Bill Gates is a great man, he is giving all his money away to charity. Without Microsoft computers would be much harder to use and more expensive. Etc.
I wasn't so much trying to be funny as regurgitating some of the sugar-coated bullshit I've been spoon-fed by the media over the past couple of years leading up to the release of Vista.
My honest opinion from what I've seen of Bill Gates is that he seems very insincere most of the time, like he is trying to hide deep seated insecurities behind a veneer of smugness. I suspect he is really fixated on how people perceive him.
Continuing in the amateur psychology vein, I think that his deep seated insecurities shaped Microsoft and guided it's behavior.
Would a company that was proud of it's creations feel that they had to constantly intimidate hardware partners in order to ensure they keep using that software, or specifically adjust their software to make it incompatible with competing software?
Personally I think those are the actions of a company that believes that their customers, given a choice, would rather migrate away.
Bill Gates is right! Apple are lying to everyone about how secure their OS is!
It's really vulnerable to all the same problems as Windows, and this is proof. Absolute irrefutable proof from an utterly incorruptible independent source!
I say we just put up with the problems in Windows. Windows just needs time to mature. At the moment Microsoft are undergoing a big shake up. Everyone has their foibles, and Windows is no different. No software is perfect. Microsoft are really trying to turn things around.
Emusic also don't sell any music without DRM, it's highly probably that the "big 4" don't want their DRM'd music on a site which offers music from other labels without DRM, since it will make them look bad in comparison.
If I were a record company selling a crippled product for reasons that only benefit me and I had the power to make sure that all other similar products were similarly crippled so as not to draw attention to said crippling, I would most certainly do so.
I doubt that Apple has the power to decide one way or the other. If anyone can cite an example of a site that sells DRM'd music from the big guys alongside non-DRM'd music from indie labels I'd be interested...
If Apple's marketing tripe/hype is to be believed, then Apple entirely re-wrote the Unix layer of OS X, which could be true since they moved from a proprietary licensed Unix subsystem to a FreeBSD base.
Also, (to all and sundry) the Mach based kernel of OS X is called XNU not Darwin. XNU and the FreeBSD subsystem collectively comprise Darwin, and neither are strictly necessary to run the NextStep/OpenStep/OS X frameworks (though some kind of Unix-like userland might be).
L4 or QNX's microkernel could probably function as replacements for XNU. There's nothing stopping Apple from re-forking BSD if their own license somehow restricts Apple themselves from relicensing the code under any terns they want.
"It takes simple paper work but a decent amount of time to become an established 501c(3) charitable organization. Often times a disaster or other circumstance will occur that necessitates setting up a non-profit to try to help raise the funds... These organizations want to raise money while the cause is still fresh in people minds, even if it means that they're not formally set up as such... So paypal let them set up the account on the expectation that this would occur."
Yet they aren't able to display the same accommodating attitude towards actually giving the people their money in the PayPal account... PayPal weren't being nice by allowing this guy to open an account in this way, they were being bastards.
They set up an account knowing that the person setting it up would probably not be able to withdraw money from it, and knowing that it was highly likely it would enter a suspended state because money would flow into the account rapidly since it was a relief fund, yet failed to disclose either of these facts to their customer.
Also, if the account was indeed set up as a charitable organization, PayPal, having found out that it wasn't actually a charitable organization, may need time to figure out (consult with lawyers, etc) whether or not they have to contact all the donors to inform them that their contribution weren't to a tax-deductible cause. I don't know about you, but if i donated to something expecting it to be a charitable contribution and found out afterwards that it wasn't, I'd be peeved at Paypal for having allowed that to happen. They simply want to make sure that no ones going to make a big stink or sue.
Firstly, these people claim that they never asked for their account to be set up that way. Secondly, PayPal didn't require the same level of documentation to start the account as they do to withdraw from it, that would be an obvious way to solve the problem, but that doesn't result in PayPal getting to hold onto their victim's money for six months.
If I donated to something and then found out later that it wasn't a charitable fund, I'd be peeved at the people who ripped me off, not PayPal. Maybe it's something about Americans that you always go looking to sue people over the most tenuous of connections, but in the rest of the world we tend to blame the criminals for the crime, rather than the council who built the road that the criminals drove on to get away.
"I don't think that paypal just abritrarily froze this account, that wouldn't make a bit of sense. They've said they'll release the funds in 180 days, so i think that whoever set it up mistakenly or not thought that they should check the the "non-profit" checkbox."
They didn't arbitrarily suspend the account, PayPal would make everyone wait six months if they could. They have set up their entire business model based on the idea that it's easy to get money into a PayPal account and hard to get it out. Since it's bad for customer relations to do so, which is in turn bad for business, there must be some kind of pay off that more than makes up for the massive bad publicity that policy causes.
My guess is that PayPal makes a lot more money out of mistreating and tricking it's customers than it would out of being nice to them.
"1. The issue of lack of documentation would not have been an issue with setting up the account per se. PayPal will typically be very happy to let you do this and not be concerned about anything."
Which goes back to my original point that PayPal are irresponsible in neglecting to explain their terms and conditions up front, just because you can shit over more people and from a higher point than average doesn't give you more right to.
