The Mac is a LOT more expensive - as in, three times as expensive as a comparable PC. Then you have to repurchase all the software.
Someone did the math awhile ago, I can't find the link, but you're just plain wrong. The Mac is maybe $50 or $100 more than a comparable PC. And you'll be repurchasing software with Vista anyhow -- or living through the hell of the security dialogs.
That's assuming you actually have lots of software which can't simply transfer a license to the Mac.
A lot easier to use? Not if you've been using a PC for twenty years.
And for twenty years, they've been changing things. You're going to have to retrain about as much to learn to use Vista as you will to use a Mac.
Then, once past the learning curve, there's a whole slew of brand spanking new problems.
I admit there are problems, but would you like to tell me which one you think makes a Mac worse than a PC?
Plus a closed architecture.
Sorry? It's not as open as I'd like, but as far as I know, you don't get ANY source code with Windows.
And if by some miracle the Mac ever starts to get a mass audience, it will be a target for all the same viruses the PC currently is.
Target, yes. But it really is more secure. Prove me wrong, though, if you dare. I'll put my Mac on any network you like and let you hit it with anything you want.
Vista is just now starting to do some of the things that OS X has had for years, in terms of security.
But out of all those, the first two - the initial overpricing and the repurchasing of the software you already own - are what will keep the vast majority of computer users from making a useless switch.
The vast majority of computer users own less than $100 worth of software, and the price difference is also less than $100. Geek Squad charges $129-229 every time you screw up your PC. After just a couple of those, it's already cheaper to make the switch.
Personally, I don't think it's as useful as, say, a mass exodus to Ubuntu would be. But at least I can easily set up SSH, use Perl, and all that good stuff without hours of hassle, so I'd be happy with people using a Mac.
Anyway, get back to Digg. Your 12-year-old MS apologist friends miss you.
MSFT is strongly pushing DRM for video content whereas Apple so far has been silent on the matter. I do not foresee Apple making a sharp about face and forcing HDMI down our throats at this stage in the game. If you value your freedom of fair use, I would suggest looking at Apple.
Sorry, no. I mean, I have a powerbook, but that's because I love the hardware -- as soon as I get Linux on this thing, I'll be booting it pretty much exclusively.
If you value your freedom of fair use, why are you giving anyone a kill switch? I would suggest you take a long, hard look at using Linux for anything you care about.
That maybe the reason more women don't go into tech is cultural - not in the "women are more interested in nail polish than hard drives"-sort of way, but in the sense that they sick and tired of dealing with all the "oohh, titties!" comments that we men think is good natured humor, but gets old with women?
While this may mean fewer women in IT, it will certainly mean better women in IT. And before you jump on me for being sexist, what I mean by this is women who can deal with that kind of bigotry. Especially fun are the ones who fight fire with fire -- you make a comment about "ooh, titties", the woman says "Yeah, yours are getting kind of big..."
Ok, bad example, but I'm not even that smart of a guy when it comes to insults. I know for a fact there are women who just love to be in this kind of situation -- no competition from other women, and if the guys want to be assholes, they're also probably easily... distractable.
And one more thing -- if I'm ever guilty of this, I'd rather be told about it, to my face, so I can change, rather than see the woman walk off the job entirely.
But anyway, this whole thing is moot, because Slashdot is not a good representation of the IT industry -- especially because it's online. It's a lot harder to say "ooh, titties" when they're staring you in the face, unless you're this guy
being a Man is not a de-facto state, it's a continuous battle.. and you have to prove yourself every single second
Well, you just proved one thing. You replied to the same post twice, trying to prove some point about how people with more confidence, maturity, and sensitivity than you are less manly. Congrats on becoming my first foe, kid.
Surely, there's a value to the "take it like a man" bit. Swallow your tears or turn them into spears, kick some ass... But real men don't fight or kill (metaphorically, even) just because they can. That's what videogames are for, if you're into that. But you become that monster on the battlefield, and then you have to come home.
And when you do, if you're unable to feel emotion, or admit that you're human, then what were you fighting for?
Boys are rebels without a cause, fighting to burn off testosterone. Men fight for what they believe in, so that when the fighting's done, they can come home and have peace, and laugh and cry and be a real person again.
But this is too far offtopic anyway, and you're not worth it.
