Personally, I always found Kon got in the way, so I look forward to them being on a separate layer. Best of both worlds I suppose would be to allow placing some on the Dasboard layer, and some on the Desktop (I would like Weather shown all the time, for instance).
If you want to avoid some apps breaking (like HotSync did), carefully merge the "Previous System/Library" folder contents into your new/Library folder. You have to know what's going on in there, but it's a lot faster.
If you don't know what's in there, app reinstalls work just as well.
Google has said all along it will be released when they have all the data. That type of data entry and coding takes time. Otherwise we'd have the Debian of websites: no new features for anyone until they work on the whole planet!
A graphical installer would be nice for the true newbies, but all my hardware was recognized and worked without any trouble (including two ethernet cards, two graphics adapters, and four - yes, four - SCSI adapters, two of them RAID). The desktop was functional (although the 2-taskbar paradigm Gnome uses, while it makes sense, is very strange feeling), and Synaptic worked fine to quickly change some packages in and out.
Now imagine if Ubuntu had instead been a group of developers who decided to combine their efforts with the Debian group to improve Debian? We'd have a better Debian and no incompatibility between two popular distros and two communities.
No, we'd have no such release, because the problem is not a technical one that requires more coders, it's a community one that Debian has shown no willingness to either accept or address. We would still be stuck waiting on 11 different architectures to be done before anything could be released, we'd have no timeline for updates, and we'd still get no respect from the maintainers. None of this has anything to do with adding more developers to Debian. The technology of Debian is excellent, and the politics and social issues are undermining it.
I'm going out on a limb and predicting the Debian/Ubuntu split will end up like XFree86/x.org split. I'm worried about the other architectures as developers leave Debian for Ubuntu. I hope that Debian will continue to exist and be used due to its wide platform support (unlike XFree86), but it will very quickly become irrelevant on x86 and PPC - the two largest Linux platforms.
Bullshit or FUD, I can't decide which. Gentoo/MacOS is brand-spanking new, and has a handful of things running - it's nothing more than a technology demo at this point. Fink, on the other hand, is very mature and works extremely well.
Apple's X11 implementation is extremely fast, being OpenGL accelerated and such. For a silly example, fire up an xterm and run "sudo ls -R/" and watch it fly. For better examples, run KDE or Gnome - they run very well, as well as on any Linux system.
Oh no, Aqua is only available to Cocoa/Carbon which are *gasp* non-standard! Non-standard to who? These are the default frameworks and API's for the platform. I could say just as well that X11 is non-standard on Mac OS X, or Win32 is non-standard on anything but Windows. That is such a completely bogus argument it's trollish.
OS X has a nice kernel, all of the BSD userspace tools, good debian-based package management (although I do look forward to Gentoo/MacOS, as emerge is very nice), a full X11 system that can swap back and forth between OS X and X11, full hardware support, "mainstream" applications - what the hell more do you want?
The only people OS X will not satisfy are RMS-style free software zealots, and those who want complete tweakability and control (which is perfectly valid). For everyone else who wants a UNIX workhorse that is stable, has full driver support, has "It Just Works" down pat, and wants to get work done, OS X is peerless.
Okay, someone please help me out here. Why would I choose WBEL/CentOS over Fedora Core? How do they relate, say, to Fedora Core 3, which has very similar specs (kernel version, Gnome version, etc).
And if there's a good reason to choose them over Fedora, should I look at WBEL or CentOS? I'm very confused by the conflicting statements on this site and those on this site. To my reading, the second site is trying to make it sound like WBEL is dead, and the CentOS FAQ "confirms" it, but that doesn't jive at all with the "official" WBEL site.
Are you saying that a salesman that knowingly acts in a manner contrary to the best interests of the customer is blameless when the customer is coerced into the action that harms them?
What was this coercion? Were they holding a gun to your head? Threatening your family? No, there was salesmanship going on here, but you were not coerced into buying that car; you just wanted to and let yourself be swayed.
