they simply to be disallowed the right to read things that our government distributes, for fear that they might hear something classified? Are they to be disallowed the ability to discuss information that they have access to and have no reason to believe is classified? In fact, they would have every reason to believe that it's unclassified since the screenreader would say "Unclassified" at the top of each page.
I really fail to see how portions of a document that a screenreader could read with no modification could be considered "unable to be viewed in its intended distribution format".
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly my point. And yet the free version is quite a capable media framework in itself with a decent frontend.
Yes, well, there are programs that use the QuickTime framework (remember, it isn't just an application) that can go fullscreen that don't cost money. ;p iTunes, for example, can play videos fullscreen without a charge. There's even a quick little AppleScript to do it:
tell application "QuickTime"
present front movie scale screen
end tell
And that was the first result on a Google search for the words "QuickTime", "fullscreen", and "free".
Here's another result: Fullscreen Movie Player - A free Full Screen Movie Player for QuickTime.
There. Was that too hard for you?
And yes, mplayer and VLC have their moments, I just prefer QuickTime for most of my media purposes.
Please note that iTunes at number 34 is also marked as a Media Player. Thus, the words after the link just describe what the product is rather than saying "This is the best _______".
Also, Windows Media Player 10 is much better than some of the previous ones with respect to interface. And compatibility, too.
Goodness it's hard to say that with a straight face. I mean, come on. QuickTime 7 beats it hands down in quite a few respects (Mmm. Decent H.264), and even then, QT7 isn't the best media player out there for everything.
From reading the descriptions of the different versions of Vista, Microsoft is doing away with the whole Windows Server bit and merging its capabilities with the other editions. For example, "Windows Vista Pro Edition will include domain join and management functionality, compatibility with non-Microsoft networking protocols (Netware, SNMP, etc.), Remote Desktop, IIS Web server, and Encrypted File System (EFS)." Sounds an awful lot like Windows Server 2003 to me. Really, more like a step between the current xp Pro and Server 2003.
Then, we get to Windows Vista Small Business Edition. It's got all kinds of features from shadow copy support to "castle networking", which seems to be a lot like an ad-hoc Active Directory system.
Windows Vista Enterprise Edition seems to have Virtual PC integration, which in the case of Server 2003, would be Virtual Server.
So anyway, I suppose that my point is that 7 9. If Microsoft announce a Windows Vista Server line, then I take all of this back and admit that it'll probably be a bad idea to have this many versions.
Having a secure default install means that the admins don't have to do nearly as much work to secure it. This means that you can get away with fewer administrators, and therefore, it has the potential of being cheaper for a company to get an OS that starts out secure.
A company would be foolish not to consider the security of the default install of an OS and comparing it with the security of others.
So does your workplace not use ethernet?
How about 19" racks? Surely you don't use 16" racks.
Do you use PCI-based computers, or did your company want to make its own bus technology?
SVGA or DVI-based monitors, or did you guys make your own display technology?
Do your computers understand ASCII?
Admittedly, those are all computer-based questions, so here's one that applies pretty much everywhere. Does nothing in your workplace use mass-manufactured bolts or screws?
I don't know where you work, but if it has no standards, then it must be under a rock or something.
So basically, Microsoft are trying to undo years of software development stage terminology. Sorry, but I don't care what they call it. Much of the rest of the software development world calls this kind of release an Alpha.
To alter an ACL, it's just 'chmod +a "someUser deny append" fileName' or whatever. You can even add ACLs to specific spots in the stack by using '+a#' followed by the number. '-a' and '-a#' remove access control entries just like their + counterparts.
It's a rather nice system. I like it more than "The Windows Way", since I like being able to do recursive chmod'ing, and I've not found a suitable equivalent in Windows.
On Mac OS X, there's a really nice application that adds a "Typeset Equation" system service. Basically, you select the TeX source and run the service, and the source is replaced by a PDF of the typeset equation.
1 .1b1.pdf
Here's a PDF describing the idea and process as well as how to work with it in the first version of Keynote: http://keynotehq.com/tutorials/keynote_equations_
Now, it isn't quite as integrated into Keynote or Pages as it could be, but it's easier for most people to edit the document as a whole in one of those two, and only use TeX when they have to. I certainly find it a nice add-on.
Actually, Microsoft was convicted of abuse of monopoly power due to the fact that they used threats and other means of coercion to prevent other corporations from bundling non-Microsoft operating systems on their products. Notice the "other corporations" bit.
Essentially, they used their massive market share to keep all of the computer manufacturers from throwing in competing products. It was an "I'm taking my ball and going to play with those other kids without you" sort of attitude. And technically, they weren't only using their own monopoly power to do this, but also the competitive power of all of the other computer manufacturers. If you can't sell Windows and everyone else can, then you go out of business. Microsoft used that to bully computer manufacturers into bundling Windows with every computer they sold and doing no business with Microsoft's competitors.