I also wonder -- how easy would it be to place the menus in the menu bar as it is in the rest of the GUI? Is that something that could be easily integrated?
In a word: No. If it works the way I think it works, X just lets you draw a window. It doesn't care where you put it, or what you put in it, and it lets you capture all the clicks.
It might be patched inside, say, GTK, but I think that ships with the Gimp anyway.
There's a similar technological problem with Adium, in that chat invites cannot be "events", and since they appear behind windows, you never see them unless you're looking for them. (Events can trigger sounds, dock icon flashing, and Growl notifications.) You'd think it would be easy, but the problem lies in that Adium uses things like libgaim as "plugins", and those have their own plugins, and the plugin for Jabber notifications in particular just uses an interface of "Show this window and tell me what the result is" to send chat notifications back to Adium, rather than doing the sensible thing and telling it "Display a chat request window".
It's the same thing -- the interface is too abstract to really do anything interesting by changing the mechanism behind it. Kind of like how you can't really add dropshadows to application windows if the app itself is just talking directly to a framebuffer. You'd have to patch every app that behaves that way.
You don't get cool Aqua stuff. Honestly, this seems trivial to me,
It is to me, but we're talking about Mac users here. And you're right about dropshadows, those are easy. But can an X application do things like become partly translucent? In other words, can my xterm do what Terminal does, and provide REAL transparency/translucency (using GL, shows what's actually under the window, not just what the desktop image was when the app launched), or is it limited to the things X actually knows about (like the edges of the window)?
I don't think these can really be fixed, but I'm just telling you why Mac users don't like X11 apps. Also, especially in light of the work being done with XGL, I think Apple could do a better job, but then, I doubt they'll bother.
Ok, you're right, we should all have the option of privacy.
In some cases, though, I'd like things to be public. What I don't want to be public is all locked down tight, encrypted in my computers, or memorized. Just about everything else is public for a reason -- it makes my life easier. The receipts are just one thing.
Maybe I've just gotten used to having my privacy raped, but I just don't care anymore, personally. I think it's an essential right, and I love to waive it all the time. I think I've done maybe one AC post since I signed up for this account.
What I care more about is power. I don't care what MS knows about my computer, I care what they do with it. I honestly don't give a shit what info they collect from my Windows, since I assume they already knew it all. But I'm going to be pissed if they "deactivate" it. And I really don't care if the government collects info on me, but get this Patriot Act shit gone -- when I got my citizenship (well, when I was born, but that's not the point), I was essentially entering a contract with America. This includes due process. If I have to defend myself, fine, but I want my trial public and fair.
But as I said earlier, I may as well make a long list of things I really want -- like my own private jet -- but will never have. Such is the Corporatocracy that I doubt we'll ever get it right.
WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Have you ever walked outside and thought to yourself, "Man, I hope no Islamic terrorists kill me today." Of course not.
It's just more subconscious, and for that matter, the damage has been done. Look, in 2001, the government said "We have to fight terrorist!" And we all cringed in fear and said "ok, just save me from the bad bad bearded Arab men!" Today, yes, people are lazy and apathetic -- it's hard to change something -- but on 9/11/01, something changed, and we suddenly decided we'd be willing to give up our essential liberty for a little temporary security.
Since then, we're just overreacting (societies tend to do this) until we hit the other end, and the government (or corporations) do something so obviously horrific that we snap and correct it.
It's already happening, somewhat. Bush finally proved to the world what a moron he is with Katrina, and his approval ratings are through the floor, too bad we can't actually kick him out yet. I mean, I never liked him, the country was completely divided in 2004, but now we've all decided we hate Bush.
So it could happen that way, but I'd rather not let our privacy get bad enough first. I'd rather that just once, common sense prevails over sensationalism -- people hate Bush now because it's fashionable, and the economy kind of sucks, not because there's a real reason to. I'd like people to actually remember what country they're in, and fix it.
I'd also like a jet skateboard, a quad-core/quad-SLI computer with an Apple Cinema display that plays any game flawlessly in Linux, and a few million dollars of spending money, as long as I'm wishing for things that will never happen.
Why hasn't something like this been done for an interface which users can actually change (Gnome, KDE)? Not just a screenshot, but an actual new feature?
I have a MacBook. The lack of right mouse button is annoying, particularly when I'm running something other than OS X on it.