When I went to buy a car, the first dealership I went to wouldn't bother to pay any attention, so I left. The next one (Lombard Toyota, on Roosevelt Ave in Lombard, IL) used every scammy auto-dealer trick in the book. Made me wait forever, had to "go talk with his manager/financial guy", suddenly told me the model I was looking at was "just sold by another salesman, but would I like to look at...". Did I feel bad about it the next morning?
No, becaue I got up and LEFT.
I then called Oakbrook Toyota (Ogden Ave, Westmont, IL) and not only got someone who said he had a car just traded in that was what I wanted, but he negotiated a good deal right there on the phone. When I showed up, he shaved off another grand without even being asked. We bargained on my trade-in, reached a consensus in about 15 minutes (I got the Blue Book value), and after a half hour of paperwork I drove out. I got the car for less than I thought I would, with no pressure, quickly and efficiently. I've now been driving it for 80,000 miles, with nary a hiccup, and I've taken it back for all of my service (which has been priced very honestly and reasonably). Anyone reading this post from the Oak Brook, IL area, drop in there - great place.
So if you were "coerced" into buying the wrong car at the wrong price, then yes, I'm placing the blame on YOU. The salesman is doing his job, and if you don't like his tactics or the car, then you can get up and walk out.
This is why we we HAVE situational ethics. Sure, Microsoft, on the whole, is worse than a spammer. However, in this case they are fighting on our side; i.e., against spam. Unless you're completely irrational, then yes, Microsoft is the lesser of the two evils here.
Re:I agree--Finder is a disappointment
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Hacking Mac OS X
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· Score: 2, Informative
And the performance isn't nearly what it could have been. Every use BeOS? You make a file on the desktop from within an app, boom, it appears in the background instantly. OS X: make a file or folder, click on the desktop to (hopefully) force a redraw, and a moment later (on a dual-G5) it'll show up. Editing a file that you can see in a window in list view? Save it and BeOS updates the 'date modified' column in the background instantly. OS X? Click the file and it'll update. And the Finder is especially lazy about updating disk usage when you have the 'calculate folder sizes' option checked. C'mon, Apple... I had BeOS R3 for Intel and PPC in *1998*! It's 2005 now! Want me to send you my old CDs?
This has nothing to do with performance, but the fact that the Finder does not use kernel event notifications (kqueue and such). Early betas of Panther had it enabled, but something was causing problems as it vanished before the final release. I think I recall reading that Tiger has this finally implemented (and it better).
Re:great read for developers
on
Hacking Mac OS X
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The reason the Mac OS has a single menu bar isn't to help figure out what application you're in, it's to provide a consistent spot to find commands. With Windows and Linux, you never know what window a command is necessarily in, as each window can have its own menu bar. This is compounded on those systems by over-dependence on right-click to get things done.
(In fact, if you'll notice, most Windows/Linux apps really only have one menu bar; it's just that it's a moving target.)
Now, I'd be fine with a NeXT-style menu "palette" (for lack of a better, or proper, term). I will admit that I prefer the consistency of the menu bar at the top of the screen, even if it shows its warts (too cramped with Photoshop on a 1024x768 screen, too long on a Cinema display).
Back on topic, the sad thing about the OS X Finder is that it would make perfect sense if only "browser" windows couldn't change to "normal" windows and vice-versa. There should be two different types of windows - a "browser" window with toolbar and sidebar (ala NeXT) and a "normal" window with neither (ala classic Mac OS). I should never see a browser window when clicking through normal windows, and I should never see a normal window when using browser windows. Then the metal-aqua difference would actually serve some purpose, and provide spatiality to those who want it, and let those who don't never see it.
Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the legality of the situation. This is trade secret law that's involved, not journalism and free-speech (and yes, I'm a member of the ACLU and an EFF supporter). It was quite unusual for Apple to act when they did, and if you'll note, that case was centered exclusively around Asteroid. As for the student who leaked Tiger, he downloaded it from ADC then distributed it and got caught. I have sympathy for the fact that he's a college kid and his life has been hell since, but Apple's position there is completely justified.
