"yes, not being able to put their best chip in their laptops hurt..."
Not to mention that their best chip wasn't as good as the x86 competition and was soon to be eclipsed by an x86 mobile processor in performance. Their best mobile processor was woefully inadequate compared to x86 options. That hurt a great deal as well. I think what informed users understood was "why am I paying $1000 more for a Mac when a PC runs more faster and is twice as fast. Now that Macs use Intel they are at relative price and performance parity so their appealing designs and alternative OS has more appeal to potential buyers.
Claiming that the internal processor designs of modern processors are "RISC" is arbitrary, though common. Modern "RISC" processors also use the same decoder stages after all.
It's a shame that a comment that actually "gets it" won't get modded up. Current x86 processors ARE superior general purpose CPUs. It's never been about instruction set design or elegance; it's about building a computer that does what you want it to do. RISC is all about old propaganda, RISC as an architectural concept was rendered irrelevent a long time ago.
"IBM picked it specifically because it sucked--they didn't want the PC to compete with their professional workstations."
Haha. IBM chose the 68000 but Motorola couldn't commit to the volumes and ship dates, so IBM switched to the 8088 which they were familiar with from previous projects. IBM didn't have ANY "professional workstations" at the time.
"...and backward compatibility requirements have prevented cleaning away crap like segmented memory."
"Crap" which costs us nothing. 32 and 64 bit OSes don't require programmers (other than the OS programmers themselves) to deal with segments.
"...so they can spend more on engineering and make up for x86's deficiencies."
It sounds like you think that's a bad thing. Would like worse processors?
"Even the major x86 hardware vendors, Intel and AMD, have long since stopped implementing x86 in hardware, choosing instead to design decoders which rapidly translate x86 instructions to the native RISC instruction set used by the cores."
Haha. Intel and AMD processors ARE hardware and their decoders don't run microcode. The concept that the "native instruction set" of the cores is "RISC" is also arbitrary. Current "RISC" processors, such as the G5, do the same thing.
"x86 was designed nearly 30 years ago as an entry level processor for the technology of the day."
Really? Entry level? I don't see how the x86 was considered "entry level" in any way.
"It was originally built as a 16-bit architecture, then extended to 32-bit, and recently 64-bit..."
So what? It hasn't prevented x86 from being a superior desktop processor in contrast to the PPC that you compare it to.
"All things being equal, the same investment of engineer man-hours would bear more performance fruit on MIPS, SPARC, POWER, ARM, Alpha, or any of a number of other more modern architectures, but because of the huge volumes the x86 manufacturers deal in, they can afford to spend the extra effort improving the x86."
That was true at one time, but today the instruction set decoder for x86 is mature, well understood, and constitutes a small portion of the die. Considering that it's RISC competition implements very similar archtectures but with different instruction sets to decode, your claim is simply wrong. The massive investments are what makes x86 superior to its competition in spite of its less modern instruction set. If the investments were similar, the architecture that would win is more likely to come from the superior design team, not from the superior ISA (IMO).
"So, even though the Cell can mop the floor with a Core 2 or an Opteron when fully optimized code is used, it's easier (right now at least) to develop code that uses an x86 well than code which fully utilizes the Cell."
The Cell isn't a general purpose CPU and cannot "mop the floor" with any CPU for general tasks. It's a high performance multicore DSP with a crappy PPC scheduling processor. It should not be discussed in the context of general purpose CPUs.
The answer to the question is easy: no other processor architecture came along that offered a compelling reason to lure the market away from the x86. It wasn't just the x86 itself that created the market dominance, but Intel managed to keep the performance good enough for long enough to hold onto the market until it could produce products that were, in fact, equal or superior in performance to the competition. Instruction sets don't really matter, after all, and calling x86 "ugly" is meaningless.
Yes it does. Apple sells style, and where style compromises function, Apple compromises function. Nowhere is that more clear than with the iPod where there are not quite enough buttons to do the job. There is no on/off control and the battery life sacrifices that result are dumped on the end user.
"However, if, from the perspective of interface design, the first iteration Apple phone is anywhere near as good, compared to other phones, as the iPod is to other MP3 players, then I see no reason why the device couldn't be at least as good as the best Symbian based phones, and a good deal better than just about anything Motorola has produced in the past ten years-- including all-hype, no-function phones like the RAZR and, the ill-fated ROKR."
