... AND admit that Windows is the de facto desktop?!
Because it is? Let's not delude ourselves here, folks. Windows has 90%+ of the desktop marketshare. If Linux and/or anything else wants to take marketshare away from Windows, the only way thats going to happen is by making it easy for the users. In my mind, this means making a GUI that resembles Windows closely enough such that regular users won't skip a beat. And, from what I can tell, this is what XPde is setting out to accomplish. Let's take away a lot of marketshare and THEN make a better GUI. Trying to do both at once is just like shooing ourselves in the foot.
It's the same in Windows. Windows shortcuts will update themselves if the app is renamed, and good apps will update their file associations when they are launched.
I can definitely see the 'good apps will update their file associations when they are launched', but I've been using Windows from 3.1 thru XP and I don't ever remember a Windows shortcut updating itself if I renamed the app it was pointing to. However, I do fondly remember the dialog stating 'Windows could not find _____.exe. Click Browse to search for it or wait will Windows searches...". Granted, XP has gotten a whole lot less use from me than 2k did, but I still don't ever remember seeing this automagical feature in any Windows OS that utilized NTFS. Care to provide a specific example?
...Microsoft's solution for "DLL Hell" is nothing compared to Mac OS X bundles. Bundles offer a simple, intuitive approach, whereas Windows takes multiple routes in trying to solve "DLL Hell". While Windows 2000/XP are much much better than previous version of Windows with respect to "DLL Hell", they still do not approach the simplicity and power of Mac OS X bundles. This particular thing is one of the many reasons that make coding for OS X nearly enjoyable, whereas coding for Windows usually gives me a few more gray hairs than I had when I started.
Simple: because in Australia, unless you are profiting from the illegal copying of copyrighted works, it is a civil matter, not criminal. I didn't see anywhere in the article that mentioned that law enforcement had evidence of someone profiting (which, I believe, should be necessary to even get them involved to begin with). Now, obviously, if they had evidence of people profiting because of these actions, that would be one thing. But based on the article, it doesn't sound to me like that is the case.
While this may be the goal, I highly doubt it will actually happen unless a law comes about requiring DRM on CD-Rs. Otherwise, there are simply enough people that won't tolerate DRM-tainted CD-Rs to sustain a healthy market for plain ol' regular CD-Rs.
I just dealt with this the other day at the office. I run OS X at home, so I can't exactly double-check right now, but IIRC, you go to Tools->Options->Security and there is an option (that is checked by default) to block files "that may contain a virus" (or wording very similar to that). If memory serves, it is near the top of the Security pane. Unchecking this will allow you to save EXE files and what-not, you just obviously have to be a bit more vigilant about what you open/save.
The ability to set a timer for a webpage to refresh, on an individual page basis.
Ever heard of meta refresh? Look up the "meta" tag and how to use its "refresh" attribute--works wonderfully in every browser I've ever used.
Just like every other stereotype...
on
10 Techno-Cool Cars
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Just because the stereotype isn't true for all doesn't mean that it isn't true for some or even most. After all, stereotypes don't just pop out of thin air--something true almost always inspires them.
(Case in point: Jews and their obsession for money.)
I don't know what is defined as "active retail presence", but Apple has been charging sales tax at their online store for all 50 states for at least over a year now. When I bought my iBook, I called to complain about the sales tax and was told that Apple has a presence in all 50 states and is therefore required to collect sales tax. At the time, there was no Apple retail store here and there were only 2 authorized resellers in this city of 1M+. Soooo, I'd be real interested to know exactly what Apple considers enough retail presence to charge sales tax (and no, the unlucky dolt that received my sales tax bitching couldn't give me this answer).
I installed both with SoftwareUpdate shortly after they came out and have been playing with both since. Here's a few thoughts/problems I've had:
iPhoto 2 is much faster. I'm using an iBook 600 and have about 1250 ~1.2mb jpegs in iPhoto. Moving back and forth between photos is actually instantaneous now, rather than a half second pause followed by a unfocused view of the image followed by another half second pause and then the image itself. Starting and quitting the app itself seemed to best 1.x by at least a couple seconds each.
The iPhoto interface is much cleaner. It always seemed to me that the 'Export' button and panel could be eliminated in iPhoto, and with the release of 2.0, it seems I was right.
iMovie 3 is only slightly improved from my perspective. The only problem I had with 2.x was how it would take over the whole screen. Now it looks and behaves like any other app. Other than that, the interface does look much more refined and the app itself just feels faster (when exporting, mainly).