Apple is the company that produces both the software and the hardware. This means that they can't use their power to force other companies to not do business with Apple's competitors.
You're the kind of guy who also thinks that Sony has a monopoly on Playstation systems, aren't you?
General statements like that are really not helpful. ;p If you've got specific examples, list them. Here are some specific examples I've got:
...
... I've not really used any server version of Windows to do much of anything other than basic futzing around. I must, however, say that neither server OS seemed particularly "noob-friendly" in terms of configuring services or anything else.
-- When talking about the non-server version of each, I can't think of anything that's easier to do on Windows than on a Mac. Changing network interface details is about the same on both platforms, as is altering the settings for the general way the OS looks, display preferences such as resolution or refresh rate, power settings, mouse and keyboard settings, date and time
Macs have an easier time setting up basic sharing, but it's harder to set up more advanced sharing of specific directories. Then again, sharing only the ~/Public directory provides a rather concrete distinction between what's private and what's public. Both systems have benefits.
Basic user accounts are equally easy to create, and on a Mac, you have more options to tweak them.
Software update is nigh-trivial on Macs, and only slightly harder on Windows. They're about the same in terms of idiot-proof-ness (hooray for new "words"!).
Changing the startup disk and rebooting on a Mac takes literally five mouseclicks. On a windows box, you have to go into the BIOS or use some kind of bootloader. Macs have a bootloader, too, though it generally isn't necessary.
Macs have much more integrated support for assistive devices, though that isn't relevant for most people.
-- As for the server side
-- With regards to remote management tools, I've not used any for Windows, so I gave examples of what Apple Remote Desktop does as a sort of "What more could you want?" example. I've never found myself wishing that it had such-and-such a feature or that it could do something easier. Or rather, I have thought repeatedly that faster network scanning would be nice, but that isn't exactly Apple's fault.
I very much like the ability to remotely install packages on user machines as well as the ability to run shell commands on entire batches of machines at once. The ability to share either the admin screen or a client screen with other machines on the network is quite a nice feature, as is the ability to lock screens remotely.
ARD's interface is as close to idiot-proof as any remote management tool can be.
-- I'd really love to hear if I'm wrong about any of this or if I overlooked anything.
I'd love to see a list of these features of Windows that make it easier to manage large numbers of machines. I honestly can't think of any. Mac OS X has Apple Remote Desktop which can send batch commands to entire networks of computers as easily as typing the command and selecting the target machines from a list.
...
It also has an absolutely fantastic method of networked booting that allows you to flush a machine's hard drive and restore it to a disk image on a server with only a few clicks. This can also be done with groups of computers and is handled with multicasting so as to save on bandwidth.
It's got all of the standard features such as Windows NT compatible ACLs; network software installs and booting; domain management and user authentication through Active Directory, Open Directory, LDAP, NetInfo, and just about anything else I've heard of; standard mounting of SMB shares as well as NFS, AFP, WebDAV, and FTP all trivially and with as strong authentication as the standard supports; Wake on LAN, of course
In all seriousness, I'd love to hear what OS X is missing.
Interestingly enough, it was only same-sex anal and/or oral sex ("sodomy" sounds like such a euphemism) that was prohibited by the law. It was even specified to only apply to same-sex encounters. All of the oppositely sexed couples could do pretty much whatever they wanted to do.
Of course, at this point my comment is officially nowhere near the topic of the article.
I suppose I don't see the problem with OS X requiring a TCPA chip to run. After all, it isn't like they're doing anything to prevent other operating systems from running, they're just blocking the non-open parts of their OS from running on generic hardware. There are even developers who say they've installed Windows xp on their dev boxes, so competing operating systems don't even need to be recompiled. All this does is limit how much Apple can compete in the market.
If they were going for OS dominance, this would be shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, they don't sell just an operating system. They sell the environment as a whole, including hardware. If you don't like their hardware, then feel free to buy some different hardware and run the open parts of OS X (mostly Darwin) on that box.
Try moving one of the Apple-provided widgets to ~/Library/Widgets/ and reload the widget manager. Notice how it has the red Delete button next to it now. The button only shows up for widgets that the user can delete.
/Library/Widgets/ and they're the only widgets that are in there. Nobody other than 'system' has write permissions to that folder, so 'system' is the only user that can delete widget bundles. The widgets that a user installs go into his home folder.
By default, all of the Apple-provided widgets are in
It has nothing to do with whether the widget is provided by Apple and everything to do with a user's permissions.
The red button only appears for widgets that you have permission to delete. Note that nobody other than 'system' can write to /Library/Widgets/
/Library/Widgets/ you should know how to remove it. Same goes for if you know enough to alter the permissions of /Library/Widgets/ to make it writable by wheel or something.
