As someone whose 23rd birthday is next week, I can tell you in all honesty there are times when I do feel almost 30. But no, most of the time I feel, and behave, a lot more like a 12 year old. Just like Windows.
Well, let's assume for the moment that our latest escapade in Iraq is the "Real War On Terror". Now, terrorism killed 4000 people five years ago. The cost in terms of American lives fighting the (losing) War On Terror in Iraq is presently 2426 -- according to antiwar.com. So far, it's taken half as many lives as terrorism has actually claimed to (allegedly) prevent terrorism.
Now, as previous posters have said, the deaths on September 11, 2001 were largely the result of luck on the part of Al Qaeda. Hey, even bad guys get lucky sometimes. It seems very improbable that terrorists will ever have the opportunity or the capability to kill that many people again. What that means is that 4000 is likely to be the sum total of terrorism-related deaths for quite some time, but the death toll in Iraq is steadily climbing.
Let's also keep in mind that the US military is generally thought to be responsible for at least 35,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. So, I guess killing nine times as many civilians in a foreign land -- which cannot even be proven to be in any way culpable for the September 11th attacks -- is the just punishment. Wow, what a great country we live in.
Now as for this phone database nonsense, can any of us be honestly surprised? I guess my biggest surprise is at other peoples' surprise. This administration has proven time and again that there is no depth too low for them to stoop to. Reporters -- Fox "News" excluded -- could save themselves a lot of time if they just printed up a bunch of templates that start: "Today, it was revealed that the Bush administration has lied about _____". Just fill in the blank! Or, I guess these days, it could also be, "Today, it was revealed that the Bush administration has been surreptitiously monitoring ordinary Americans' ____ without a warrant."
As I sit here, sipping my second cup of coffee for the day, I'm thinking back to earlier this morning when, like every morning, I read my email and my Bloglines as I drink my first cup of coffee. Now, I always have my coffee first thing -- OK, maybe second thing -- in the morning. (If you can believe it, I'm usually even coordinated enough to make a passable latte) In my perpetually sleep-deprived state, I'll believe anything right after I get up.
It's not the coffee that makes me suggestible, it's the sleepiness.
As a grad student at my university (University of Northern Iowa -- a primarily undergraduate institution), I'm seeing the benefit of so-called weeder classes. Here, the weed-out class tends to be CS III, a data structures class. The reason is simple: later courses require a basic understanding of data structures, so if you can't hack it in CS III, you're not going to make it in Operating Systems, or Networking, or (God help us!) Theory.
Weeding out disinterested students was a primary concern in the 1990's when tons of completely unmotivated students were entering CS programs because they thought they could make a ton of money doing it. It never occurred to most of them that they should, perhaps, like what they're doing.
A good CS program does not consist of simple "programming courses". While you might be learning how to write Java code, a good instructor will also be teaching you about designing algorithms, testing your code, and all the other concepts that apply to any language.
The difference between CS majors and MIS majors, in my experience, has been that the CS majors are not only able, but willing to learn how to use a new programming language or API in a weekend. The MIS majors, by contrast, haven't been given the tools to do this. This happens fairly regularly when MIS majors take CS courses. Because they don't have the grounding in concepts that do not change over time, they're completely lost. The weed-out courses are designed so that students who are unable or unwilling to grasp concepts over any particular language will quit while they're ahead. So, while the MIS major may have plenty of experience with.NET or SQL or something like that, it's the CS major who will be able to learn.NET and SQL easily, as well as.NET++ and Ultra-Super-Duper SQL years down the road. That's what a CS grad should be able to do, and if they can't, then they're in the wrong place.
Don't downplay your own role. While the surgeons, cardiologists and nurses may have done the physical things to make your son's recovery possible, it was you, your family, and even those strangers who called and emailed who supported his recovery emotionally. The medical community is just starting to realize the connection between the mind and physical healing. There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that a positive emotional state speeds the body's own healing processes. That old expression, "laughter is the best medicine" may really have something to it.
Now, the strangers didn't offer their support to your child, they offered it to you. I imagine that knowing that other people care made you feel better, which in turn kept your spirits up so you could offer your support to your son. Heck, knowing that a complete stranger has taken an interest in you and your child has got to feel pretty reassuring. I think that after reading your story, anyone with any kind of compassion would hope that your son gets the chance to live a full, happy, healthy life. I know that I certainly wish you and your family the best.
I, myself, am not a person of faith, but I'm not here to debate that point. If anything, I would call myself a humanist: a person who finds it a lot more beautiful and life-affirming when people, through their own goodness, make amazing things happen. Another way of saying it is that humanists try to be decent simply because it's the best thing to do. I do, however, believe that our bodies and minds are complex and interconnected and that our minds play a more critical role in our functioning than we've realized in the past. I guess what I'm trying to say, and rather inarticulately, is that while other people may have made your son's conditions for recovery happen, it was the constant love and reassurance that you and others in his life gave him that made it all work. I think that it just wouldn't have happened without that. So, in that regard, you were just as important to your son's recovery as anyone else. If you call that God, then that's your prerogative, but I'd rather give you the credit.
