Yes, forgive us for being pessimistic about the long-term future of this technology, and how committed they are to cross-platform, and not simply trying to do what they can to establish strong market position, so they can later use it as another monopoly leverage. Watching Microsoft for the last 20 years tells us that they won't do anything nasty if they start to feel threatened, and once they're a strong competitor in or owner of this market....Because we know that Ballmer is completely reformed in his business tactics versus the mid-90s.
Assuming you just meant Outlook (since I believe we're talking about desktops here), OS X runs Exchange+Entourage and Word just fine, and is *nixy. I use them and their Windows equivalents about equally (and constantly), and am about equally productive with the two. While there are a few things lacking in Entourage (I'd say it's about 90-95% as good, at least for me), it works very well for this power user in a large corporate environment. Word is pretty much identical Entourage even tends to be quite a bit more responsive over VPN than Outlook, and OS X tends to be more convenient overall since I have to work with a lot of unix command-line stuff and NFS filesystems (which are, obviously, a bit more convenient in OS X).
Your zealotry appears to have overwhelmed your sarcasm detector.
My point was that OS X does NOT have an "utterly foreign" interface as the GGP stated. My examples were obviously bogus; you don't really have to do these things...Unless you really HAVE punched a dog in the face in order to launch a new application in OS X - in which case I wonder if you should be allowed near technology at all.
I always wondered WHY OS X was designed to be so utterly foreign, and incomprehensible for Windows users to pick up. I never understood why you have to stand on a balance bar and lean to interact with the computer. Or why you have to punch a dog in the face to launch a new application. Or why their display device is a constantly reshaping bowl of mashed bananas.
I guess they just want to Think Different, but you'd think that they'd use desktop and GUI concepts similar to what Windows uses. And yet strangely, several million Windows users started using Macs this year.
Frequently. And I constantly have to recompile stuff, or jump through other hoops just to get whichever app installed or running. If it's not open-source, and if someone hasn't taken the time to port the app to my *exact* distribution and post it in a repository that I have access to (and is still maintained), then.
IANAL or want to be one, but I expect that a court would take intent highly under consideration, as with many, many other laws. If you were to, say, format your hard drive, or run a registry "clean-up" program, this wouldn't be an issue, though you're still effectively "deleting the files".
This is only an issue because he was deleting things in an attempt to circumvent a (arguably weak) form of digital restriction/protection. It's not the fact that he was deleting stuff from his computer.
I assume this is sarcasm? With the tremendous amount of physical real estate that the button takes up, there's no reason why splitting it into two would make things worse for virtually any user. I've been using the two-button "right click" for nearly a year now and do it instinctively, but still think that a right button would be significantly more effective, and less limiting (I do occasionally need right-click+drag, or right-click+very very quick move)
I suppose it's personal preference. I have used the Apple remote fairly extensively in several different situations (iMac in my home office, Mac Mini attached to my TV, MacBook Pro in the kitchen, etc). In the end, I just don't like it. I ended up replacing the remote on the iMac with an ATI Remote Wonder, and in the living room I have a Keyspan remote attachment and then have a Harmony Remote (which also controls TV+Tivo) emulating it. I don't typically like overly-complicated devices (I want my equipment to work with as little fiddling around as I possibly can), but the remote just doesn't cut it for me.
I also don't like the old Apple one-button mice (or the horribleness that is the Mighty Mouse). I suspect *most* Slashdotters immediately replaced the one-button mouse with something with a right-click and scroll wheel =) The single button on my Macbook Pro is also by far my largest complaint about it, even if I can do the multi-finger tap thing.
But that's my preference. Yours obviously differs on the remote.
Or the many, many products (from a variety of companies) that do similar things but typically with more features (like DVD player, the mentioned AVI/DivX support, etc).
For example, the only thing that the Apple TV has that the D-link DSM-520 doesn't is the snazzy interface and the ability to play iTunes-protected media. On the other hand, the D-link gives you the ability to play a huge range of media formats (including DivX, WMV, MPEG-2/MPEG-1), has the S-video output, video up to 1080i, doesn't have that horrendous tiny remote and is $50 cheaper.
I'm sure the interface will be nice and the fact that it's the only system (outside of a cheap Mac Mini) that plays iTunes content will be a selling point for some, but I just don't see this taking off. I buy a lot of Apple gear and I've even bought my share of videos off of iTunes, but this just isn't on my list.
Also, that the phisher has figured out WHICH bank this particular person uses, and has set up a phone number/system specifically for that bank. Hearing the message "Thank you for calling THE BANK" might be a tip-off that something's up....And all of this without leaving enough of a trail that they'll be caught.