The only problem I've had with either is with sound in iMovie. I opened a project I created with iMovie 2 and although each clip shows up, when I try to play any of them, I get a rather loud and annoying tone played rather than the sound itself. This problem seems to be related to an incompatibility between the Formac Studio DV converter box I used to import the clips and iMovie 3 itself. Several people are having this problem, so I imagine it will be fixed fairly shortly. Until then, I've used a workaround posted on the Apple discussion boards.
All in all, a worthwhile upgrade (particularly once the glaring problem with iMovie is fixed).
Somehow I doubt he was confusing the fact that Ximian Gnome and Ximian Evolution are two separate products that do entirely different things. I think his comparison had more to do with the particular popularity of each product, rather than the product itself.
....and Wiley Publishing, Inc. into publishing what I consider a weak book on security.
Publishers, like any business, are just out to make a buck. Screw the actual quality of the book, if it will bring in the cash, then they'll publish it. And with such a high profile name as Kevin Mitnick, they're almost assured of a profit. Enough people are going to buy it, so it doesn't even matter how weak it is, as long as it's barely enough to get by.
Anything that needs to be spammed over and over, ad nauseum, isn't selling, thus requiring repeated spam runs in order for the spammer to make a decent ROI.
To me, it seems more logical that repeated ads for the same product means that it is selling. I wouldn't think spammers have the resources to repeatedly spam something that isn't making them immediate cash flow. It makes much more sense to me that the repeated ads are the result of the spammers seeing something sell and just getting greedy (and/or lazy).
(For the record, if anyone cares: I do support gun ownership, but I don't think it has any significant effect on the crime rate either way. I like shooting guns because they're fun and exciting; they give you a feeling of power. I'm not so scared of criminals that I feel the need to carry one, and I refuse to elevate my enjoyment of guns to the status of a political commitment or ideology.)
As pretty as OSX is the Apple desktop is hard to justify.
Personally, I don't think the desktops are any harder to justify than the laptops...
A friend of mine, who is the IT director for a warehouse here in town, just bought 24 new iMac G4-700's for $1200/each. He said given the requirements (all-in-one form factor, LCD monitor, CD-RW), the iMac G4 was easily the most cost effective solution. The cheapest overall machine that fit the requirements was one from Gateway that was $200 less, but the increased stability of OS X over XP and the fact that setting up the database client software would require about half the hassle made him go with the iMac G4.
I have another friend who bought a new Dell desktop about 8 or 10 months ago. It is a P4, I believe 1.4 or 1.5GHz with 256MB RAM and a CD-RW. At the time, I believe he paid around $900 for the system plus 17" CRT. He originally asked my advice on what to get, and, although I suggested the base model iMac G4 to him, he ended up getting the Dell. And since then, I've had at least one call a week from him because his system just magically rebooted itself or some drivers are blowing up or the printer wont print or any of a thousand different things. And each time, I would make sure to remind him, "Hey man, if you had spent the extra couple hundred dollars, you wouldn't be having these problems." Well, a week and a half ago, he sold his Dell and monitor to some guy on his street and ordered himself a brand new iMac G4.
Perhaps the value of the Apple desktops isn't quite as apparent as their notebooks, but as the two stories above show, I've personally seen two different people realize for themselves just how much value the Apple desktops do have.
Try the nightly builds...
on
Midweek Upgrades
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· Score: 3, Informative
There's a great program called ChimeraKnight that will backup your current Chimera, download the current nightly build and unpack and install it for you, all automagically. I run it every couple days or so, and while I used to have the same speed and stability complaints about Chimera, it only gets better day after day. In fact, I've had it crash only once in the past week. And its speed (startup, navigation) is noticeably better these days over Mozilla, especially on my iBook 600/640. Up until a little over a week ago, I was using Mozilla instead of Chimera, but the way things are going for Chimera now, I doubt I'll ever go back to Mozilla.
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Publically posting a document that you shouldn't is hardly "hacking". I'd definitely lump it into cracking before hacking.
If you haven't seen a BSOD under Windows 2000 OR XP, then you just haven't used Windows enough.
Not to say they are as prevalent as the 95/98 days, but anyone that truly believes they are gone is fooling themselves.
... AND admit that Windows is the de facto desktop?!
