The average Apple user I have met isn't a computer whizkid. However there is a huge difference with the unwashed windows hords. The Apple user KNOWS he is a computer moron. Most of them therefore do little things like read the goddamn fucking manual.
It probably helps that Apple has some of the best manuals in the industry.
I'd add a huge caveat to your generalization. OS X has attracted a whole lot of really intelligent people with its *BSD-based underpinnings. Their hardware and software is exceedingly advanced, and their development tools are the same as you'll find on Linux.
All of my desktop machines are Intel-based, but my laptop (only a few months old now) is a PowerBook G4. And the "Power" portion isn't a misnomer -- it's a power laptop for a power user/developer (me:) ).
The greatest directorial performance in history would not make a plotless movie good, it would just make it a bad movie with great direction.
Except that 2001 does indeed have a plot. A rather complex plot at that.
If you simply "don't get it", try a Google search -- there are lots of websites out there that will describe the plot for you.
It's admittedly a complex movie. Many people "don't get it" the first time, but subsequent viewings usually bring out important items you might have missed.
I am of the opinion that the exact opposite is true: I'd be exceedingly suprised if a group of scientists didn't include it in their top 10. Indeed, I'm rather suprised it wasn't in the #1 position.
2001: A Space Odyssey still stands today as one of the most scientifically accurate Sci-Fi movies. And when you consider that it was produced prior to man's first landing on the moon, that's quite a huge feat.
Not only that, but the story is vastly moree thought provoking than your typical sci-fi fare intended for mass consumption. It deals with issues such as human evolution, human exploration, the role of artificial intelligence, man's attempt to "play god" gone terribly wrong, and man's place in the universe.
It's not a movie for people with a closed mind, or people who don't want to think about the story for themselves. I don't think there is anything wrong with people who want to go to a movie that tells them a simple to understand story (like, say, anything in the Star Wars series) -- but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for well through, thought provoking films in the genre.
2001: A Space Odyssey is simply brilliant. There's a reason why it appears on virtually every top movies list (like the AFC Top 100). And even thought the movie was filmed nearly 40 years ago, it still stands up as scientifically realistic in its portrayals of computer science and space travel.
It's probably appropriate to consider IBM as a services rather than a software company. Distributing software for free enhances the value of the services they provide enormously - it makes the market possible.
As a former IBM employee, I had the opportunity to sit in on a lot of different presentations on many different topics in the FOSS and Linux areas.
One thing a lot of people seem to miss is that one of the very important reasons why IBM started embracing Linux had nothing to do with it being free, but instead being able to offer a single OS and API set across all of their hardware platforms. This had been a "holy grail" at IBM for some time -- I actually sat in on a public presentation one time where IBM developers were talking about extending OS/2 up to their mainframe line -- and Linux fits the bill.
IBM is still, at its core, a hardware company, and being able to have a single API with which you can use to control all their different systems is a huge potential benifit.
Java, another technology IBM has pushed heavily, is one such solution. And Java isn't free -- IBM pays Sun licensing fees in order to create the JVMs for all their different platforms (OS/2, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400, etc.).
IBM got into Linux in a big way not so much because it was free, but because it was readily portable (a side-effect of being free).
IBM wants to be able to sell you an Intel-based xSeries server for your business. And then another. And then as you grow, upgrade you to a bigger server (like an iSeries). Then a xSeries mainframe. If you start off running Linux and developing your business code in Java, they can push bigger and more expensive solutions on you, and you don't have to retrain your IT staff to deal with a new OS, and you don't have to rewrite your business code.
That's where the big benifit to IBM is. Of course, it doesn't hurt IBM when it's trivial to port DB2 (and WebSphere, and other big business products) for Intel Linux over to an S/390 also running Linux. They can target different hardware without having to hire on a whole new development team to port it to yet another platform.
In fact I cannot think of a single large vendor who chose FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD over Linux, despite the fact that they offer a similar feature suite.
While I don't generally disagree with your analysis, there is one large vendor that chose the *BSD's over Linux -- Apple.
Don't forget that the underpinnings of Mac OS X is Darwin, which is forked from FreeBSD.