So the MPAA is going crazy to restrict my ability to use my legally purchased content because (up to!) 8% of folks have downloaded a movie? 92+% of us are being impacted, through tax money spent on legal fees, disproportionately large lobbying/focus of congress and other agencies, political capital expended lobbying other countries for copyright/license restrictions, through draconian laws restricting our rights to fair use, because of that small of a base?
Come on.
I don't like the idea that folks are benefiting by being dishonest, when I'm shelling out bucks for stuff. That's one thing. But the idea that the MPAA et al (and companies like Apple, who are opportunistic benefactors) are going batshit to prevent me from watching video that I bought on iTunes on my D-link media center, or my DVDs on my iPod, etc because of a small fraction of folks just drives me nuts.
I understand that their bottom line is hit. No, I don't know where I'd draw the line (if it was 20% would I still be angry? 50%?). But they could have been expending all that effort driving new sales and profit by providing additional value, not by attempting to force us into their shaky business model...
One of my favorite things about OS X + the Dock was sort of mentioned in the article, and might help you here.
Try dragging your Applications folder down to the Dock. Now right-click on it. Bam, instant application grouping and easy launcher.
Since in OS X, moving applications around is as easy as moving them from one folder to another (and they still work afterwards!!) it's pretty easy to organize apps in the way you want, by creating subfolders, creating multiple "applications" folders, etc.
I usually end up having 3 folders in my Dock for quick access to apps - the Applications folder, a "Games" folder, and MS Office. Inside Applications I might even put apps into sub-categories (like "Browsers" and "Media players", etc but usually I just keep them in one big folder. If the list grows too long it's very fast just to scroll through them with the mouse wheel.
I agree with the author of the article that putting the Applications folder in the Dock by default would be a good idea. I've never met another person that used OS X that realized this was possible, and 100% of the folks I've showed this to have found it to be extremely useful.
That's really only true for their only non-integrated model left - the Mac Pro. With all other models you're pretty much limited to just swapping out the memory, and MAYBE the hard drive/wireless. However, the Mac Pro appears to be very flexible. I've also never heard of anyone TRYING a different video card with the Mac Pro, I'm not sure if it's been confirmed that you can use generic video?
The Powermacs (G4 and below) never really had much in the way of hardware restrictions either, it's just that the selection of hardware (particularly video cards, because of BIOS issues) was fairly limited.
Notice that I quoted the two different things he would have seen (at the top of the article even) on Wikipedia between the time the Slashdot article was posted and the time that his comment was posted - depending on at what time he read it. I even mentioned that the two Wikipedia quotes depended on when he "read" that article.
Several things that you supposedly read should have tipped you off.
Summary: "the extremely ill Mr. Wilson can't make his rent" Article: "whose *infirmity* and depleted finances" Article: "Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit" Article: "I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute" Wikipedia article (which you say you read) depending on when you read it: Wikipedia: "This author who has changed the lives of many is dying of post polio syndrome" Wikipedia: "Robert A. Wilson is currently under hospice care at home with friends and family."...But you didn't actually read any of this (you even quoted the article wrong after being called out!!). You skimmed a few things, jumped to conclusions, then rushed to get first post by being about as much of an ass about it as possible - revealing how much you're just a sad, sad, excuse for a human being.
RAW himself did not ask for money. A fan of his, however, did. Your high horse died about 2 posts ago, *get off of it*.
Also, you've never once taken a homeless guy into a restaurant. Liar.
I think another important question here is culpability. Under US (and Illinois) law would a *US-based* operation similar to Spamhaus actually have a legal problem here? Are they potentially doing anything wrong?
It seems to me this Spamhaus is acting in an advisory capacity only. People ask them who they feel aren't sending out "trustworthy" emails, and they attempt to provide advice. Couldn't they just as easily make the same "restriction of trade" argument against, say, consumer reports?
Or it's somewhat like a situation where someone owns an operation where they send cars up and down neighborhoods with megaphones attached, spouting out advertisements about their pharmaceuticals at low, low prices. Someone analyzes the megaphones and sends out information about how residents can add insulation to their houses to help block the noise, but let other sounds through. The advertiser sues the person providing the info for "restriction of trade". There's a good chance that what the advertiser was doing was violating local laws (noise ordinances, etc) in the first place, but does the provider of info actually have any real legal responsibility here? If a company sells and installs the insulation, is there a legal reprucussion for them?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, 5 iterations, but one cost either $0 or $10, depending on how you got it.
Yes, forgive us for being pessimistic about the long-term future of this technology, and how committed they are to cross-platform, and not simply trying to do what they can to establish strong market position, so they can later use it as another monopoly leverage. Watching Microsoft for the last 20 years tells us that they won't do anything nasty if they start to feel threatened, and once they're a strong competitor in or owner of this market. ...Because we know that Ballmer is completely reformed in his business tactics versus the mid-90s.
