Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Macs are generally considered more user friendly for novice users, a group that I would guess video/graphics professionals would probably tend to fall into.
Spoken like someone who has never approached compositing software. Come on, pal, professionals? Grow the fuck up.
if Apple Corp can't market their product to the young'uns (and how likely are they to go to a store to buy their parents, nay grandparent's, music?)
I played in bands starting right around the time the Beatles were being turned down by all the (then) majors, and continued playing for about three decades. I saw a 'modified' Beatlemania sweep through the schools every 5-8 years or so. Did it last and last? No, But anyone familiar with the London scene knows that the average 'mania' lasts about two weeks, on average. England swings, yup, and like a pendulum, the Beatles take an astonishing swing through the ears, hearts, and minds of 'kids' on a very regular basis.
And that's reality
In the early-mid sixties,music, from Classical to pop to jazz, was turned on its ear (so to speak) around the World. Was it ''because' of the Beatles? No, not really. But make no mistake, they were the straw that stirred the drink. My girlfriend's kids (they're 18 and 21, the g-friend is 56) gave me the Beatles "Love" thing (the George martin, Cirque du Soleil piece) for Christmas this year, and the daughter and I trade uot-takes from the whit Album, on a regular basis.
Don't hold yer breath waitin' for them to mosey into olivion, no way.
What am I missing here? They don't want people hoarding them to melt them down for a marginal increase in rendered value, BUT, it's okay to get as many pennies as you want now, sit on them until they 'become' five cents apiece in face value, and that will stop hoarding, how, exactly? Ha ha, I feel sorry for the poor schmucks that dished out for the kilns, overhead and export costs, to 'double' their money, when they could, possibly, just wait for a natural 400% 'profit.' Something doesn't seem to add up.
I should have quoted a bit more of your post, sorry. But what kills me about the Finder, and, in turn the file system with my Macs, is this: When they got their hands on NeXTSTEP, if they could have just moved to that, instead of grafting legacy OS onto a 'layer', and simply moved to a true UNIX file system, they wouldn't need Spotlight, at all. (I have it disabled here).
Some of the 3rd-party 'file manager/search' apps are so much faster than Finder/Spotlight... if I was an engineer at Apple I'd be embarrassed, or leave...oh wait, most of the NeXT guys did leave. Oops.
Full grep searching, should be the goal in any OS. You know, leave the 'either/or' paradigm (there's that word again) for the others, and let the rest of us get on with the work, rather than trying to 'jimmy' the crippled command/filing structure into doing what it's supposed to do in the first place. I'm not a programmer, or even a 'geek' like most of you out there, but I've done real world side-by-side comparisons of Spotlight/Sherlock/Cmd-F vs. Eudora for mailbox/text search, and FileBuddy, Xfile (and BBEdit, and definitely including the shell) for cross-drive, simultaneous networked drives, you name it), and it is NOT theory I'm talking about, more like simple factual stuff, that Apple should have had in there 6 years ago. They litter every directory with DS_Store files, every drive with these whomping 'indexes', and the bloody search is still just about stillborn compared to simple Unix search/find/replace, etc.
And how about a 'real' cut/paste, a la Windows, instead of 'cmd-click dragging' for a 'move?'
Frankly this was just a way to point out how people forget their common sense when computers are involved. That's all....
Don't worry about it. These other guys missed your point entirely. The underlying, adversarial, tone associated with opinions, on Slashdot isn't tragic... might be a bit pathetic, though.
Those who are not into technology have no idea.... Look at my latest journal [slashdot.org]. You can have a PhD and fall for the simplest scam there is. Computers do seem to have this effect on people: their common sense fails because computers are somehow "Magic".
It's tragic if you ask me.
You can say that again. My girlfriend is a physician (who has practiced psychiatry for 25+ years), and she is absolutely devoid of any understanding of the risks in those 'scratch and win', 'you may be a winner' type scams that proliferate online. It astonishes me, and it's tragic, like you said. I'll try to discuss it with her, and she'll come back with, "You're right, i probably wouldn't win anything, anyway." And there I am, speechless...
I think Apple would lose a lot of flac they get over iTunes if they did sell some content without Fairplay on it.
