"(b) The mouse-movement that the menu costs you is a lot easier than the mouse movement for menus attached to windows..."
No it's not, and anyone who uses a modern mac with a large monitor can see that immediately. It's a shame people repeat the same old tired arguments rather than think for themselves.
"...that's the point of putting the menus at the top of the screen."
It was 25 years ago when all apps took up the entire screen and switching the menu and title bars made sense. Now it's just legacy garbage that Apple couldn't get rid of without a great deal of pain a huge blow to their ego.
"(c) If I'm using multiple applications on the same screen (and I'm not using a virtual-desktop, which to be fair I usually do), then I use Exposé to switch between them. It's bound to my 5th mouse button so it works anywhere and it's very quick."
"(d) There are other ways the Mac tries to speed workflow, but to be fair, other systems have extras too, so I'll stick to what you identified..."
Wow, the wonders of a mac "workflow" copied from other systems. Mac was last to get such a mechanism yet it is dissentors that don't understand the mac "workflow".
"You don't have to like the Mac way of doing things, but you ought to try it with a fair mind before criticising it..."
And you ought to try other platforms before making such qualitative judgements.
As a converted mac user, my criticisms are the same as his. The top menu bar is the number one abomination to OS X usability. It wastes space, is awkward and non-intuitive, and it slows the user down. The dock does not serve as an effective task bar and it isn't a suitable launcher until you make it contain too many items. It's default location, like the menu bar, wastes the most precious screen real estate and auto-hiding is a poor solution just like it is on other desktops. It's sad that mac defenders regurgitate the same, tired arguments and blame others for failing to understand the one, true way.
"For example, I have six windows open right now in OS X. Were I using an environment where each window had its own menu bar, that would use six times as much screen real estate."
No it wouldn't. Perhaps you ought to think about that some more.
"If menus are hidden and only activated by right-click, many people wouldn't realize the options that are available to them. That is admittedly easy for some people, but it's better not to require most people to memorize a whole bunch of stuff."
How did this suddenly switch to a discussion of context menus, and are you now going to be the only one to argue against them now that Apple implements them as well?
"Using a computer shouldn't be frustrating even for someone just sitting down for the first time. A luddite isn't going to know that they need to right-click to see menus."
Agreed, and disassociating menus with applications like an OS written in the early 80's for a 9" monochrome monitor is about the most obvious, frustrating anacronism there is. I can see how you might confuse mac users and luddites, but every user except the most hardcore mac ones know what the right mouse button is. Apple lost that argument long ago.
"I suppose it would be beneficial to let people decide whether to display menus in-window or outside, and do I agree that all commands should be accessible through contextual menus, but by default, I believe strongly that controls should be placed to waste as little screen real estate as possible, and to be very easy to hit, regardless of movement."
Menus inside apps do not waste real estate. In fact, when menu hiding is available, the mac approach wastes real estate because the menu space is always lost. As for being easy to hit, "Fitt's law", which was never a law to begin with, ceased being valid in any way when screen resolutions became too large for mouse movements to comfortably cover the entire surface. The mac menu bar is something OS X is stuck with, it is not a usability improvement.
Of course, because the world's most intuitive environment designed from the beginning to use a mouse must use keyboard shortcuts in order to get things done.
The biggest limitation of PATA is that the data on its cable is not parity checked. Data transfer errors can occur undetected.
SATA was not created to make a faster interface than PATA, it was created to be fast enough, backward compatible enough, functional enough, while being cheaper and more reliable. It does all those things. PATA needs to die.
You are confused. SATA works without a single change to legacy software. Just because your systems are a pile of poorly implemented, non-standard disk interfaces doesn't mean that SATA itself has compatibility problems. SATA can't control crappy host implementations.
SATA was specifically developed to offer full backward compatibility with existing software so this is a non-issue. Your post indicates you don't know nearly enough to be concerning yourself with this anyway. By the time you've written this, if you ever do, you will have learned enough to realize that you didn't need to ask this question.
A few points: You can choose to use PIO, but the BIOS will program which mode is used. ATA did not come from the IBM AT, it came much later. PIO mode 0 does not offer "best compatibility", the BIOS will ensure what modes work and will have them set up before you even run.