The point I am making is that PayPal have a moral responsibility to disclose to people starting an account if the account is likely to become suspended, it's obvious that an account with "relief fund" in the name is going to be stuffed full of cash in a relatively short timeframe, it's also obvious that you should ask for the same documentation at the establishment of the account that you are going to require to withdraw money from it.
Without demanding the correct documentation up front, PayPal are deliberately setting up a trap situation. PayPal act this way for the same reason hunters don't put bait outside traps and fishermen don't throw their bait and hooks into the water seperately, because you wouldn't catch anything otherwise.
In order to catch the maximum number of punters, you don't inform them about the trap, you let them stumble into it and find out about the trap themselves. PayPal are baiting people, and then trapping their money in the PayPal system in such a way that they can extract maximum profit from it before they hand it over. It's a cynical, calculating way of misusing the financial laws designed to protect their customers.
Elsewhere in the article, someone mentioned that since paypal isn't a bank, they can't make interest on your money, since it's still your money- so the interest gathering you suggest is not a motive.
The reason why Paypal does this is because creating a charity account without being able to provide documents proving your charity status is suspect. It's a red flag. Another red flag is having a new account suddenly receive a massive amount of funds from many individual.
So why didn't they outline the fact that these things would be "red flags" when it comes to recovering money from them?
Why would they let someone set up an account in that way when it is obviously going to create problems with the recovery of funds?
Obviously, the account never should have been able to be set up as a charity without documentation identifying it as such if it's going to create these kinds of problems down the line. The problem is clearly of PayPal's own devising by allowing the account to be set up as such a trap in the first place.
To make things clear, the types of accounts that is: A) New accounts B) Unable to provide documents C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals
If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!
Even if the person who set up the account requested the wrong type, PayPal should have either not set the account up in that way without the proper documentation, or outline the ramifications of not being able to produce said documentation when the money is withdrawn. I think it's obvious that they didn't do either of those things from the reaction of the site, and the "ho-hum should've known better" reaction of a lot of users here.
These people can provide a lot of documentation, just cannot prove they are a charitable organization, because they aren't, never were, and never should have ended up with an account of that type, but because of PayPal's corporate policy of setting up interest-traps like this (they obviously want to trap as much money as possible by luring people into setting up PayPal accounts in such a way that they will enter a "suspended" state which they can then collect interest on) they are now unable to collect their funds.
If PayPal were interested in helping people not be ripped off, they would demand all of the information required to draw down from a PayPal account at the establishment of the account, not when someone tries to withdraw their hard-earned (or hard-earned, then donated) cash from PayPal.
Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.
This particular case highlights exactly why PayPal does suck. Because they encourage their staff to use legal technicalities to bar people from receiving money they have a legitimate right to, because it is more profitable and legally prudent to do so than not to.
PayPal sucks because as a corporate citizen they are psychopath with a pathological money addiction. The same reason every other large corporation sucks.:)
That is part of my point as well. I'm writing this in Gnome/Ubuntu. I have three window managers installed on this machine (KWin, Metacity, and Beryl), and all of them behave in the same way. I suspect that I could easily apt-get a few more that also behaved the same way. Windows also behaves the same way. Almost everything behaves in that same way.
That's the Microsoft Way(tm). The toolkits in X11, and Windows itself are following Microsoft's Presentation Manager Style Guide from Windows 3.1. It's nice for Microsoft that you've adopted their style guide and you now feel that their way is the proper way of doing things, but please don't go around spouting that Apple should copy them.
If you like the Windows way of doing things then by all means feel free to stay the hell away from the Mac (in fact, get your damn Windows-indoctrinated hands off my UI!). We'll all be better off that way.
It's probably because you don't have a clue about Macs, or User Interfaces in general if you think that Gnome bears more similarity to Mac than Windows.
Gnome has a bar at the top of the screen with a menu in it, the menu is system wide, nor for the focussed application as with the Mac.
Ultimately, both KDE and Gnome follow the windows PM interface guidelines which were established about the time of Windows 3.1. and adopted by the Motif toolkit, which probably explains the ongoing cloning of Windows' interface by X11 toolkits, rather than attempting to find new, possibly better ways of doing things.
In many ways, it was a master-stroke for Microsoft to have Motif following the PM style guide, as it established the Windows style window-centric (instead of application- or document-centric) method of interface management as the "usual" way of doing things, and Apple's application-centric way as the "unusual" way.
The reason that Ubuntu's desktop probably seems to you to be "the very definition of simplicity and ease of use" is because it follows similar guidelines to those laid down in the PM style guide all those years ago.
The reason that the Mac desktop feels foreign and makes you feel lost is because it is an example (the only remaining one?) of an interface that doesn't follow Microsoft's 25 year old style guidelines.
In short, the reason you feel lost on a Mac is because you're so indoctrinated with Microsoft's UI principles that you're unable to comprehend something that didn't originate in Redmond, and you need to get out more...
"The general pattern I see are the artsy types get macs because they either arent' interested in gaming or want a "just works" box. The compsi geeks all have x86 machines to dual boot and play games on"
I think you're right though, well... maybe you are. The guy hasn't stated what his objective is.