Well, people do studies on porn for women, but they generally take the form of a master's thesis. A friend of mine is studying romance novels for her Women's Studies master's thesis. She's both excited and horrified by the prospect of reading lots and lots of pulpy romance novels. Another friend, coincidentally, is doing her thesis on blogging. The point is that people do study it, but there's a prevailing notion that "porn" is only intended for consumption by men, and those are the stories that the media picks up. I also think it has something to do with the tendency among researchers to make connections between viewing porn and violence against women, clearly a more serious problem than women's violence against men.
Yeah, I realized that after I posted. What Rosetta doesn't support, and what I meant to say, was that Rosetta doesn't support certain G5-specific features. My bad.
As a previous poster mentioned, PPC executables run through an emulation layer called "Rosetta". However, Mac OS X binaries are stored in the Mach-O format. A Mach-O file can be divided into multiple segments, each of which can contain machine code for a different architecture. So, Universal applications really do include equivalent code for both PPC and x86. It's not really magic so much as it is that the loader knows to look for non-native code in a binary and run it through Rosetta if no x86 code exists. Here's the reference.
As for your friend's programs not running, Rosetta does have some limitations. In particular, Rosetta can't handle Altivec instructions well -- Altivec being the rough analog to SSE on Intel chips. However, few programs use this, so I'm a little puzzled.
Why yes, yes I have. Where I work, we still have a number of older Sun machines running Solaris 8; CDE is about as good as it gets since these old guys can't run GNOME very well.
For the love of God.
My sentiments exactly. It's pretty awful. But you know what's worse? Trying to use a plain ol' text console on Solaris. For whatever reason, Sun thought it would be a good idea if the text console, even on a fancy 3D graphics card attached to a 21" display, like we've got here, had this enormous PlaySkool-looking 80x24 font. I know, I know, 80x24 is a standard, but good God the characters are huge. I need to sit out in the hallway just to make them look normal-sized.
The dude's name is Tommy Thompson and he was the former head of HHS, not the FDA. And, although he said he'd gladly get an RFID tag -- and in fact recommended that every American did -- now that he's no longer head of HHS (and, I suppose, no longer on the take from the RFID powers-that-be) he said that he's not getting tagged until he's convinced it's safe.
I take exception to your list of "likely reasons you would be attending a state university." I have an undergraduate degree from a fine state university (and in May I'll have a master's, as well) and I've had an excellent education here. When I started, the University was just starting its Honors program; my classmates and I had a chance to shape the program, and many of our decisions are still in effect today. Add to that a program director who is not only very good at her job, but also truly interested in making a student's university experience the best it can be, and you end up with a page-long list of honors courses at the front of the course schedule that almost makes me jealous of the undergraduates. Those were truly excellent courses.
Now, my department is a small one, but I can name a number of faculty members who will do just about anything for their students. They offer the elective courses we want to take, they offer seminars in relevant, pertinent topics. When I was doing a senior research project, my "weekly meeting" with my advisor consisted of him taking about ten minutes to review what I'd done and offer advice, and then about fifty minutes of conversation about just about any computing topic you can name. I learned as much from that as most students would learn in a semester-long course. And I got the research credit, too!
Attending a state university is not simply a "this is the best I could do" sort of thing. Hell, UNI has one of the best education programs in the country -- it was called Iowa State Teacher's College for a while, even. There are people who come from all fifty states specifically for this program. Going to a state university is not a compromise. In a lot of ways, it can be far better than going to an Ivy League school where the faculty are too busy promoting their new book than to grade your tests or meet with you to answer your questions. Remember, the school is only half the equation. The other half is the student. A brilliant, unmotivated student will be a collossal failure at an Ivy League school, even though he or she may graduate with a decent GPA, while a motivated student, brilliant or not, can excel in any environment.
The article says that Vista won't suck. What I'm seeing in the article is stuff that should have been in Windows for years. And much of that is stuff that has been in, oh, say Mac OS X for years.
So let's assume that the author is right. Suppose that Vista doesn't suck. Does that mean you're going to want to use it? From what I've seen, Microsoft has made blunder after blunder after blunder with their UI design. I had a chance to take a peek at one of the later Vista builds. They replaced the Start menu with a tiny little non-expanding window. Now, I know the current Start menu is difficult to navigate when it's full of stuff, but does Microsoft really expect us to scroll through a tiny little list -- on a 1280x1024 display -- that could be hundreds of items long to find the one 16x16 icon we're looking for?
And say what you will about Aero glass being pretty, but I've got another name for it: resource hog. Using the 2D graphics acceleration is a great idea for improving the performance of the window server (or whatever it's called in Microsoft parlance) but adding gratuitous eye candy -- which most systems won't be able to handle -- means that Vista will never quite look the same on two computers. And I think the style is, frankly, distracting.
I've been playing with IE 7. I've got lots of problems with the UI, to say nothing of the lousy browser it houses. Why oh why is the menu bar not where it is on every other Windows app? And why did they break up the standard cluster of about five toolbar buttons and spread them all over the place? E.g., why is the stop/reload button to the right of the address bar, when it's been to the left of the address bar in every major browser for over ten years now.