Assuming you just meant Outlook (since I believe we're talking about desktops here), OS X runs Exchange+Entourage and Word just fine, and is *nixy. I use them and their Windows equivalents about equally (and constantly), and am about equally productive with the two. While there are a few things lacking in Entourage (I'd say it's about 90-95% as good, at least for me), it works very well for this power user in a large corporate environment. Word is pretty much identical Entourage even tends to be quite a bit more responsive over VPN than Outlook, and OS X tends to be more convenient overall since I have to work with a lot of unix command-line stuff and NFS filesystems (which are, obviously, a bit more convenient in OS X).
Your zealotry appears to have overwhelmed your sarcasm detector.
My point was that OS X does NOT have an "utterly foreign" interface as the GGP stated. My examples were obviously bogus; you don't really have to do these things...Unless you really HAVE punched a dog in the face in order to launch a new application in OS X - in which case I wonder if you should be allowed near technology at all.
I always wondered WHY OS X was designed to be so utterly foreign, and incomprehensible for Windows users to pick up. I never understood why you have to stand on a balance bar and lean to interact with the computer. Or why you have to punch a dog in the face to launch a new application. Or why their display device is a constantly reshaping bowl of mashed bananas.
I guess they just want to Think Different, but you'd think that they'd use desktop and GUI concepts similar to what Windows uses. And yet strangely, several million Windows users started using Macs this year.
Frequently. And I constantly have to recompile stuff, or jump through other hoops just to get whichever app installed or running. If it's not open-source, and if someone hasn't taken the time to port the app to my *exact* distribution and post it in a repository that I have access to (and is still maintained), then.
IANAL or want to be one, but I expect that a court would take intent highly under consideration, as with many, many other laws. If you were to, say, format your hard drive, or run a registry "clean-up" program, this wouldn't be an issue, though you're still effectively "deleting the files".
This is only an issue because he was deleting things in an attempt to circumvent a (arguably weak) form of digital restriction/protection. It's not the fact that he was deleting stuff from his computer.
No, because no one forced you to read the article.
I assume this is sarcasm? With the tremendous amount of physical real estate that the button takes up, there's no reason why splitting it into two would make things worse for virtually any user. I've been using the two-button "right click" for nearly a year now and do it instinctively, but still think that a right button would be significantly more effective, and less limiting (I do occasionally need right-click+drag, or right-click+very very quick move)
I suppose it's personal preference. I have used the Apple remote fairly extensively in several different situations (iMac in my home office, Mac Mini attached to my TV, MacBook Pro in the kitchen, etc). In the end, I just don't like it. I ended up replacing the remote on the iMac with an ATI Remote Wonder, and in the living room I have a Keyspan remote attachment and then have a Harmony Remote (which also controls TV+Tivo) emulating it. I don't typically like overly-complicated devices (I want my equipment to work with as little fiddling around as I possibly can), but the remote just doesn't cut it for me.
I also don't like the old Apple one-button mice (or the horribleness that is the Mighty Mouse). I suspect *most* Slashdotters immediately replaced the one-button mouse with something with a right-click and scroll wheel =) The single button on my Macbook Pro is also by far my largest complaint about it, even if I can do the multi-finger tap thing.
But that's my preference. Yours obviously differs on the remote.
Or the many, many products (from a variety of companies) that do similar things but typically with more features (like DVD player, the mentioned AVI/DivX support, etc).
For example, the only thing that the Apple TV has that the D-link DSM-520 doesn't is the snazzy interface and the ability to play iTunes-protected media. On the other hand, the D-link gives you the ability to play a huge range of media formats (including DivX, WMV, MPEG-2/MPEG-1), has the S-video output, video up to 1080i, doesn't have that horrendous tiny remote and is $50 cheaper.
I'm sure the interface will be nice and the fact that it's the only system (outside of a cheap Mac Mini) that plays iTunes content will be a selling point for some, but I just don't see this taking off. I buy a lot of Apple gear and I've even bought my share of videos off of iTunes, but this just isn't on my list.
The linked photo site was almost immediately Slashdotted so I'm not sure what they contained, but there are pictures on NASA's site here:
0 070301.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/2
I've never understood why editors are so very hesitant to correct errors in titles or summaries. But I suspect you will never see this fixed.
They're not first - Activeworlds has been around for years (I first used it in 97 or so).
http://www.activeworlds.com/
Also, that the phisher has figured out WHICH bank this particular person uses, and has set up a phone number/system specifically for that bank. Hearing the message "Thank you for calling THE BANK" might be a tip-off that something's up. ...And all of this without leaving enough of a trail that they'll be caught.