Considering that if about 50 people who post on Slashdot were run over by a bus and all that flac would disappear, I doubt Apple is going to change their modus operandi.
I see a certain phrase, from time to time here, and promised myself I would never indulge......but.... Where Are My Mod Points, Now that I Need Them?
Too funny, too insightful. Oh, and it's 'flak', technically, a bad thing, not flac, (a good thing):)
Well, apparently, from an earlier poster...Apple sells these same songs on iTunes that are sold by eMusic (without drm), but, Apple puts DRM on these songs just like from the 'majors'.
I haven't worked in the music business for a while, so things might be vastly different now. I did see a 'standard' recording contract, a few months ago, and it looked startlingly similar to one from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Be that as it may, a lot of so-called 'independent' labels sign distribution deals with the majors, or their subsidiaries.
They do so because it is a lot easier for a company with clout to recover, in a timely fashion, accounts receivable, from even the sales of much smaller labels and artists. No jobber or chain store is going to get 'cute' with a major, when they need the next big hit product from that same major label. Fair enough. And it is also not hard to imagine a tiny label getting a green light to sell limited distribution product, under its own terms, but the tail is not gonna wag the fucking dog, and you can bank on that.
Eddie & the PipeSmokers can give their stuff away on eMusic (or wherever their distribution deal allows their 'indie label' to do so), but MCA or whoever is going to demand their DRM on the stuff they distribute electronically (and if it's a choice of channels between eMusic and the Apple iTunes Store, you be god-damned certain MCA (et al) is not going to give up Apple for some minor outfit).
Before we barbecue Apple over this heinous practice, somebody needs to do a little real world due diligence, no? Or should we make 'facts' and 'details' personna non grata insofar as their colliding with our righteous opinions is concerned?
..... by producing a toy for the wealthy person........
Apparently there are quite a few wealthy people who have purchased ipods. Nobody really NEEDS any iPod, yet they are selling like hot-cakes. With iphone a customer gets three devices in one.
Bingo. Exactly god-damned right.
These suckers on the forum, bitching/sniveling, "My mp3s are way more than 8GB..", etc, what the fuck? I have over a terabyte of stuff in mp3s here, and more than that (data-wise) in flac stuff, AND I own a fucking 1st gen iPod (10gigs), that I have never filled up. And why? Answer: Why? Who needs 60 gigs of what probably amounts to five bands and a shitlload of imitators and also-rans clogging their head on a flight or a drive? Talk to your kids, your family, friends, read a fucking book, say hi to a stranger, jesus
I was on Motorolas (Cantel/AT&T) back in the early-mid 90s... a $250 phone, $250 a month for twenty-five hundred minutes, and in 18 months none of my bills was under $2500 (Canadian). I quit the cell phone biz around '99-'00, and I was watching the keynote, and my reaction was simple: "I'm in, Steve." NeXT.
Oh, and one more thing, I LOVED the joke, you know, the one that went, "We are hoping to sell 10 million in 2008." Ha ha ha, Jobs. Fuck me, they'll sell 10 mil in greater New York City... alone.
If I were an Apple shareholder, I'd be getting out right now.
But you're not, because you have no 'real' idea what exactly is happening, nevermind what will happen in 5 minutes or centuries, and thankfully, you know it. Very good, Johnny.
I'm looking hard at AAPL right now, myself. No, not for purchase, or some 'pretend' knowledge of what's "certain" to befall the gullible. No son, I got my brother and his wife into AAPL when it was $14 (before the split, ha ha ha), and I'm concerned that it will fall back slightly, take a run at $100, and go sideways or down. (There's market risk that has nothing to do with Apple, as usual, and on the other hand, Steve Jobs could pop up in a month with 'one more thing...' and drive people and Wall Street, ballistic, and the stock, itself, northward.)
One never knows, do one? (.:- - Fats Waller quote)
But when my bro gets out, and he will within the week, I'm probably getting him back in around late May (subject to change). Wall Street and all the biggest institutional investors watch Apple like hawks. They own tons of AAPL. Some of these 'opinions' today, in this Slashdot mind-sharing ritual, are hilarious, almost beyond belief. Keep guessing everybody! And don't let a 50-50 proposition that 'they go up, or they go down', mislead you into thinking you know shit. Remember, as my brother and I like to recall, "Money talks, and..." well, you know the rest.
