Digg's traffic will be overtaking Slashdot's in a month according to Alexa. Only Slashdotters care about Slashdot's misinformed comment system. Even Linus Torvalds doesn't like this place and thinks it's a "public wanking session."
But hey, stick with Slashdot, where you get front page stories about CmdrTaco not getting to use his nick in World of Warcraft even though he's Rob Malda of Slashdot. Very relevant, mature stuff.
At least Digg actually updates its interface regularly. This crappy Times New Roman white and green interface screams 1997.
Apple didn't "steal" from Xerox. They were shown the technology and ran with it, adding a full desktop metaphor. Pull-down menus? That was Apple. Trash can? That was Apple. And on and on. Xerox showed what was possible with mouse input and overlapping windows, but Apple did the rest.
That's not even mentioning the fact that most of the Xerox guys on that project subsequently went to work at Apple anyway.
I wonder why they didn't use MPEG-4. H.264 (AVC) is expected to be the standard encoding for next-gen formats, so maybe they did MPEG-2 because this is only a test disc, but still. MPEG-4 saves so much space, you could put an HD movie on a DVD of today if you wanted to.
I'm missing the part in this story where Richard Stallman was "accosted" by anybody. According to the website, they just wouldn't let him leave the room for a period of time.
Why is this even front page news? Over at Digg.com, they're churning out the relevant tech news left and right.
Pick up the box your copy of OS X came in, and read the minimum system requirements on the side. There's your evidence. And then there's common sense, I mean the dock alone would take up the $100 Laptop's entire 8" screen! Not to mention I doubt these laptops have 3D acceleration which Aqua is probably all but useless without, and they definitely don't do high resolution colour (you get high res monochrome, or colour, but not both).
As usual, you're completely wrong about everything in this paragraph. OS X will run on the laptop, the Dock wouldn't take the entire screen (this magic thing called "resizing"), and Aqua runs without 3D acceleration as it did up until 10.2 (software blitting like Windows does today).
You need to upgrade your narrowminded view of what a computer is, and start thinking realistically -- this device has more in common with a PDA than the kind of computer you seem to be used to. So OS X on these $100 laptops? Not going to happen.
I'm the one who needs to upgrade my narrowminded view? Read what you just stated there. "This device has more in common with a PDA, therefore, OS X is never going to happen." Apparently, you believe if you state it enough times with zero supporting evidence whatsoever, it magically becomes true--this despite the fact that Steve Jobs already offered OS X to run these things, which means YOU'RE ALREADY WRONG ANYWAY. OS X could have happened if not for the ideologues who chose their $2 million donor, Red Hat.
Linux on the other hand? Can be pared down to run on a wristwatch. I think they'll manage, even without your helpful advice.
Oh, God. You're such an idiot. Linux can be pared down to run on a wristwatch, yeah, but so can Darwin. WHAT'S YOUR POINT? On a wristwatch, you won't have a desktop--no X11, no KDE/GNOME, no real software at all. Not even a prompt. Is this supposed to prove a point or something? FreeBSD can be pared down to a wristwatch too, and FreeBSD is a foundation in OS X's Darwin system.
What a completely pointless statement.
One more thing, when people who know what they're talking about refer to 'free software', and what you seem to think the term means, are obviously two widely different things.
Oh, I know exactly what these ideologues were referring to. They'd rather give crippled crap to children instead of a superior system that would have enabled them creatively and programmaticly.
Whether you realise it or not, there is a fundamental difference between software given away at no cost, and software that is legally and politically unencumbered. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one of these types of software can be modified to suit particular needs, and which one if you tried could have you in court for reverse engineering.
Seeing as how Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, your completely random reference to "reverse engineering" is, as usual, 100% pointless and irrelevant. As I said before, kids aren't going to be modifying the Linux kernel source, so that is an irrelevant point too. And even if they were, Darwin and FreeBSD are open source already anyway...geez, what was your point again? What is it about the Aqua system that kids or engineers would need to be modifying? Darwin is what they'd be targeting, and it's already available for free.
As for your condescension when it comes to underpriveleged people and intelligence or motivation, just because you can't write a symphony doesn't mean somebody somewhere in Africa doesn't have the potential to be the next fucking Mozart, you xenophobic prick.