1) If he has found some amazing command line program that only works in OS X, then he'd probably be best served by simply turning off the GUI and forgetting X11. There are several different ways to do this for each different version of OS X at MacOSXhints.com
2) If he wants to run X11 apps, then Linux is definitely the better way to go, there will be 3d acceleration support for the ATI Rage card in his iMac that people probably haven't bothered to port to darwin.
3) If he wants to run Mac applications, he'd be better off using a version of OS 9, which can be found on auction sites for decent prices.
4) If he wants to run Unix and Mac apps side by side, Linux+MOL+OS 9 is going to require a smaller RAM upgrade than OS X. A setup like that can be quite usable in only 256MB ram.
5) If he wants to run OS X, he will need to upgrade the ram in the machine to at least 256MB
As for modern Mac apps, tough. An old iMac is simply not going to cut it, even with 512MB ram a lot of modern applications will run too slowly to be usable. It's only worthwhile for a taste of OS X, even with a RAM upgrade.
If this fellow wants to run modern OS X applications, he's going to have to dump that old PoS and get something better, that's all there is to it. Modern apps require modern hardware, and there are no cheap shortcuts.
I call bullshit on your bullshit calling bullshit.:)
"X11 takes less memory than Aqua if you run it in monochrome mode with a window manager that can barely manage windows. Is that news? I don't think "monochrome X11 with twm" is what he was asking about."
XFCE, which is a perfectly usable X11 desktop which can run in as little as 32MB RAM, though that's a lot like Windows "minimum requirements", you'll need double that for it to work well.
If OS X + WindowServer can even run in 64MB RAM, there's no way you'd be able to load any useful applications without it swapping to disk and slowing everything to a crawl.
"OTOH, I'm using right now the slowest/cheapest Mac you can buy (1.66GHz Core Duo -- the only 32-bit Mac you can buy! -- with Intel GMA950 graphics) and it absolutely screams at graphics. What with doing almost all graphics work on the graphics card these days, it's fast. Really fast. I've never seen a stable X11 setup so fast."
That's still far in excess of the requirements to run XFCE, and you don't mention how much ram it has... I'm guessing at least half a GB. You've basically disproved your own point right there. You seem surprised that OS X can run well on a Multi-gigahertz computer with at least half a GB of RAM.
Also... what the fuck does 32 bit have to do with this discussion, if you want to sell Macs go work in an Apple Store.
"(For starters, most X11 setups still need to redraw a window when it's exposed -- even with a fast CPU, it's noticable. Yes, I know you're running a fancy new compositing manager and it looks just as slick as Aqua. I tried the latest code a couple weeks ago, and it was marginally stable, and completely unusable. Come back when it's the default install for all setups.)"
Every OS needs to redraw the screen after a window is moved/created/resized, that's why windows don't leave a trail of blankness behind them when you move windows around. I think you're meaning that Applications have to redraw their own window content when it's disrupted by another window moving into it's screen space. XP does the same thing, OS X is the only one of the "big three" OSes which doesn't need the application to redraw it's own window contents when they're damaged.
Having said that, I've been using Beryl (nee compiz-quinn) on my Dapper desktop at work since Dapper was introduced. What exactly did you find "unusable" about it? It's certainly dramatically faster than standard X, doesn't require applications to redraw their windows content when damaged, and has lower hardware requirements than QuartzGL/2D Extreme or Aero Glass.
It sounds to me like you're making stuff up to make OS X sound better, I don't have anything against OS X (I'm typing this on a Powerbook running 10.5 pre-release), but it limps like a half-dead dog with one leg compared to X11 on a low resource machine.
For another example, look again at that ArsTechnica page: Quartz2D is now much faster than QuickDraw (and will become even faster when they flip the switch on Quartz2D Extreme). Not only is that impressive by itself, but I don't see those kind of performance improvements from X11.
Mmmm.... Apple flavoured Kool-aid.
Believe me, it won't get noticeably faster, I've tried activating QuartzGL in Quartz Debug and benchmarking it with XBench, I can't give any specifics obviously (being an Appleseed member) but it's actually slower a lot of the time. Hopefully it at least allows the processor to get on with other things while it's drawing more slowly, otherwise it's going to be a complete waste of everyone's time,
Also, a lot of applications seem to have increased graphics glitches once QuartzGL is enabled, Firefox being a prime example.
I guess it's not fair, or even staying within the spirit of my agreement with Apple to expect a pre-release OS to be stable, but I really take issue with the things you've been claiming. It's not good for OS X to have people lying about it like you have been. It builds false expectations for those who don't know OS X, and gives ammunition to people who point to Apple users as some kind of flag-waving Jobs-worshiping cult.
They're not talking about making a list of hackers, they're talking about profiling.
So for instance they will look at the level of technical knowledge needed to do what was done, which could help them determine whether they're looking for a script-kiddie or a guru.
They could look at how quickly the attacker was able to locate their target, which on a reasonably sized network may tell them whether it was an inside-job, a skilled attacker, or a script-kiddie who struck it lucky.