Hmmm, where do you start with that? The much-heralded iPod UI isn't really significantly better or different than other players. It's differentiation is style and form factor, not UI, and it's main market advantage is accesories. Regarding Symbian-based phones, Symbian doesn't provide the UI, only the OS, so Symbian phones don't have consistent UIs and Nokia and SE have, IMO, poor UIs that don't compete with the best. I do agree with the Moto comparison, but then that's not a hard standard to beat.
"I'm sorry, but your frothing at the mouth over the "misunderstood WM" just screams Astroturfing."
Because you don't agree with it? My WM5 Smartphone device seems no more bloated than the Symbian competitors I've used. I don't count PalmOS because it's braindead.
"Especially on such a mission-critical device as a cellphone."
Ignoring that this is a sentence fragment, there's nothing inherently "mission-critical" about a cellphone nor is there anything about WM5 that makes it less suitable in that regard to PalmOS.
"Bloated & unstable under normal use by the majority of users."
Another fine sentence fragment. WM5 is far more stable than PalmOS. It has nothing in common with Windows other than the name.
"The sad thing here is that WM competitors are Symbian, which is too carrier friendly to be considered (they do have a nice system). Then you have Palm, which for the most part the OS has been stagnant for the past 2 years or so, and is still a hell of allot better system for the end-user. Developers being happy means jack-shit if the device itself is junk. If your going to develop for just one: you develop for what has more possible sales. Any other decision is a poor business decision."
Symbian is an incomplete solution since it doesn't provide the UI. Neither Nokia's nor SE's systems offer stability or usability that compares to WM5 smartphone. I know because I've owned and used them all.
PalmOS isn't "a hell of allot better" for anyone. It's buggy as hell and doesn't offer even the most rudimentary of modern capabilities. It doesn't even multitask. Yes, PalmOS has been stagnant for years. All the talent left long ago as well. You might try a Blackjack then try to defend your clunky, pathetic PalmOS running on your bloated Treo.
You don't know anyone with a current WM5 Smartphone like a Dash or a Blackjack. Furthermore, you have one of those magical 650's that never crashes despite the fact that the OS is riddled with bugs that virtually assure failure eventually. Treo 650's like yours I frequently hear about on the internet but have never seen in real life. All of mine were horribly unstable and it wasn't the hardware. I believe your 650 to be the fantasy version.
As far as customization goes, I can't imagine what you are talking about. You can skin WM5 and there is a vastly larger library of software for it. The PalmOS Treos allow color schemes and background pics. Big deal.
WM5 supports 640x480 screens. PalmOS does 320x320.
PalmOS is dead and the Treo is a tired, old clunky hardware platform.
My Treo 650 would crash during the process of booting, sending an SMS and opening an SMS. Predicting when it would crash was impossible but it would occasionally get into a crash-boot-crash loop and require a firmware install. Yes, there were actions you didn't dare do like downloading emails but avoiding those was no assurance of avoiding problems. What a piece of crap. I owned three and knew several people that also owned them. All of mine behaved the same way and my friends had similar experiences.
Only idiots believe that Treo users that can't avoid crashes are idiots. What kind of apologist would make such a stupid statement anyway?
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody say "My Treo crashes every time I do ". I don't understand why people keep doing the thing that doesn't work."
My Samsung i320 (WM5 smartphone) is rock-solid, the UI is fine, and the performance is good. Browser is far superior, etc. Yes, the SMS isn't as good, there aren't as many thoughtful (but unstable touches), and the battery life isn't good, but the phone is super small and it kicks the crap out of any Treo.
"In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software."
That's not our world. In our world, computers are central to some forms of speech and those forms depend on software. Without that software you still have free speech.
"If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech."
No, it's just a barrier to entry. Even if the software were free, you'd still have to pay access fees to connect. Are Telephone, cable and ISP fees a real danger to speech? No, of course not. Are the computers themselves free? Of course not. How are software prices any different in their threat to free speech than computer prices?
Of course, by "free" you might not mean price, but that's an even more absurd statement. Provide one example where the fact that software is proprietary endangers my ability to express myself on the internet. Does IE censor what I post here? You would have to be a helluva conspiracy theorist to believe that the intent of DRM is to lockout all forms of free speech.
There is always an opportunity to write your own software if none exists that does what you want. That software doesn't have to be "free software" in the FSF sense in order to accomplish the task.
"I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows."
Marketing yourself takes effort and money. You aren't entitled to become known without effort. Get to work.
"I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays."
That's just bullshit. The Zune isn't obligated to provide a free and convenient mechanism for people to do your marketing for you. The Zune's limits are there to protect your rights, not deny you entry. I would wager you don't own a Zune anyway.
"I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified."