You said it. If you actually want some more details on what I have on my network, the systems involved are:
A PIII-450 system with 384MB RAM running OS/2 WARP Server for e-business as my general workstation for running DOS, Java, OS/2, and X sessions,
A Celeron 550 box with 128MB RAM running RedHat 8. This acts as my network fileserver, DNS (I'm starting to build up too many systems to want to worry about coordinating the hosts files between them all), and automated nightly build system for jSyncManager Project, running in headless mode,
My 1.33Mhz PowerBook G4 laptop (which has been taking over most of the duties I used to use the OS/2 box for these last few months), networked wirelessly (everything else is wired),
The P-133 with 32MB RAM acting as my own personal mail server, running RedHat 8 (a brutal install to pare it down to fit on the 1GB drive in that system, and yet still be semi-useful.:P), also running headless,
An AMD K6-2 running at 450Mhz with 128MB RAM, an old CD-ROM drive, and absolutely NO hard drive, running Knoppix. I use this as a guest machine -- it has Mozilla and OpenOffice on it, so if a visitor wants to check their e-mail or surf the web or work on a document, they do it on this machine (as they can do whatever they want to it, and all I have to do to restore it is a reboot),
A PlayStation 2 with Sony Linux for the PlayStation 2 installed. With the kits 40GB of hard drive space, this acts as both my file server and my media server (I did the first official port of Ogg Vorbis to the PS2 on this system) -- being able to do 48Khz output via optical cable to my home theatre makes this a wonderful media box,
A SitePlayer Developers Kit. Not doing anything particularily useful, but I'm eventually going to get into the microcode and make this into a web-enabled controller for my homes X10 network,
An IBM WorkPad c505 (mostly for jSyncManager network sync development).
I've had more systems, but that's what's currently running on my network. I've had a few people promise me some more systems -- I'm just trying to figure out what to do with them before accepting them (after all, have to put them to good use...;) ).
Heck, my firewall ran on a 486 DX/100... that is, until the power supply died.
My mail server is still running off a Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM.
These old systems are wonderful with Linux. Sure you may not want to use them as desktop systems -- but if you've got 'em, why not use them to offload some of the tasks you normally run on your desktop?
You have 1050 songs in 3 gigabytes? Sounds like a terrible encoding rate to me.
Well, first off, allow me to correct my rounding error -- the current size of the data is actually 3.78GB for 1016 songs totalling 2:20:28:46 in playtime.
The songs themselves are a mix of MP3s at various rates, and 128kbps AAC files (the default for iTunes, which with AAC sounds good enough I haven't felt the need to change it).
I was going to post "Get an iPod", but it looks like a whole lot of other people beat me to it.
So instead of doing so, I'll expand on the benifits of doing so:
Comes in sizes from 4GB up to 40GB
Supports both firewire and USB 2.0
Rechargable
Size of a pack of cards
...and hey, it's a music playback device as well!
I love my iPod with my PowerBook. I routinely use it for storing backups of my data (even though I have the 3G 15GB unit, I'm currently only using about 3GB to hold the ~1050 songs I have on it, so it has lots of free space).
Small, sleek, portable, lots of storage space, and fast -- what more could you want?
Except that this isn't a case where the dick manufacturers have their own standards which are competing. The disk manufacturers each make both types of disks, and generally charge the same amount for them.
And it doesn't lower the procees of the drives when the drive manufacturers have to implement several different write standards just to be somewhat compatible with the plethora of disc types already out there.
I actually worked for a global computer company which wound up in some hot water with China over a reference to Taiwan.
At one point in the products life we were instructed to add a registration wizard that had been written elsewhere in the company. Dutifully, we did, and shipped out the product.
China wound up complaining about this, because in the registration wizard we had a drop-down titled "Country" -- which listed Taiwan.
For the next release of the software, this field had to be renamed "Country/Region" just to pass muster with the Chinese government.
Personally, I can't get worked up over this. If Real wants to offer a service to cater to iPod owners, and want to chase every firmware update -- fine with me. Consumers can choose who they want to buy their online music from, and given a choice I'm sure I wouldn't buy from Real (being a PowerBook user in Canada, however, I don't have a choice between either of them, so it's moot).
What I did get a chuckle from was this:
We're asking that you...support the right of your own customers to make their own choices about where they buy music for the iPod.