Nah, the number one reason they're so secretive is because of Steve Jobs' ego.
Thank you for saying that.
And for the younger folks out there, this is a textbook statement illustrating what unsubstantiated conjecture masquerading as an 'opinion', mixed in equal parts with pure cynicism, sounds like.
Cynicism has an almost romantic appeal to the younger, so-inclined types. It goes along nicely with the notion that youthful suicide is 'romantic'. The main difference being, one mindset/action robs one of one's life on the spot, and the other robs it, just as thoroughly, over a longer period of time.
Now, don't misunderstand, I'm not one of those youth-is-wasted-on-the-young guys, no way. But 'brains', 'intelligence', and 'logic' (as opposed to fallacy), well, I'm not so sure about them. Regardless, consider this, O Cynical One: Suppose a whole shitload of miracles happened and you, the 'smart-guy', participated, in any meaningful manner, in a series of projects developed by a small group of your peers, and it was critical to keep the project, and the pride, and the relief, and the long nights, and the missed weekends, and yes, even the 'oohs' and ahhs' of your peers, a SECRET, and then, all you got to do about it was walk around on a stage, in front of a paltry 4,000 geeks, one fucking time... and wait for the cynics, and the envious, and the bored, to lace into you with whatever half-cocked theories or personal gripes happened to emerge from their pathetic excuses for minds. Would you keep going for 30 years?
Let's assume you lack the balls to answer honestly, so let an old-timer help you out here. The answer is no. You'd kill yourself with the myth of "I'm too amazing for this world" ringing in your empty head, and two days after your teary funeral, your buddies would be back on their Playstations. Have a nice life.
Most of the time products that actually come to fruition are no match for the fantastic rumors that fly wildly. Apple has this problem quite a bit.
Yeah, those quad xeons sure disappointed a ton of people, and Apple's share price action over the last five years is a real strong indicator of a general dissatisfaction with their hardware, software, engineering, resale value, etc... unh huh, right.
Were you the guy that greeted the rumor of an mp3 player from Cupertino with "Why, there's plenty of those, already?" I thought so... ha ha ha. Mmhmm, Microsoft has a much better track record with meeting/exceeding expectations, eh? And then there's Sony. Yeah, poor old disappointing Apple, death must be just around the corner.
Those who can't write books review them (this guy). Those who can't review books argue about reviews on Slashdot.
And then there are those of us^h^h^h^h^h who have no time for arguing about reviews because we are way too busy sorting through pdfs, URLs of snazzy web sites (in multiple browsers and directories labeled "URLs"), out-dated guides downloaded from a.b.e-books.etc, scraps of paper, Photoshop tips in soft covers (great bathroom reading material, by the way, uh, someone 'told me'), Webstractored sites, etc, etc
Perhaps it's like how people tend to think more saturated colors are a good thing and then they wonder why the "full" red their LCD displayed comes out faded when printed.
warped analogy... I've worked in vinyl and digital recording (big studios, no TEAC kidstuff), for decades, and the difference between clean harmonic overtones in vinyl, and that clipped, mega-snapshot approximation that we're limited to with all-digital is as different as...well, as different as some toad griping about color correction shit on his LCD, when anyone who's actually 'been there' knows (doesn't 'guess', in other words) that CRT's are for color correction, and LCDs are for punks. Ha ha, and one continuous groove is night-and-day different than itty-bitty bites of the same source.
Check out Boulez, mid-sixties vinyl of The Firebird Suite, (warm, lush) and then run through, say, Dutoit/MSO doing the same thing, direct-to-digital(44kHz 'tin')... I rest my case.
I don't know the ins and out of this, but what I don't understand is this: The Apple Finder has always had those drop-down menus with subfolders, etc, as I'm sure other OS's have. So how is the hierarchial mp3 navigation different enough? When I first used (and still use) my 1st gen iPod, it was familiar from the start, as far as navigation, precisely because it was a long-familiar interface. I'm sure Windows users wouldn't have a problem seeing the drop-down, nested directory 'map', either. So what gives?
