Which are of course (curiously) their worst products. Photoshop and Illustrator on the other hand are damn good. Not perfect, but about as good as software gets. InDesign seemed to be pretty good to while I used it. After Effects is in a bit of a class of it's own: there's a lot of things I'd change, but there's no real competitor, and it too is stable, mature, and powerful.
Adobe has made good software. Whether a newly-built office app would be any good remains to be seen of course.
A nice smooth professional-feeling SVG editor is/was needed to give SVG traction. Inkscape is a good start, but it's still a just a start. It needs to run on Macs without X11 to really break into the design market.
Uh, I recently installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's computer, and was similarly confused by the partitioning aspect of the install (which I ended up having to do manually). Now, like him I would normally consider myself computer savvy (macs, not Windows in this case), even if I don't know a lot about partitioning. The help in Ubuntu is often of a very cursory nature, the partitioning help particularly so.
I'm very happy with Ubuntu now it's up and running, it's simple, elegant and fast, but the installation process needs more help for the users who might be trying to do something other than wipe the disk and install Ubuntu on ext3.
I actually think this is a bit of a broader problem with the Linux mindset: either you're a stupid GUI user who only wants the vanilla setup and everything done automatically, or you're command-line wizard. Actually, I think the people most likely to switch to Linux are power GUI users.
Check out "ubuntu" versus "microsoft" or "windows" and you'll see the opposite trend. I don't know how google trends works, but I think you need to check a variety of searches rather than just one.
One reason (probably why you can find games for macs): you'll have far less competition. Having 50% of 2% of the market is better than 0.5% of 100%. While the Linux gaming market is small, it's pretty unsaturated. There's got to be other reasons for lack of gaming on Linux.
It has nothing to do with ease of use or speed. If you think about it, how many people have tried Linux, and gone back to Windows because it was slow/difficult to use? I'm guessing pretty close to zero in market terms. No, people never try it.
The key is apps. Can't run iTunes - oh dear. No Photoshop either? Err um... I think I'll stick with Windows/OS X. It's not clear that Linux does anything extra for the desktop user at all. And that's why it's not krushing the proprietary kompetition.
... and Photoshop, Illustrator, and video editing apps. There is a hell of a lot of media software that people need that you just can't get on Linux (either natively of a replacement). I want to switch (from OS X), but I just can't. For example, what do I replace After Effects with?
No kidding. I was happy with Apple back in the risc (especially G3-G4) days, when it was an esoteric platform that nobody used or even knew anything about. I'd recommend getting a mac to anybody that would listen. Now I'm getting nervous, Apple seems willing and able to flex their corporate muscles to dominate markets, and it would be a far worse monopoly than Microsoft. I'm shifting to using F/OSS wherever I can (oh lordy, please make the GIMP usable), and am vaguely planning to move to Linux in the next couple of years.
The paper's a nice try, but it's all just so dang shaky. We don't really know if consciousness can be simulated in non-biological materials. We don't know whether computational power will level off before giving us anything like the power to do it, or indeed whether it is physically possible to crunch those sorts of numbers at all. We don't know how difficult it would be to write the software without bugs (very hard I should think). We don't now whether it would be considered worthwhile economically or perhaps more pertinently, ethical, in future society.
I think these sort of ideas seem plausible because of the great strides in computer technology. It's flying cars though in my opinion. Computers will get very, very powerful, and then start to level off. The future holds a different branch; genetic engineering most likely.
I wasn't talking about virus scanners, I was thinking more along the lines that it's very unlikely that the ad did what it said it would do, and much more likely it was study or a joke -- people would guess that before clicking it.
Or better yet, have a machine that can handle all the filters and anti alias on at full-resolution on the fly. Having no rendering time is better than farming it out. The point of my original comment here was that there are things people want to do that current chips are no where near doing -- to counter the weird idea here at slashdot that no one needs faster chips.
Err, no. All the design/post-production places I've worked at use 1 machine/1 designer (not say there isn't a bunch of other arrangements out there). Snappyness is really important in graphics.