Once again, a mechanism that exists to help protect copyright holders. Why aren't you "certified"? You feel YouTube owes you access and exposure? Why don't you start a site yourself?
"I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set."
Take it up with the owners of that information who obviously don't want you to distribute it.
"I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key."
What? That's just crap. Did you shoot it with a HiDef camera? If you did then it's in high definition. What imposes this special key? Nothing.
"I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene."
Then publish on a site that you create, pay for, and manage yourself. You seem to feel entitled to dictate the terms for how you use facilities provided by others.
"Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software."
Nonsense.
"But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough?"
The market will decide. That's what free markets do.
"...when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer..."
Without Hollywood, some technologies, such as DVRs, have no reason to exist. Contrary to your assertion, these companies aren't treated like the customer but they have to be given consideration (at least so far). Without content, content players are of no value.
"Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own."
Some feel that way. Most don't, and the computer industry has thrived entirely without free software. It might be better WITH free software, but there's no justification for saying the industry needs free software.
"You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do."
Just because you value software freedoms doesn't mean that software freedoms are critical.
"What right does Microsoft have to lock me out of my own files on a system with legally licensed software?"
It's actually your employer's computer, your employer's files, your employer's "legally licensed software", your employer's lockout policy, and your failure to follow your employer's procedures. Microsoft provides the options; take your complaints up with your manager.
I guess it's Apple that gets to decide what's "foolish" when they argue menu grammar as an example of why Windows is inferior to MacOS. Talk about something that doesn't really matter...
I fail to see how consistency in any of these matters is a bad thing regardless of the clever but meaningless quote. Valid criticism is valid criticism.
The US government has always been the most reliable, unbiased source of information on this subject;-)
I see no reason to believe that child porn works differently on the mind of a pedophile than adult porn works on those who desire adult sex. Furthermore, there is an assumption here that pedophiles desire to molest children and that porn increases that desire. Not all pedophiles are criminals, though the government would have you believe differently.
In any event, the subject isn't child porn, it's cartoons. If outlawing cartoons is justifiable in the case of underage sexual depictions, I see no reason why the scope shouldn't be much broader. We shouldn't allow drawings to encourage *any* socially unacceptable behavior. The justification is the same.
"Furthermore, it could be argued that this kind of stuff existing could alter the behavior of pedophiles."...and adult porn may alter the behavior of rapists, and guns may alter the behavior of murderers, and money could alter the behavior of thieves.
I would be interested to know if there are any other than sex offender lists. Once you've done your time you've paid your debt to society EXCEPT in the case of sex offenses (and that's bullshit).
"I'm sure the fact that I have children may skew my opinion in this matter."
Haha, yes (and I mean that in the most respectful way). I, too, have an adult child and have been through this.
The problem with your argument is that many areas of the country, and many countries around the world, recognize the age of consent at 17 or even lower. Just because a teen's thinking isn't fully mature (and that process continues for a long, long time) doesn't mean that he/she isn't capable of understanding the consequences of sexual consent. Perhaps laws could take into account the age of the partner, and they do sometimes, but I suspect the result would be too complicated to make good law.
I think there's a clear difference between adolescents and children from a sexual standpoint and I think we are doing ourselves a great disservice in lumping sexual acts with near-adults into the same category with child sex offenses. Any 30 year old that has sex with a 17 year old may be offensive to you and to others, but it's clearly not the same as a 21 year old having sex with an 8 year old.
Well said. Sex offenses are the only crimes where sentences can be extended after the fact and the government sees fit to impose ongoing additional punishments. Our system is horribly broken here.
No, not everyone has a SSN and there are laws restricting its mandatory disclosure. Governments see fit to ignore those laws from time to time, but your SSN should not be used except where it is required.
Since you are assuming it's a "given", please provide details of this recidivism rate, and while you are at it, please define what you mean by "pedophilia".
The government foists several fallacies on the public. One is that sexual acts with someone as old as 17 is pedophilia when it is not, another is that all pedophiles are predators or will be (no pedophile can resist raping a child), and finally that all child sex offenders will continue to commit crimes. All these things are bullshit.
"If the cops are tracking a suspected perv, they can arrest him now just for using the bad email."
I really can't see how anyone thinks this is a great idea nor do I respect the term "suspected perv". There are illegal activities and there are legal ones, and I don't think reclassifying legal activities as illegal ones is using sound judgement just because your personal opinion is that someone is a pervert. People get charged and convicted of sex crimes all the time where the reality of the circumstances don't look anything like pedophilia but the results lump them in with the "perv" crowd.