The other, actually disturbing, part I don't understand is the sort of MS/SCO-like 'you pay me, and we'll rob them' aspect of the Apple/Creative 'clause' that allows Creative to nail others, with Apple as the first 'payer', and then do a kickback...It just looks sleazy as hell to me. I think Apple is in trouble. When all the NeXT people bailed out, and their Counsel quits and hires counsel, and now this kind of cheap stuff... I don't know, red flags, maybe?
I'm not saying they should just cover their eyes and say "Second set of books? I don't see any second set of books.", but SOX sucks and needs to be reformed.
You are full of shit. Sarbanes-Oxley's main 'bitch' is that it forces the principal executive and the the principal finacial executive (usually the CEO and the CFO) to sign sppecifically-worded statements to the effect that the quarterly reports and annual reports are following the S-O rules requiring sworn statements regarding two major rules of the Securities Act of 1934 (as amended). In other words, they sign statementts reaffirming that they are following much older laws and rules. They are on record, and on the fucking hook, big time, if they knowingly omit facts that would otherwise make their financial statements misleading.
That law (Sarbanes-Oxley) coupled with the SEC's recent $1 Billion reduction in filing fees, is good for honest business. Period.
I knew it was just a matter of time before one of you mental midget fake-ass Randian libertarians would wave your poorly thought out version of what is going on, and how it should be in a 'free' society. Har har har, tell it to Bubba in the Big House, fuckwad. You people never give up, do you? Well guess what? You're fucking full of shit, your facts are faulty, and you're wasting bandwidth, print, and, probably, oxygen. Go make an honest living, asswipe, and when you do the crime, do the fucking time, and shut the fuck up. have a nice day.
Posted anonymously because Slashdot's servers are currently fucking up on Logins. (500 and 503 Errors).
I write software for a living. In my industry a product is "finished" when it implements all of the features that it was intended to implement within a certain threshold of quality (e.g. there are probably some bugs, but it functions *as intended* in almost all situations.)
When you put it that way it makes more sense.
My feeling about the progress of Apple's OS X is that it has been developed and incrementally-updated countless times since initial release, and I was looking at a 'narrower' definition of 'finished.' When the 'point-5' iteration is released, people like me, who have bought each of the 5 'versions of X, will have spent over $500 US, not counting the 'free' 10.0 beta that was gotten as a result of buying an Apple box (a Titanium 667, in my case) when OS X was on the verge of initial release.
For someone who might have used OS 9, back in the day, and then drifted away, and came back to "Tiger" on a Mini, or whatever, it looks pretty radical and like a helluva monetary deal. And, as usual, those of us who faithfully upgraded, all down the line, pay through the nose, and get the benefit of donating our time and efforts to bug eradication, bumpy installs, a couple of OS 'recalls' and re-releases, etc. It has not always been smooth. I haven't seen smooth video in the iTunes screensaver/music vid thing, since 10.2.8, for example. And I hear that in an effort to avoid starting internal fires (semi-laugh) they decided to down-clock the Graphics processor in the MacTel books. It's a minor gripe, but, it feels like a work-in-progress, to me, just my personal opinion/experience.
But I'm 'locked-in' just like all other longtime Mac users, and that's the deal. What kills me is that ubuntu can be upgraded, radically, and it just reboots sub-systems (as far as I can tell) without even so much as a restart involved after the upgrades. If Apple hadn't messed with the schizo NeXT/Legacy hybrid, it would do the same thing. (and actually will, in some cases, if one reads the full info on incremental upgrades, and uses the CLI to reboot affected subsystems), but I digress.
On another front, I agree with the folks who were asking, "What do you people want?" In that, Leopard looks very very interesting, and the new desktops are exciting, no question about it. I'm in. Still, er, again... heheh.
I also wouldn't be surprised if 10.5 is actually *finished* when it does come to market.
Really? That's funny, because after all of the OS 6, 6.0.x, 6.x, 7, 7.5, 7.6, 7.6.1, 8, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.2, and then 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.2.2... point, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10.3 (up to 10.3.9) to 10.4, etc, etc... I would think if 10.5 was 'finished', as you put it, it would be one- unprecedented, and two- about one 'C'-hair short of impossible.