Because it is? Let's not delude ourselves here, folks. Windows has 90%+ of the desktop marketshare. If Linux and/or anything else wants to take marketshare away from Windows, the only way thats going to happen is by making it easy for the users. In my mind, this means making a GUI that resembles Windows closely enough such that regular users won't skip a beat. And, from what I can tell, this is what XPde is setting out to accomplish. Let's take away a lot of marketshare and THEN make a better GUI. Trying to do both at once is just like shooing ourselves in the foot.
It's the same in Windows. Windows shortcuts will update themselves if the app is renamed, and good apps will update their file associations when they are launched.
I can definitely see the 'good apps will update their file associations when they are launched', but I've been using Windows from 3.1 thru XP and I don't ever remember a Windows shortcut updating itself if I renamed the app it was pointing to. However, I do fondly remember the dialog stating 'Windows could not find _____.exe. Click Browse to search for it or wait will Windows searches...". Granted, XP has gotten a whole lot less use from me than 2k did, but I still don't ever remember seeing this automagical feature in any Windows OS that utilized NTFS. Care to provide a specific example?
...Microsoft's solution for "DLL Hell" is nothing compared to Mac OS X bundles. Bundles offer a simple, intuitive approach, whereas Windows takes multiple routes in trying to solve "DLL Hell". While Windows 2000/XP are much much better than previous version of Windows with respect to "DLL Hell", they still do not approach the simplicity and power of Mac OS X bundles. This particular thing is one of the many reasons that make coding for OS X nearly enjoyable, whereas coding for Windows usually gives me a few more gray hairs than I had when I started.
Simple: because in Australia, unless you are profiting from the illegal copying of copyrighted works, it is a civil matter, not criminal. I didn't see anywhere in the article that mentioned that law enforcement had evidence of someone profiting (which, I believe, should be necessary to even get them involved to begin with). Now, obviously, if they had evidence of people profiting because of these actions, that would be one thing. But based on the article, it doesn't sound to me like that is the case.
...Watch these replace normal CDRs....
While this may be the goal, I highly doubt it will actually happen unless a law comes about requiring DRM on CD-Rs. Otherwise, there are simply enough people that won't tolerate DRM-tainted CD-Rs to sustain a healthy market for plain ol' regular CD-Rs.
I just dealt with this the other day at the office. I run OS X at home, so I can't exactly double-check right now, but IIRC, you go to Tools->Options->Security and there is an option (that is checked by default) to block files "that may contain a virus" (or wording very similar to that). If memory serves, it is near the top of the Security pane. Unchecking this will allow you to save EXE files and what-not, you just obviously have to be a bit more vigilant about what you open/save.
The ability to set a timer for a webpage to refresh, on an individual page basis.
Ever heard of meta refresh? Look up the "meta" tag and how to use its "refresh" attribute--works wonderfully in every browser I've ever used.
Just because the stereotype isn't true for all doesn't mean that it isn't true for some or even most. After all, stereotypes don't just pop out of thin air--something true almost always inspires them.
(Case in point: Jews and their obsession for money.)
And there are better, and technologically more interesting, ways to do that, as stated.
Not to troll, but-- like what?
Hmpf. All the proposed names (official and otherwise) sound really lame to me. Wouldn't "Chimaera" work?
Yah, that's a great idea--make it harder to pronounce than it already is.
Never before? Maybe, but then why do we keep hearing this phrase, year after year
Because the power available to the consumer grows year after year, making it true year after year?
I don't know what is defined as "active retail presence", but Apple has been charging sales tax at their online store for all 50 states for at least over a year now. When I bought my iBook, I called to complain about the sales tax and was told that Apple has a presence in all 50 states and is therefore required to collect sales tax. At the time, there was no Apple retail store here and there were only 2 authorized resellers in this city of 1M+. Soooo, I'd be real interested to know exactly what Apple considers enough retail presence to charge sales tax (and no, the unlucky dolt that received my sales tax bitching couldn't give me this answer).
- iPhoto 2 is much faster. I'm using an iBook 600 and have about 1250 ~1.2mb jpegs in iPhoto. Moving back and forth between photos is actually instantaneous now, rather than a half second pause followed by a unfocused view of the image followed by another half second pause and then the image itself. Starting and quitting the app itself seemed to best 1.x by at least a couple seconds each.
- The iPhoto interface is much cleaner. It always seemed to me that the 'Export' button and panel could be eliminated in iPhoto, and with the release of 2.0, it seems I was right.