Understand that I want to be able to do dozens of different operations a minute, some small, some large (as far as computational power is concerned), and I want them all to be snappy. The sort of thing would be, "oops no, rotate it back 5 degrees and try 7, okay that looks good now let's try it without the blur" -- if that takes any appreciable time at all, the thing is too slow. I don't see how that is going to be solved by a thin client architecture.
I'm mostly 2D, though a do sometimes composite in 3D in After Effects (another thing which it would be good to have like 2000x the power for). I don't know how much is graphics card-dependent. In Photoshop I think not a lot. Vector graphics maybe.
Anyone doing graphics, even hobbyists. Editing home movies with effects, for example can use an almost unlimited amount of resources.
As an artist working with a graphics tablet on large file in photoshop, and complex vector graphics, processors are no where near fast enough. I want everything now. I don't want to wait for the screen to redraw. I don't want to have to wait for filters. Bollocks to that. Give me 64-core 24GHz machine an I'd find a way to slow it down.
I totally disagree, I've been using the Thunderbird 2.0 RC for a while now, and I'm very impressed with it's integration with OS X UI. It looks beautiful (and I wouldn't say that about many OSS apps on OS X).
Really solid too. One of the best releases of an OSS app I've seen.
That's because you're thinking of it as a smartphone. Think of it as an Apple gadget. A lot of mac users will buy one even if they wouldn't normally be in the market for a smartphone.
On other disadvantage is that credit unions aren't guaranteed by the central or reserve bank, like banks are, so that if they go bust, you lose your money. I remember a large credit union in Australia a few years back, can't remember it's name though.
You have a poor understanding of evolution. Evolution is not directed toward anything, there are no real general trends. Animals may evolve greater or lesser intelligence, depending on what local conditions favour. They certainly won't evolve en-mass toward being sentient--that's crazy talk.
I suggest you read some Gould; he does a good job of explaining why your type of thinking on evolution, while common, is completely wrong-headed.
Slashdot Mirror
Which are of course (curiously) their worst products. Photoshop and Illustrator on the other hand are damn good. Not perfect, but about as good as software gets. InDesign seemed to be pretty good to while I used it. After Effects is in a bit of a class of it's own: there's a lot of things I'd change, but there's no real competitor, and it too is stable, mature, and powerful.
Adobe has made good software. Whether a newly-built office app would be any good remains to be seen of course.
A nice smooth professional-feeling SVG editor is/was needed to give SVG traction. Inkscape is a good start, but it's still a just a start. It needs to run on Macs without X11 to really break into the design market.
Can't... minimize... window... Windows Media Player for OS X... spiking... processor... while... doing... nothing!
Uh, I recently installed Ubuntu on my girlfriend's computer, and was similarly confused by the partitioning aspect of the install (which I ended up having to do manually). Now, like him I would normally consider myself computer savvy (macs, not Windows in this case), even if I don't know a lot about partitioning. The help in Ubuntu is often of a very cursory nature, the partitioning help particularly so.
I'm very happy with Ubuntu now it's up and running, it's simple, elegant and fast, but the installation process needs more help for the users who might be trying to do something other than wipe the disk and install Ubuntu on ext3.
I actually think this is a bit of a broader problem with the Linux mindset: either you're a stupid GUI user who only wants the vanilla setup and everything done automatically, or you're command-line wizard. Actually, I think the people most likely to switch to Linux are power GUI users.
Check out "ubuntu" versus "microsoft" or "windows" and you'll see the opposite trend. I don't know how google trends works, but I think you need to check a variety of searches rather than just one.
One reason (probably why you can find games for macs): you'll have far less competition. Having 50% of 2% of the market is better than 0.5% of 100%. While the Linux gaming market is small, it's pretty unsaturated. There's got to be other reasons for lack of gaming on Linux.
It has nothing to do with ease of use or speed. If you think about it, how many people have tried Linux, and gone back to Windows because it was slow/difficult to use? I'm guessing pretty close to zero in market terms. No, people never try it. The key is apps. Can't run iTunes - oh dear. No Photoshop either? Err um... I think I'll stick with Windows/OS X. It's not clear that Linux does anything extra for the desktop user at all. And that's why it's not krushing the proprietary kompetition.
... and Photoshop, Illustrator, and video editing apps. There is a hell of a lot of media software that people need that you just can't get on Linux (either natively of a replacement). I want to switch (from OS X), but I just can't. For example, what do I replace After Effects with?