Want 'surprising?' How about they finally give that lame-assed, incompatible with Unix-like systems "Finder" the fucking heave-ho, and toss out reliance on Cnodes,.DS_Store files, and resource forks, while they're at it? But, of course, the only thing truly surprising about that would be that it took them so long to do it.
Forget 'stock option pricing irregularities', whoever was responsible for destroying NeXTSTEP in order to keep the Finder and all the wonky shit that goes with it, ought to be going to prison.
I understand your point, sort of, but maybe 'polished' would work in place of 'finished.'
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like someone who has never approached compositing software. Come on, pal, professionals? Grow the fuck up.
BBEdit is way more than a text editor. Hell, TextMate isn't even close to being on par with TextPad, on Windows.
But the list is missing a few critical apps:
Thoth, for starters, hasn't been updated in a long time, and still runs rings around any news reader.
VLC and Flip4Mac
FileBuddy and Xfile (the Finder is arguably the worst file manager on any platform)
Toast Titanium (one burning app that does it all, as opposed to the fragmented Windows equivalents)
Eudora (all other email apps are okay for secretaries and kids. period)
OmniDiskSweeper
iDefrag
And the killer drive Directory wonder-app: DiskWarrior
I think Elvis Costello has 'dibs' on that gig. :)
I played in bands starting right around the time the Beatles were being turned down by all the (then) majors, and continued playing for about three decades. I saw a 'modified' Beatlemania sweep through the schools every 5-8 years or so. Did it last and last? No, But anyone familiar with the London scene knows that the average 'mania' lasts about two weeks, on average. England swings, yup, and like a pendulum, the Beatles take an astonishing swing through the ears, hearts, and minds of 'kids' on a very regular basis.
And that's reality
In the early-mid sixties,music, from Classical to pop to jazz, was turned on its ear (so to speak) around the World. Was it ''because' of the Beatles? No, not really. But make no mistake, they were the straw that stirred the drink. My girlfriend's kids (they're 18 and 21, the g-friend is 56) gave me the Beatles "Love" thing (the George martin, Cirque du Soleil piece) for Christmas this year, and the daughter and I trade uot-takes from the whit Album, on a regular basis.
Don't hold yer breath waitin' for them to mosey into olivion, no way.
What am I missing here? They don't want people hoarding them to melt them down for a marginal increase in rendered value, BUT, it's okay to get as many pennies as you want now, sit on them until they 'become' five cents apiece in face value, and that will stop hoarding, how, exactly? Ha ha, I feel sorry for the poor schmucks that dished out for the kilns, overhead and export costs, to 'double' their money, when they could, possibly, just wait for a natural 400% 'profit.' Something doesn't seem to add up.
...heartily
No offense, nothing personal... every 2000 (or so) illiterate spellings something just 'clicks' and then resets.Guess what happens. All the states set the same driking age....extortion.
Fixed that for ya, except for the misspelling, no question mark after string one, 4 dot elipsis, etc.
I should have quoted a bit more of your post, sorry. But what kills me about the Finder, and, in turn the file system with my Macs, is this: When they got their hands on NeXTSTEP, if they could have just moved to that, instead of grafting legacy OS onto a 'layer', and simply moved to a true UNIX file system, they wouldn't need Spotlight, at all. (I have it disabled here).
Some of the 3rd-party 'file manager/search' apps are so much faster than Finder/Spotlight... if I was an engineer at Apple I'd be embarrassed, or leave...oh wait, most of the NeXT guys did leave. Oops.
Full grep searching, should be the goal in any OS. You know, leave the 'either/or' paradigm (there's that word again) for the others, and let the rest of us get on with the work, rather than trying to 'jimmy' the crippled command/filing structure into doing what it's supposed to do in the first place. I'm not a programmer, or even a 'geek' like most of you out there, but I've done real world side-by-side comparisons of Spotlight/Sherlock/Cmd-F vs. Eudora for mailbox/text search, and FileBuddy, Xfile (and BBEdit, and definitely including the shell) for cross-drive, simultaneous networked drives, you name it), and it is NOT theory I'm talking about, more like simple factual stuff, that Apple should have had in there 6 years ago. They litter every directory with DS_Store files, every drive with these whomping 'indexes', and the bloody search is still just about stillborn compared to simple Unix search/find/replace, etc.