Nothing I said was xenophobic or had anything to do with social classes. You completely made this part up. I was pointing out the 100% truth that most kids aren't kernel system engineers. It doesn't interest them. Geeks on Slashdot, on the other hand, think EVERYBODY is a coder who wants to browse lines of text in a source tree, and that is why people like you think Linux is the better choice here instead of t
Ah, the typical Slashbot response. "I disagree, so I will call you a troll." How ridiculously closed-minded.
And btw, wxWidgets is better than Cocoa? Are you fucking insane?! Have you tried Cocoa? Did you know the Apple devs had a working iPhoto prototype in less than a week thanks to Interface Builder?
So, you assume that the full set of features of OS X will be ported to this tiny machine ? No comments here.
Yes, of course I do. Until you can actually cite any single quote or evidence that when Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, he was referring to some other magical version of OS X that doesn't exist, your comment here is irrelevant.
Can you please point (in terms of text reading/editing, internet browsing, e-mail and other common tasks, from a user point of view) what Linux 2.6.x can do that 2.2.x can't ? and what XFree 4.x can that 3.x can't ?
A lot of the changes are in hardware support and reorganization. Actually, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. I was talking about the old versions of Windowmaker, Gnome, KDE, etc. from back in the day.
You conveniently ommited my quote, where I was talking about the engineers behind this project, that will for sure customize the chosen Linux version to suit the said $100 machine.
For them (the engineers), it is very important an OS that you can trully 100% customize and modify to suit their needs.
Yeah, how exactly are they going to "customize" Linux specifically for this machine? What code will they be modifying? And have you heard of Darwin?
Besides, why are you underestimating these kids ? Can't they be, in the future, a kernel hacker ?
Once again, I have to roll up my sleeves and shoot down this ridiculous Slashdotter assumption. The majority of kids are not fucking kernel hackers. They'll look at you blankly when you tell them to "compile from source" and will move on to a better computer.
Or contribute for an project ?
A kid who would ever actually contribute to an OSS project would be smart enough to download Linux and wipe OS X for themselves anyway. Why deprive all the other kids of a superior system?
With bug fixes, new features, etc. With these tools in hands (the laptop and the whole free system) the chances that a percentage of them turn into programmers, etc is higher.
No, it's not. Giving a kid Linux doesn't magically turn them into a programmer. Again, this stupid assumption needs to DIE. It's not true. Never will be. Some kids are into this stuff, most aren't, and you're never going to change that. Besides, OS X SHIPS FREE WITH GCC4 AND XCODE. So another point crumbles to dust.
Face it, this screwed over all those kids who would have been better served with OS X rather than the fragmented Linux desktop arena.
Free beer ? No thanks. So, what happens when 100 million units have been distributed and they need a bug fix, a new feature not anticipated, a security fix, etc ??
They get a patch from Apple or fix it themselves in Darwin? How the hell is this different from Red Hat?
Are you sure Apple will happily donate their software and workforce forever without expecting anything back ? Last time I checked they were a for profit company, interested in boosting their sales.
Have you ever heard of xfce, blackbox, windowmaker ?
In other words, we have to choose crippled window managers with a reduced featureset?
I remember that some years ago I managed to get Linux/Windowmaker running smoothly on a old 486DX2 66Mhz, 32Mb RAM.
Yeah, "some years ago" Linux was pretty speedy. It also could barely do much.
Can you really do this with Mac OS X under a similar machine ?
What does a 486DX2 66mhz with 32mb of RAM have to do with this discussion? You could barely get Windowmaker/X11 to run on that machine today, if at all.
And, besides, with a 100% free software Linux distro, you can thinker with every bit of code (and I mean the WHOLE system AND apps) to make it faster
Oh, yeah, because every kid in the world is a goddamned kernel systems engineer. I love this incorrect assumption always made by every Slashdot poster. I'm sure the kids will love having to compile shit from source instead of getting to use the very fun iMovie.
Let alone future (free) upgrades...
Guess you missed the part where Steve Jobs was offering OS X for free.
I've seen an "Archos Gmini." After I found out how to pronounce the damn name, I tossed it aside and went back to my 5G iPod.
You didn't address my points. Have fun manually managing your music. Try it with 85GB like I do. iTunes handles it like a champ. I couldn't live without auto-syncing. New album? Next time I plug in the iPod, iTunes will copy it over and sync my playcounts and ratings (I always rate my music on my iPod and not in iTunes).