Don't know where your history comes from, but my recollection is that the first IDE drives came from Quantum and Conner (partly owned by Compaq), drive geometries were available from the beginning, the programming interfaces were already long established, and the electrical interface was the 16-bit ISA bus with a couple of chip selects added. Compaq didn't invent this at all. Systems shipped from other vendors as soon as drives were available. I worked at Dell at the time and had these drives before they existed in the market.
"The P-ATA interface uses the same physical connector as the IDE interface, but incorporated much of the SCSI command set instead of the low level disk controller command set used on the original IDE drives."
I have no idea what you are talking about here. IDE devices use the same command set they always have although much has been added with time. The only SCSI command set added came with ATAPI which has nothing to do with hard drives. ATAPI was not "instead of" anything, it was created to replace proprietary CD-ROM attachment schemes in order to make optical drives ubiquitous.
Of course it's unreasonable. Just where do you find in the GPL any requirement that code integrated into other systems require adoption of a name? No offering that adopts the Linux kernel is required to use the Linux name either.
It isn't just a request either; Stallman uses any form of leverage he can to achieve that end. He's jealous that a project not under his control gets more visible credit than he does.
A typical system that includes GNU software and a Linux kernel has many software projects to thank. GNU is only one of those and none have any claim to appear in the name of that system.
Your question doesn't even make sense. What is "less free".
He stated very clearly that Apple purchased CUPS as insurance for avoiding GPL worries with their product as a whole. If you want to argue, perhaps you should suggest why that isn't so.
"...while contributing the code shifts the maintenance burden to the gcc project as whole."
No it doesn't. No one in the gcc project has any obligation to take on maintenance of such code. They may choose to, but in reality Apple will still be burdened with plenty of work.
"Apple won the market on music players by providing an extremely easy way to manage your collection and sync your device."
You may attribute their success to anything you want, but it's just not that simple.
"Call it flashy advertising or a fashion statement if it helps you to feel better about your electronics purchase, but simplicity and interface are key."
Yeah, that's always said yet it's not clear how much more simple Apple's products were to provide that "key" differentiation. Funny how the interface that was so inherently superior in the iPod was abandoned entirely in the iPhone yet the iPhone is now praised for it's "simplicity". The fact is that whatever Apple's product is at any given time is claimed to be the standard by which everything is judged. That's called fanboyism.
"...but I've never seen a communications device that makes contact and calendar syncing so easy..."
Then you haven't been looking. Contact and calendar syncing is a trivial process with every smartphone. Palm was doing it for years prior to the iPhone and they are, frankly, the gold standard, not Apple. The iPhone is exactly as easy and no easier to sync than the last several smartphones I've owned.
"Wake me when it syncs with iTunes and automatically pulls my contacts, music, movies, TV shows, and calendar."
And that comment smacks of the same Apple-elitist mentality that defines everything in the market by what Apple does. If iTunes is required, no one but Apple can succeed. Syncing a smartphone through a media jukebox application is totally counterintuitive yet no one comments on that.
I can make a lot of claims regarding what other products do that the iPhone doesn't. Funny that you don't concern yourself with any of that. Apparently, all that's important to you is precisely what the iPhone does. Wonder why that is? Can the iPhone sync its SMS messages to its host computer? Can it archive it's IM conversations? Oh yeah, it doesn't even do IM.
Entrapment isn't strictly defined by who does what first. It isn't like everything said or done is black and white anyway. The street prostitution example is pretty transactional in nature so it's easy to define. Entrapment cases are generally more complicated.
Is it OK for investigators to mail, or email, you advertisements for child pornography? Entrapment always involves the suggestion that products or services are available of an illegal nature. That means that whoever does it is always walking a fine line as the original poster said.
Way to pass judgement. Not all people who are sexually attracted to those legally defined as children are "sick fucks".
Besides, it's irrelevant. Laws criminalizing the possession of pornography don't eliminate demand.
"Finally, to address your "highest level," are you honestly suggesting that you see nothing wrong with watching videos of the sexual abuse of a minor for entertainment?"
Not all sexual acts involving minors are abuse. Where I live a minor is anyone under 18. You think 17 years olds aren't sexually active? If two 17 year olds have sex, who is committing sexual abuse?
"The iPod has millions of third-party developers. They make music and movies. For example, Disney/Pixar, Dixie Chicks, Eminem, 20th Century Fox.
The iPhone has millions of third-party developers. They make Web apps. For example, YouTube, Flickr, eBay, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter."
Bullshit and bullshit.