I also don't like the way they've integrated searching. Searching is different from "Starting" (or I guess since the start button doesn't say start anymore, "Windows logo-ing") an application. That's why it makes sense that the Google desktop search goes in the tray, or why Spotlight in Mac OS X gets its own little corner of the screen. Also, that totally screws with the keyboard shortcuts. I'm used to hitting (Windows) > P and then scrolling around with the keyboard for the app I want. I guess I won't be able to do that anymore.
And finally, Windows still gives the average user waaaaaay too much information about the computer. For example, most grandmas I know have no idea what "defragmenting" means. Most other people know that it's a good idea to do it from time to time, but never do and there's never been a built-in easy way to schedule it automatically. So instead of annoying the user from time to time with a "hey, congratulations, you don't need to defragment your hard drive" window, why doesn't the system just do it automatically in the background like Mac OS does? Same goes for virus scanning. Why couldn't virus scanning be more like a daemon that only shows a UI when there's actually something pertinent to report. And no, "no viruses found" is not pertinent information.
Well, that turned into more of a rant than I intended.
I didn't see anything on that list that Mac OS X or your favorite Linux distro doesn't already have. I looked, point by point, and could think of a comparable feature on either Mac OS X or Linux or, usually, both. That's what I wish Windows users would understand, particularly home users. Microsoft, despite their dominance of the OS market, sells, by far, the least advanced operating system of the big three. Linux gets features as soon as someone contributes code, which happens all the time. And, if you're impatient like me, you can install Debian testing/unstable and always have the latest features as they come down the pike.
Let's review:
Security
Every Linux distro I know of forces you to make a non-privileged user account. There are plenty of features built into GNOME and KDE now that let you do a graphical 'sudo' to do administrative tasks. On the Mac, this is the default. They have their own graphical 'sudo', which works incredibly well. And, aside from the occasional exploit, neither OS has the same kind of inherent security problems that Windows does.
IE 7
One word: Firefox. OK, two: Safari. Both great browsers that already offer all the same featuers.
Righteous Eye Candy
The GNOME and KDE themes have improved dramatically over the past few years and they look pretty good. Maybe not "Aero Glass" good, but then again they don't require an outrageous graphics card to use. Mac OS X has Aqua. Very pretty indeed, and far less distracting than Aero Glass.
Desktop Search
On Linux, locate. On the Mac, Spotlight. And developers can write Spotlight importers that give those apps better control over how their files are indexed. Windows has nothing like this. Oh, and if you are using Windows, use Google Desktop Search. It works well. I like it.
Better updates
On Linux, set up a cron job to do an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade every now-and-then and you're set. On Mac OS X, Software Update already updates every piece of software Apple sells with about one or two clicks. And, it runs automatically. Done.
More Media
iTunes, QuickTime. And with Flip4Mac, you can play un-DRMed WMV files right in QuickTime. On Linux, there are too many media players to name. No, they won't work with Windows Media, usually, but there's definitely no lack of MP3 library apps.
Parental Controls
Now here, I don't know about Linux, but I'd find it hard to believe there isn't some way a person couldn't use PAM to control when and where his/her kids use the computer. On the Mac, parental controls are already built in, system-wide.
Better Backups
Sure, it costs $99/year, but.Mac backup is awesome. It has backup plans for all the most common things: purchased music, documents, and so on. Custom backup plans are easy to configure. On Linux, every file copy program is a backup program with the right flags. And there are a few graphical tools to automate the process as well.
Collaboration
On the Mac: SubEthaEdit. Can't beat it. Again, I'm not sure about Linux, but I don't think that collaborative editing is a make-or-break feature.
Quick Setup
Mac OS X install has always taken about 20 minutes. Depending on your distro, you could be up and running in, well, no time if you use a live CD, but most CD-based Linux installs (think Fedora) take about the same time.
Granted, Linux still has to do some catching up in terms of user-friendliness, but like all UNIX, all the pieces are there if you know how to assemble them. There are more and more graphical tools appearing everyday to put those pieces together for you. Mac OS X already has just about every feature the article describes and they're planning a new release about the same time as Vista appears.
And Microsoft would do well to drop certain features. The Windows Registry, I think, is one of the worst-conceived ideas ever. If Microsof
Developing an OS is a significant overhead, but well worth it when it's the number one thing that drives your computer sales.
Every company has products that are more expensive to build/maintain. That's why they cost more to the buyer. The profit margins on the Macs are in line with the profit margins on the iPod.
The iPod does generate a substantial portion of Apple's revenue. But Apple would be foolish to "bet the farm" as it were by dropping a sucessful product line to focus on another. It's the same reason why almost every car manufacturer makes sedans, SUVs, minivans, and so on; a failure in one line does not lead to the total failure of the company.
Those are rumors, so they're probably not true. While Steve Jobs is undoubtedly busy lately with Disney's acquisition of Pixar, there's been no indication that he has any intention of backing away from Apple. Also, he was lucky enough to have the 1 in 100 type of pancreatic cancer that's completely treatable.