I believe Linux can be set up for the main way I "right-click" on my Powerbook -- ctrl+click. This doesn't interfere with opening new Firefox tabs; that's Command-click.
I mean, I hate the arrogance of Apple in that they haven't made right mouse buttons till the Mighty Mouse, and then the right side isn't visible, but I honestly don't notice it in day-to-day use. Even at work, I haven't had to plug in a real mouse -- the trackpad is nice, and I don't use it much (my keyboarding skills all come from Linux...)
I know they weren't the first, but they are still one of the best at combining an FPS with an RTS. The same principle could apply -- you have various levels of commander, your "level" is all about military rank, so there would be a flurry of high-level activity -- and probably also a lot of ducking and covering. Sounds like fun!
If the Zerg are done at all like the Natural Selection aliens, well, just imagine... "The hive is under attack. The hive is dying..."
A couple of major reasons. X11 does take more than a couple seconds to load, and you have to have it loaded (and installed from your install DVD) before you can run any X applications, so it's kind of like running a Classic app. Also, and this is the big one, the menu bar is in the window, instead of at the top of the screen. There are good reasons for having that one unified menu bar. And finally, you don't get all the cool Aqua stuff, like being able to pop up something translucent.
Simpler: Most access points already have the ability to have a list of IP addresses allowed into an open network. But why leave it open at all if you aren't going to mess with them?
I just checked out tubgirl. I think they could sue you.
Not unless the image itself is illegal.
Let's suppose you looked at tubgirl at home, for whatever reason. Maybe you're a sicko, whatever. Is that illegal?
Even if your monitor is in full view of your backyard window?
At that point, I'd say the person looking in your backyard is trespassing.
Really, here's how I'd like to see it work: If you leave your wireless unsecured, then you are advertising it as free. But if you connect to an unsecure wireless connection, you and only you are liable for whatever content you get.
The fact is, it's so insanely easy to be secure, and it's also insanely easy for him to reconstruct your email -- he just has to become a bit of a script kiddie, and get a tool to do it.
But more importantly, how can bluetooth both be secure and be easy to set up? I haven't actually used it, but if I pull a bluetooth mouse out of the box and turn it on, does it just work with the computer next to me? If I don't have to enter a key into the computer, I can't imagine the encryption is worth anything.
What do people expect Apple to do? This article makes it sound like "Contact AppleCare" isn't a solution. Frankly, as much as I like to fix things myself, it's actually less of my time to just send it back to them.
I did watch it awhile back, I remember there being a show called "The ScreenSavers" which my whole family would watch. Most of the time, it didn't suck.
I actually got to watch that show go downhill for awhile. It started out doing some relatively techincal stuff, and they understood their medium and their purpose. So you'd get an occasional mention of a download or something you could just find on the Internet, but plenty of other things -- I know they had a Slashdot guy (Taco, I think), they had someone in a full, official Master Chief suit (got to be as intimidating as Darth Vader making an appearance on Oprah, which did happen), as well as just occasional cool tech stuff, like making a cup warmer out of old CPUs, testing a paint that's supposed to keep your wireless from leaking out of your house... They answered questions over the phone, they showed demos of games and tested experimental gaming rigs on the air...
In other words, it was much of what I like about Slashdot, only in a more convenient TV form. When I saw them talking about Firefox, I knew it had gone mainstream, and it was time to ditch IE forever (for web development).
I watched that show die. I especially remember coming back a few months or a year later, and there was a show called Attack of the Show... I'm not sure what happened to everyone I liked from the ScreenSavers, or what happened to the show itself, but I know I can't find anything to watch on G4 anymore. If I wanted cinematech, I'd download game trailers and demoscenes.
So, I'm not at all surprised that it sucks now. It seems they decided to use Xplay as the model, instead of the ScreenSavers. Oh, they had Xplay, and it sucked also, but at least they had one or two decent shows. Now they've butchered the last of it, so as others have said, I'll take SpikeTV any day.
I think that game makers shouldn't try too hard to make games seem nonlinear because they eventually will be anyway, only crappier.
This is exactly why Max Payne was linear. They even had it up on their FAQ page -- they'd much rather do one story and get it done right than do many stories and have them all suck.
I wonder if this was a reaction to GTA -- the game did have a kind of a GTA feel to it, being a third-person shooter...