"An hour into your iPhone ownership you probably have the work of hundreds if not thousands of third-parties on your iPhone."
Bullshit.
"Throughout an iPhone's two year life span (both the hardware and service contract are $X/month for 24 months) a typical user will probably have 1000x the third-party data in their iPhone than if they were using another phone."
Bullshit.
"The iPhone has so much more storage, syncs so much more easily with your music and movies, and has a real Web browser and Wi-Fi so you can chew up a lot of Web over two years."
Partial bullshit.
"So if your standard for greatness is third-parties then you have predicted iPhone's impending world domination."
Prepare to learn what a third-party developer is.
The iPhone shares content with all other media devices. There are no artists exclusive to the iPhone.
"They have learned that you don't necessarily need the most apps, you need great apps. The iPhone, one way or another, will have great apps."
When will the iPhone get great apps? So far the consensus is, and I agree since I own one, that the iPhone apps consistently have major shortcomings. The media app is good, google maps is good, everything else is substandard. Mail sucks, SMS is missing obvious features, calc is terrible, and other obvious apps are totally MIA.
"From the iPod, they have learned that keeping full control over the device enables them to move more nimbly, unlike the cumbersome PlaysFor{not}Sure system developed by Microsoft."
That's a bunch of irrelevent bullshit.
"Yet, the iPhone can come along and make an immediate, serious impact on the market."
That hasn't been shown yet. They made a splash with a flashy, slick product as they frequently do. What impact that has can't be seen in a week.
Which device is this and which carrier gave you a free one that is unlocked for use with any carrier? What memory card does it support that offers 8GB?
Slashdot Mirror
"I think you don't get the usual Mac workflow."
I don't think you know what "workflow" means.
"(b) The mouse-movement that the menu costs you is a lot easier than the mouse movement for menus attached to windows..."
No it's not, and anyone who uses a modern mac with a large monitor can see that immediately. It's a shame people repeat the same old tired arguments rather than think for themselves.
"...that's the point of putting the menus at the top of the screen."
It was 25 years ago when all apps took up the entire screen and switching the menu and title bars made sense. Now it's just legacy garbage that Apple couldn't get rid of without a great deal of pain a huge blow to their ego.
"(c) If I'm using multiple applications on the same screen (and I'm not using a virtual-desktop, which to be fair I usually do), then I use Exposé to switch between them. It's bound to my 5th mouse button so it works anywhere and it's very quick."
"(d) There are other ways the Mac tries to speed workflow, but to be fair, other systems have extras too, so I'll stick to what you identified..."
Wow, the wonders of a mac "workflow" copied from other systems. Mac was last to get such a mechanism yet it is dissentors that don't understand the mac "workflow".
"You don't have to like the Mac way of doing things, but you ought to try it with a fair mind before criticising it..."
And you ought to try other platforms before making such qualitative judgements.
As a converted mac user, my criticisms are the same as his. The top menu bar is the number one abomination to OS X usability. It wastes space, is awkward and non-intuitive, and it slows the user down. The dock does not serve as an effective task bar and it isn't a suitable launcher until you make it contain too many items. It's default location, like the menu bar, wastes the most precious screen real estate and auto-hiding is a poor solution just like it is on other desktops. It's sad that mac defenders regurgitate the same, tired arguments and blame others for failing to understand the one, true way.
"For example, I have six windows open right now in OS X. Were I using an environment where each window had its own menu bar, that would use six times as much screen real estate."
No it wouldn't. Perhaps you ought to think about that some more.
"If menus are hidden and only activated by right-click, many people wouldn't realize the options that are available to them. That is admittedly easy for some people, but it's better not to require most people to memorize a whole bunch of stuff."
How did this suddenly switch to a discussion of context menus, and are you now going to be the only one to argue against them now that Apple implements them as well?
"Using a computer shouldn't be frustrating even for someone just sitting down for the first time. A luddite isn't going to know that they need to right-click to see menus."
Agreed, and disassociating menus with applications like an OS written in the early 80's for a 9" monochrome monitor is about the most obvious, frustrating anacronism there is. I can see how you might confuse mac users and luddites, but every user except the most hardcore mac ones know what the right mouse button is. Apple lost that argument long ago.
"I suppose it would be beneficial to let people decide whether to display menus in-window or outside, and do I agree that all commands should be accessible through contextual menus, but by default, I believe strongly that controls should be placed to waste as little screen real estate as possible, and to be very easy to hit, regardless of movement."