They could look for signs of auditing, the more traces of auditing of the network that can be found, the less experienced the hacker is likely to be.
They can look at the language used in any defacements to determine a likely geographical region that an attacker is based in.
They can determine whether the person is just curious, setting themselves up for some future attack, gathering information etc etc.
You can see that once you apply enough criteria you could narrow the list of possible suspects down, and also have a set of criteria to compare any new suspects against.
I would guess that in that situation, an uninitiated user would go for the Mac, because at first glance a mac desktop is filled with objects that appear to be tangible and realistic. The Windows XP desktop is flat and cluttered, with a lot of words everywhere, Ubuntu and Kubuntu are very much like the Windows desktop.
That's not to say that I think there's any inherent superiority in Apple's UI, just that more effort seems to have been put into making the Mac attractive straight after installation than Windows or Ubuntu. Think dock "zooming" and "genie" effects. It didn't take me long to get sick of zooming and genie, but they seemed really cool at first.
I doubt that Linux without XGL or Windows XP could compete with that.
Ubuntu is more desktop ready than OS X or Windows!
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Ubuntu 6.10 is Out
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· Score: 1
That's right, you heard it here first... Ubuntu is actually more "desktop ready" than Windows or OS X!*
*Logic courtesy of HeroreV.
Even grandmas know how to click "OK". You're right that some people aren't meant to be upgrading operating systems, but that's exactly why they need an operating system that does it for them automatically. That's exactly why Linux is not ready for the average person.
Damn, I guess that means Windows and Mac OS X aren't ready for the desktop either then, since I can't see Apple or Microsoft distributing their next major OS release through their automatic software updates either.
In fact, taking this argument to it's logical conclusion... Since you can point and click your way to a major version upgrade through the automatic software updater in Ubuntu, and can't do the same in Windows or OS X, I guess that means it's actually closer to being "desktop ready" than either OS X or Windows.
I get random locks on both my win32 and osx versions which rules out the OS.
It must be that crappy Intel hardware then.:D
I've been using FF2 fairly intensely since it was released and have found it to be better in pretty much every respect than 1.5. (Apart from making it harder to disable that useless "go" button, which is strangely no longer a toolbar button in FF2 - hint: go to about:config and look for browser.urlbar.hideGoButton).
I keep hearing that Linux is ready for the desktop and it's easier to use than Windows. I used to think it might be true, but I keep seeing shit like this. What percentage of Windows XP users went to Microsoft.com to read instructions about how to install Service Pack 2 via the command line? Most of them didn't do anything because it was done automatically.
For god's sake stop whining, man!
You're not comparing Apples to Apples, you can't do the same thing under Windows at all, so it's not surprising you can't find any direct comparisons.
Dapper -> Edgy is a major version upgrade.
When Microsoft allows you to upgrade from XP to Vista over the internet without needing install media or editing a text file, you'll be entitled to complain. At the moment, the fact that this is even possible is something you should be commending not condemning. It's not likely that Microsoft will *ever* offer online upgrades between major OS versions.
You're perfectly welcome to follow the Microsoft-style major version upgrade procedure and grab a copy of the next version on CD if you want. Canonical will even send you one for free. Alternatively, you can upgrade like a power user by using the command line or changing your repositories in synaptic's preferences.
No one owes you a free operating system, particularly if you're not willing to put in the time to learn the ins-and-outs as you were with Windows.
You'd think there would be zero (0) demand for something like this, but I just showed a friend of mine who pretty much only uses his computer for gaming and visiting his work's flash website to make sure that everything is running smoothly at the plant he is in charge of when he's not there.
He's a large (tall not fat) guy who drives or flies everywhere, and doesn't have any desire at all to use a computer "on the go", he just wants a luggable desktop that fits into a convenient desktop form factor.
When I showed him this machine, he said "FINALLY!". So, while this machine doesn't have a lot of appeal to die-hard road-warrior geeks, it seems like there is a market for luggable powerhouse computers for those who just want a wintendo that doesn't need to be transported in seperate boxes and packed/unpacked at either end of the journey.
The problem is that the article isn't discrediting his theory, it's discrediting Yau. The article is pretty much entirely unrelated to math and is about sensationalising supposed infighting between prominent mathmaticians, it's basically tabloid journalism that has nothing to do with the achievements of the people mentioned and everything to do with taking sides in attempt to spread negative feelings about Yau.
I don't know much about the people in question, and even less about the math, but it's pretty damn obvious that the article was slanted against Yau for whatever reason. There were no responses from Yau published, nor any views opposing the idea that he's an old man with little to offer the world, who is desperately scrambling to remain relevant.
I'm sorry, but I fail to believe that there isn't a single person anywhere in the world who thinks that Yau is an OK guy. Even Bill Gates has fans, yet this article would have us believe that Yau is universally dispised and regarded as a publicity hound and plagarist by everyone who knows him.
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Bill Gates is a great man, he is giving all his money away to charity.
Without Microsoft computers would be much harder to use and more expensive.
Etc.
I wasn't so much trying to be funny as regurgitating some of the sugar-coated bullshit I've been spoon-fed by the media over the past couple of years leading up to the release of Vista.