I have noticed that they have been remarkably successful on two fronts - first, we've seen no further Tiger builds leaked, just information about them reported. Secondly, we've seen no further information about Asteroid other than what was accidentally left inside GarageBand and such. They have very effectively plugged those two leaks.
In the meantime, Apple's "users" are completely unaffected, and ThinkSecret/AppleInisder et. al. have continued to post rumors and info as usual.
Why run Longhorn and upgrade all your apps (except for the one for which the vendors have died out, but 50% of your department insists on continuing to use because it 'just works'), or run them in a Virtual Machine, when you can get Linux, for free, run Wine, which will offer better compatability, or run either a) Qemu, b) VMware, or c) Remote Desktop into a Windows XP server box for legacy apps.
In that case, the distro developers had better get cracking on getting a one-click install for a Linux distro that has all of this preconfigured and "just works". We have to be ready by next year (completed, tested, mature).
Simplify setup, including partitioning (explain it better, for one), choosing packages, etc. Should be less than half a dozen clicks from inserting the CD to having a usable (if possibly bloated) Linux system installed.
Simplify the desktop, and make it CLEAN. Get rid of all of the taskbar applets (maybe a clock), get rid of the workspace managers, and use a high-quality font (the ones I see so often, for instance in the Ubuntu screenshots from the other day, look like crap compared to OS X or Windows). Obviously, if they want the extra features and functionality it's there, but don't bombard them with it.
Simplify all of the configuration panels (I'm looking at both Gnome and KDE here). Move most of the "geeky" and "tweaky" settings to "Advanced" sections that either don't have to be clicked, or not even *shown* unless the user wants them.
No going elsewhere to find packages - have all of this stuff (Windows compatibility) in the base distribution and WORKING. If Wizards are required to set it up, make sure they only ask what is absolutely necessary of the user and figure out as much as possible themselves.
Include every damn driver and module possible on that install CD - if the install CD can't install on the first try, you've lost. EVERY IDE/SCSI/RAID driver, EVERY network driver, etc.
Include the most recent Xorg X11 windowing system, with updated window managers and desktop environments. By the time Longhorn ships, we need all of these fancy alpha-effects and such WORKING, and for enhancing usability, not just screenshots to oggle and movies of "wobbly windows".
Now, before everyone jumps on me, I know that many distros have many of these items covered, but none have it all together. Fedora still shows remnants of the old command-line installer at first, only Suse has really good partitioning, and Fedora has by far the cleanest initial desktop. By the time Longhorn ships, we need ALL of this in place in ONE distribution. We really need to be able to say with a straight face to our mothers - "here, install this over your current Windows computer - it's easy to use and all of your current software will work fine".
Once again - keep all of the things the geeks love about Linux - the configurability, the customization, the power, but dammit, HIDE it all by default. Make the default as simple and "just works" as you possibly can make it.
The REASON you hear it is that we're all still astonished people "ooh" and "aah" over features that we've had for YEARS by the time they reach Windows. Furthermore, there have been innumerable examples of how Windows copies features and botches them. A couple examples I ran into in the last hour:
1) Shortcuts (and symbolic links for that matter) break when the original file moves or is renamed. Aliases (from System 7 in 199-freaking-1) have a two-step process to "find' the original. First based on file-id (think inodes), second based on the pathname. If you move a file or rename it, the file-id never changes, so the alias still works.
2) Dialog boxes. Yes, dialog boxes. When you close a document you haven't saved, Windows says "Do you want to save? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]". The Mac says "Do you want to save? [Save] [Don't Save] [Cancel]". Mac dialog boxes use verbs, which mean I don't have to read the whole dialog box closely to see if some idiot wrote "Do you want to quit without saving?" or something similarly asinine. It's immediately obvious just looking at the buttons what they're going to do.
It's been rehashed forever - Steve Jobs visited Xerox and yes, was inspired that GUIs were the way to go. And many elements of the Xerox GUI are on the Mac (windows, icons). However, things like overlapping windows, single menu bar, progressive disclosure, and many other concepts are 100% Apple.