And how about a 'real' cut/paste, a la Windows, instead of 'cmd-click dragging' for a 'move?'
Don't worry about it. These other guys missed your point entirely. The underlying, adversarial, tone associated with opinions, on Slashdot isn't tragic... might be a bit pathetic, though.
You can say that again. My girlfriend is a physician (who has practiced psychiatry for 25+ years), and she is absolutely devoid of any understanding of the risks in those 'scratch and win', 'you may be a winner' type scams that proliferate online. It astonishes me, and it's tragic, like you said. I'll try to discuss it with her, and she'll come back with, "You're right, i probably wouldn't win anything, anyway." And there I am, speechless...
I see a certain phrase, from time to time here, and promised myself I would never indulge......but.... Where Are My Mod Points, Now that I Need Them?
Too funny, too insightful. Oh, and it's 'flak', technically, a bad thing, not flac, (a good thing) :)
I haven't worked in the music business for a while, so things might be vastly different now. I did see a 'standard' recording contract, a few months ago, and it looked startlingly similar to one from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Be that as it may, a lot of so-called 'independent' labels sign distribution deals with the majors, or their subsidiaries.
They do so because it is a lot easier for a company with clout to recover, in a timely fashion, accounts receivable, from even the sales of much smaller labels and artists. No jobber or chain store is going to get 'cute' with a major, when they need the next big hit product from that same major label. Fair enough. And it is also not hard to imagine a tiny label getting a green light to sell limited distribution product, under its own terms, but the tail is not gonna wag the fucking dog, and you can bank on that.
Eddie & the PipeSmokers can give their stuff away on eMusic (or wherever their distribution deal allows their 'indie label' to do so), but MCA or whoever is going to demand their DRM on the stuff they distribute electronically (and if it's a choice of channels between eMusic and the Apple iTunes Store, you be god-damned certain MCA (et al) is not going to give up Apple for some minor outfit).
Before we barbecue Apple over this heinous practice, somebody needs to do a little real world due diligence, no? Or should we make 'facts' and 'details' personna non grata insofar as their colliding with our righteous opinions is concerned?
Bingo. Exactly god-damned right.
These suckers on the forum, bitching/sniveling, "My mp3s are way more than 8GB..", etc, what the fuck? I have over a terabyte of stuff in mp3s here, and more than that (data-wise) in flac stuff, AND I own a fucking 1st gen iPod (10gigs), that I have never filled up. And why? Answer: Why? Who needs 60 gigs of what probably amounts to five bands and a shitlload of imitators and also-rans clogging their head on a flight or a drive? Talk to your kids, your family, friends, read a fucking book, say hi to a stranger, jesus
I was on Motorolas (Cantel/AT&T) back in the early-mid 90s... a $250 phone, $250 a month for twenty-five hundred minutes, and in 18 months none of my bills was under $2500 (Canadian). I quit the cell phone biz around '99-'00, and I was watching the keynote, and my reaction was simple: "I'm in, Steve." NeXT.
Oh, and one more thing, I LOVED the joke, you know, the one that went, "We are hoping to sell 10 million in 2008." Ha ha ha, Jobs. Fuck me, they'll sell 10 mil in greater New York City... alone.
But you're not, because you have no 'real' idea what exactly is happening, nevermind what will happen in 5 minutes or centuries, and thankfully, you know it. Very good, Johnny.
I'm looking hard at AAPL right now, myself. No, not for purchase, or some 'pretend' knowledge of what's "certain" to befall the gullible. No son, I got my brother and his wife into AAPL when it was $14 (before the split, ha ha ha), and I'm concerned that it will fall back slightly, take a run at $100, and go sideways or down. (There's market risk that has nothing to do with Apple, as usual, and on the other hand, Steve Jobs could pop up in a month with 'one more thing...' and drive people and Wall Street, ballistic, and the stock, itself, northward.)
One never knows, do one? (.:- - Fats Waller quote)
But when my bro gets out, and he will within the week, I'm probably getting him back in around late May (subject to change). Wall Street and all the biggest institutional investors watch Apple like hawks. They own tons of AAPL. Some of these 'opinions' today, in this Slashdot mind-sharing ritual, are hilarious, almost beyond belief. Keep guessing everybody! And don't let a 50-50 proposition that 'they go up, or they go down', mislead you into thinking you know shit. Remember, as my brother and I like to recall, "Money talks, and..." well, you know the rest.