My honest opinion from what I've seen of Bill Gates is that he seems very insincere most of the time, like he is trying to hide deep seated insecurities behind a veneer of smugness. I suspect he is really fixated on how people perceive him.
Continuing in the amateur psychology vein, I think that his deep seated insecurities shaped Microsoft and guided it's behavior.
Would a company that was proud of it's creations feel that they had to constantly intimidate hardware partners in order to ensure they keep using that software, or specifically adjust their software to make it incompatible with competing software?
Personally I think those are the actions of a company that believes that their customers, given a choice, would rather migrate away.
Bill Gates is right! Apple are lying to everyone about how secure their OS is!
It's really vulnerable to all the same problems as Windows, and this is proof.
Absolute irrefutable proof from an utterly incorruptible independent source!
I say we just put up with the problems in Windows.
Windows just needs time to mature.
At the moment Microsoft are undergoing a big shake up.
Everyone has their foibles, and Windows is no different.
No software is perfect.
Microsoft are really trying to turn things around.
Emusic also don't sell any music without DRM,
oops... that was supposed to be
Emusic also don't sell any music with DRM,
I missed that blunder even though I previewed it. There's no helping some people.
Emusic also don't sell any music without DRM, it's highly probably that the "big 4" don't want their DRM'd music on a site which offers music from other labels without DRM, since it will make them look bad in comparison.
If I were a record company selling a crippled product for reasons that only benefit me and I had the power to make sure that all other similar products were similarly crippled so as not to draw attention to said crippling, I would most certainly do so.
I doubt that Apple has the power to decide one way or the other. If anyone can cite an example of a site that sells DRM'd music from the big guys alongside non-DRM'd music from indie labels I'd be interested...
Does anyone know of such a site?
If Apple's marketing tripe/hype is to be believed, then Apple entirely re-wrote the Unix layer of OS X, which could be true since they moved from a proprietary licensed Unix subsystem to a FreeBSD base.
Also, (to all and sundry) the Mach based kernel of OS X is called XNU not Darwin. XNU and the FreeBSD subsystem collectively comprise Darwin, and neither are strictly necessary to run the NextStep/OpenStep/OS X frameworks (though some kind of Unix-like userland might be).
L4 or QNX's microkernel could probably function as replacements for XNU. There's nothing stopping Apple from re-forking BSD if their own license somehow restricts Apple themselves from relicensing the code under any terns they want.
"It takes simple paper work but a decent amount of time to become an established 501c(3) charitable organization. Often times a disaster or other circumstance will occur that necessitates setting up a non-profit to try to help raise the funds... These organizations want to raise money while the cause is still fresh in people minds, even if it means that they're not formally set up as such... So paypal let them set up the account on the expectation that this would occur."
Yet they aren't able to display the same accommodating attitude towards actually giving the people their money in the PayPal account... PayPal weren't being nice by allowing this guy to open an account in this way, they were being bastards.
They set up an account knowing that the person setting it up would probably not be able to withdraw money from it, and knowing that it was highly likely it would enter a suspended state because money would flow into the account rapidly since it was a relief fund, yet failed to disclose either of these facts to their customer.
Also, if the account was indeed set up as a charitable organization, PayPal, having found out that it wasn't actually a charitable organization, may need time to figure out (consult with lawyers, etc) whether or not they have to contact all the donors to inform them that their contribution weren't to a tax-deductible cause. I don't know about you, but if i donated to something expecting it to be a charitable contribution and found out afterwards that it wasn't, I'd be peeved at Paypal for having allowed that to happen. They simply want to make sure that no ones going to make a big stink or sue.
Firstly, these people claim that they never asked for their account to be set up that way. Secondly, PayPal didn't require the same level of documentation to start the account as they do to withdraw from it, that would be an obvious way to solve the problem, but that doesn't result in PayPal getting to hold onto their victim's money for six months.
If I donated to something and then found out later that it wasn't a charitable fund, I'd be peeved at the people who ripped me off, not PayPal. Maybe it's something about Americans that you always go looking to sue people over the most tenuous of connections, but in the rest of the world we tend to blame the criminals for the crime, rather than the council who built the road that the criminals drove on to get away.
"I don't think that paypal just abritrarily froze this account, that wouldn't make a bit of sense. They've said they'll release the funds in 180 days, so i think that whoever set it up mistakenly or not thought that they should check the the "non-profit" checkbox."
They didn't arbitrarily suspend the account, PayPal would make everyone wait six months if they could. They have set up their entire business model based on the idea that it's easy to get money into a PayPal account and hard to get it out. Since it's bad for customer relations to do so, which is in turn bad for business, there must be some kind of pay off that more than makes up for the massive bad publicity that policy causes.
My guess is that PayPal makes a lot more money out of mistreating and tricking it's customers than it would out of being nice to them.
"1. The issue of lack of documentation would not have been an issue with setting up the account per se. PayPal will typically be very happy to let you do this and not be concerned about anything."
Which goes back to my original point that PayPal are irresponsible in neglecting to explain their terms and conditions up front, just because you can shit over more people and from a higher point than average doesn't give you more right to.