OH NOS! I can't pirate stuff at extreme high speeds because "the industry" decided to protect their property! Front page news on Slashdot, the pro-piracy haven!
Be sure to mod this down even though it's a valid point you're free to agree or disagree with. But face it, pro-piracy agenda is rampant around here, even though everyone jumps up and down over "stolen" GPL code and cries out for the EFF to legally pursue infringers. But stopping people from making sure System of a Down doesn't get paid today? Fuck that, they're stealing our rights!
They want an operating system "that can be tinkered with," which displays the standard Slashbot geek assumptions:
1.) That everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done. 95% of you people have never even modified a single line of your local Linux kernel source tree.
2.) That there will always be a majority of kids who aren't interested in staring at lines of source code to feel good about their "software freedom." Give me a break.
3.) That the tiny minority of kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux for free anyway.
4.) You guys obsess over making every little kid a coder, when XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything else out there.
5.) There are TONS more creative kids than coder kids, and think of all the incredible creative stuff that would have been nurtured here. iLife ships for free with OS X. Now these kids won't get to have Garageband for free, or iPhoto for free, or iMovie and iDVD for free. But hey, now they get to experience the joy of having to install two entire desktop environments and libraries just to run each other's apps! Have fun with a "package management system" and a fragmented filesystem hierarchy that dumps files all over the place instead of in well-designed bundles!
6.) Which leads to my final point. These kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways. App bundles, real application APIs, real drag-and-drop, etc....
But, the designers' wishes triumphed. Oh? What's this? Red Hat donated $2 million to this project, and now they're getting used over OS X? Ah, that's why. So much for free and open. Only the designers got what they wanted. I guarantee a kid given a choice and presented both systems would have gone with Apple...
Funny, do you think everybody should know how to build their own cell phones, car engines, or refrigerators?
God, this stupid attitude is so prevalent on Slashdot. Teaching someone about computers doesn't mean forcing them to install Slackware and compile applications from source. I mean, are you fucking serious? You want to force kids to have to learn how to compile apps from source instead of, I don't know, actually USING THE COMPUTER?
You're one of those people who thinks everyone has to know everything under the hood, but I bet you don't know shit about your car or your air conditioning system or the traffic light system in your town and so on. People SHOULDN'T HAVE to know how to compile an app from source. I consider that a flaw in the system if they're required to know how to do that. So does Steve Jobs, incidentally.
Did he slug you in the mouth for quoting from a closed source binary? Stallman is hardly sane. He believes you are not "free" unless you ascribe to HIS meaning of freedom, and that's not freedom at all.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it.
What are you wanting people to learn, exactly? Arcane UNIX commands? Uh, how is that good for kids?
Having that latitude is not to be casually foregone, for all OS X is eyecandyville.
And with that, you prove your ignorance about OS X! My DarwinPorts installation hates you now.
Take off the hyperventilating Stallman blinders. Putting on a pair of handcuffs? Are you fucking serious? "Lose one's software freedom?" You sound like a StallmanBot.
Give a 12 year old kid a Red Hat laptop and an OS X laptop. He'll choose OS X. Even if you wag your finger at him and give him the long lecture you just typed up about his "software freedom." He'll tell you he doesn't feel any less "free" for choosing the thing that works. That's because he's smart enough not to buy into your rhetoric and bullshit.
Besides, ever heard of Darwin? Webkit? All the other OSS that Apple relies on to make OS X?
Is chaining yourself to Red Hat, or to Linux in general, any less of a set of handcuffs? Any platform is a set of handcuffs. Ignorant, closed-minded viewpoints like yours are what happens when people spend YEARS forming their perspectives based entirely on Slashdot headlines and end up thinking anything that doesn't mail its source code to you is, for some reason not ever justified, is evil and bad. You're a dying mindset.
Bill Gates didn't convince Steve Jobs of anything, as Jobs was kicked out of Apple by then. And Apple didn't let Microsoft do anything; Microsoft went and did it on its own.
Ugh, no thank you. I have my entire CD collection ripped and on my Archos player... that's around 2300 tracks. I like to be able to find things when I want them. I don't want some application automatically moving things to and from it.