Thank you for saying that.
And for the younger folks out there, this is a textbook statement illustrating what unsubstantiated conjecture masquerading as an 'opinion', mixed in equal parts with pure cynicism, sounds like.
Cynicism has an almost romantic appeal to the younger, so-inclined types. It goes along nicely with the notion that youthful suicide is 'romantic'. The main difference being, one mindset/action robs one of one's life on the spot, and the other robs it, just as thoroughly, over a longer period of time.
Now, don't misunderstand, I'm not one of those youth-is-wasted-on-the-young guys, no way. But 'brains', 'intelligence', and 'logic' (as opposed to fallacy), well, I'm not so sure about them. Regardless, consider this, O Cynical One: Suppose a whole shitload of miracles happened and you, the 'smart-guy', participated, in any meaningful manner, in a series of projects developed by a small group of your peers, and it was critical to keep the project, and the pride, and the relief, and the long nights, and the missed weekends, and yes, even the 'oohs' and ahhs' of your peers, a SECRET, and then, all you got to do about it was walk around on a stage, in front of a paltry 4,000 geeks, one fucking time... and wait for the cynics, and the envious, and the bored, to lace into you with whatever half-cocked theories or personal gripes happened to emerge from their pathetic excuses for minds. Would you keep going for 30 years?
Let's assume you lack the balls to answer honestly, so let an old-timer help you out here. The answer is no. You'd kill yourself with the myth of "I'm too amazing for this world" ringing in your empty head, and two days after your teary funeral, your buddies would be back on their Playstations. Have a nice life.
Yeah, those quad xeons sure disappointed a ton of people, and Apple's share price action over the last five years is a real strong indicator of a general dissatisfaction with their hardware, software, engineering, resale value, etc... unh huh, right.
Were you the guy that greeted the rumor of an mp3 player from Cupertino with "Why, there's plenty of those, already?" I thought so... ha ha ha. Mmhmm, Microsoft has a much better track record with meeting/exceeding expectations, eh? And then there's Sony. Yeah, poor old disappointing Apple, death must be just around the corner.
ha ha ha, very funny, and I squandered my points already. :)
And then there are those of us^h^h^h^h^h who have no time for arguing about reviews because we are way too busy sorting through pdfs, URLs of snazzy web sites (in multiple browsers and directories labeled "URLs"), out-dated guides downloaded from a.b.e-books.etc, scraps of paper, Photoshop tips in soft covers (great bathroom reading material, by the way, uh, someone 'told me'), Webstractored sites, etc, etc
That's great, clueless/ignorant, and proud. You'll make a fine American voter/consumer, someday.
warped analogy... I've worked in vinyl and digital recording (big studios, no TEAC kidstuff), for decades, and the difference between clean harmonic overtones in vinyl, and that clipped, mega-snapshot approximation that we're limited to with all-digital is as different as ...well, as different as some toad griping about color correction shit on his LCD, when anyone who's actually 'been there' knows (doesn't 'guess', in other words) that CRT's are for color correction, and LCDs are for punks. Ha ha, and one continuous groove is night-and-day different than itty-bitty bites of the same source.
Check out Boulez, mid-sixties vinyl of The Firebird Suite, (warm, lush) and then run through, say, Dutoit/MSO doing the same thing, direct-to-digital(44kHz 'tin')... I rest my case.
I don't know the ins and out of this, but what I don't understand is this: The Apple Finder has always had those drop-down menus with subfolders, etc, as I'm sure other OS's have. So how is the hierarchial mp3 navigation different enough? When I first used (and still use) my 1st gen iPod, it was familiar from the start, as far as navigation, precisely because it was a long-familiar interface. I'm sure Windows users wouldn't have a problem seeing the drop-down, nested directory 'map', either. So what gives?
The other, actually disturbing, part I don't understand is the sort of MS/SCO-like 'you pay me, and we'll rob them' aspect of the Apple/Creative 'clause' that allows Creative to nail others, with Apple as the first 'payer', and then do a kickback...It just looks sleazy as hell to me. I think Apple is in trouble. When all the NeXT people bailed out, and their Counsel quits and hires counsel, and now this kind of cheap stuff... I don't know, red flags, maybe?