The point I am making is that PayPal have a moral responsibility to disclose to people starting an account if the account is likely to become suspended, it's obvious that an account with "relief fund" in the name is going to be stuffed full of cash in a relatively short timeframe, it's also obvious that you should ask for the same documentation at the establishment of the account that you are going to require to withdraw money from it.
Without demanding the correct documentation up front, PayPal are deliberately setting up a trap situation. PayPal act this way for the same reason hunters don't put bait outside traps and fishermen don't throw their bait and hooks into the water seperately, because you wouldn't catch anything otherwise.
In order to catch the maximum number of punters, you don't inform them about the trap, you let them stumble into it and find out about the trap themselves. PayPal are baiting people, and then trapping their money in the PayPal system in such a way that they can extract maximum profit from it before they hand it over. It's a cynical, calculating way of misusing the financial laws designed to protect their customers.
Elsewhere in the article, someone mentioned that since paypal isn't a bank, they can't make interest on your money, since it's still your money- so the interest gathering you suggest is not a motive.
So where do paypal store all that money then?
The reason why Paypal does this is because creating a charity account without being able to provide documents proving your charity status is suspect. It's a red flag. Another red flag is having a new account suddenly receive a massive amount of funds from many individual.
:)
So why didn't they outline the fact that these things would be "red flags" when it comes to recovering money from them?
Why would they let someone set up an account in that way when it is obviously going to create problems with the recovery of funds?
Obviously, the account never should have been able to be set up as a charity without documentation identifying it as such if it's going to create these kinds of problems down the line. The problem is clearly of PayPal's own devising by allowing the account to be set up as such a trap in the first place.
To make things clear, the types of accounts that is:
A) New accounts
B) Unable to provide documents
C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals
If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!
Even if the person who set up the account requested the wrong type, PayPal should have either not set the account up in that way without the proper documentation, or outline the ramifications of not being able to produce said documentation when the money is withdrawn. I think it's obvious that they didn't do either of those things from the reaction of the site, and the "ho-hum should've known better" reaction of a lot of users here.
These people can provide a lot of documentation, just cannot prove they are a charitable organization, because they aren't, never were, and never should have ended up with an account of that type, but because of PayPal's corporate policy of setting up interest-traps like this (they obviously want to trap as much money as possible by luring people into setting up PayPal accounts in such a way that they will enter a "suspended" state which they can then collect interest on) they are now unable to collect their funds.
If PayPal were interested in helping people not be ripped off, they would demand all of the information required to draw down from a PayPal account at the establishment of the account, not when someone tries to withdraw their hard-earned (or hard-earned, then donated) cash from PayPal.
Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.
This particular case highlights exactly why PayPal does suck. Because they encourage their staff to use legal technicalities to bar people from receiving money they have a legitimate right to, because it is more profitable and legally prudent to do so than not to.
PayPal sucks because as a corporate citizen they are psychopath with a pathological money addiction.
The same reason every other large corporation sucks.
That is part of my point as well. I'm writing this in Gnome/Ubuntu. I have three window managers installed on this machine (KWin, Metacity, and Beryl), and all of them behave in the same way. I suspect that I could easily apt-get a few more that also behaved the same way. Windows also behaves the same way. Almost everything behaves in that same way.
That's the Microsoft Way(tm). The toolkits in X11, and Windows itself are following Microsoft's Presentation Manager Style Guide from Windows 3.1. It's nice for Microsoft that you've adopted their style guide and you now feel that their way is the proper way of doing things, but please don't go around spouting that Apple should copy them.
If you like the Windows way of doing things then by all means feel free to stay the hell away from the Mac (in fact, get your damn Windows-indoctrinated hands off my UI!). We'll all be better off that way.
It's probably because you don't have a clue about Macs, or User Interfaces in general if you think that Gnome bears more similarity to Mac than Windows.
Gnome has a bar at the top of the screen with a menu in it, the menu is system wide, nor for the focussed application as with the Mac.
Ultimately, both KDE and Gnome follow the windows PM interface guidelines which were established about the time of Windows 3.1. and adopted by the Motif toolkit, which probably explains the ongoing cloning of Windows' interface by X11 toolkits, rather than attempting to find new, possibly better ways of doing things.
In many ways, it was a master-stroke for Microsoft to have Motif following the PM style guide, as it established the Windows style window-centric (instead of application- or document-centric) method of interface management as the "usual" way of doing things, and Apple's application-centric way as the "unusual" way.
The reason that Ubuntu's desktop probably seems to you to be "the very definition of simplicity and ease of use" is because it follows similar guidelines to those laid down in the PM style guide all those years ago.
The reason that the Mac desktop feels foreign and makes you feel lost is because it is an example (the only remaining one?) of an interface that doesn't follow Microsoft's 25 year old style guidelines.
In short, the reason you feel lost on a Mac is because you're so indoctrinated with Microsoft's UI principles that you're unable to comprehend something that didn't originate in Redmond, and you need to get out more...
"The general pattern I see are the artsy types get macs because they either arent' interested in gaming or want a "just works" box. The compsi geeks all have x86 machines to dual boot and play games on"
What rock have you been living under for the past 18 months?
in OS X the command line takes back seat to the GUI for system administration tasks.