"...having a somewhat too intimate conversation with a kid..."
Boy, you entrust a lot to some of out lowest, paid, poorest educated, ex-marine cops. Those guys are the last ones I want deciding what constitutes "too intimate". How do they know it's really with a kid?
"This is by no means intended to completely solve the problem of molestation..."
Of course not, because the majority of child molestation occurs through other mechanisms. This won't even completely solve a small fraction of the problem (probably won't solve any at all).
"This is intended to be a charge that you can prove without a doubt."
Fabulous. More examples of piling on charges in order to raise the stakes and force the innocent into plea bargaining.
"If you see this from the point of view from how law enforecement works, it makes sense. There are a lot of cases where the cops get stuck without quite enough evidence to make charges stick. Now they have something that will stick for sure."
Of course I see it that way, and I'm greatly offended. I consider the legal system to exist for the pursuit of justice. All you seem to argue is that it exists for the pursuit of convictions. Cops *should* be burdened with the collection of actual evidence, not be given bogus additional laws which require no effort to prove.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. Nowhere in the post did it say "conversing in a suggestive manner" nor is it clear that doing so is illegal. BTW, it also never mentioned "convicted pedophile".
Faster than the default in OS X and Windows both. It's always too slow for me.
The difference is that I use very large monitors and the fallacy of "Fitt's law" is very apparent. Just watch people play around with a mac and a 30" monitor in an Apple store and you'll see it too.
"That made no sense, unless you only ever open one window at a time."
You need to think about it some more. One window (maximized) is the only time the mac has an advantage (because in OS X a maximize app has no title bar).
"The worlds best gui would not require using a mouse unless it were a better choice."
And yet OS X requires a mouse and Windows does not. Remember that Windows machines always had optional mouses, so Windows always had thorough and complete keyboard shortcuts. It was a functional requirement from the beginning.
"It's hardly a penalty when mouse movements are so quick."
They aren't on large displays. The mac argument (Fitt's law) was once reasonable when displays were low resolution and users typically only had one window at a time. Now, with monitors at 2560x1600 and greater (and multiple displays) large mouse movements are not always quick.
"I can't help it if I do more with my computer than you do, and seem to have more accurate mousing skills - I can hit what I aim for, but multiple menus can cause misclicks. I guess when you move a mouse REAL SLOW LIKE you can hit targets anywhere on the screen."
It sounds quite the opposite. You're the one that stacks windows in inconceivable ways in order to maximize the likelihood of misclicks, then for all your power-user mouse accuracy you manage to miss your menus.
"Is it quicker to reach the upper left corner of a screen or pixel 768,345? Look up fitts law."
Fitt's law is a myth on larger displays. Furthermore, the menu for an app isn't in the upper left corner, and you still have to travel back to the app afterward.
"I suggest you try using a few other X-Windows window managers and the Mac GUI for longer than ten seconds so you can avoid looking like such a UI noob in the future. It's pretty obvious you lack any kind of real-world experience with a GUI and a lot of windows."
I think if you knew me you would be more careful saying who's the "noob". I'm old and experienced enough to never consider using such a stupid and juvenile term. This "noob" was using computers when the macintosh was originally introduced.
"I don't know about you, but when a window on my screen gets shorter I can see more behind it."
The screen itself is shorter as well. The clock and search entry fields are in the title bar, and I arrange my windows mostly side-by-side on a wide screen display.
"Mac apps don't have to have a toolbar either, and can go full screen if they like."
All mac apps have a menu bar whether they need it or not. The menu bar wastes screen space always. Try putting a window on top of it if you don't believe me.
"What happens is the other window gains focus - so you don't really get the wrong menu..."
Yes you do, and you have to go back to the window and reestablish focus THEN travel back to the menu bar to try again.
"In OS X going for a menu will not cause a misclick, because the menu is always at the top. Talk about impossible..."
But not at the far left, where there's a menu that is unrelated to the app. Talk about non-intuitive. Furthermore, just because it's at the top doesn't mean that, by the time you hunt carefully to the right for your menu, you won't click slightly below and lose focus. It's far more likely than selecting a menu in the wrong window!
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"yes, not being able to put their best chip in their laptops hurt..."
Not to mention that their best chip wasn't as good as the x86 competition and was soon to be eclipsed by an x86 mobile processor in performance. Their best mobile processor was woefully inadequate compared to x86 options. That hurt a great deal as well. I think what informed users understood was "why am I paying $1000 more for a Mac when a PC runs more faster and is twice as fast. Now that Macs use Intel they are at relative price and performance parity so their appealing designs and alternative OS has more appeal to potential buyers.