Which is why iTunes has an option for letting you manually manage what music gets copied. However, your statement doesn't really make sense. How would you not be able to find things when you want them if iTunes is auto-syncing your music library to your iPod? Basically what that means is when you add new music in iTunes, the next time you plug in the iPod, you can have iTunes automatically copy the new music to the iPod. It seems to me iTunes makes it easier to find your new music...
Besides, iTunes doesn't work on Linux.
Well, that's a completely different topic. iTunes will never work on Linux, because desktop Linux isn't a major player whatsoever.
Not at all.
I have every song from every CD I own on my Archos Gmini. With the "Arclibrary" app on the player itself, I can browse through things by genre, by release date, by artist, or by album.
Same with iTunes/iPod.
I can create playlists on the fly with just about any computer-based music player I have seen, and load them on my player, or I can use the player itself to create playlists.
Same with iPod. You can create "On-The-Go" playlists.
You completely didn't address what I was talking about with regards to metadata-based playlists. There's no way, with your manual managing of the filesystem, to automatically copy, say, only 4+ rated 1990s grunge music added in the last two weeks to your music player. Or keep playcounts, ratings, and other metadata auto-synced between the music on your computer and the copies on your player. I could go and on and on here.
I'm not missing a thing, trust me.:-)
I think you've just never actually tried an iPod for a week.
Slashdot Mirror
Such moderations prove what a sheepish place the comments section of Slashdot has become. "OMG HE DIDN'T LIKE MARIO KART, -1 FOR U!!!!"
The browser will become more of an OS. Google is already using it like such.
Digg's traffic will be overtaking Slashdot's in a month according to Alexa. Only Slashdotters care about Slashdot's misinformed comment system. Even Linus Torvalds doesn't like this place and thinks it's a "public wanking session."
But hey, stick with Slashdot, where you get front page stories about CmdrTaco not getting to use his nick in World of Warcraft even though he's Rob Malda of Slashdot. Very relevant, mature stuff.
At least Digg actually updates its interface regularly. This crappy Times New Roman white and green interface screams 1997.
If GPL violations aren't theft, why is it called "stolen" GPL code? The point just whooshed right over your head, didn't it?
Apple didn't "steal" from Xerox. They were shown the technology and ran with it, adding a full desktop metaphor. Pull-down menus? That was Apple. Trash can? That was Apple. And on and on. Xerox showed what was possible with mouse input and overlapping windows, but Apple did the rest.
That's not even mentioning the fact that most of the Xerox guys on that project subsequently went to work at Apple anyway.
I wonder why they didn't use MPEG-4. H.264 (AVC) is expected to be the standard encoding for next-gen formats, so maybe they did MPEG-2 because this is only a test disc, but still. MPEG-4 saves so much space, you could put an HD movie on a DVD of today if you wanted to.
I'm missing the part in this story where Richard Stallman was "accosted" by anybody. According to the website, they just wouldn't let him leave the room for a period of time.
Why is this even front page news? Over at Digg.com, they're churning out the relevant tech news left and right.
Pick up the box your copy of OS X came in, and read the minimum system requirements on the side. There's your evidence. And then there's common sense, I mean the dock alone would take up the $100 Laptop's entire 8" screen! Not to mention I doubt these laptops have 3D acceleration which Aqua is probably all but useless without, and they definitely don't do high resolution colour (you get high res monochrome, or colour, but not both).
As usual, you're completely wrong about everything in this paragraph. OS X will run on the laptop, the Dock wouldn't take the entire screen (this magic thing called "resizing"), and Aqua runs without 3D acceleration as it did up until 10.2 (software blitting like Windows does today).
You need to upgrade your narrowminded view of what a computer is, and start thinking realistically -- this device has more in common with a PDA than the kind of computer you seem to be used to. So OS X on these $100 laptops? Not going to happen.
I'm the one who needs to upgrade my narrowminded view? Read what you just stated there. "This device has more in common with a PDA, therefore, OS X is never going to happen." Apparently, you believe if you state it enough times with zero supporting evidence whatsoever, it magically becomes true--this despite the fact that Steve Jobs already offered OS X to run these things, which means YOU'RE ALREADY WRONG ANYWAY. OS X could have happened if not for the ideologues who chose their $2 million donor, Red Hat.
