> I don't want my computer to think for me, I want my computer to just do what it's told!
As someone else already wrote: make it optional to turn it off. Just because you don't use it it does not have to mean that it shouldn't be there. You don't tell your computer how to write data to the hard disk - the operating system does - and most probably you wouldn't want to take care about disk I/O everytime you need it. Isn't it nice that it's already there? If you never used the -l option on ls, would you take it out? Maybe someone else might want it...
If you want your computer not to do it, simply tell it so - that's what you want (you said). I think it sounds like a good idea (plagiate from someone else?) to keep scattering of files (especially windows needs this, as (at least it happens to me once in a while) you save something into whatever was set as a default folder while you thought you'd save it somewhere else. This feature would consolidate things like that.
Do not forget - there are many people out there that use computers for work and don't want to know how it works - it's a tool, and if a hammer was a complicated thing I wouldn't care, as long as the nail is in the wall after I applied it.
And Apple's there first again (at least on commonly used Desktop OSs): MacOS X is probably the best OS to take advantage of such resolutions as Display PDF is not bound to pixel resolutions. It just scales up to anything (it's Postscript, so it uses vectors anyway and therefore is device independend)
Bernd
P.S.: I know that there were others, like NeXT and News...
I do not see a single product where Apple listened to customers:
Nobody asked for a computer without floppy Nobody asked for 15" screens Nobody asked for "flavoured" cases
Before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the Macs were just "boxes". Since then the iMac, the G3 and 4s and the iBook defined "fun of computing" again. Interestingly enough nobody had that idea before Apple but suddenly the only way to design all in one computers is the way the iMac looks like.
*Aaaargh!* About what are we talking in this thread? Macintosh or the "open source" CHRP design offered by IBM? If it is Macintosh: Its GUI is not built for people that have to think complicated to complex things done. It is the representation, not the information that makes something usable. You might need a click a few times but you rarely get a typo by doing so. If we are talking about PowerPC: I think it is one of the best RISC platforms around and gets faster and faster with any new generation *at the same clockspeed* (a P III is actually slower than a P II). What I heard is that Alphas have some problems with some sort of context switching (anybody a comment on that?) and are by far not as affordable as PowerPCs.
By the way, bliss - get rid of the annoying "feel the wrath" trailer - you want to sound competent, not redicilous, right?
I came across a Web site quite recently which compared different platforms - all running Linux. In that comparism a 300 MHz G3 was almost as fast as a Pentium II or III with 400 MHz. So maybe Apple's "twice as fast" may not be that correct, but 30% faster is not that bad either. If I just could remember the URL...
Talking about new generatios of processors: Intel only relys on higher clock speeds - a P III at 150 MHz would not be faster than a Pentium Pro at the same speed - it would be slower. A G3 at the same clock speed as a PPC 601 or 604 should be 20 to 40 % faster. That's what I call development...
Yes, I heard this argument since years: "I want to know how my computer works." People used to say that when the Mac came out and it didn't have a shell: "I want to know what happens when I copy a file." Well, you still don't. The only difference between typing "copy a:\*.* c:\" and dragging an icon from a floppy to the icon of the hard disk is that the dragging is easier to understand and faster because you do not type the command in 3 times because of typos. In the end you do still not know how that stuff reaches the hard disk - you just can hope that it really is there.
It's the representation that is different and more intuitive on the Mac. Who is still using DOS so he can pretend to know how his/her computer works? Now everybody is using Windows - isn't it funny?
Searching and plugging in jumpers to configure IRQs does not really tell you how your computer works either - only if you do it wrong it won't work as you expect it to. How sophisticated! If the monitor doesn't work on a Mac, then you can be sure that the graphics card doesn't work - there are no jumpers that can be in the wrong places. Ignorant are those who think that everybody has to understand how a computer works - they are wrong. A computer is a tool (for work, for entertainment), a commodity. These things are supposed to work and most people really do not care how. Those people need a computer to do their work and not to work on the computer until it works. Ignorant are also those that do not see that there are indeed computers that comply very heavily to this ideal - the Mac for "ordinairy" people and the different flavours of Unix on the other. The majority out there lives with a bad copy of either of them.
Getting rid of all exclamation marks in the event log of Win NT? I gave up - my machine works but I wonder why.
If you are so sure how a computer works, then I want to know from you where each and every electron goes and why it does so. If you can explain to me how a processor works and how information is kept in memory it starts getting interesting because that is the underhood knowledge that you are talking about. Not the jumpers and DIP-switches.
What do you like better? To get a row of 300 numbers of your favourite stock or a nice graph? The best information is worth nothing if the representation sucks. The fastest Xeon system doesn't help you much if you got IRQ problems. It's smarter not to even have the chance to get them, right?
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> I don't want my computer to think for me, I want my computer to just do what it's told!
As someone else already wrote: make it optional to turn it off.
Just because you don't use it it does not have to mean that it shouldn't be there. You don't tell your computer how to write data to the hard disk - the operating system does - and most probably you wouldn't want to take care about disk I/O everytime you need it. Isn't it nice that it's already there?