Jef Raskin had an axe to grind with Steve Jobs (he's dead now, so had is the operative term). If you're going to compare Windows with OS X, the problems with OS X are a drop in the bucket compared with the problems in Windows.
Dvorak is an idiot; the only reason he's still in print is because he occasionally makes a correct prediction and the rest of the time, his outrageous columns at least drive traffic to PC Magazine's site. He's not the kind of person most people take seriously.
No, the MacBook Pro that they showed off at the MacWorld Expo was a prototype. While they had every reason to believe that the hardware in the prototype was the hardware that would go into the shipping MacBooks, it turns out that the configuration changed slightly, and for the better. I doubt Apple will change configurations more frequently now that they're using Intel processors.
Except that Gateway 2000 started in Sioux City, IA, my hometown. They, very wisely, relocated to North Sioux City, just across the river in South Dakota, where the tax laws are much more favorably than they are in Iowa. As a matter of fact, when my parents lived in Sioux City, my dad used to run the cookie plant right across the street from Gateway's campus. Gateway was really quite the place, with giant cow-spotted buildings. They actually paid employees to come in on the weekends one summer and help them paint the place. My uncle worked there for a time and I got to take a tour of certain parts of the plant, including the assembly line. This was, of course, a long time ago since they haven't made a computer in the US for quite some time now.
So, newspapers are complaining because Google is sending traffic to their sites? When you make this stuff available for indexing on your web site, often via RSS (hell, SYNDICATION is right in the name!), and in turn you get a bunch of people visiting your site who may not have otherwise read your newspaper, you get pissed because... why?
Well, it is true that Mac OS doesn't have thousands of different APIs for when Apple changes their mind about what the "next big thing" in development will be. That's why I suggest a virtualization layer and a transition to a cleaner, more long-term, less ad-hoc approach. It would simplify the lives of developers and result in a more secure OS.
While I agree with you that this scumbag needs to rot in jail for a good, long time...
NO EXCUSE for this sexual orientation
Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation. Gay and straight are sexual orientations. They have nothing to do with this filth.
Now, back to the original point, I think that when someone has done something as horrifying as download child pornography, a court's natural reaction, if they're human, is to throw every conceivable book at the bastard. I think that the reason they claim that burning a CD containing kiddie porn is the same thing as "making" porn is that he was making media for the express purpose of carrying this kind of filth. If he put it on his hard drive, he easily could have deleted the files, so he didn't "make" a hard drive. But when he burned a CD, he made a CD, and the only way to disassociate the data from the media is to physically destroy both. In that respect, I can see how the court would find that he was making porn.
Now, let's all pray to our respective gods that this guy never sees the outside of a prison cell ever again.
Take a page from Apple
on
Buy Vista or Else
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It's pretty clear to me that the main reason that Windows has so many security problems is that there is something inherently broken in its design. Remember: when Microsoft first designed Windows, no one was using the Internet, office LANs were pretty much the most networking you were likely to find. So Microsoft didn't have to think about network security back then. Now that the world of computing is increasingly connected to a high-bandwidth Internet connection all the time, it's clear that the model that Windows is built upon is broken.
I think it would benefit Microsoft to do a fundamental redesign of Windows. Apple did this about five years ago when they made the transition from Classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. They designed an API that permitted developers to write software that ran natively on both operating systems (Carbon) and gradually phased it out in favor of an API that was completely native to Mac OS X (Cocoa). At the same time, there were many applications that would only run on Mac OS 9 -- i.e., those that were not Carbonized -- that ran in a (mostly transparent) virtualized environment. Microsoft could follow the same pattern as Apple and redesign their operating system from the ground up with security as a primary focus.
The thing that's going to get people to upgrade to Vista isn't the desktop search or any new multimedia features. It's the security and the performance. Right now, Microsoft keeps tacking on bloat after bloat to the existing Windows codebase. This has the effect of making Windows slower. Also, these "ad-hoc" additions, I think, have a tendency of opening up security holes. Microsoft, it's time for you to reevaluate the design of your operating system. Instead of focusing on devising as many different editions as you can for Vista -- which, by the way, baffles the hell out of a lot of your customers -- it's time to wipe the slate clean and start over.
I know we've all said at one point or another, "if I'd known then what I know now, I would have done things completely differently." Well, Microsoft, you do know stuff now that you didn't know 20 years ago. It's time to do things completely differently. Your model no longer works; find a new one.
From the summary: Further, Nielsen indicates that iTunes users form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along autos, alcohol beverages, magazines, and television,' he added.
While I believe that this sentence is true, it is also incomplete. iTunes users also form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along MP3 players. Unless Google can somehow find a way to sell music that both plays on iPods and satisfies the record labels' requirement for DRM, they're not going to get anywhere. The only technology that can do this is FairPlay, and it's not for sale or license at any price.
The explosive growth of unique visitors to the iTunes Music Store is the result of one thing: the explosive growth of sales of iPods (particularly to new users). While it is interesting that there are trends among the buyers of iPods, I don't see how Google, or anyone else for that matter, will be able to offer a real competitor to the iTunes Music Store. I have no doubt of Google's ability to launch a great music service, but there's simply no way they can sell a product that really competes with the iTunes Music Store.