Linux on the other hand? Can be pared down to run on a wristwatch. I think they'll manage, even without your helpful advice.
Oh, God. You're such an idiot. Linux can be pared down to run on a wristwatch, yeah, but so can Darwin. WHAT'S YOUR POINT? On a wristwatch, you won't have a desktop--no X11, no KDE/GNOME, no real software at all. Not even a prompt. Is this supposed to prove a point or something? FreeBSD can be pared down to a wristwatch too, and FreeBSD is a foundation in OS X's Darwin system.
What a completely pointless statement.
One more thing, when people who know what they're talking about refer to 'free software', and what you seem to think the term means, are obviously two widely different things.
Oh, I know exactly what these ideologues were referring to. They'd rather give crippled crap to children instead of a superior system that would have enabled them creatively and programmaticly.
Whether you realise it or not, there is a fundamental difference between software given away at no cost, and software that is legally and politically unencumbered. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one of these types of software can be modified to suit particular needs, and which one if you tried could have you in court for reverse engineering.
Seeing as how Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, your completely random reference to "reverse engineering" is, as usual, 100% pointless and irrelevant. As I said before, kids aren't going to be modifying the Linux kernel source, so that is an irrelevant point too. And even if they were, Darwin and FreeBSD are open source already anyway...geez, what was your point again? What is it about the Aqua system that kids or engineers would need to be modifying? Darwin is what they'd be targeting, and it's already available for free.
As for your condescension when it comes to underpriveleged people and intelligence or motivation, just because you can't write a symphony doesn't mean somebody somewhere in Africa doesn't have the potential to be the next fucking Mozart, you xenophobic prick.
Nothing I said was xenophobic or had anything to do with social classes. You completely made this part up. I was pointing out the 100% truth that most kids aren't kernel system engineers. It doesn't interest them. Geeks on Slashdot, on the other hand, think EVERYBODY is a coder who wants to browse lines of text in a source tree, and that is why people like you think Linux is the better choice here instead of t
I'll feed the troll...
Ah, the typical Slashbot response. "I disagree, so I will call you a troll." How ridiculously closed-minded.
And btw, wxWidgets is better than Cocoa? Are you fucking insane?! Have you tried Cocoa? Did you know the Apple devs had a working iPhoto prototype in less than a week thanks to Interface Builder?
So, you assume that the full set of features of OS X will be ported to this tiny machine ? No comments here.
Yes, of course I do. Until you can actually cite any single quote or evidence that when Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, he was referring to some other magical version of OS X that doesn't exist, your comment here is irrelevant.
Can you please point (in terms of text reading/editing, internet browsing, e-mail and other common tasks, from a user point of view) what Linux 2.6.x can do that 2.2.x can't ? and what XFree 4.x can that 3.x can't ?
A lot of the changes are in hardware support and reorganization. Actually, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. I was talking about the old versions of Windowmaker, Gnome, KDE, etc. from back in the day.
You conveniently ommited my quote, where I was talking about the engineers behind this project, that will for sure customize the chosen Linux version to suit the said $100 machine.
For them (the engineers), it is very important an OS that you can trully 100% customize and modify to suit their needs.
Yeah, how exactly are they going to "customize" Linux specifically for this machine? What code will they be modifying? And have you heard of Darwin?
Besides, why are you underestimating these kids ? Can't they be, in the future, a kernel hacker ?
Once again, I have to roll up my sleeves and shoot down this ridiculous Slashdotter assumption. The majority of kids are not fucking kernel hackers. They'll look at you blankly when you tell them to "compile from source" and will move on to a better computer.
Or contribute for an project ?
A kid who would ever actually contribute to an OSS project would be smart enough to download Linux and wipe OS X for themselves anyway. Why deprive all the other kids of a superior system?
With bug fixes, new features, etc. With these tools in hands (the laptop and the whole free system) the chances that a percentage of them turn into programmers, etc is higher.
No, it's not. Giving a kid Linux doesn't magically turn them into a programmer. Again, this stupid assumption needs to DIE. It's not true. Never will be. Some kids are into this stuff, most aren't, and you're never going to change that. Besides, OS X SHIPS FREE WITH GCC4 AND XCODE. So another point crumbles to dust.
Face it, this screwed over all those kids who would have been better served with OS X rather than the fragmented Linux desktop arena.