FFX didn't have mana/heart of the world. It just had Sin, which was killing people, not the planet.
Sin you can take both ways. Sin is Nature, and most of the creatures in the game world are Fiends, which as I understand it can come from animals dying as much as people. After Sin dies, we get FFX-2, which is a modern world. But Sin is also a human creation, and has an effect much like nukes -- and we also have the ban of Machina, and all of the cities are small.
So FFX manages to have both a "humans are evil" plot and a "let's subdue nature" plot, all mixed in with the World War II / Hiroshima metaphor that seems to be in most good, serious anime.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone did the math awhile ago, I can't find the link, but you're just plain wrong. The Mac is maybe $50 or $100 more than a comparable PC. And you'll be repurchasing software with Vista anyhow -- or living through the hell of the security dialogs.
That's assuming you actually have lots of software which can't simply transfer a license to the Mac.
And for twenty years, they've been changing things. You're going to have to retrain about as much to learn to use Vista as you will to use a Mac.
I admit there are problems, but would you like to tell me which one you think makes a Mac worse than a PC?
Sorry? It's not as open as I'd like, but as far as I know, you don't get ANY source code with Windows.
Target, yes. But it really is more secure. Prove me wrong, though, if you dare. I'll put my Mac on any network you like and let you hit it with anything you want.
Vista is just now starting to do some of the things that OS X has had for years, in terms of security.
The vast majority of computer users own less than $100 worth of software, and the price difference is also less than $100. Geek Squad charges $129-229 every time you screw up your PC. After just a couple of those, it's already cheaper to make the switch.
Personally, I don't think it's as useful as, say, a mass exodus to Ubuntu would be. But at least I can easily set up SSH, use Perl, and all that good stuff without hours of hassle, so I'd be happy with people using a Mac.
Anyway, get back to Digg. Your 12-year-old MS apologist friends miss you.
Sorry, no. I mean, I have a powerbook, but that's because I love the hardware -- as soon as I get Linux on this thing, I'll be booting it pretty much exclusively.
If you value your freedom of fair use, why are you giving anyone a kill switch? I would suggest you take a long, hard look at using Linux for anything you care about.
"Amoeba-like"? I don't know about you, but I'm glad mine isn't...
If you meant to link to the Wikipedia article, you missed the mark pretty badly by linking back to TFA.
While this may mean fewer women in IT, it will certainly mean better women in IT. And before you jump on me for being sexist, what I mean by this is women who can deal with that kind of bigotry. Especially fun are the ones who fight fire with fire -- you make a comment about "ooh, titties", the woman says "Yeah, yours are getting kind of big..."
Ok, bad example, but I'm not even that smart of a guy when it comes to insults. I know for a fact there are women who just love to be in this kind of situation -- no competition from other women, and if the guys want to be assholes, they're also probably easily... distractable.
And one more thing -- if I'm ever guilty of this, I'd rather be told about it, to my face, so I can change, rather than see the woman walk off the job entirely.
But anyway, this whole thing is moot, because Slashdot is not a good representation of the IT industry -- especially because it's online. It's a lot harder to say "ooh, titties" when they're staring you in the face, unless you're this guy
Well, you just proved one thing. You replied to the same post twice, trying to prove some point about how people with more confidence, maturity, and sensitivity than you are less manly. Congrats on becoming my first foe, kid.
Surely, there's a value to the "take it like a man" bit. Swallow your tears or turn them into spears, kick some ass... But real men don't fight or kill (metaphorically, even) just because they can. That's what videogames are for, if you're into that. But you become that monster on the battlefield, and then you have to come home.
And when you do, if you're unable to feel emotion, or admit that you're human, then what were you fighting for?
Boys are rebels without a cause, fighting to burn off testosterone. Men fight for what they believe in, so that when the fighting's done, they can come home and have peace, and laugh and cry and be a real person again.
But this is too far offtopic anyway, and you're not worth it.
In a word: No. If it works the way I think it works, X just lets you draw a window. It doesn't care where you put it, or what you put in it, and it lets you capture all the clicks.
It might be patched inside, say, GTK, but I think that ships with the Gimp anyway.