Apple saw a good idea and improved it and made it its own. Microsoft sees good ideas and copies them closely, but rarely understanding the thought that made it a good idea in the first place. This is why Windows always seems so clunky - there is NO thought that goes into its design, just what looks "cool" elsewhere.
The difference is while you believe all companies are evil (they're not), Microsoft has a long and noted history of such evil, to the point of federal convictions (not that they meant anything).
The worst thing you can say about Apple, meanwhile, is they stole the ideas for Sherlock and Dashboard from Watson and Konfabulator. And that's if you ever agree on the Dashboard/Konfabulator debate...
Back on topic, Apple has demoed this type of technology back to 1995 in Copland, and shipped portions in several OS revisions (Sherlock, iApps, etc). The only difference is now it's OS-wide.
And who is shipping it first? Apple, by a wide margin. When the announced it last year, they had DVD's under the seats with Tiger, Spotlight, etc ready to develop for. They're on the verge of shipping the final now (in a matter of days/weeks, not months/years as with Longhorn).
You haven't been to Hong Kong lately, where every single person seems to have multiple phones. I'm talking 5-year-olds (literally!).
You haven't read Engadget, where they go on and on at the new innovative phones you can only get in Asia (because you don't have to deal with carriers deciding what phones you get to use).
You seem to have missed that people can buy phones relatively cheaply WITHOUT carrier subsidies.
You seem to have missed that NO ONE in HK has contracts and can switch providers daily, while nearly everyone in the US has one to get the phone discounts.
So let's see - the point is that by separating phone purchases and mobile service, pushing the number portability earlier, and a single phone standard, Hong Kong has a hugely competitive mobile phone market, both forcing better features, better phones, and better service.
Pulling down all of these websites on a Palm or PocketPC is very painful - my Treo 650 would take *forever* to load image-heavy Engadget, for instance. RSS is the perfect solution for the handheld. It allows you to quickly get a list of topics (text only, which is perfect for small screens) and then only load those pieces that interest you.
RSS is nice on the desktop. RSS is invaluable on the handheld.
Now if only a decent method of synchronizing multiple RSS clients could be developed (Bloglines doesn't cut it).
That works with x86, but not so well with Macs. They hold their value remarkably well, even years later. Just check out eBay - two year old machines still retain 80% or so of their value. This hurts if you want to buy used hardware, but provides a nice buffer when you upgrade and get a surprising amount for your old machine.
iTunes and the integration and user experience is what drives the buzz, which is what drives the iPod sales. Had the iPod been as clunky as other players, do you really think iPod owners would gush about them?
People might get it because other have told them they should, but WHY are people saying that? Because they've used it and realized yes, this is how it should be - simple, elegant, and It Just Works.
Yes, because we all know of the horrible safety problems in Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada, where handguns are illegal, and only the criminals and police have them. I keep hearing of innocents being gunned down daily since they can't "protect themselves".
Sarcasm aside, I DO read stories with alarming frequency of kids finding guns and accidentally shooting themselves, suicides, and even the occasional nutjob shooting up his office or school. Would any of these (other than suicide, sadly) happen without guns being freely and readily available?
What other civilized country has an unrestricted right to own handguns without any form of licensing and background checks (if there are any, please, let me know)? We're talking an item that has NO other reason to exist than to kill people. Where do we get this screwed up notion that we should be "defending ourselves" instead of the police force that we as society have tasked with that (and they do a damn fine job, I might add)?
I agree that a lot of people are using X just fine. However, I'm tired of anecdotal evidence being used constantly to support arguments. I want to know under what situations does X perform well? What are the key bottlenecks to avoid? How does it compare to a Windows system on the same hardware? Stock install? Tweaked install? Etc. None of this "well on MY system it's great/awful/etc".
Well, in my case I'm running a recent optimized kernel (2.6.9-cko3), only have an ATI RAGE 2MB onboard video (which still flies in Windows), no DMA (this is SCSI, not IDE), but I do have paltry memory (256MB). I would find it highly ironic if Windows is outperforming Linux in a low-memory situation, given the years of "Linux can run on my , so take that Microsoft!".