/Library/Widgets/, said manager would need to run as root. I somehow think that most people who install their widgets by hand would like that even less than having to delete them by hand.
This means that normal users can't put anything in there, nor can they delete anything from it. Thus, they don't have permission to delete the widgets, thus the option doesn't show up.
Any widget that automatically installs itself can only go into ~/Library/Widgets/ so this widget manager can delete any automatically installed widget. If you know enough to put a widget into
For the widget manager to delete widgets in
What I find interesting is that in this context, ignorance is quite literally no defense. Consider that unless this person plugged the AP in and never used it, then his own computer has to have connected to it at some point. Assuming the owner never changed any settings, who would expect anyone else to have a harder time connecting to the AP than he did?
Thus, not having read the manual doesn't help the case at all.
I guessed that you were saying that initial comment jokingly, I just thought that it bore pointing out that he's one of the greatest minds in technology in general. After all, a disturbing number of slashdotters seem to have never heard of him.
As for the singularity and ascension and all that, I remember reading some article by him where he discussed how, like a black hole's event horizon, "the singularity" is something that we cannot actually reach. Rather, it's something beyond which our models are no longer effective and we cannot make any sort of educated guess at what will happen. Newton indeed could not have predicted the discoveries beyond the renaissance, so to him, it would be a singularity.
Fairly often, discussions of "the singularity" involve technological change, but there are also social singularities. For example, a fairly short while ago, no westerners could imagine women owning their own property. After all, they were the property of their husbands. Now, we've got women not only owning property, but running huge corporations.
Really, I like it as a description of innovation and change. It's a wonderful idea.
Plus, it isn't every day that I get to discuss a N:S ratio of predictions relative to time being (-1/(t-q)) where 'q' is the "distance" from now to the singularity. </geek="math">
So it isn't exactly his job to make these hypotheses, more like his hobby.
Personally, I like PentiuMacs. Kind of like how Apple's dev lists are calling the versions of OS X that run on these Intel-based Macs "osx86".
The point is that it's like a hash. As long as each fingerprint system uses different points to make the number, then getting your number from one of the systems won't allow that person to somehow reconstruct your fingerprint for use in, say, your bank.
I still hate the idea, since it seems terribly excessive to require a fingerprint to use computers in a public library, but at least this one value won't "open all the doors" if someone maliciously obtains it.
That sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how well it would work. Menu items need to be fairly visible to be usable, and it's somewhat difficult to keep them visible in any sort of usage-gradient scheme.
... this isn't really all that different from how Windows applications are now.
Consider a gradient from a low saturation of a color to a high saturation. For this to have any visual impact, infrequently used menu items would end up with their background colors getting pretty saturated. You could potentially have the mouseover of all items be consistent, but then you're left with the problem of OS X's Dock. Namely that you may not be able to tell what something is until your cursor is over it. This problem would be intensified in a menu, because menus tend not to have big, clear icons like the Dock has.
A size gradient is right out, since it would end up either making the menus really huge, or making the infrequently used menu items really small.
A color-rotating scheme might work, but from what color to what color? From beige to a pastel purple (or some other color) as the items range from frequently used to infrequent? That sounds useful without being horrible, as long as the colors used are fairly light. I doubt that everyone could agree on a single color system, so you'd end up with a dozen different applications all using their own color schemes. Though
As for whether an app has tried any of these, I don't know. Out of the ideas I just threw out, the color gradient seems the most intuitive, but also the least usable. A color wheel system would take a lot of work to do well, and even then, it wouldn't be particularly intuitive.
Then again, I'm not paid to do UI design, so if someone feels he knows the topic better than me cares to comment, please do.
Personally, I use a multicast address. Specifically, 224.1.1.1. Sending an HTTP request to a multicast address doesn't make sense, so my IP stack blocks it. Meanwhile, my stack actually attempts to connect to 0.0.0.0. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a non-spec stack. Whatever. :P
The point is that there are plenty of nice addresses to use.
The parent link didn't work for me, but after exploring the NSA's website, I found this link, which seems to work better:
osx_client_final_v_1_1.pdf
Uh ... just so you know, the message isn't hidden from blind people. Or anyone with a screenreader, for that matter. I like to have my computer read documents aloud to me as I do other things. My screenreader read all of the "classified" portions without the least bit of trouble. It even prefaced them with the word "Unclassified" on each page.
Now, it could be argued that I was using it in an unintended way, but what of blind people? Are they simply to be disallowed the right to read things that our government distributes, for fear that they might hear something classified? Are they to be disallowed the ability to discuss information that they have access to and have no reason to believe is classified? In fact, they would have every reason to believe that it's unclassified since the screenreader would say "Unclassified" at the top of each page.
I really fail to see how portions of a document that a screenreader could read with no modification could be considered "unable to be viewed in its intended distribution format".
"Thank you all for wearing your ID cards. They'll help to identify the bodies!"