I did -- I bought a song online a few weeks ago from a non-Apple online source: The Might Be Giants sells their songs for $0.99 USD -- get this -- in MP3 format! What a concept! And they play on my iPod!
The only company preventting Real from selling music to iPod users is Real. Apple supports a number of non-DRM'ed formats -- they simply have to pick one and use it.
Except Toronto is almost exclusively powered by nuclear energy and hydroelectricty.
...which if Toronto isn't using to capacity, can be directed to other areas in southern Ontario which are still powered primarily by coal-fired plants.
This is really, really cool! Now I can... erm... well... Hotsync without a cradle! Yeah, that's it!
Even better, you can HotSync to your home PC from a WiFi-enabled coffee shop or bookstore.
Personally, even though I have a 12" PowerBook, having WiFi capabilities in my Palm is really attractive. Unfortunately for me, it is uncertain as to wether or not this newly annouced device would work with my slightly older m505:P.
Man, I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this moronic, paranoiac debate.
You and me both:P.
Just to amplify your already excellent response, the other thing people here are forgetting is that Lake Ontario isn't a closed hydrolic system. It is fed by hundreds of rivers which dump tons of sun-warmed water into the lake in summer, and which dump tons of frozen and near-freezing water into it during the winter and spring thaws.
This input vastly outnumbers the amount of cold water the Enwave system will be extracting, along with vastly outnumbering the amount of warm water input to the lake.
In the end, the lake will be the same as it's always been, and less air-polluting fossil fuels will be required to run the existing air conditioning systems. Looks like a win-win situation to me.
Slightly off-topic response to your slightly off-topic post, but why do you need software updates to your 3G Ipod? It works and it doesn't need to be updated. I don't get it. You have software update envy?
Not at all -- but the 4G iPods have introduced some new features that would really be nice to have, such as the new multiple on-the-go playlists, and some of the longer battery life features.
Plus there are other interesting software things Apple could do with the iPod.
I'm not saying I'm unhappy with the existing iPod software, but that doesn't mean that there aren't interesting and innovative things Apple could do with the ipod's software -- if they had more incentive to do so.
While I have no intention of buying anything from Real (they don't support Mac OS X with this scheme), and I've never bought anything from iTMS (as I live in Canada), as an iPod owner I'm still somewhat excited -- this may be good for me as an iPod owner inn an indirect way.
Apple has in the last few weeks released two iPod firmware updaters (one of which was released in the past week) -- but both have contained updates only for the 4G iPods. I bought my iPod two months too soon, and thus own the 3G iPod, for which Apple appears to have no interest in providing any software updates for.
However, if things go as many here predict, Real may force Apples hand in pushing out firmware updates for the older iPods to ensure they don't work with Real's system. And to ensure users actually apply these updates, they'll have to offer some form of incentive in the form of new features or other improvements beyond breaking compatible with Real's Harmony.
So if Apple does do something about this, iPod owners (particularily hose of us who don't have the new 4G iPod) may end up winning anyhow:).
Most of the complaints about Graham are likely from people who are just barely programmers.
I call bullshit on you.
I'm complaining about Graham and other language-bigots, and over the last 20 years I've coded in:
Java
C
C++
REXX
ObjectREXX
Ada 83
Ada 95
Modula-2
Pascal
Basic
x86 Assmebly
VAX-VMS Assembly
...and have dabbled in many others (and I'm exccluding a whole slew of scripting languages from the above list). And I've written that code on and for the following platforms:
Mac OS X
Mac OS 7
VMS
OS/2
AIX
HP-UX
Solaris
Linux
*BSD
Dynix
Windows (3.0 to 2000)
DOS
CP/M
PalmOS
S/390
PlayStation 2
... and that list excludes older systems I started on like the Commodore 64 that didn't have an Operating System (per-se).
And much of this development hasn't been on small projects either. Indeed, a good portion of my platform development experience came about when I worked at the IBM Toronto Softwre Development Lab, doing DB2 development.
And I'm a Java developer. And not because I have to for job purposes (indeed, I generally refuse to work at jobs using Java, because most Java-related jobs suck), but because it's a language and environment with strengths not sufficiently matched elsewhere. I've programmed AI solutions in Java, protocol handlers in Java, and various other complex tasks beyond your usual "call a bunch of APIs" crap you seem to paint Java developers as doing.