Meanwhile, no, I wasn't switching distros to solve a problem, I was just sampling the various "flavors" of packaged Linux to see what I liked. Turns out (no flames, please) that I don't like KDE that much and rather like Gnome, I like being able to have a decent GUI for configuration most of the time, but I don't want it to override manual tweaks (better yet, recognize my tweaks in the GUI). I like not fighting to install it. I like frequent updates so I can see how Linux is evolving. So, for my "mainstream" system I settled into Fedora. For my own tweaking and server needs I tended to like the Gentoo philosophy - emerge is simply wonderful (but can be very painful on PII-400's!). So I was using many distros to experience their divergent philosophies, not to "fix" a problem.
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Um, Konfabulator?
Personally, I always found Kon got in the way, so I look forward to them being on a separate layer. Best of both worlds I suppose would be to allow placing some on the Dasboard layer, and some on the Desktop (I would like Weather shown all the time, for instance).
If you want to avoid some apps breaking (like HotSync did), carefully merge the "Previous System/Library" folder contents into your new /Library folder. You have to know what's going on in there, but it's a lot faster.
If you don't know what's in there, app reinstalls work just as well.
Google has said all along it will be released when they have all the data. That type of data entry and coding takes time. Otherwise we'd have the Debian of websites: no new features for anyone until they work on the whole planet!
No problems here. What didn't work for you?
A graphical installer would be nice for the true newbies, but all my hardware was recognized and worked without any trouble (including two ethernet cards, two graphics adapters, and four - yes, four - SCSI adapters, two of them RAID). The desktop was functional (although the 2-taskbar paradigm Gnome uses, while it makes sense, is very strange feeling), and Synaptic worked fine to quickly change some packages in and out.
What's not to like?
I can't think of anything that would make all the Debian developers decide to pack up and go home.
It's not a matter of all of them packing up and leaving, but of too many leaving. See XFree86.
Now imagine if Ubuntu had instead been a group of developers who decided to combine their efforts with the Debian group to improve Debian? We'd have a better Debian and no incompatibility between two popular distros and two communities.
No, we'd have no such release, because the problem is not a technical one that requires more coders, it's a community one that Debian has shown no willingness to either accept or address. We would still be stuck waiting on 11 different architectures to be done before anything could be released, we'd have no timeline for updates, and we'd still get no respect from the maintainers. None of this has anything to do with adding more developers to Debian. The technology of Debian is excellent, and the politics and social issues are undermining it.
I'm going out on a limb and predicting the Debian/Ubuntu split will end up like XFree86/x.org split. I'm worried about the other architectures as developers leave Debian for Ubuntu. I hope that Debian will continue to exist and be used due to its wide platform support (unlike XFree86), but it will very quickly become irrelevant on x86 and PPC - the two largest Linux platforms.
Bullshit or FUD, I can't decide which. Gentoo/MacOS is brand-spanking new, and has a handful of things running - it's nothing more than a technology demo at this point. Fink, on the other hand, is very mature and works extremely well.
/" and watch it fly. For better examples, run KDE or Gnome - they run very well, as well as on any Linux system.
Apple's X11 implementation is extremely fast, being OpenGL accelerated and such. For a silly example, fire up an xterm and run "sudo ls -R
Oh no, Aqua is only available to Cocoa/Carbon which are *gasp* non-standard! Non-standard to who? These are the default frameworks and API's for the platform. I could say just as well that X11 is non-standard on Mac OS X, or Win32 is non-standard on anything but Windows. That is such a completely bogus argument it's trollish.
OS X has a nice kernel, all of the BSD userspace tools, good debian-based package management (although I do look forward to Gentoo/MacOS, as emerge is very nice), a full X11 system that can swap back and forth between OS X and X11, full hardware support, "mainstream" applications - what the hell more do you want?
The only people OS X will not satisfy are RMS-style free software zealots, and those who want complete tweakability and control (which is perfectly valid). For everyone else who wants a UNIX workhorse that is stable, has full driver support, has "It Just Works" down pat, and wants to get work done, OS X is peerless.