Care to name something that you can do with the GUI but not from the command line in OS X?
What a flamebaity subject line...
I think you're right though, well... maybe you are. The guy hasn't stated what his objective is.
1) If he has found some amazing command line program that only works in OS X, then he'd probably be best served by simply turning off the GUI and forgetting X11. There are several different ways to do this for each different version of OS X at MacOSXhints.com
2) If he wants to run X11 apps, then Linux is definitely the better way to go, there will be 3d acceleration support for the ATI Rage card in his iMac that people probably haven't bothered to port to darwin.
3) If he wants to run Mac applications, he'd be better off using a version of OS 9, which can be found on auction sites for decent prices.
4) If he wants to run Unix and Mac apps side by side, Linux+MOL+OS 9 is going to require a smaller RAM upgrade than OS X. A setup like that can be quite usable in only 256MB ram.
5) If he wants to run OS X, he will need to upgrade the ram in the machine to at least 256MB
As for modern Mac apps, tough. An old iMac is simply not going to cut it, even with 512MB ram a lot of modern applications will run too slowly to be usable. It's only worthwhile for a taste of OS X, even with a RAM upgrade.
If this fellow wants to run modern OS X applications, he's going to have to dump that old PoS and get something better, that's all there is to it. Modern apps require modern hardware, and there are no cheap shortcuts.
I call bullshit on your bullshit calling bullshit. :)
"X11 takes less memory than Aqua if you run it in monochrome mode with a window manager that can barely manage windows. Is that news? I don't think "monochrome X11 with twm" is what he was asking about."
XFCE, which is a perfectly usable X11 desktop which can run in as little as 32MB RAM, though that's a lot like Windows "minimum requirements", you'll need double that for it to work well.
If OS X + WindowServer can even run in 64MB RAM, there's no way you'd be able to load any useful applications without it swapping to disk and slowing everything to a crawl.
"OTOH, I'm using right now the slowest/cheapest Mac you can buy (1.66GHz Core Duo -- the only 32-bit Mac you can buy! -- with Intel GMA950 graphics) and it absolutely screams at graphics. What with doing almost all graphics work on the graphics card these days, it's fast. Really fast. I've never seen a stable X11 setup so fast."
That's still far in excess of the requirements to run XFCE, and you don't mention how much ram it has... I'm guessing at least half a GB. You've basically disproved your own point right there. You seem surprised that OS X can run well on a Multi-gigahertz computer with at least half a GB of RAM.
Also... what the fuck does 32 bit have to do with this discussion, if you want to sell Macs go work in an Apple Store.
"(For starters, most X11 setups still need to redraw a window when it's exposed -- even with a fast CPU, it's noticable. Yes, I know you're running a fancy new compositing manager and it looks just as slick as Aqua. I tried the latest code a couple weeks ago, and it was marginally stable, and completely unusable. Come back when it's the default install for all setups.)"
Every OS needs to redraw the screen after a window is moved/created/resized, that's why windows don't leave a trail of blankness behind them when you move windows around. I think you're meaning that Applications have to redraw their own window content when it's disrupted by another window moving into it's screen space. XP does the same thing, OS X is the only one of the "big three" OSes which doesn't need the application to redraw it's own window contents when they're damaged.
Having said that, I've been using Beryl (nee compiz-quinn) on my Dapper desktop at work since Dapper was introduced. What exactly did you find "unusable" about it? It's certainly dramatically faster than standard X, doesn't require applications to redraw their windows content when damaged, and has lower hardware requirements than QuartzGL/2D Extreme or Aero Glass.
It sounds to me like you're making stuff up to make OS X sound better, I don't have anything against OS X (I'm typing this on a Powerbook running 10.5 pre-release), but it limps like a half-dead dog with one leg compared to X11 on a low resource machine.
For another example, look again at that ArsTechnica page: Quartz2D is now much faster than QuickDraw (and will become even faster when they flip the switch on Quartz2D Extreme). Not only is that impressive by itself, but I don't see those kind of performance improvements from X11.
Mmmm.... Apple flavoured Kool-aid.
Believe me, it won't get noticeably faster, I've tried activating QuartzGL in Quartz Debug and benchmarking it with XBench, I can't give any specifics obviously (being an Appleseed member) but it's actually slower a lot of the time. Hopefully it at least allows the processor to get on with other things while it's drawing more slowly, otherwise it's going to be a complete waste of everyone's time,
Also, a lot of applications seem to have increased graphics glitches once QuartzGL is enabled, Firefox being a prime example.
I guess it's not fair, or even staying within the spirit of my agreement with Apple to expect a pre-release OS to be stable, but I really take issue with the things you've been claiming. It's not good for OS X to have people lying about it like you have been. It builds false expectations for those who don't know OS X, and gives ammunition to people who point to Apple users as some kind of flag-waving Jobs-worshiping cult.
They're not talking about making a list of hackers, they're talking about profiling.
So for instance they will look at the level of technical knowledge needed to do what was done, which could help them determine whether they're looking for a script-kiddie or a guru.