Claiming that the internal processor designs of modern processors are "RISC" is arbitrary, though common. Modern "RISC" processors also use the same decoder stages after all.
It's a shame that a comment that actually "gets it" won't get modded up. Current x86 processors ARE superior general purpose CPUs. It's never been about instruction set design or elegance; it's about building a computer that does what you want it to do. RISC is all about old propaganda, RISC as an architectural concept was rendered irrelevent a long time ago.
"IBM picked it specifically because it sucked--they didn't want the PC to compete with their professional workstations."
Haha. IBM chose the 68000 but Motorola couldn't commit to the volumes and ship dates, so IBM switched to the 8088 which they were familiar with from previous projects. IBM didn't have ANY "professional workstations" at the time.
"...and backward compatibility requirements have prevented cleaning away crap like segmented memory."
"Crap" which costs us nothing. 32 and 64 bit OSes don't require programmers (other than the OS programmers themselves) to deal with segments.
"...so they can spend more on engineering and make up for x86's deficiencies."
It sounds like you think that's a bad thing. Would like worse processors?
"Even the major x86 hardware vendors, Intel and AMD, have long since stopped implementing x86 in hardware, choosing instead to design decoders which rapidly translate x86 instructions to the native RISC instruction set used by the cores."
Haha. Intel and AMD processors ARE hardware and their decoders don't run microcode. The concept that the "native instruction set" of the cores is "RISC" is also arbitrary. Current "RISC" processors, such as the G5, do the same thing.
"x86 was designed nearly 30 years ago as an entry level processor for the technology of the day."
Really? Entry level? I don't see how the x86 was considered "entry level" in any way.
"It was originally built as a 16-bit architecture, then extended to 32-bit, and recently 64-bit..."
So what? It hasn't prevented x86 from being a superior desktop processor in contrast to the PPC that you compare it to.
"All things being equal, the same investment of engineer man-hours would bear more performance fruit on MIPS, SPARC, POWER, ARM, Alpha, or any of a number of other more modern architectures, but because of the huge volumes the x86 manufacturers deal in, they can afford to spend the extra effort improving the x86."
That was true at one time, but today the instruction set decoder for x86 is mature, well understood, and constitutes a small portion of the die. Considering that it's RISC competition implements very similar archtectures but with different instruction sets to decode, your claim is simply wrong. The massive investments are what makes x86 superior to its competition in spite of its less modern instruction set. If the investments were similar, the architecture that would win is more likely to come from the superior design team, not from the superior ISA (IMO).
"So, even though the Cell can mop the floor with a Core 2 or an Opteron when fully optimized code is used, it's easier (right now at least) to develop code that uses an x86 well than code which fully utilizes the Cell."
The Cell isn't a general purpose CPU and cannot "mop the floor" with any CPU for general tasks. It's a high performance multicore DSP with a crappy PPC scheduling processor. It should not be discussed in the context of general purpose CPUs.
The answer to the question is easy: no other processor architecture came along that offered a compelling reason to lure the market away from the x86. It wasn't just the x86 itself that created the market dominance, but Intel managed to keep the performance good enough for long enough to hold onto the market until it could produce products that were, in fact, equal or superior in performance to the competition. Instruction sets don't really matter, after all, and calling x86 "ugly" is meaningless.
"Apple doesn't sell form over function."
Yes it does. Apple sells style, and where style compromises function, Apple compromises function. Nowhere is that more clear than with the iPod where there are not quite enough buttons to do the job. There is no on/off control and the battery life sacrifices that result are dumped on the end user.
"However, if, from the perspective of interface design, the first iteration Apple phone is anywhere near as good, compared to other phones, as the iPod is to other MP3 players, then I see no reason why the device couldn't be at least as good as the best Symbian based phones, and a good deal better than just about anything Motorola has produced in the past ten years-- including all-hype, no-function phones like the RAZR and, the ill-fated ROKR."
Hmmm, where do you start with that? The much-heralded iPod UI isn't really significantly better or different than other players. It's differentiation is style and form factor, not UI, and it's main market advantage is accesories. Regarding Symbian-based phones, Symbian doesn't provide the UI, only the OS, so Symbian phones don't have consistent UIs and Nokia and SE have, IMO, poor UIs that don't compete with the best. I do agree with the Moto comparison, but then that's not a hard standard to beat.
"I'm sorry, but your frothing at the mouth over the "misunderstood WM" just screams Astroturfing."