Okay, someone please help me out here. Why would I choose WBEL/CentOS over Fedora Core? How do they relate, say, to Fedora Core 3, which has very similar specs (kernel version, Gnome version, etc).
And if there's a good reason to choose them over Fedora, should I look at WBEL or CentOS? I'm very confused by the conflicting statements on this site and those on this site. To my reading, the second site is trying to make it sound like WBEL is dead, and the CentOS FAQ "confirms" it, but that doesn't jive at all with the "official" WBEL site.
Are you saying that a salesman that knowingly acts in a manner contrary to the best interests of the customer is blameless when the customer is coerced into the action that harms them?
What was this coercion? Were they holding a gun to your head? Threatening your family? No, there was salesmanship going on here, but you were not coerced into buying that car; you just wanted to and let yourself be swayed.
When I went to buy a car, the first dealership I went to wouldn't bother to pay any attention, so I left. The next one (Lombard Toyota, on Roosevelt Ave in Lombard, IL) used every scammy auto-dealer trick in the book. Made me wait forever, had to "go talk with his manager/financial guy", suddenly told me the model I was looking at was "just sold by another salesman, but would I like to look at...". Did I feel bad about it the next morning?
No, becaue I got up and LEFT.
I then called Oakbrook Toyota (Ogden Ave, Westmont, IL) and not only got someone who said he had a car just traded in that was what I wanted, but he negotiated a good deal right there on the phone. When I showed up, he shaved off another grand without even being asked. We bargained on my trade-in, reached a consensus in about 15 minutes (I got the Blue Book value), and after a half hour of paperwork I drove out. I got the car for less than I thought I would, with no pressure, quickly and efficiently. I've now been driving it for 80,000 miles, with nary a hiccup, and I've taken it back for all of my service (which has been priced very honestly and reasonably). Anyone reading this post from the Oak Brook, IL area, drop in there - great place.
So if you were "coerced" into buying the wrong car at the wrong price, then yes, I'm placing the blame on YOU. The salesman is doing his job, and if you don't like his tactics or the car, then you can get up and walk out.
This is why we we HAVE situational ethics. Sure, Microsoft, on the whole, is worse than a spammer. However, in this case they are fighting on our side; i.e., against spam. Unless you're completely irrational, then yes, Microsoft is the lesser of the two evils here.
And the performance isn't nearly what it could have been. Every use BeOS? You make a file on the desktop from within an app, boom, it appears in the background instantly. OS X: make a file or folder, click on the desktop to (hopefully) force a redraw, and a moment later (on a dual-G5) it'll show up. Editing a file that you can see in a window in list view? Save it and BeOS updates the 'date modified' column in the background instantly. OS X? Click the file and it'll update. And the Finder is especially lazy about updating disk usage when you have the 'calculate folder sizes' option checked. C'mon, Apple... I had BeOS R3 for Intel and PPC in *1998*! It's 2005 now! Want me to send you my old CDs?
This has nothing to do with performance, but the fact that the Finder does not use kernel event notifications (kqueue and such). Early betas of Panther had it enabled, but something was causing problems as it vanished before the final release. I think I recall reading that Tiger has this finally implemented (and it better).
The reason the Mac OS has a single menu bar isn't to help figure out what application you're in, it's to provide a consistent spot to find commands. With Windows and Linux, you never know what window a command is necessarily in, as each window can have its own menu bar. This is compounded on those systems by over-dependence on right-click to get things done.
(In fact, if you'll notice, most Windows/Linux apps really only have one menu bar; it's just that it's a moving target.)
Now, I'd be fine with a NeXT-style menu "palette" (for lack of a better, or proper, term). I will admit that I prefer the consistency of the menu bar at the top of the screen, even if it shows its warts (too cramped with Photoshop on a 1024x768 screen, too long on a Cinema display).
Back on topic, the sad thing about the OS X Finder is that it would make perfect sense if only "browser" windows couldn't change to "normal" windows and vice-versa. There should be two different types of windows - a "browser" window with toolbar and sidebar (ala NeXT) and a "normal" window with neither (ala classic Mac OS). I should never see a browser window when clicking through normal windows, and I should never see a normal window when using browser windows. Then the metal-aqua difference would actually serve some purpose, and provide spatiality to those who want it, and let those who don't never see it.
Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the legality of the situation. This is trade secret law that's involved, not journalism and free-speech (and yes, I'm a member of the ACLU and an EFF supporter). It was quite unusual for Apple to act when they did, and if you'll note, that case was centered exclusively around Asteroid. As for the student who leaked Tiger, he downloaded it from ADC then distributed it and got caught. I have sympathy for the fact that he's a college kid and his life has been hell since, but Apple's position there is completely justified.
I have noticed that they have been remarkably successful on two fronts - first, we've seen no further Tiger builds leaked, just information about them reported. Secondly, we've seen no further information about Asteroid other than what was accidentally left inside GarageBand and such. They have very effectively plugged those two leaks.
In the meantime, Apple's "users" are completely unaffected, and ThinkSecret/AppleInisder et. al. have continued to post rumors and info as usual.
In that case, the distro developers had better get cracking on getting a one-click install for a Linux distro that has all of this preconfigured and "just works". We have to be ready by next year (completed, tested, mature).
Now, before everyone jumps on me, I know that many distros have many of these items covered, but none have it all together. Fedora still shows remnants of the old command-line installer at first, only Suse has really good partitioning, and Fedora has by far the cleanest initial desktop. By the time Longhorn ships, we need ALL of this in place in ONE distribution. We really need to be able to say with a straight face to our mothers - "here, install this over your current Windows computer - it's easy to use and all of your current software will work fine".
Once again - keep all of the things the geeks love about Linux - the configurability, the customization, the power, but dammit, HIDE it all by default. Make the default as simple and "just works" as you possibly can make it.
The REASON you hear it is that we're all still astonished people "ooh" and "aah" over features that we've had for YEARS by the time they reach Windows. Furthermore, there have been innumerable examples of how Windows copies features and botches them. A couple examples I ran into in the last hour:
1) Shortcuts (and symbolic links for that matter) break when the original file moves or is renamed. Aliases (from System 7 in 199-freaking-1) have a two-step process to "find' the original. First based on file-id (think inodes), second based on the pathname. If you move a file or rename it, the file-id never changes, so the alias still works.
2) Dialog boxes. Yes, dialog boxes. When you close a document you haven't saved, Windows says "Do you want to save? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]". The Mac says "Do you want to save? [Save] [Don't Save] [Cancel]". Mac dialog boxes use verbs, which mean I don't have to read the whole dialog box closely to see if some idiot wrote "Do you want to quit without saving?" or something similarly asinine. It's immediately obvious just looking at the buttons what they're going to do.
It's been rehashed forever - Steve Jobs visited Xerox and yes, was inspired that GUIs were the way to go. And many elements of the Xerox GUI are on the Mac (windows, icons). However, things like overlapping windows, single menu bar, progressive disclosure, and many other concepts are 100% Apple.
Apple saw a good idea and improved it and made it its own. Microsoft sees good ideas and copies them closely, but rarely understanding the thought that made it a good idea in the first place. This is why Windows always seems so clunky - there is NO thought that goes into its design, just what looks "cool" elsewhere.
The difference is while you believe all companies are evil (they're not), Microsoft has a long and noted history of such evil, to the point of federal convictions (not that they meant anything).
The worst thing you can say about Apple, meanwhile, is they stole the ideas for Sherlock and Dashboard from Watson and Konfabulator. And that's if you ever agree on the Dashboard/Konfabulator debate...
Back on topic, Apple has demoed this type of technology back to 1995 in Copland, and shipped portions in several OS revisions (Sherlock, iApps, etc). The only difference is now it's OS-wide.
And who is shipping it first? Apple, by a wide margin. When the announced it last year, they had DVD's under the seats with Tiger, Spotlight, etc ready to develop for. They're on the verge of shipping the final now (in a matter of days/weeks, not months/years as with Longhorn).