Ok, for pure brainpower here is the competition I propose: Take a Python programmer and a Java programmer. They tackle the same problem in both Python and Java. I'm betting on the Python guy to present better solutions in both languages.
I'd take that bet, and then completely wipe the floor with whomever you pitted me against:).
Sorry, but this sort of language bigotism really gets to me. Yes, there are crappy Java developers out there. Yes, many organizations doing Java development are targeting mundane tasks. But same goes for every other language out there -- the only difference is in degree.
In my years of speaking at conferences and chairing workshops on topics in computer science research, I've met a whole pile of brilliant people working in Java to solve complex problems. I've seen it used for artificial intelligence, robotics, research operating systems, protocol stacks, and game development -- more compilcated projects than your typical Python developer is ever going to tackle (nevermind all of the VM research I've seen surrounding Java).
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project (Open Source Java at that).
A lot of people choose Java, but only a very small number for open source projects, especially if you discount projects that were initiated by corporations. If Java is so great, why don't they use it?
Because Java has quite unfairly been given a bad rap by people who don't understand it, coupled with the fact that most operating systems don't make it easy to run Java applications (until fairly recently).
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It probably helps that Apple has some of the best manuals in the industry.
I'd add a huge caveat to your generalization. OS X has attracted a whole lot of really intelligent people with its *BSD-based underpinnings. Their hardware and software is exceedingly advanced, and their development tools are the same as you'll find on Linux.
All of my desktop machines are Intel-based, but my laptop (only a few months old now) is a PowerBook G4. And the "Power" portion isn't a misnomer -- it's a power laptop for a power user/developer (me :) ).
Brad BARCLAY
Except that 2001 does indeed have a plot. A rather complex plot at that.
If you simply "don't get it", try a Google search -- there are lots of websites out there that will describe the plot for you.
It's admittedly a complex movie. Many people "don't get it" the first time, but subsequent viewings usually bring out important items you might have missed.
Yaz.
I am of the opinion that the exact opposite is true: I'd be exceedingly suprised if a group of scientists didn't include it in their top 10. Indeed, I'm rather suprised it wasn't in the #1 position.
2001: A Space Odyssey still stands today as one of the most scientifically accurate Sci-Fi movies. And when you consider that it was produced prior to man's first landing on the moon, that's quite a huge feat.
Not only that, but the story is vastly moree thought provoking than your typical sci-fi fare intended for mass consumption. It deals with issues such as human evolution, human exploration, the role of artificial intelligence, man's attempt to "play god" gone terribly wrong, and man's place in the universe.
It's not a movie for people with a closed mind, or people who don't want to think about the story for themselves. I don't think there is anything wrong with people who want to go to a movie that tells them a simple to understand story (like, say, anything in the Star Wars series) -- but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for well through, thought provoking films in the genre.
2001: A Space Odyssey is simply brilliant. There's a reason why it appears on virtually every top movies list (like the AFC Top 100). And even thought the movie was filmed nearly 40 years ago, it still stands up as scientifically realistic in its portrayals of computer science and space travel.
How many movies out there can say that?
Yaz.
I'll take that bet, because with the money I won I could build at least half a dozen robotic hookers!
Yaz.
As a former IBM employee, I had the opportunity to sit in on a lot of different presentations on many different topics in the FOSS and Linux areas.
One thing a lot of people seem to miss is that one of the very important reasons why IBM started embracing Linux had nothing to do with it being free, but instead being able to offer a single OS and API set across all of their hardware platforms. This had been a "holy grail" at IBM for some time -- I actually sat in on a public presentation one time where IBM developers were talking about extending OS/2 up to their mainframe line -- and Linux fits the bill.
IBM is still, at its core, a hardware company, and being able to have a single API with which you can use to control all their different systems is a huge potential benifit.
Java, another technology IBM has pushed heavily, is one such solution. And Java isn't free -- IBM pays Sun licensing fees in order to create the JVMs for all their different platforms (OS/2, Linux, Windows, AIX, OS/400, etc.).