Because you don't agree with it? My WM5 Smartphone device seems no more bloated than the Symbian competitors I've used. I don't count PalmOS because it's braindead.
"Especially on such a mission-critical device as a cellphone."
Ignoring that this is a sentence fragment, there's nothing inherently "mission-critical" about a cellphone nor is there anything about WM5 that makes it less suitable in that regard to PalmOS.
"Bloated & unstable under normal use by the majority of users."
Another fine sentence fragment. WM5 is far more stable than PalmOS. It has nothing in common with Windows other than the name.
"The sad thing here is that WM competitors are Symbian, which is too carrier friendly to be considered (they do have a nice system). Then you have Palm, which for the most part the OS has been stagnant for the past 2 years or so, and is still a hell of allot better system for the end-user. Developers being happy means jack-shit if the device itself is junk. If your going to develop for just one: you develop for what has more possible sales. Any other decision is a poor business decision."
Symbian is an incomplete solution since it doesn't provide the UI. Neither Nokia's nor SE's systems offer stability or usability that compares to WM5 smartphone. I know because I've owned and used them all.
PalmOS isn't "a hell of allot better" for anyone. It's buggy as hell and doesn't offer even the most rudimentary of modern capabilities. It doesn't even multitask. Yes, PalmOS has been stagnant for years. All the talent left long ago as well. You might try a Blackjack then try to defend your clunky, pathetic PalmOS running on your bloated Treo.
You don't know anyone with a current WM5 Smartphone like a Dash or a Blackjack. Furthermore, you have one of those magical 650's that never crashes despite the fact that the OS is riddled with bugs that virtually assure failure eventually. Treo 650's like yours I frequently hear about on the internet but have never seen in real life. All of mine were horribly unstable and it wasn't the hardware. I believe your 650 to be the fantasy version.
As far as customization goes, I can't imagine what you are talking about. You can skin WM5 and there is a vastly larger library of software for it. The PalmOS Treos allow color schemes and background pics. Big deal.
WM5 supports 640x480 screens. PalmOS does 320x320.
PalmOS is dead and the Treo is a tired, old clunky hardware platform.
My Treo 650 would crash during the process of booting, sending an SMS and opening an SMS. Predicting when it would crash was impossible but it would occasionally get into a crash-boot-crash loop and require a firmware install. Yes, there were actions you didn't dare do like downloading emails but avoiding those was no assurance of avoiding problems. What a piece of crap. I owned three and knew several people that also owned them. All of mine behaved the same way and my friends had similar experiences.
Only idiots believe that Treo users that can't avoid crashes are idiots. What kind of apologist would make such a stupid statement anyway?
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody say "My Treo crashes every time I do ". I don't understand why people keep doing the thing that doesn't work."
My Samsung i320 (WM5 smartphone) is rock-solid, the UI is fine, and the performance is good. Browser is far superior, etc. Yes, the SMS isn't as good, there aren't as many thoughtful (but unstable touches), and the battery life isn't good, but the phone is super small and it kicks the crap out of any Treo.
"In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software."
That's not our world. In our world, computers are central to some forms of speech and those forms depend on software. Without that software you still have free speech.
"If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech."
No, it's just a barrier to entry. Even if the software were free, you'd still have to pay access fees to connect. Are Telephone, cable and ISP fees a real danger to speech? No, of course not. Are the computers themselves free? Of course not. How are software prices any different in their threat to free speech than computer prices?
Of course, by "free" you might not mean price, but that's an even more absurd statement. Provide one example where the fact that software is proprietary endangers my ability to express myself on the internet. Does IE censor what I post here? You would have to be a helluva conspiracy theorist to believe that the intent of DRM is to lockout all forms of free speech.
There is always an opportunity to write your own software if none exists that does what you want. That software doesn't have to be "free software" in the FSF sense in order to accomplish the task.
"I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows."
Marketing yourself takes effort and money. You aren't entitled to become known without effort. Get to work.
"I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays."
That's just bullshit. The Zune isn't obligated to provide a free and convenient mechanism for people to do your marketing for you. The Zune's limits are there to protect your rights, not deny you entry. I would wager you don't own a Zune anyway.
"I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified."
Once again, a mechanism that exists to help protect copyright holders. Why aren't you "certified"? You feel YouTube owes you access and exposure? Why don't you start a site yourself?
"I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set."
Take it up with the owners of that information who obviously don't want you to distribute it.
"I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key."
What? That's just crap. Did you shoot it with a HiDef camera? If you did then it's in high definition. What imposes this special key? Nothing.