Free beer ? No thanks. So, what happens when 100 million units have been distributed and they need a bug fix, a new feature not anticipated, a security fix, etc ??
They get a patch from Apple or fix it themselves in Darwin? How the hell is this different from Red Hat?
Are you sure Apple will happily donate their software and workforce forever without expecting anything back ? Last time I checked they were a for profit company, interested in boosting their sales.
Last time I checked, SO WAS RED HAT.
Have you ever heard of xfce, blackbox, windowmaker ?
...
In other words, we have to choose crippled window managers with a reduced featureset?
I remember that some years ago I managed to get Linux/Windowmaker running smoothly on a old 486DX2 66Mhz, 32Mb RAM.
Yeah, "some years ago" Linux was pretty speedy. It also could barely do much.
Can you really do this with Mac OS X under a similar machine ?
What does a 486DX2 66mhz with 32mb of RAM have to do with this discussion? You could barely get Windowmaker/X11 to run on that machine today, if at all.
And, besides, with a 100% free software Linux distro, you can thinker with every bit of code (and I mean the WHOLE system AND apps) to make it faster
Oh, yeah, because every kid in the world is a goddamned kernel systems engineer. I love this incorrect assumption always made by every Slashdot poster. I'm sure the kids will love having to compile shit from source instead of getting to use the very fun iMovie.
Let alone future (free) upgrades
Guess you missed the part where Steve Jobs was offering OS X for free.
In other words, you have to use some crippled window manager with a reduced featureset to reduce the memory bloat.
Yeah, you sure showed me.
Closed-source APIs? Have you ever seen OpenStep or GNUstep?
As for localization issues...again, have you peaked at all behind the scenes of Cocoa?
Dude...it's not like Red Hat with Gnome or KDE is any better on such low-end hardware.
I thought this bogus perception that Linux desktop software is somehow faster and more efficient had finally died off, but I guess not.
I've seen an "Archos Gmini." After I found out how to pronounce the damn name, I tossed it aside and went back to my 5G iPod.
You didn't address my points. Have fun manually managing your music. Try it with 85GB like I do. iTunes handles it like a champ. I couldn't live without auto-syncing. New album? Next time I plug in the iPod, iTunes will copy it over and sync my playcounts and ratings (I always rate my music on my iPod and not in iTunes).
OH NOS! I can't pirate stuff at extreme high speeds because "the industry" decided to protect their property! Front page news on Slashdot, the pro-piracy haven!
Be sure to mod this down even though it's a valid point you're free to agree or disagree with. But face it, pro-piracy agenda is rampant around here, even though everyone jumps up and down over "stolen" GPL code and cries out for the EFF to legally pursue infringers. But stopping people from making sure System of a Down doesn't get paid today? Fuck that, they're stealing our rights!
After point #1, I didn't realize that I stopped listing "standard Slashbot assumptions." I just started listing truth points. Oops!
Yeah, instead it's corporate market exposure paid for by Red Hat! (to the tune of $2 million "donated" to the project)
They want an operating system "that can be tinkered with," which displays the standard Slashbot geek assumptions:
1.) That everybody is a goddamned operating systems kernel engineer instead of a user who wants to get some fucking computer work done. 95% of you people have never even modified a single line of your local Linux kernel source tree.
2.) That there will always be a majority of kids who aren't interested in staring at lines of source code to feel good about their "software freedom." Give me a break.
3.) That the tiny minority of kids who would actually be interested in Linux and 100% open source would just wipe OS X off the laptop and install Linux for free anyway.
4.) You guys obsess over making every little kid a coder, when XCode/GCC ships free with OS X, and these kids could have been designing the next great Cocoa apps. Cocoa simply whips the butt of everything else out there.
5.) There are TONS more creative kids than coder kids, and think of all the incredible creative stuff that would have been nurtured here. iLife ships for free with OS X. Now these kids won't get to have Garageband for free, or iPhoto for free, or iMovie and iDVD for free. But hey, now they get to experience the joy of having to install two entire desktop environments and libraries just to run each other's apps! Have fun with a "package management system" and a fragmented filesystem hierarchy that dumps files all over the place instead of in well-designed bundles!