Not at all, but the point I was trying to make is that for the expense that it would incur, the benefit would be minimal. I guess I meant to imply that the only way they would be able to do it economically is if they didn't have to contract them out.
Here's a thought: do you suppose that Apple might be leaving the modem out because they intend an upcoming Apple mobile phone to make the perfect wireless connection accessory? With all the rumor and speculation surrounding Apple launching some kind of wireless communications service in the future, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's exactly what they're planning. If they make it easy to use, there would be tons of people using a bluetooth modem and not even knowing it.
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As someone whose 23rd birthday is next week, I can tell you in all honesty there are times when I do feel almost 30. But no, most of the time I feel, and behave, a lot more like a 12 year old. Just like Windows.
Yeah, I was thinking about that one, too. But imagine how embarassed you'd be if someone snapped their fingers in public!
Well, let's assume for the moment that our latest escapade in Iraq is the "Real War On Terror". Now, terrorism killed 4000 people five years ago. The cost in terms of American lives fighting the (losing) War On Terror in Iraq is presently 2426 -- according to antiwar.com. So far, it's taken half as many lives as terrorism has actually claimed to (allegedly) prevent terrorism.
Now, as previous posters have said, the deaths on September 11, 2001 were largely the result of luck on the part of Al Qaeda. Hey, even bad guys get lucky sometimes. It seems very improbable that terrorists will ever have the opportunity or the capability to kill that many people again. What that means is that 4000 is likely to be the sum total of terrorism-related deaths for quite some time, but the death toll in Iraq is steadily climbing.
Let's also keep in mind that the US military is generally thought to be responsible for at least 35,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. So, I guess killing nine times as many civilians in a foreign land -- which cannot even be proven to be in any way culpable for the September 11th attacks -- is the just punishment. Wow, what a great country we live in.
Now as for this phone database nonsense, can any of us be honestly surprised? I guess my biggest surprise is at other peoples' surprise. This administration has proven time and again that there is no depth too low for them to stoop to. Reporters -- Fox "News" excluded -- could save themselves a lot of time if they just printed up a bunch of templates that start: "Today, it was revealed that the Bush administration has lied about _____". Just fill in the blank! Or, I guess these days, it could also be, "Today, it was revealed that the Bush administration has been surreptitiously monitoring ordinary Americans' ____ without a warrant."
Truly mad libs!
As I sit here, sipping my second cup of coffee for the day, I'm thinking back to earlier this morning when, like every morning, I read my email and my Bloglines as I drink my first cup of coffee. Now, I always have my coffee first thing -- OK, maybe second thing -- in the morning. (If you can believe it, I'm usually even coordinated enough to make a passable latte) In my perpetually sleep-deprived state, I'll believe anything right after I get up.
It's not the coffee that makes me suggestible, it's the sleepiness.As a grad student at my university (University of Northern Iowa -- a primarily undergraduate institution), I'm seeing the benefit of so-called weeder classes. Here, the weed-out class tends to be CS III, a data structures class. The reason is simple: later courses require a basic understanding of data structures, so if you can't hack it in CS III, you're not going to make it in Operating Systems, or Networking, or (God help us!) Theory.
Weeding out disinterested students was a primary concern in the 1990's when tons of completely unmotivated students were entering CS programs because they thought they could make a ton of money doing it. It never occurred to most of them that they should, perhaps, like what they're doing.
A good CS program does not consist of simple "programming courses". While you might be learning how to write Java code, a good instructor will also be teaching you about designing algorithms, testing your code, and all the other concepts that apply to any language.
The difference between CS majors and MIS majors, in my experience, has been that the CS majors are not only able, but willing to learn how to use a new programming language or API in a weekend. The MIS majors, by contrast, haven't been given the tools to do this. This happens fairly regularly when MIS majors take CS courses. Because they don't have the grounding in concepts that do not change over time, they're completely lost. The weed-out courses are designed so that students who are unable or unwilling to grasp concepts over any particular language will quit while they're ahead. So, while the MIS major may have plenty of experience with .NET or SQL or something like that, it's the CS major who will be able to learn .NET and SQL easily, as well as .NET++ and Ultra-Super-Duper SQL years down the road. That's what a CS grad should be able to do, and if they can't, then they're in the wrong place.
Don't downplay your own role. While the surgeons, cardiologists and nurses may have done the physical things to make your son's recovery possible, it was you, your family, and even those strangers who called and emailed who supported his recovery emotionally. The medical community is just starting to realize the connection between the mind and physical healing. There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that a positive emotional state speeds the body's own healing processes. That old expression, "laughter is the best medicine" may really have something to it.
Now, the strangers didn't offer their support to your child, they offered it to you. I imagine that knowing that other people care made you feel better, which in turn kept your spirits up so you could offer your support to your son. Heck, knowing that a complete stranger has taken an interest in you and your child has got to feel pretty reassuring. I think that after reading your story, anyone with any kind of compassion would hope that your son gets the chance to live a full, happy, healthy life. I know that I certainly wish you and your family the best.