"I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene."
Then publish on a site that you create, pay for, and manage yourself. You seem to feel entitled to dictate the terms for how you use facilities provided by others.
"Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software."
Nonsense.
"But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough?"
The market will decide. That's what free markets do.
"...when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer..."
Without Hollywood, some technologies, such as DVRs, have no reason to exist. Contrary to your assertion, these companies aren't treated like the customer but they have to be given consideration (at least so far). Without content, content players are of no value.
"Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own."
Some feel that way. Most don't, and the computer industry has thrived entirely without free software. It might be better WITH free software, but there's no justification for saying the industry needs free software.
"You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do."
Just because you value software freedoms doesn't mean that software freedoms are critical.
"What right does Microsoft have to lock me out of my own files on a system with legally licensed software?"
It's actually your employer's computer, your employer's files, your employer's "legally licensed software", your employer's lockout policy, and your failure to follow your employer's procedures. Microsoft provides the options; take your complaints up with your manager.
"First of all, brushed metal and shiny scroll bars have nothing to do with user interface."
You don't feel that the "look" part of "look and feel" matters to a UI? You think that "feel" is all that defines a UI?
"Each of these applications look different because they are different."
The point is that they are gratuitously different having nothing to do with their function.
"If an application is intuitive and responsive, like iTunes, Safari, and Mail, it should look different from other applications."
Why? How does making the apps different for the sake of difference improve usability or intuition?
Since when is iTunes "responsive". It's slow as a dog.
I guess it's Apple that gets to decide what's "foolish" when they argue menu grammar as an example of why Windows is inferior to MacOS. Talk about something that doesn't really matter...
I fail to see how consistency in any of these matters is a bad thing regardless of the clever but meaningless quote. Valid criticism is valid criticism.
The US government has always been the most reliable, unbiased source of information on this subject ;-)
I see no reason to believe that child porn works differently on the mind of a pedophile than adult porn works on those who desire adult sex. Furthermore, there is an assumption here that pedophiles desire to molest children and that porn increases that desire. Not all pedophiles are criminals, though the government would have you believe differently.
In any event, the subject isn't child porn, it's cartoons. If outlawing cartoons is justifiable in the case of underage sexual depictions, I see no reason why the scope shouldn't be much broader. We shouldn't allow drawings to encourage *any* socially unacceptable behavior. The justification is the same.
"Furthermore, it could be argued that this kind of stuff existing could alter the behavior of pedophiles." ...and adult porn may alter the behavior of rapists, and guns may alter the behavior of murderers, and money could alter the behavior of thieves.
I would be interested to know if there are any other than sex offender lists. Once you've done your time you've paid your debt to society EXCEPT in the case of sex offenses (and that's bullshit).
"I'm sure the fact that I have children may skew my opinion in this matter."
Haha, yes (and I mean that in the most respectful way). I, too, have an adult child and have been through this.
The problem with your argument is that many areas of the country, and many countries around the world, recognize the age of consent at 17 or even lower. Just because a teen's thinking isn't fully mature (and that process continues for a long, long time) doesn't mean that he/she isn't capable of understanding the consequences of sexual consent. Perhaps laws could take into account the age of the partner, and they do sometimes, but I suspect the result would be too complicated to make good law.
I think there's a clear difference between adolescents and children from a sexual standpoint and I think we are doing ourselves a great disservice in lumping sexual acts with near-adults into the same category with child sex offenses. Any 30 year old that has sex with a 17 year old may be offensive to you and to others, but it's clearly not the same as a 21 year old having sex with an 8 year old.
Well said. Sex offenses are the only crimes where sentences can be extended after the fact and the government sees fit to impose ongoing additional punishments. Our system is horribly broken here.
No, not everyone has a SSN and there are laws restricting its mandatory disclosure. Governments see fit to ignore those laws from time to time, but your SSN should not be used except where it is required.
"But given the recidivism rate of pedophilia..."
Since you are assuming it's a "given", please provide details of this recidivism rate, and while you are at it, please define what you mean by "pedophilia".
The government foists several fallacies on the public. One is that sexual acts with someone as old as 17 is pedophilia when it is not, another is that all pedophiles are predators or will be (no pedophile can resist raping a child), and finally that all child sex offenders will continue to commit crimes. All these things are bullshit.
"If the cops are tracking a suspected perv, they can arrest him now just for using the bad email."