Menus inside apps do not waste real estate. In fact, when menu hiding is available, the mac approach wastes real estate because the menu space is always lost. As for being easy to hit, "Fitt's law", which was never a law to begin with, ceased being valid in any way when screen resolutions became too large for mouse movements to comfortably cover the entire surface. The mac menu bar is something OS X is stuck with, it is not a usability improvement.
Of course, because the world's most intuitive environment designed from the beginning to use a mouse must use keyboard shortcuts in order to get things done.
The biggest limitation of PATA is that the data on its cable is not parity checked. Data transfer errors can occur undetected.
SATA was not created to make a faster interface than PATA, it was created to be fast enough, backward compatible enough, functional enough, while being cheaper and more reliable. It does all those things. PATA needs to die.
You are confused. SATA works without a single change to legacy software. Just because your systems are a pile of poorly implemented, non-standard disk interfaces doesn't mean that SATA itself has compatibility problems. SATA can't control crappy host implementations.
SATA was specifically developed to offer full backward compatibility with existing software so this is a non-issue. Your post indicates you don't know nearly enough to be concerning yourself with this anyway. By the time you've written this, if you ever do, you will have learned enough to realize that you didn't need to ask this question.
A few points: You can choose to use PIO, but the BIOS will program which mode is used. ATA did not come from the IBM AT, it came much later. PIO mode 0 does not offer "best compatibility", the BIOS will ensure what modes work and will have them set up before you even run.
...and it's only laziness that makes that a problem. It's possible, and has been done, to make the keyboard and mouse ports autodetect.
Don't know where your history comes from, but my recollection is that the first IDE drives came from Quantum and Conner (partly owned by Compaq), drive geometries were available from the beginning, the programming interfaces were already long established, and the electrical interface was the 16-bit ISA bus with a couple of chip selects added. Compaq didn't invent this at all. Systems shipped from other vendors as soon as drives were available. I worked at Dell at the time and had these drives before they existed in the market.
"The P-ATA interface uses the same physical connector as the IDE interface, but incorporated much of the SCSI command set instead of the low level disk controller command set used on the original IDE drives."
I have no idea what you are talking about here. IDE devices use the same command set they always have although much has been added with time. The only SCSI command set added came with ATAPI which has nothing to do with hard drives. ATAPI was not "instead of" anything, it was created to replace proprietary CD-ROM attachment schemes in order to make optical drives ubiquitous.
Of course it's unreasonable. Just where do you find in the GPL any requirement that code integrated into other systems require adoption of a name? No offering that adopts the Linux kernel is required to use the Linux name either.
It isn't just a request either; Stallman uses any form of leverage he can to achieve that end. He's jealous that a project not under his control gets more visible credit than he does.
A typical system that includes GNU software and a Linux kernel has many software projects to thank. GNU is only one of those and none have any claim to appear in the name of that system.
What does the iPhone do with multitouch again? Oh yeah, virtually nothing.
Switching from HFCS to cane sugar wouldn't make one bit of difference. Perhaps you should read the article.
Bullshit. There is no such thing as a "normal computer", there are only devices made to do certain things. Some are fixed function; others are not.
Your question doesn't even make sense. What is "less free".
He stated very clearly that Apple purchased CUPS as insurance for avoiding GPL worries with their product as a whole. If you want to argue, perhaps you should suggest why that isn't so.
"A practice started and encouraged by the FSF by the way."
Are you saying that the FSF invented this form of power hoarding?
"...while contributing the code shifts the maintenance burden to the gcc project as whole."
No it doesn't. No one in the gcc project has any obligation to take on maintenance of such code. They may choose to, but in reality Apple will still be burdened with plenty of work.
"Apple won the market on music players by providing an extremely easy way to manage your collection and sync your device."
You may attribute their success to anything you want, but it's just not that simple.
"Call it flashy advertising or a fashion statement if it helps you to feel better about your electronics purchase, but simplicity and interface are key."
Yeah, that's always said yet it's not clear how much more simple Apple's products were to provide that "key" differentiation. Funny how the interface that was so inherently superior in the iPod was abandoned entirely in the iPhone yet the iPhone is now praised for it's "simplicity". The fact is that whatever Apple's product is at any given time is claimed to be the standard by which everything is judged. That's called fanboyism.