IBM got into Linux in a big way not so much because it was free, but because it was readily portable (a side-effect of being free).
IBM wants to be able to sell you an Intel-based xSeries server for your business. And then another. And then as you grow, upgrade you to a bigger server (like an iSeries). Then a xSeries mainframe. If you start off running Linux and developing your business code in Java, they can push bigger and more expensive solutions on you, and you don't have to retrain your IT staff to deal with a new OS, and you don't have to rewrite your business code.
That's where the big benifit to IBM is. Of course, it doesn't hurt IBM when it's trivial to port DB2 (and WebSphere, and other big business products) for Intel Linux over to an S/390 also running Linux. They can target different hardware without having to hire on a whole new development team to port it to yet another platform.
Yaz.
While I don't generally disagree with your analysis, there is one large vendor that chose the *BSD's over Linux -- Apple.
Don't forget that the underpinnings of Mac OS X is Darwin, which is forked from FreeBSD.
Yaz.
You said it. If you actually want some more details on what I have on my network, the systems involved are:
I've had more systems, but that's what's currently running on my network. I've had a few people promise me some more systems -- I'm just trying to figure out what to do with them before accepting them (after all, have to put them to good use...;) ).
Yaz.
My mail server is still running off a Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM.
These old systems are wonderful with Linux. Sure you may not want to use them as desktop systems -- but if you've got 'em, why not use them to offload some of the tasks you normally run on your desktop?
Yaz.
Oddly enough, only 14% of people know this.
Yaz.
I'm sure everyone here would be more than happy to bounce you some of the e-mails they get that purport to help you to solve that problem :).
Yaz
True! I've been thinking about doing this with my 15GB iPod, but haven't got around to it just yet :).
Yaz.
Well, first off, allow me to correct my rounding error -- the current size of the data is actually 3.78GB for 1016 songs totalling 2:20:28:46 in playtime.
The songs themselves are a mix of MP3s at various rates, and 128kbps AAC files (the default for iTunes, which with AAC sounds good enough I haven't felt the need to change it).
Yaz.
I was going to post "Get an iPod", but it looks like a whole lot of other people beat me to it.
So instead of doing so, I'll expand on the benifits of doing so:
I love my iPod with my PowerBook. I routinely use it for storing backups of my data (even though I have the 3G 15GB unit, I'm currently only using about 3GB to hold the ~1050 songs I have on it, so it has lots of free space).
Small, sleek, portable, lots of storage space, and fast -- what more could you want?
Yaz.
Responding to my own post...
Really, I don't hate the disc manufacturers! Nor do I advocate putting certain parts of the male anatomy in your DVD drives.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should preview before you hit submit...
Yaz.
Except that this isn't a case where the dick manufacturers have their own standards which are competing. The disk manufacturers each make both types of disks, and generally charge the same amount for them.
And it doesn't lower the procees of the drives when the drive manufacturers have to implement several different write standards just to be somewhat compatible with the plethora of disc types already out there.
Yaz.
No you don't. You can achieve the same end by simply calling:
String[] myList = new File(filename).list();
That's one line. So long as you don't need to re-use the File instance, what's the point in reserving memory space for another pointer?
Yaz.
I actually worked for a global computer company which wound up in some hot water with China over a reference to Taiwan.
At one point in the products life we were instructed to add a registration wizard that had been written elsewhere in the company. Dutifully, we did, and shipped out the product.
China wound up complaining about this, because in the registration wizard we had a drop-down titled "Country" -- which listed Taiwan.
For the next release of the software, this field had to be renamed "Country/Region" just to pass muster with the Chinese government.
Yaz.
Personally, I can't get worked up over this. If Real wants to offer a service to cater to iPod owners, and want to chase every firmware update -- fine with me. Consumers can choose who they want to buy their online music from, and given a choice I'm sure I wouldn't buy from Real (being a PowerBook user in Canada, however, I don't have a choice between either of them, so it's moot).
What I did get a chuckle from was this:
I did -- I bought a song online a few weeks ago from a non-Apple online source: The Might Be Giants sells their songs for $0.99 USD -- get this -- in MP3 format! What a concept! And they play on my iPod!