There's a similar technological problem with Adium, in that chat invites cannot be "events", and since they appear behind windows, you never see them unless you're looking for them. (Events can trigger sounds, dock icon flashing, and Growl notifications.) You'd think it would be easy, but the problem lies in that Adium uses things like libgaim as "plugins", and those have their own plugins, and the plugin for Jabber notifications in particular just uses an interface of "Show this window and tell me what the result is" to send chat notifications back to Adium, rather than doing the sensible thing and telling it "Display a chat request window".
It's the same thing -- the interface is too abstract to really do anything interesting by changing the mechanism behind it. Kind of like how you can't really add dropshadows to application windows if the app itself is just talking directly to a framebuffer. You'd have to patch every app that behaves that way.
It is to me, but we're talking about Mac users here. And you're right about dropshadows, those are easy. But can an X application do things like become partly translucent? In other words, can my xterm do what Terminal does, and provide REAL transparency/translucency (using GL, shows what's actually under the window, not just what the desktop image was when the app launched), or is it limited to the things X actually knows about (like the edges of the window)?
I don't think these can really be fixed, but I'm just telling you why Mac users don't like X11 apps. Also, especially in light of the work being done with XGL, I think Apple could do a better job, but then, I doubt they'll bother.
Ok, you're right, we should all have the option of privacy.
In some cases, though, I'd like things to be public. What I don't want to be public is all locked down tight, encrypted in my computers, or memorized. Just about everything else is public for a reason -- it makes my life easier. The receipts are just one thing.
Maybe I've just gotten used to having my privacy raped, but I just don't care anymore, personally. I think it's an essential right, and I love to waive it all the time. I think I've done maybe one AC post since I signed up for this account.
What I care more about is power. I don't care what MS knows about my computer, I care what they do with it. I honestly don't give a shit what info they collect from my Windows, since I assume they already knew it all. But I'm going to be pissed if they "deactivate" it. And I really don't care if the government collects info on me, but get this Patriot Act shit gone -- when I got my citizenship (well, when I was born, but that's not the point), I was essentially entering a contract with America. This includes due process. If I have to defend myself, fine, but I want my trial public and fair.
But as I said earlier, I may as well make a long list of things I really want -- like my own private jet -- but will never have. Such is the Corporatocracy that I doubt we'll ever get it right.
It's just more subconscious, and for that matter, the damage has been done. Look, in 2001, the government said "We have to fight terrorist!" And we all cringed in fear and said "ok, just save me from the bad bad bearded Arab men!" Today, yes, people are lazy and apathetic -- it's hard to change something -- but on 9/11/01, something changed, and we suddenly decided we'd be willing to give up our essential liberty for a little temporary security.
Since then, we're just overreacting (societies tend to do this) until we hit the other end, and the government (or corporations) do something so obviously horrific that we snap and correct it.
It's already happening, somewhat. Bush finally proved to the world what a moron he is with Katrina, and his approval ratings are through the floor, too bad we can't actually kick him out yet. I mean, I never liked him, the country was completely divided in 2004, but now we've all decided we hate Bush.
So it could happen that way, but I'd rather not let our privacy get bad enough first. I'd rather that just once, common sense prevails over sensationalism -- people hate Bush now because it's fashionable, and the economy kind of sucks, not because there's a real reason to. I'd like people to actually remember what country they're in, and fix it.
I'd also like a jet skateboard, a quad-core/quad-SLI computer with an Apple Cinema display that plays any game flawlessly in Linux, and a few million dollars of spending money, as long as I'm wishing for things that will never happen.
I've read 1984. Is there something in particular we're getting wrong?
Why hasn't something like this been done for an interface which users can actually change (Gnome, KDE)? Not just a screenshot, but an actual new feature?
I believe Linux can be set up for the main way I "right-click" on my Powerbook -- ctrl+click. This doesn't interfere with opening new Firefox tabs; that's Command-click.
I mean, I hate the arrogance of Apple in that they haven't made right mouse buttons till the Mighty Mouse, and then the right side isn't visible, but I honestly don't notice it in day-to-day use. Even at work, I haven't had to plug in a real mouse -- the trackpad is nice, and I don't use it much (my keyboarding skills all come from Linux...)
I know they weren't the first, but they are still one of the best at combining an FPS with an RTS. The same principle could apply -- you have various levels of commander, your "level" is all about military rank, so there would be a flurry of high-level activity -- and probably also a lot of ducking and covering. Sounds like fun!