They could look at how quickly the attacker was able to locate their target, which on a reasonably sized network may tell them whether it was an inside-job, a skilled attacker, or a script-kiddie who struck it lucky.
They could look for signs of auditing, the more traces of auditing of the network that can be found, the less experienced the hacker is likely to be.
They can look at the language used in any defacements to determine a likely geographical region that an attacker is based in.
They can determine whether the person is just curious, setting themselves up for some future attack, gathering information etc etc.
You can see that once you apply enough criteria you could narrow the list of possible suspects down, and also have a set of criteria to compare any new suspects against.
I would guess that in that situation, an uninitiated user would go for the Mac, because at first glance a mac desktop is filled with objects that appear to be tangible and realistic. The Windows XP desktop is flat and cluttered, with a lot of words everywhere, Ubuntu and Kubuntu are very much like the Windows desktop.
That's not to say that I think there's any inherent superiority in Apple's UI, just that more effort seems to have been put into making the Mac attractive straight after installation than Windows or Ubuntu. Think dock "zooming" and "genie" effects. It didn't take me long to get sick of zooming and genie, but they seemed really cool at first.
I doubt that Linux without XGL or Windows XP could compete with that.
That's right, you heard it here first... Ubuntu is actually more "desktop ready" than Windows or OS X!*
*Logic courtesy of HeroreV.
Even grandmas know how to click "OK". You're right that some people aren't meant to be upgrading operating systems, but that's exactly why they need an operating system that does it for them automatically. That's exactly why Linux is not ready for the average person.
Damn, I guess that means Windows and Mac OS X aren't ready for the desktop either then, since I can't see Apple or Microsoft distributing their next major OS release through their automatic software updates either.
In fact, taking this argument to it's logical conclusion... Since you can point and click your way to a major version upgrade through the automatic software updater in Ubuntu, and can't do the same in Windows or OS X, I guess that means it's actually closer to being "desktop ready" than either OS X or Windows.
I get random locks on both my win32 and osx versions which rules out the OS.
:D
It must be that crappy Intel hardware then.
I've been using FF2 fairly intensely since it was released and have found it to be better in pretty much every respect than 1.5. (Apart from making it harder to disable that useless "go" button, which is strangely no longer a toolbar button in FF2 - hint: go to about:config and look for browser.urlbar.hideGoButton).
Apple's engineers will simply integrate the GUI and other services even further into the chip.
Into the chip? You obviously have no idea of how TPM works.
I keep hearing that Linux is ready for the desktop and it's easier to use than Windows. I used to think it might be true, but I keep seeing shit like this. What percentage of Windows XP users went to Microsoft.com to read instructions about how to install Service Pack 2 via the command line? Most of them didn't do anything because it was done automatically.
For god's sake stop whining, man!
You're not comparing Apples to Apples, you can't do the same thing under Windows at all, so it's not surprising you can't find any direct comparisons.
Dapper -> Edgy is a major version upgrade.
When Microsoft allows you to upgrade from XP to Vista over the internet without needing install media or editing a text file, you'll be entitled to complain. At the moment, the fact that this is even possible is something you should be commending not condemning. It's not likely that Microsoft will *ever* offer online upgrades between major OS versions.
You're perfectly welcome to follow the Microsoft-style major version upgrade procedure and grab a copy of the next version on CD if you want. Canonical will even send you one for free. Alternatively, you can upgrade like a power user by using the command line or changing your repositories in synaptic's preferences.
No one owes you a free operating system, particularly if you're not willing to put in the time to learn the ins-and-outs as you were with Windows.
You'd think there would be zero (0) demand for something like this, but I just showed a friend of mine who pretty much only uses his computer for gaming and visiting his work's flash website to make sure that everything is running smoothly at the plant he is in charge of when he's not there.
He's a large (tall not fat) guy who drives or flies everywhere, and doesn't have any desire at all to use a computer "on the go", he just wants a luggable desktop that fits into a convenient desktop form factor.
When I showed him this machine, he said "FINALLY!". So, while this machine doesn't have a lot of appeal to die-hard road-warrior geeks, it seems like there is a market for luggable powerhouse computers for those who just want a wintendo that doesn't need to be transported in seperate boxes and packed/unpacked at either end of the journey.
Surely you can't be genuinely surprised, given that there's no genuine flash player and no wma, real or quicktime codecs for PPC either.
What online videos can you watch on PPC linux?
The problem is that the article isn't discrediting his theory, it's discrediting Yau. The article is pretty much entirely unrelated to math and is about sensationalising supposed infighting between prominent mathmaticians, it's basically tabloid journalism that has nothing to do with the achievements of the people mentioned and everything to do with taking sides in attempt to spread negative feelings about Yau.
I don't know much about the people in question, and even less about the math, but it's pretty damn obvious that the article was slanted against Yau for whatever reason. There were no responses from Yau published, nor any views opposing the idea that he's an old man with little to offer the world, who is desperately scrambling to remain relevant.
I'm sorry, but I fail to believe that there isn't a single person anywhere in the world who thinks that Yau is an OK guy. Even Bill Gates has fans, yet this article would have us believe that Yau is universally dispised and regarded as a publicity hound and plagarist by everyone who knows him.