You haven't been to Hong Kong lately, where every single person seems to have multiple phones. I'm talking 5-year-olds (literally!).
You haven't read Engadget, where they go on and on at the new innovative phones you can only get in Asia (because you don't have to deal with carriers deciding what phones you get to use).
You seem to have missed that people can buy phones relatively cheaply WITHOUT carrier subsidies.
You seem to have missed that NO ONE in HK has contracts and can switch providers daily, while nearly everyone in the US has one to get the phone discounts.
So let's see - the point is that by separating phone purchases and mobile service, pushing the number portability earlier, and a single phone standard, Hong Kong has a hugely competitive mobile phone market, both forcing better features, better phones, and better service.
Pulling down all of these websites on a Palm or PocketPC is very painful - my Treo 650 would take *forever* to load image-heavy Engadget, for instance. RSS is the perfect solution for the handheld. It allows you to quickly get a list of topics (text only, which is perfect for small screens) and then only load those pieces that interest you.
RSS is nice on the desktop. RSS is invaluable on the handheld.
Now if only a decent method of synchronizing multiple RSS clients could be developed (Bloglines doesn't cut it).
That works with x86, but not so well with Macs. They hold their value remarkably well, even years later. Just check out eBay - two year old machines still retain 80% or so of their value. This hurts if you want to buy used hardware, but provides a nice buffer when you upgrade and get a surprising amount for your old machine.
All REAL Star Trek fans know it's a Klingon Bird of Prey, not a Romulan Warbird.
You don't seem to have a problem with any type of corporate abuse if you're buying your music for $0.88 a song.
iTunes and the integration and user experience is what drives the buzz, which is what drives the iPod sales. Had the iPod been as clunky as other players, do you really think iPod owners would gush about them?
People might get it because other have told them they should, but WHY are people saying that? Because they've used it and realized yes, this is how it should be - simple, elegant, and It Just Works.
Dammit, I'm going to get shot down for this - Canada does allow guns. I'd still like to ask if there are any restrictions on said purchases.
Screw karma.
Yes, because we all know of the horrible safety problems in Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada, where handguns are illegal, and only the criminals and police have them. I keep hearing of innocents being gunned down daily since they can't "protect themselves".
Sarcasm aside, I DO read stories with alarming frequency of kids finding guns and accidentally shooting themselves, suicides, and even the occasional nutjob shooting up his office or school. Would any of these (other than suicide, sadly) happen without guns being freely and readily available?
What other civilized country has an unrestricted right to own handguns without any form of licensing and background checks (if there are any, please, let me know)? We're talking an item that has NO other reason to exist than to kill people. Where do we get this screwed up notion that we should be "defending ourselves" instead of the police force that we as society have tasked with that (and they do a damn fine job, I might add)?
I agree that a lot of people are using X just fine. However, I'm tired of anecdotal evidence being used constantly to support arguments. I want to know under what situations does X perform well? What are the key bottlenecks to avoid? How does it compare to a Windows system on the same hardware? Stock install? Tweaked install? Etc. None of this "well on MY system it's great/awful/etc".
Well, in my case I'm running a recent optimized kernel (2.6.9-cko3), only have an ATI RAGE 2MB onboard video (which still flies in Windows), no DMA (this is SCSI, not IDE), but I do have paltry memory (256MB). I would find it highly ironic if Windows is outperforming Linux in a low-memory situation, given the years of "Linux can run on my , so take that Microsoft!".
Meanwhile, no, I wasn't switching distros to solve a problem, I was just sampling the various "flavors" of packaged Linux to see what I liked. Turns out (no flames, please) that I don't like KDE that much and rather like Gnome, I like being able to have a decent GUI for configuration most of the time, but I don't want it to override manual tweaks (better yet, recognize my tweaks in the GUI). I like not fighting to install it. I like frequent updates so I can see how Linux is evolving. So, for my "mainstream" system I settled into Fedora. For my own tweaking and server needs I tended to like the Gentoo philosophy - emerge is simply wonderful (but can be very painful on PII-400's!). So I was using many distros to experience their divergent philosophies, not to "fix" a problem.