I, myself, am not a person of faith, but I'm not here to debate that point. If anything, I would call myself a humanist: a person who finds it a lot more beautiful and life-affirming when people, through their own goodness, make amazing things happen. Another way of saying it is that humanists try to be decent simply because it's the best thing to do. I do, however, believe that our bodies and minds are complex and interconnected and that our minds play a more critical role in our functioning than we've realized in the past. I guess what I'm trying to say, and rather inarticulately, is that while other people may have made your son's conditions for recovery happen, it was the constant love and reassurance that you and others in his life gave him that made it all work. I think that it just wouldn't have happened without that. So, in that regard, you were just as important to your son's recovery as anyone else. If you call that God, then that's your prerogative, but I'd rather give you the credit.
Well, people do studies on porn for women, but they generally take the form of a master's thesis. A friend of mine is studying romance novels for her Women's Studies master's thesis. She's both excited and horrified by the prospect of reading lots and lots of pulpy romance novels. Another friend, coincidentally, is doing her thesis on blogging. The point is that people do study it, but there's a prevailing notion that "porn" is only intended for consumption by men, and those are the stories that the media picks up. I also think it has something to do with the tendency among researchers to make connections between viewing porn and violence against women, clearly a more serious problem than women's violence against men.
Yeah, I realized that after I posted. What Rosetta doesn't support, and what I meant to say, was that Rosetta doesn't support certain G5-specific features. My bad.
As a previous poster mentioned, PPC executables run through an emulation layer called "Rosetta". However, Mac OS X binaries are stored in the Mach-O format. A Mach-O file can be divided into multiple segments, each of which can contain machine code for a different architecture. So, Universal applications really do include equivalent code for both PPC and x86. It's not really magic so much as it is that the loader knows to look for non-native code in a binary and run it through Rosetta if no x86 code exists. Here's the reference.
As for your friend's programs not running, Rosetta does have some limitations. In particular, Rosetta can't handle Altivec instructions well -- Altivec being the rough analog to SSE on Intel chips. However, few programs use this, so I'm a little puzzled.
Has anyone here ever seen CDE?
Why yes, yes I have. Where I work, we still have a number of older Sun machines running Solaris 8; CDE is about as good as it gets since these old guys can't run GNOME very well.
For the love of God.
My sentiments exactly. It's pretty awful. But you know what's worse? Trying to use a plain ol' text console on Solaris. For whatever reason, Sun thought it would be a good idea if the text console, even on a fancy 3D graphics card attached to a 21" display, like we've got here, had this enormous PlaySkool-looking 80x24 font. I know, I know, 80x24 is a standard, but good God the characters are huge. I need to sit out in the hallway just to make them look normal-sized.
The dude's name is Tommy Thompson and he was the former head of HHS, not the FDA. And, although he said he'd gladly get an RFID tag -- and in fact recommended that every American did -- now that he's no longer head of HHS (and, I suppose, no longer on the take from the RFID powers-that-be) he said that he's not getting tagged until he's convinced it's safe.
I take exception to your list of "likely reasons you would be attending a state university." I have an undergraduate degree from a fine state university (and in May I'll have a master's, as well) and I've had an excellent education here. When I started, the University was just starting its Honors program; my classmates and I had a chance to shape the program, and many of our decisions are still in effect today. Add to that a program director who is not only very good at her job, but also truly interested in making a student's university experience the best it can be, and you end up with a page-long list of honors courses at the front of the course schedule that almost makes me jealous of the undergraduates. Those were truly excellent courses.
Now, my department is a small one, but I can name a number of faculty members who will do just about anything for their students. They offer the elective courses we want to take, they offer seminars in relevant, pertinent topics. When I was doing a senior research project, my "weekly meeting" with my advisor consisted of him taking about ten minutes to review what I'd done and offer advice, and then about fifty minutes of conversation about just about any computing topic you can name. I learned as much from that as most students would learn in a semester-long course. And I got the research credit, too!
Attending a state university is not simply a "this is the best I could do" sort of thing. Hell, UNI has one of the best education programs in the country -- it was called Iowa State Teacher's College for a while, even. There are people who come from all fifty states specifically for this program. Going to a state university is not a compromise. In a lot of ways, it can be far better than going to an Ivy League school where the faculty are too busy promoting their new book than to grade your tests or meet with you to answer your questions. Remember, the school is only half the equation. The other half is the student. A brilliant, unmotivated student will be a collossal failure at an Ivy League school, even though he or she may graduate with a decent GPA, while a motivated student, brilliant or not, can excel in any environment.
The article says that Vista won't suck. What I'm seeing in the article is stuff that should have been in Windows for years. And much of that is stuff that has been in, oh, say Mac OS X for years.