So the MPAA is going crazy to restrict my ability to use my legally purchased content because (up to!) 8% of folks have downloaded a movie? 92+% of us are being impacted, through tax money spent on legal fees, disproportionately large lobbying/focus of congress and other agencies, political capital expended lobbying other countries for copyright/license restrictions, through draconian laws restricting our rights to fair use, because of that small of a base?
Come on.
I don't like the idea that folks are benefiting by being dishonest, when I'm shelling out bucks for stuff. That's one thing. But the idea that the MPAA et al (and companies like Apple, who are opportunistic benefactors) are going batshit to prevent me from watching video that I bought on iTunes on my D-link media center, or my DVDs on my iPod, etc because of a small fraction of folks just drives me nuts.
I understand that their bottom line is hit. No, I don't know where I'd draw the line (if it was 20% would I still be angry? 50%?). But they could have been expending all that effort driving new sales and profit by providing additional value, not by attempting to force us into their shaky business model...
One of my favorite things about OS X + the Dock was sort of mentioned in the article, and might help you here.
Try dragging your Applications folder down to the Dock. Now right-click on it. Bam, instant application grouping and easy launcher.
Since in OS X, moving applications around is as easy as moving them from one folder to another (and they still work afterwards!!) it's pretty easy to organize apps in the way you want, by creating subfolders, creating multiple "applications" folders, etc.
I usually end up having 3 folders in my Dock for quick access to apps - the Applications folder, a "Games" folder, and MS Office. Inside Applications I might even put apps into sub-categories (like "Browsers" and "Media players", etc but usually I just keep them in one big folder. If the list grows too long it's very fast just to scroll through them with the mouse wheel.
I agree with the author of the article that putting the Applications folder in the Dock by default would be a good idea. I've never met another person that used OS X that realized this was possible, and 100% of the folks I've showed this to have found it to be extremely useful.
Amen.
That's really only true for their only non-integrated model left - the Mac Pro. With all other models you're pretty much limited to just swapping out the memory, and MAYBE the hard drive/wireless. However, the Mac Pro appears to be very flexible. I've also never heard of anyone TRYING a different video card with the Mac Pro, I'm not sure if it's been confirmed that you can use generic video?
The Powermacs (G4 and below) never really had much in the way of hardware restrictions either, it's just that the selection of hardware (particularly video cards, because of BIOS issues) was fairly limited.
Notice that I quoted the two different things he would have seen (at the top of the article even) on Wikipedia between the time the Slashdot article was posted and the time that his comment was posted - depending on at what time he read it. I even mentioned that the two Wikipedia quotes depended on when he "read" that article.
Several things that you supposedly read should have tipped you off.
...But you didn't actually read any of this (you even quoted the article wrong after being called out!!). You skimmed a few things, jumped to conclusions, then rushed to get first post by being about as much of an ass about it as possible - revealing how much you're just a sad, sad, excuse for a human being.
Summary: "the extremely ill Mr. Wilson can't make his rent"
Article: "whose *infirmity* and depleted finances"
Article: "Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit"
Article: "I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute"
Wikipedia article (which you say you read) depending on when you read it:
Wikipedia: "This author who has changed the lives of many is dying of post polio syndrome"
Wikipedia: "Robert A. Wilson is currently under hospice care at home with friends and family."
RAW himself did not ask for money. A fan of his, however, did. Your high horse died about 2 posts ago, *get off of it*.
Also, you've never once taken a homeless guy into a restaurant. Liar.
There was also Salmon Days (http://www.salmondays.tv/), which was originally based on the BoFH stuff that shows up on The Register.
For those with short attention spans, the trailer is here. Don't miss the killing of clippy, it's priceless.
I think another important question here is culpability. Under US (and Illinois) law would a *US-based* operation similar to Spamhaus actually have a legal problem here? Are they potentially doing anything wrong?
It seems to me this Spamhaus is acting in an advisory capacity only. People ask them who they feel aren't sending out "trustworthy" emails, and they attempt to provide advice. Couldn't they just as easily make the same "restriction of trade" argument against, say, consumer reports?
Or it's somewhat like a situation where someone owns an operation where they send cars up and down neighborhoods with megaphones attached, spouting out advertisements about their pharmaceuticals at low, low prices. Someone analyzes the megaphones and sends out information about how residents can add insulation to their houses to help block the noise, but let other sounds through. The advertiser sues the person providing the info for "restriction of trade". There's a good chance that what the advertiser was doing was violating local laws (noise ordinances, etc) in the first place, but does the provider of info actually have any real legal responsibility here? If a company sells and installs the insulation, is there a legal reprucussion for them?
What makes you think Leopard won't run on G4s?
Losing money also causes the stock price to go down. Sometimes even more than "image" drives it up. Sometimes.