I really can't see how anyone thinks this is a great idea nor do I respect the term "suspected perv". There are illegal activities and there are legal ones, and I don't think reclassifying legal activities as illegal ones is using sound judgement just because your personal opinion is that someone is a pervert. People get charged and convicted of sex crimes all the time where the reality of the circumstances don't look anything like pedophilia but the results lump them in with the "perv" crowd.
"...having a somewhat too intimate conversation with a kid..."
Boy, you entrust a lot to some of out lowest, paid, poorest educated, ex-marine cops. Those guys are the last ones I want deciding what constitutes "too intimate". How do they know it's really with a kid?
"This is by no means intended to completely solve the problem of molestation..."
Of course not, because the majority of child molestation occurs through other mechanisms. This won't even completely solve a small fraction of the problem (probably won't solve any at all).
"This is intended to be a charge that you can prove without a doubt."
Fabulous. More examples of piling on charges in order to raise the stakes and force the innocent into plea bargaining.
"If you see this from the point of view from how law enforecement works, it makes sense. There are a lot of cases where the cops get stuck without quite enough evidence to make charges stick. Now they have something that will stick for sure."
Of course I see it that way, and I'm greatly offended. I consider the legal system to exist for the pursuit of justice. All you seem to argue is that it exists for the pursuit of convictions. Cops *should* be burdened with the collection of actual evidence, not be given bogus additional laws which require no effort to prove.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. Nowhere in the post did it say "conversing in a suggestive manner" nor is it clear that doing so is illegal. BTW, it also never mentioned "convicted pedophile".
Faster than the default in OS X and Windows both. It's always too slow for me.
The difference is that I use very large monitors and the fallacy of "Fitt's law" is very apparent. Just watch people play around with a mac and a 30" monitor in an Apple store and you'll see it too.
"That made no sense, unless you only ever open one window at a time."
You need to think about it some more. One window (maximized) is the only time the mac has an advantage (because in OS X a maximize app has no title bar).
"The worlds best gui would not require using a mouse unless it were a better choice."
And yet OS X requires a mouse and Windows does not. Remember that Windows machines always had optional mouses, so Windows always had thorough and complete keyboard shortcuts. It was a functional requirement from the beginning.
"It's hardly a penalty when mouse movements are so quick."
They aren't on large displays. The mac argument (Fitt's law) was once reasonable when displays were low resolution and users typically only had one window at a time. Now, with monitors at 2560x1600 and greater (and multiple displays) large mouse movements are not always quick.
"I can't help it if I do more with my computer than you do, and seem to have more accurate mousing skills - I can hit what I aim for, but multiple menus can cause misclicks. I guess when you move a mouse REAL SLOW LIKE you can hit targets anywhere on the screen."
It sounds quite the opposite. You're the one that stacks windows in inconceivable ways in order to maximize the likelihood of misclicks, then for all your power-user mouse accuracy you manage to miss your menus.
"Is it quicker to reach the upper left corner of a screen or pixel 768,345? Look up fitts law."
Fitt's law is a myth on larger displays. Furthermore, the menu for an app isn't in the upper left corner, and you still have to travel back to the app afterward.
"I suggest you try using a few other X-Windows window managers and the Mac GUI for longer than ten seconds so you can avoid looking like such a UI noob in the future. It's pretty obvious you lack any kind of real-world experience with a GUI and a lot of windows."
I think if you knew me you would be more careful saying who's the "noob". I'm old and experienced enough to never consider using such a stupid and juvenile term. This "noob" was using computers when the macintosh was originally introduced.
"I don't know about you, but when a window on my screen gets shorter I can see more behind it."
The screen itself is shorter as well. The clock and search entry fields are in the title bar, and I arrange my windows mostly side-by-side on a wide screen display.
"Mac apps don't have to have a toolbar either, and can go full screen if they like."
All mac apps have a menu bar whether they need it or not. The menu bar wastes screen space always. Try putting a window on top of it if you don't believe me.
"What happens is the other window gains focus - so you don't really get the wrong menu..."
Yes you do, and you have to go back to the window and reestablish focus THEN travel back to the menu bar to try again.
"In OS X going for a menu will not cause a misclick, because the menu is always at the top. Talk about impossible..."
But not at the far left, where there's a menu that is unrelated to the app. Talk about non-intuitive. Furthermore, just because it's at the top doesn't mean that, by the time you hunt carefully to the right for your menu, you won't click slightly below and lose focus. It's far more likely than selecting a menu in the wrong window!
Just setting the record straight for those who'd say that Apple invented color. Jobs was notoriously anti-color.
Getting software to understand more than 8 or 12 bits of color isn't hard. It was the cost of hardware at the time.