6.) Which leads to my final point. These kids will be taught the wrong ways to do things instead of the right ways. App bundles, real application APIs, real drag-and-drop, etc....
But, the designers' wishes triumphed. Oh? What's this? Red Hat donated $2 million to this project, and now they're getting used over OS X? Ah, that's why. So much for free and open. Only the designers got what they wanted. I guarantee a kid given a choice and presented both systems would have gone with Apple...
So? That doesn't change the fact that the hardware is closed. The point still stands.
Funny, do you think everybody should know how to build their own cell phones, car engines, or refrigerators?
God, this stupid attitude is so prevalent on Slashdot. Teaching someone about computers doesn't mean forcing them to install Slackware and compile applications from source. I mean, are you fucking serious? You want to force kids to have to learn how to compile apps from source instead of, I don't know, actually USING THE COMPUTER?
You're one of those people who thinks everyone has to know everything under the hood, but I bet you don't know shit about your car or your air conditioning system or the traffic light system in your town and so on. People SHOULDN'T HAVE to know how to compile an app from source. I consider that a flaw in the system if they're required to know how to do that. So does Steve Jobs, incidentally.
I shared with him that quote from Civ IV
Did he slug you in the mouth for quoting from a closed source binary? Stallman is hardly sane. He believes you are not "free" unless you ascribe to HIS meaning of freedom, and that's not freedom at all.
At any rate, among the problems with the opaque OS X binary is that people can't learn much from it.
What are you wanting people to learn, exactly? Arcane UNIX commands? Uh, how is that good for kids?
Having that latitude is not to be casually foregone, for all OS X is eyecandyville.
And with that, you prove your ignorance about OS X! My DarwinPorts installation hates you now.
Take off the hyperventilating Stallman blinders. Putting on a pair of handcuffs? Are you fucking serious? "Lose one's software freedom?" You sound like a StallmanBot.
Give a 12 year old kid a Red Hat laptop and an OS X laptop. He'll choose OS X. Even if you wag your finger at him and give him the long lecture you just typed up about his "software freedom." He'll tell you he doesn't feel any less "free" for choosing the thing that works. That's because he's smart enough not to buy into your rhetoric and bullshit.
Besides, ever heard of Darwin? Webkit? All the other OSS that Apple relies on to make OS X?
Is chaining yourself to Red Hat, or to Linux in general, any less of a set of handcuffs? Any platform is a set of handcuffs. Ignorant, closed-minded viewpoints like yours are what happens when people spend YEARS forming their perspectives based entirely on Slashdot headlines and end up thinking anything that doesn't mail its source code to you is, for some reason not ever justified, is evil and bad. You're a dying mindset.
Bill Gates didn't convince Steve Jobs of anything, as Jobs was kicked out of Apple by then. And Apple didn't let Microsoft do anything; Microsoft went and did it on its own.
Ugh, no thank you. I have my entire CD collection ripped and on my Archos player... that's around 2300 tracks. I like to be able to find things when I want them. I don't want some application automatically moving things to and from it.
:-)
Which is why iTunes has an option for letting you manually manage what music gets copied. However, your statement doesn't really make sense. How would you not be able to find things when you want them if iTunes is auto-syncing your music library to your iPod? Basically what that means is when you add new music in iTunes, the next time you plug in the iPod, you can have iTunes automatically copy the new music to the iPod. It seems to me iTunes makes it easier to find your new music...
Besides, iTunes doesn't work on Linux.
Well, that's a completely different topic. iTunes will never work on Linux, because desktop Linux isn't a major player whatsoever.
Not at all.
I have every song from every CD I own on my Archos Gmini. With the "Arclibrary" app on the player itself, I can browse through things by genre, by release date, by artist, or by album.
Same with iTunes/iPod.
I can create playlists on the fly with just about any computer-based music player I have seen, and load them on my player, or I can use the player itself to create playlists.
Same with iPod. You can create "On-The-Go" playlists.
You completely didn't address what I was talking about with regards to metadata-based playlists. There's no way, with your manual managing of the filesystem, to automatically copy, say, only 4+ rated 1990s grunge music added in the last two weeks to your music player. Or keep playcounts, ratings, and other metadata auto-synced between the music on your computer and the copies on your player. I could go and on and on here.
I'm not missing a thing, trust me.
I think you've just never actually tried an iPod for a week.