So let's assume that the author is right. Suppose that Vista doesn't suck. Does that mean you're going to want to use it? From what I've seen, Microsoft has made blunder after blunder after blunder with their UI design. I had a chance to take a peek at one of the later Vista builds. They replaced the Start menu with a tiny little non-expanding window. Now, I know the current Start menu is difficult to navigate when it's full of stuff, but does Microsoft really expect us to scroll through a tiny little list -- on a 1280x1024 display -- that could be hundreds of items long to find the one 16x16 icon we're looking for?
And say what you will about Aero glass being pretty, but I've got another name for it: resource hog. Using the 2D graphics acceleration is a great idea for improving the performance of the window server (or whatever it's called in Microsoft parlance) but adding gratuitous eye candy -- which most systems won't be able to handle -- means that Vista will never quite look the same on two computers. And I think the style is, frankly, distracting.
I've been playing with IE 7. I've got lots of problems with the UI, to say nothing of the lousy browser it houses. Why oh why is the menu bar not where it is on every other Windows app? And why did they break up the standard cluster of about five toolbar buttons and spread them all over the place? E.g., why is the stop/reload button to the right of the address bar, when it's been to the left of the address bar in every major browser for over ten years now.
I also don't like the way they've integrated searching. Searching is different from "Starting" (or I guess since the start button doesn't say start anymore, "Windows logo-ing") an application. That's why it makes sense that the Google desktop search goes in the tray, or why Spotlight in Mac OS X gets its own little corner of the screen. Also, that totally screws with the keyboard shortcuts. I'm used to hitting (Windows) > P and then scrolling around with the keyboard for the app I want. I guess I won't be able to do that anymore.
And finally, Windows still gives the average user waaaaaay too much information about the computer. For example, most grandmas I know have no idea what "defragmenting" means. Most other people know that it's a good idea to do it from time to time, but never do and there's never been a built-in easy way to schedule it automatically. So instead of annoying the user from time to time with a "hey, congratulations, you don't need to defragment your hard drive" window, why doesn't the system just do it automatically in the background like Mac OS does? Same goes for virus scanning. Why couldn't virus scanning be more like a daemon that only shows a UI when there's actually something pertinent to report. And no, "no viruses found" is not pertinent information.
Well, that turned into more of a rant than I intended.
I didn't see anything on that list that Mac OS X or your favorite Linux distro doesn't already have. I looked, point by point, and could think of a comparable feature on either Mac OS X or Linux or, usually, both. That's what I wish Windows users would understand, particularly home users. Microsoft, despite their dominance of the OS market, sells, by far, the least advanced operating system of the big three. Linux gets features as soon as someone contributes code, which happens all the time. And, if you're impatient like me, you can install Debian testing/unstable and always have the latest features as they come down the pike.
Let's review:
Security Every Linux distro I know of forces you to make a non-privileged user account. There are plenty of features built into GNOME and KDE now that let you do a graphical 'sudo' to do administrative tasks. On the Mac, this is the default. They have their own graphical 'sudo', which works incredibly well. And, aside from the occasional exploit, neither OS has the same kind of inherent security problems that Windows does. IE 7 One word: Firefox. OK, two: Safari. Both great browsers that already offer all the same featuers. Righteous Eye Candy The GNOME and KDE themes have improved dramatically over the past few years and they look pretty good. Maybe not "Aero Glass" good, but then again they don't require an outrageous graphics card to use. Mac OS X has Aqua. Very pretty indeed, and far less distracting than Aero Glass. Desktop Search On Linux, locate. On the Mac, Spotlight. And developers can write Spotlight importers that give those apps better control over how their files are indexed. Windows has nothing like this. Oh, and if you are using Windows, use Google Desktop Search. It works well. I like it. Better updates On Linux, set up a cron job to do an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade every now-and-then and you're set. On Mac OS X, Software Update already updates every piece of software Apple sells with about one or two clicks. And, it runs automatically. Done. More Media iTunes, QuickTime. And with Flip4Mac, you can play un-DRMed WMV files right in QuickTime. On Linux, there are too many media players to name. No, they won't work with Windows Media, usually, but there's definitely no lack of MP3 library apps. Parental Controls Now here, I don't know about Linux, but I'd find it hard to believe there isn't some way a person couldn't use PAM to control when and where his/her kids use the computer. On the Mac, parental controls are already built in, system-wide. Better Backups Sure, it costs $99/year, butGranted, Linux still has to do some catching up in terms of user-friendliness, but like all UNIX, all the pieces are there if you know how to assemble them. There are more and more graphical tools appearing everyday to put those pieces together for you. Mac OS X already has just about every feature the article describes and they're planning a new release about the same time as Vista appears.
And Microsoft would do well to drop certain features. The Windows Registry, I think, is one of the worst-conceived ideas ever. If Microsof
Let's think about this a little bit further
Dvorak is an idiot; the only reason he's still in print is because he occasionally makes a correct prediction and the rest of the time, his outrageous columns at least drive traffic to PC Magazine's site. He's not the kind of person most people take seriously.
No, the MacBook Pro that they showed off at the MacWorld Expo was a prototype. While they had every reason to believe that the hardware in the prototype was the hardware that would go into the shipping MacBooks, it turns out that the configuration changed slightly, and for the better. I doubt Apple will change configurations more frequently now that they're using Intel processors.