If the Zerg are done at all like the Natural Selection aliens, well, just imagine... "The hive is under attack. The hive is dying..."
A couple of major reasons. X11 does take more than a couple seconds to load, and you have to have it loaded (and installed from your install DVD) before you can run any X applications, so it's kind of like running a Classic app. Also, and this is the big one, the menu bar is in the window, instead of at the top of the screen. There are good reasons for having that one unified menu bar. And finally, you don't get all the cool Aqua stuff, like being able to pop up something translucent.
Erm... I'd prefer zfone, I think it works with all software VOIP phones, possibly even at the router level. And that also runs on Linux.
Simpler: Most access points already have the ability to have a list of IP addresses allowed into an open network. But why leave it open at all if you aren't going to mess with them?
Not unless the image itself is illegal.
Let's suppose you looked at tubgirl at home, for whatever reason. Maybe you're a sicko, whatever. Is that illegal?
Even if your monitor is in full view of your backyard window?
At that point, I'd say the person looking in your backyard is trespassing.
Really, here's how I'd like to see it work: If you leave your wireless unsecured, then you are advertising it as free. But if you connect to an unsecure wireless connection, you and only you are liable for whatever content you get.
... And you could still read the Mesa implementation.
The fact is, it's so insanely easy to be secure, and it's also insanely easy for him to reconstruct your email -- he just has to become a bit of a script kiddie, and get a tool to do it.
But more importantly, how can bluetooth both be secure and be easy to set up? I haven't actually used it, but if I pull a bluetooth mouse out of the box and turn it on, does it just work with the computer next to me? If I don't have to enter a key into the computer, I can't imagine the encryption is worth anything.
What do people expect Apple to do? This article makes it sound like "Contact AppleCare" isn't a solution. Frankly, as much as I like to fix things myself, it's actually less of my time to just send it back to them.
Thank you for demonstrating the subtle difference between "boy" and "man".
Boys try not to cry to prove they're all grown-up. Men don't have anything to prove.
I'll accept that it could speed up that much, but I never saw a 64-bit binary. Is XP 64-bit just that much faster?
I did watch it awhile back, I remember there being a show called "The ScreenSavers" which my whole family would watch. Most of the time, it didn't suck.
I actually got to watch that show go downhill for awhile. It started out doing some relatively techincal stuff, and they understood their medium and their purpose. So you'd get an occasional mention of a download or something you could just find on the Internet, but plenty of other things -- I know they had a Slashdot guy (Taco, I think), they had someone in a full, official Master Chief suit (got to be as intimidating as Darth Vader making an appearance on Oprah, which did happen), as well as just occasional cool tech stuff, like making a cup warmer out of old CPUs, testing a paint that's supposed to keep your wireless from leaking out of your house... They answered questions over the phone, they showed demos of games and tested experimental gaming rigs on the air...
In other words, it was much of what I like about Slashdot, only in a more convenient TV form. When I saw them talking about Firefox, I knew it had gone mainstream, and it was time to ditch IE forever (for web development).
I watched that show die. I especially remember coming back a few months or a year later, and there was a show called Attack of the Show... I'm not sure what happened to everyone I liked from the ScreenSavers, or what happened to the show itself, but I know I can't find anything to watch on G4 anymore. If I wanted cinematech, I'd download game trailers and demoscenes.
So, I'm not at all surprised that it sucks now. It seems they decided to use Xplay as the model, instead of the ScreenSavers. Oh, they had Xplay, and it sucked also, but at least they had one or two decent shows. Now they've butchered the last of it, so as others have said, I'll take SpikeTV any day.
This is exactly why Max Payne was linear. They even had it up on their FAQ page -- they'd much rather do one story and get it done right than do many stories and have them all suck.
I wonder if this was a reaction to GTA -- the game did have a kind of a GTA feel to it, being a third-person shooter...
Sin you can take both ways. Sin is Nature, and most of the creatures in the game world are Fiends, which as I understand it can come from animals dying as much as people. After Sin dies, we get FFX-2, which is a modern world. But Sin is also a human creation, and has an effect much like nukes -- and we also have the ban of Machina, and all of the cities are small.
So FFX manages to have both a "humans are evil" plot and a "let's subdue nature" plot, all mixed in with the World War II / Hiroshima metaphor that seems to be in most good, serious anime.