You are full of shit. Sarbanes-Oxley's main 'bitch' is that it forces the principal executive and the the principal finacial executive (usually the CEO and the CFO) to sign sppecifically-worded statements to the effect that the quarterly reports and annual reports are following the S-O rules requiring sworn statements regarding two major rules of the Securities Act of 1934 (as amended). In other words, they sign statementts reaffirming that they are following much older laws and rules. They are on record, and on the fucking hook, big time, if they knowingly omit facts that would otherwise make their financial statements misleading.
That law (Sarbanes-Oxley) coupled with the SEC's recent $1 Billion reduction in filing fees, is good for honest business. Period.
I knew it was just a matter of time before one of you mental midget fake-ass Randian libertarians would wave your poorly thought out version of what is going on, and how it should be in a 'free' society. Har har har, tell it to Bubba in the Big House, fuckwad. You people never give up, do you? Well guess what? You're fucking full of shit, your facts are faulty, and you're wasting bandwidth, print, and, probably, oxygen. Go make an honest living, asswipe, and when you do the crime, do the fucking time, and shut the fuck up. have a nice day.
Posted anonymously because Slashdot's servers are currently fucking up on Logins. (500 and 503 Errors).
When you put it that way it makes more sense.
My feeling about the progress of Apple's OS X is that it has been developed and incrementally-updated countless times since initial release, and I was looking at a 'narrower' definition of 'finished.' When the 'point-5' iteration is released, people like me, who have bought each of the 5 'versions of X, will have spent over $500 US, not counting the 'free' 10.0 beta that was gotten as a result of buying an Apple box (a Titanium 667, in my case) when OS X was on the verge of initial release.
For someone who might have used OS 9, back in the day, and then drifted away, and came back to "Tiger" on a Mini, or whatever, it looks pretty radical and like a helluva monetary deal. And, as usual, those of us who faithfully upgraded, all down the line, pay through the nose, and get the benefit of donating our time and efforts to bug eradication, bumpy installs, a couple of OS 'recalls' and re-releases, etc. It has not always been smooth. I haven't seen smooth video in the iTunes screensaver/music vid thing, since 10.2.8, for example. And I hear that in an effort to avoid starting internal fires (semi-laugh) they decided to down-clock the Graphics processor in the MacTel books. It's a minor gripe, but, it feels like a work-in-progress, to me, just my personal opinion/experience.
But I'm 'locked-in' just like all other longtime Mac users, and that's the deal. What kills me is that ubuntu can be upgraded, radically, and it just reboots sub-systems (as far as I can tell) without even so much as a restart involved after the upgrades. If Apple hadn't messed with the schizo NeXT/Legacy hybrid, it would do the same thing. (and actually will, in some cases, if one reads the full info on incremental upgrades, and uses the CLI to reboot affected subsystems), but I digress.
On another front, I agree with the folks who were asking, "What do you people want?" In that, Leopard looks very very interesting, and the new desktops are exciting, no question about it. I'm in. Still, er, again... heheh.
Really? That's funny, because after all of the OS 6, 6.0.x, 6.x, 7, 7.5, 7.6, 7.6.1, 8, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.2.2, and then 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.2.2... point, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10.3 (up to 10.3.9) to 10.4, etc, etc... I would think if 10.5 was 'finished', as you put it, it would be one- unprecedented, and two- about one 'C'-hair short of impossible.
Want 'surprising?' How about they finally give that lame-assed, incompatible with Unix-like systems "Finder" the fucking heave-ho, and toss out reliance on Cnodes, .DS_Store files, and resource forks, while they're at it? But, of course, the only thing truly surprising about that would be that it took them so long to do it.
Forget 'stock option pricing irregularities', whoever was responsible for destroying NeXTSTEP in order to keep the Finder and all the wonky shit that goes with it, ought to be going to prison.
I understand your point, sort of, but maybe 'polished' would work in place of 'finished.'
heheh... you forgot: nl
Oops, that's a Usenet message-ID thing, my mistake.