Except that Gateway 2000 started in Sioux City, IA, my hometown. They, very wisely, relocated to North Sioux City, just across the river in South Dakota, where the tax laws are much more favorably than they are in Iowa. As a matter of fact, when my parents lived in Sioux City, my dad used to run the cookie plant right across the street from Gateway's campus. Gateway was really quite the place, with giant cow-spotted buildings. They actually paid employees to come in on the weekends one summer and help them paint the place. My uncle worked there for a time and I got to take a tour of certain parts of the plant, including the assembly line. This was, of course, a long time ago since they haven't made a computer in the US for quite some time now.
So, newspapers are complaining because Google is sending traffic to their sites? When you make this stuff available for indexing on your web site, often via RSS (hell, SYNDICATION is right in the name!), and in turn you get a bunch of people visiting your site who may not have otherwise read your newspaper, you get pissed because... why?
SHHHHH! Don't debunk the "liberal conspiracy!" It only counts when republicans are being attacked.
Well, it is true that Mac OS doesn't have thousands of different APIs for when Apple changes their mind about what the "next big thing" in development will be. That's why I suggest a virtualization layer and a transition to a cleaner, more long-term, less ad-hoc approach. It would simplify the lives of developers and result in a more secure OS.
While I agree with you that this scumbag needs to rot in jail for a good, long time...
Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation. Gay and straight are sexual orientations. They have nothing to do with this filth.
Now, back to the original point, I think that when someone has done something as horrifying as download child pornography, a court's natural reaction, if they're human, is to throw every conceivable book at the bastard. I think that the reason they claim that burning a CD containing kiddie porn is the same thing as "making" porn is that he was making media for the express purpose of carrying this kind of filth. If he put it on his hard drive, he easily could have deleted the files, so he didn't "make" a hard drive. But when he burned a CD, he made a CD, and the only way to disassociate the data from the media is to physically destroy both. In that respect, I can see how the court would find that he was making porn.
Now, let's all pray to our respective gods that this guy never sees the outside of a prison cell ever again.
It's pretty clear to me that the main reason that Windows has so many security problems is that there is something inherently broken in its design. Remember: when Microsoft first designed Windows, no one was using the Internet, office LANs were pretty much the most networking you were likely to find. So Microsoft didn't have to think about network security back then. Now that the world of computing is increasingly connected to a high-bandwidth Internet connection all the time, it's clear that the model that Windows is built upon is broken.
I think it would benefit Microsoft to do a fundamental redesign of Windows. Apple did this about five years ago when they made the transition from Classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. They designed an API that permitted developers to write software that ran natively on both operating systems (Carbon) and gradually phased it out in favor of an API that was completely native to Mac OS X (Cocoa). At the same time, there were many applications that would only run on Mac OS 9 -- i.e., those that were not Carbonized -- that ran in a (mostly transparent) virtualized environment. Microsoft could follow the same pattern as Apple and redesign their operating system from the ground up with security as a primary focus.
The thing that's going to get people to upgrade to Vista isn't the desktop search or any new multimedia features. It's the security and the performance. Right now, Microsoft keeps tacking on bloat after bloat to the existing Windows codebase. This has the effect of making Windows slower. Also, these "ad-hoc" additions, I think, have a tendency of opening up security holes. Microsoft, it's time for you to reevaluate the design of your operating system. Instead of focusing on devising as many different editions as you can for Vista -- which, by the way, baffles the hell out of a lot of your customers -- it's time to wipe the slate clean and start over.
I know we've all said at one point or another, "if I'd known then what I know now, I would have done things completely differently." Well, Microsoft, you do know stuff now that you didn't know 20 years ago. It's time to do things completely differently. Your model no longer works; find a new one.
From the summary: Further, Nielsen indicates that iTunes users form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along autos, alcohol beverages, magazines, and television,' he added.
While I believe that this sentence is true, it is also incomplete. iTunes users also form a distinct target audience with brand preferences along MP3 players. Unless Google can somehow find a way to sell music that both plays on iPods and satisfies the record labels' requirement for DRM, they're not going to get anywhere. The only technology that can do this is FairPlay, and it's not for sale or license at any price.
The explosive growth of unique visitors to the iTunes Music Store is the result of one thing: the explosive growth of sales of iPods (particularly to new users). While it is interesting that there are trends among the buyers of iPods, I don't see how Google, or anyone else for that matter, will be able to offer a real competitor to the iTunes Music Store. I have no doubt of Google's ability to launch a great music service, but there's simply no way they can sell a product that really competes with the iTunes Music Store.
Not at all, but the point I was trying to make is that for the expense that it would incur, the benefit would be minimal. I guess I meant to imply that the only way they would be able to do it economically is if they didn't have to contract them out.
Here's a thought: do you suppose that Apple might be leaving the modem out because they intend an upcoming Apple mobile phone to make the perfect wireless connection accessory? With all the rumor and speculation surrounding Apple launching some kind of wireless communications service in the future, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's exactly what they're planning. If they make it easy to use, there would be tons of people using a bluetooth modem and not even knowing it.