No kidding. I was happy with Apple back in the risc (especially G3-G4) days, when it was an esoteric platform that nobody used or even knew anything about. I'd recommend getting a mac to anybody that would listen. Now I'm getting nervous, Apple seems willing and able to flex their corporate muscles to dominate markets, and it would be a far worse monopoly than Microsoft. I'm shifting to using F/OSS wherever I can (oh lordy, please make the GIMP usable), and am vaguely planning to move to Linux in the next couple of years.
The paper's a nice try, but it's all just so dang shaky. We don't really know if consciousness can be simulated in non-biological materials. We don't know whether computational power will level off before giving us anything like the power to do it, or indeed whether it is physically possible to crunch those sorts of numbers at all. We don't know how difficult it would be to write the software without bugs (very hard I should think). We don't now whether it would be considered worthwhile economically or perhaps more pertinently, ethical, in future society.
I think these sort of ideas seem plausible because of the great strides in computer technology. It's flying cars though in my opinion. Computers will get very, very powerful, and then start to level off. The future holds a different branch; genetic engineering most likely.
I wasn't talking about virus scanners, I was thinking more along the lines that it's very unlikely that the ad did what it said it would do, and much more likely it was study or a joke -- people would guess that before clicking it.
And of that tiny percentage how many were Windows users taking the fairly safe bet that the ad didn't do what it said?
Informative? Mods didn't know about double-clicking apparently. I wonder how they got their internets to run.
Or better yet, have a machine that can handle all the filters and anti alias on at full-resolution on the fly. Having no rendering time is better than farming it out. The point of my original comment here was that there are things people want to do that current chips are no where near doing -- to counter the weird idea here at slashdot that no one needs faster chips.
Err, no. All the design/post-production places I've worked at use 1 machine/1 designer (not say there isn't a bunch of other arrangements out there). Snappyness is really important in graphics. Understand that I want to be able to do dozens of different operations a minute, some small, some large (as far as computational power is concerned), and I want them all to be snappy. The sort of thing would be, "oops no, rotate it back 5 degrees and try 7, okay that looks good now let's try it without the blur" -- if that takes any appreciable time at all, the thing is too slow. I don't see how that is going to be solved by a thin client architecture.
I'm mostly 2D, though a do sometimes composite in 3D in After Effects (another thing which it would be good to have like 2000x the power for). I don't know how much is graphics card-dependent. In Photoshop I think not a lot. Vector graphics maybe.
Anyone doing graphics, even hobbyists. Editing home movies with effects, for example can use an almost unlimited amount of resources. As an artist working with a graphics tablet on large file in photoshop, and complex vector graphics, processors are no where near fast enough. I want everything now. I don't want to wait for the screen to redraw. I don't want to have to wait for filters. Bollocks to that. Give me 64-core 24GHz machine an I'd find a way to slow it down.
I totally disagree, I've been using the Thunderbird 2.0 RC for a while now, and I'm very impressed with it's integration with OS X UI. It looks beautiful (and I wouldn't say that about many OSS apps on OS X). Really solid too. One of the best releases of an OSS app I've seen.
Mozilla + Apple + Opera = monopoly? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
That's because you're thinking of it as a smartphone. Think of it as an Apple gadget. A lot of mac users will buy one even if they wouldn't normally be in the market for a smartphone.
The iPhone will sell to Macintosh owners for a start. Care to back up the statement that smartphone sales are based more on specs than MP3 players?
I, for one, welcome our new space-bee overlords.
Science moves on by showing just how much is impossible in the universe -- which is plenty.
On other disadvantage is that credit unions aren't guaranteed by the central or reserve bank, like banks are, so that if they go bust, you lose your money. I remember a large credit union in Australia a few years back, can't remember it's name though.
You have a poor understanding of evolution. Evolution is not directed toward anything, there are no real general trends. Animals may evolve greater or lesser intelligence, depending on what local conditions favour. They certainly won't evolve en-mass toward being sentient--that's crazy talk. I suggest you read some Gould; he does a good job of explaining why your type of thinking on evolution, while common, is completely wrong-headed.