If you never used the -l option on ls, would you take it out? Maybe someone else might want it...
If you want your computer not to do it, simply tell it so - that's what you want (you said). I think it sounds like a good idea (plagiate from someone else?) to keep scattering of files (especially windows needs this, as (at least it happens to me once in a while) you save something into whatever was set as a default folder while you thought you'd save it somewhere else. This feature would consolidate things like that.
Do not forget - there are many people out there that use computers for work and don't want to know how it works - it's a tool, and if a hammer was a complicated thing I wouldn't care, as long as the nail is in the wall after I applied it.
And Apple's there first again (at least on commonly used Desktop OSs): MacOS X is probably the best OS to take advantage of such resolutions as Display PDF is not bound to pixel resolutions. It just scales up to anything (it's Postscript, so it uses vectors anyway and therefore is device independend)
Bernd
P.S.: I know that there were others, like NeXT and News...
I do not see a single product where Apple listened to customers:
Nobody asked for a computer without floppy
Nobody asked for 15" screens
Nobody asked for "flavoured" cases
Before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the Macs were just "boxes". Since then the iMac, the G3 and 4s and the iBook defined "fun of computing" again. Interestingly enough nobody had that idea before Apple but suddenly the only way to design all in one computers is the way the iMac looks like.
Actually 1 Gflop is the sustained performance, the theoretical limit is 4 Gflops.
Maybe now you want to user G4s to build your clusters, it might even be cheaper than using P3s.
> Tux is the sexiest penguin
;-)
I agree - the sexiest penguin.
However, the daemon is much cuter
(Doesn't that remind me of some userfriendly cartoon???)
I heard something about context switching that really slows down Alphas. Is it true?
*Aaaargh!* About what are we talking in this thread? Macintosh or the "open source" CHRP design offered by IBM?
If it is Macintosh: Its GUI is not built for people that have to think complicated to complex things done. It is the representation, not the information that makes something usable. You might need a click a few times but you rarely get a typo by doing so.
If we are talking about PowerPC: I think it is one of the best RISC platforms around and gets faster and faster with any new generation *at the same clockspeed* (a P III is actually slower than a P II). What I heard is that Alphas have some problems with some sort of context switching (anybody a comment on that?) and are by far not as affordable as PowerPCs.
By the way, bliss - get rid of the annoying "feel the wrath" trailer - you want to sound competent, not redicilous, right?
I came across a Web site quite recently which compared different platforms - all running Linux. In that comparism a 300 MHz G3 was almost as fast as a Pentium II or III with 400 MHz. So maybe Apple's "twice as fast" may not be that correct, but 30% faster is not that bad either. If I just could remember the URL...
Talking about new generatios of processors: Intel only relys on higher clock speeds - a P III at 150 MHz would not be faster than a Pentium Pro at the same speed - it would be slower. A G3 at the same clock speed as a PPC 601 or 604 should be 20 to 40 % faster. That's what I call development...
Yes, I heard this argument since years: "I want to know how my computer works." People used to say that when the Mac came out and it didn't have a shell: "I want to know what happens when I copy a file." Well, you still don't. The only difference between typing "copy a:\*.* c:\" and dragging an icon from a floppy to the icon of the hard disk is that the dragging is easier to understand and faster because you do not type the command in 3 times because of typos. In the end you do still not know how that stuff reaches the hard disk - you just can hope that it really is there.
It's the representation that is different and more intuitive on the Mac. Who is still using DOS so he can pretend to know how his/her computer works? Now everybody is using Windows - isn't it funny?
Searching and plugging in jumpers to configure IRQs does not really tell you how your computer works either - only if you do it wrong it won't work as you expect it to. How sophisticated!
If the monitor doesn't work on a Mac, then you can be sure that the graphics card doesn't work - there are no jumpers that can be in the wrong places.
Ignorant are those who think that everybody has to understand how a computer works - they are wrong.
A computer is a tool (for work, for entertainment), a commodity. These things are supposed to work and most people really do not care how. Those people need a computer to do their work and not to work on the computer until it works.
Ignorant are also those that do not see that there are indeed computers that comply very heavily to this ideal - the Mac for "ordinairy" people and the different flavours of Unix on the other. The majority out there lives with a bad copy of either of them.
Getting rid of all exclamation marks in the event log of Win NT? I gave up - my machine works but I wonder why.
If you are so sure how a computer works, then I want to know from you where each and every electron goes and why it does so. If you can explain to me how a processor works and how information is kept in memory it starts getting interesting because that is the underhood knowledge that you are talking about. Not the jumpers and DIP-switches.
What do you like better? To get a row of 300 numbers of your favourite stock or a nice graph? The best information is worth nothing if the representation sucks. The fastest Xeon system doesn't help you much if you got IRQ problems. It's smarter not to even have the chance to get them, right?
Well - it's not really ugly when you like green. And for Siemens it is really good design anyway. On the other hand - who ever sees a server?
Bernd