- iMovie 3 is only slightly improved from my perspective. The only problem I had with 2.x was how it would take over the whole screen. Now it looks and behaves like any other app. Other than that, the interface does look much more refined and the app itself just feels faster (when exporting, mainly).
- The only problem I've had with either is with sound in iMovie. I opened a project I created with iMovie 2 and although each clip shows up, when I try to play any of them, I get a rather loud and annoying tone played rather than the sound itself. This problem seems to be related to an incompatibility between the Formac Studio DV converter box I used to import the clips and iMovie 3 itself. Several people are having this problem, so I imagine it will be fixed fairly shortly. Until then, I've used a workaround posted on the Apple discussion boards.
All in all, a worthwhile upgrade (particularly once the glaring problem with iMovie is fixed).Somehow I doubt he was confusing the fact that Ximian Gnome and Ximian Evolution are two separate products that do entirely different things. I think his comparison had more to do with the particular popularity of each product, rather than the product itself.
....and Wiley Publishing, Inc. into publishing what I consider a weak book on security.
Publishers, like any business, are just out to make a buck. Screw the actual quality of the book, if it will bring in the cash, then they'll publish it. And with such a high profile name as Kevin Mitnick, they're almost assured of a profit. Enough people are going to buy it, so it doesn't even matter how weak it is, as long as it's barely enough to get by.
Screw what people like or don't like...pass the bong!
My guess is they meant SmartDisk's booth at CES (Consumer Electronics Show, IIRC), which is going on this week in Vegas.
Anything that needs to be spammed over and over, ad nauseum, isn't selling, thus requiring repeated spam runs in order for the spammer to make a decent ROI.
To me, it seems more logical that repeated ads for the same product means that it is selling. I wouldn't think spammers have the resources to repeatedly spam something that isn't making them immediate cash flow. It makes much more sense to me that the repeated ads are the result of the spammers seeing something sell and just getting greedy (and/or lazy).
(For the record, if anyone cares: I do support gun ownership, but I don't think it has any significant effect on the crime rate either way. I like shooting guns because they're fun and exciting; they give you a feeling of power. I'm not so scared of criminals that I feel the need to carry one, and I refuse to elevate my enjoyment of guns to the status of a political commitment or ideology.)
Can I get an AMEN?!
maybe i'm wrong, but isn't that what the preview button does? the preview button right next to the submit button? or do you want a forced preview?
As pretty as OSX is the Apple desktop is hard to justify.
Personally, I don't think the desktops are any harder to justify than the laptops...
A friend of mine, who is the IT director for a warehouse here in town, just bought 24 new iMac G4-700's for $1200/each. He said given the requirements (all-in-one form factor, LCD monitor, CD-RW), the iMac G4 was easily the most cost effective solution. The cheapest overall machine that fit the requirements was one from Gateway that was $200 less, but the increased stability of OS X over XP and the fact that setting up the database client software would require about half the hassle made him go with the iMac G4.
I have another friend who bought a new Dell desktop about 8 or 10 months ago. It is a P4, I believe 1.4 or 1.5GHz with 256MB RAM and a CD-RW. At the time, I believe he paid around $900 for the system plus 17" CRT. He originally asked my advice on what to get, and, although I suggested the base model iMac G4 to him, he ended up getting the Dell. And since then, I've had at least one call a week from him because his system just magically rebooted itself or some drivers are blowing up or the printer wont print or any of a thousand different things. And each time, I would make sure to remind him, "Hey man, if you had spent the extra couple hundred dollars, you wouldn't be having these problems." Well, a week and a half ago, he sold his Dell and monitor to some guy on his street and ordered himself a brand new iMac G4.
Perhaps the value of the Apple desktops isn't quite as apparent as their notebooks, but as the two stories above show, I've personally seen two different people realize for themselves just how much value the Apple desktops do have.
There's a great program called ChimeraKnight that will backup your current Chimera, download the current nightly build and unpack and install it for you, all automagically. I run it every couple days or so, and while I used to have the same speed and stability complaints about Chimera, it only gets better day after day. In fact, I've had it crash only once in the past week. And its speed (startup, navigation) is noticeably better these days over Mozilla, especially on my iBook 600/640. Up until a little over a week ago, I was using Mozilla instead of Chimera, but the way things are going for Chimera now, I doubt I'll ever go back to Mozilla.
Nice boat.
;-)
Gotta spare G4 lying around?