"...but I've never seen a communications device that makes contact and calendar syncing so easy..."
Then you haven't been looking. Contact and calendar syncing is a trivial process with every smartphone. Palm was doing it for years prior to the iPhone and they are, frankly, the gold standard, not Apple. The iPhone is exactly as easy and no easier to sync than the last several smartphones I've owned.
"Wake me when it syncs with iTunes and automatically pulls my contacts, music, movies, TV shows, and calendar."
And that comment smacks of the same Apple-elitist mentality that defines everything in the market by what Apple does. If iTunes is required, no one but Apple can succeed. Syncing a smartphone through a media jukebox application is totally counterintuitive yet no one comments on that.
I can make a lot of claims regarding what other products do that the iPhone doesn't. Funny that you don't concern yourself with any of that. Apparently, all that's important to you is precisely what the iPhone does. Wonder why that is? Can the iPhone sync its SMS messages to its host computer? Can it archive it's IM conversations? Oh yeah, it doesn't even do IM.
and then again, it may not be the first.
p lus
VGA smartphones: http://www.pdadb.net/index.php?m=pdalist&list=vga
even higher res smartphones: http://www.pdadb.net/index.php?m=pdalist&list=vga
Of course, being open source there's no promise that you'll ever have any decent reader to get locked into.
Entrapment isn't strictly defined by who does what first. It isn't like everything said or done is black and white anyway. The street prostitution example is pretty transactional in nature so it's easy to define. Entrapment cases are generally more complicated.
Is it OK for investigators to mail, or email, you advertisements for child pornography? Entrapment always involves the suggestion that products or services are available of an illegal nature. That means that whoever does it is always walking a fine line as the original poster said.
Way to pass judgement. Not all people who are sexually attracted to those legally defined as children are "sick fucks".
Besides, it's irrelevant. Laws criminalizing the possession of pornography don't eliminate demand.
"Finally, to address your "highest level," are you honestly suggesting that you see nothing wrong with watching videos of the sexual abuse of a minor for entertainment?"
Not all sexual acts involving minors are abuse. Where I live a minor is anyone under 18. You think 17 years olds aren't sexually active? If two 17 year olds have sex, who is committing sexual abuse?
I'm sure you could as evidenced by there being people here that have no problem with it. There is no cause that would make doing this not wrong.
It is only possible that you're data will be looked through if you are hiring amoral assholes.
"kiddie-porn" isn't child abuse. Child abuse may have been involved, but not necessarily, in the creation of it. Porn is porn, nothing more.
"The iPod has millions of third-party developers. They make music and movies. For example, Disney/Pixar, Dixie Chicks, Eminem, 20th Century Fox.
The iPhone has millions of third-party developers. They make Web apps. For example, YouTube, Flickr, eBay, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter."
Bullshit and bullshit.
"An hour into your iPhone ownership you probably have the work of hundreds if not thousands of third-parties on your iPhone."
Bullshit.
"Throughout an iPhone's two year life span (both the hardware and service contract are $X/month for 24 months) a typical user will probably have 1000x the third-party data in their iPhone than if they were using another phone."
Bullshit.
"The iPhone has so much more storage, syncs so much more easily with your music and movies, and has a real Web browser and Wi-Fi so you can chew up a lot of Web over two years."
Partial bullshit.
"So if your standard for greatness is third-parties then you have predicted iPhone's impending world domination."
Prepare to learn what a third-party developer is.
The iPhone shares content with all other media devices. There are no artists exclusive to the iPhone.
"They have learned that you don't necessarily need the most apps, you need great apps. The iPhone, one way or another, will have great apps."
When will the iPhone get great apps? So far the consensus is, and I agree since I own one, that the iPhone apps consistently have major shortcomings. The media app is good, google maps is good, everything else is substandard. Mail sucks, SMS is missing obvious features, calc is terrible, and other obvious apps are totally MIA.
"From the iPod, they have learned that keeping full control over the device enables them to move more nimbly, unlike the cumbersome PlaysFor{not}Sure system developed by Microsoft."
That's a bunch of irrelevent bullshit.
"Yet, the iPhone can come along and make an immediate, serious impact on the market."
That hasn't been shown yet. They made a splash with a flashy, slick product as they frequently do. What impact that has can't be seen in a week.
Which device is this and which carrier gave you a free one that is unlocked for use with any carrier? What memory card does it support that offers 8GB?