The only company preventting Real from selling music to iPod users is Real. Apple supports a number of non-DRM'ed formats -- they simply have to pick one and use it.
Yaz.
...which if Toronto isn't using to capacity, can be directed to other areas in southern Ontario which are still powered primarily by coal-fired plants.
Yaz.
Even better, you can HotSync to your home PC from a WiFi-enabled coffee shop or bookstore.
Personally, even though I have a 12" PowerBook, having WiFi capabilities in my Palm is really attractive. Unfortunately for me, it is uncertain as to wether or not this newly annouced device would work with my slightly older m505 :P.
Yaz.
You and me both :P.
Just to amplify your already excellent response, the other thing people here are forgetting is that Lake Ontario isn't a closed hydrolic system. It is fed by hundreds of rivers which dump tons of sun-warmed water into the lake in summer, and which dump tons of frozen and near-freezing water into it during the winter and spring thaws.
This input vastly outnumbers the amount of cold water the Enwave system will be extracting, along with vastly outnumbering the amount of warm water input to the lake.
In the end, the lake will be the same as it's always been, and less air-polluting fossil fuels will be required to run the existing air conditioning systems. Looks like a win-win situation to me.
Yaz.
Not at all -- but the 4G iPods have introduced some new features that would really be nice to have, such as the new multiple on-the-go playlists, and some of the longer battery life features.
Plus there are other interesting software things Apple could do with the iPod.
I'm not saying I'm unhappy with the existing iPod software, but that doesn't mean that there aren't interesting and innovative things Apple could do with the ipod's software -- if they had more incentive to do so.
Yaz.
While I have no intention of buying anything from Real (they don't support Mac OS X with this scheme), and I've never bought anything from iTMS (as I live in Canada), as an iPod owner I'm still somewhat excited -- this may be good for me as an iPod owner inn an indirect way.
Apple has in the last few weeks released two iPod firmware updaters (one of which was released in the past week) -- but both have contained updates only for the 4G iPods. I bought my iPod two months too soon, and thus own the 3G iPod, for which Apple appears to have no interest in providing any software updates for.
However, if things go as many here predict, Real may force Apples hand in pushing out firmware updates for the older iPods to ensure they don't work with Real's system. And to ensure users actually apply these updates, they'll have to offer some form of incentive in the form of new features or other improvements beyond breaking compatible with Real's Harmony.
So if Apple does do something about this, iPod owners (particularily hose of us who don't have the new 4G iPod) may end up winning anyhow :).
Yaz.
I call bullshit on you.
I'm complaining about Graham and other language-bigots, and over the last 20 years I've coded in:
...and have dabbled in many others (and I'm exccluding a whole slew of scripting languages from the above list). And I've written that code on and for the following platforms:
And much of this development hasn't been on small projects either. Indeed, a good portion of my platform development experience came about when I worked at the IBM Toronto Softwre Development Lab, doing DB2 development.
And I'm a Java developer. And not because I have to for job purposes (indeed, I generally refuse to work at jobs using Java, because most Java-related jobs suck), but because it's a language and environment with strengths not sufficiently matched elsewhere. I've programmed AI solutions in Java, protocol handlers in Java, and various other complex tasks beyond your usual "call a bunch of APIs" crap you seem to paint Java developers as doing.
I'd take that bet, and then completely wipe the floor with whomever you pitted me against :).
Sorry, but this sort of language bigotism really gets to me. Yes, there are crappy Java developers out there. Yes, many organizations doing Java development are targeting mundane tasks. But same goes for every other language out there -- the only difference is in degree.
In my years of speaking at conferences and chairing workshops on topics in computer science research, I've met a whole pile of brilliant people working in Java to solve complex problems. I've seen it used for artificial intelligence, robotics, research operating systems, protocol stacks, and game development -- more compilcated projects than your typical Python developer is ever going to tackle (nevermind all of the VM research I've seen surrounding Java).
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project (Open Source Java at that).
Because Java has quite unfairly been given a bad rap by people who don't understand it, coupled with the fact that most operating systems don't make it easy to run Java applications (until fairly recently).
And I speak as someone who administers an Open Source Java Project that wasn't initiated by a corporation.
Outside the Unix world you don't see a whole lot of Open Source Python projects either.
Yaz.