Ok, its hardly a "netbook" - but ubiquitous WiFi and mobile internet weren't really on the menu in 1997. Actually, the failure of this, and also the Psion Series 7 might suggest that mobile web browsing was the missing ingredient needed to get the "small, cheap laptop" market off the ground.
As for the MacBook Air, I think Apple were a bit unlucky with the timing: it was clearly intended to compete with other "premium" ultra-compact laptops from Sony et. al. - instead, everybody seemed to put it head-to-head with the (brilliant, but more Fischer Price than Jonathan Ive) EEE PC 701.
I have a passport already I can take to a bank if I open a new account.
But what is a passport, if not a form of identity card? Thing is, not everybody has a passport. Not everybody is entitled to a UK passport - so the banks start asking for a utility bill (what if you're not responsible for utility bills where you live) or a birth certificate (scratty little bit of paper with illegible doctor's handwriting) or some other evidence never designed as proof of ID.
Now, in a perfect world, you could envisage a high-tech electronic ID card with top-notch encryption beautifully set up so that it only told the reader what they were entitled to know: the barman slots it in a reader and all it tells him is that you are over 18. The cellphone company slot it in, type in the address you've given them and the ID card says "yes, that's right". The policeman swipes your card, lets you go on your way and he doesn't even discover your name until he persuades a judge that there is a valid reason to unlock the encrypted record.
Produce one of those and I'd sign up because it would be less invasive than what currently happens... except there is One Small Problem: the odds of our beloved government getting it right are about the same as... (hmm: Monkeys writing Shakespeare? Moles building a Large Hadron Collider? Crows building an Olympic stadium? Oh, wait, I know)..are about the same as the odds of the government successfully delivering any ambitious IT project.
Well, some people (who, presumably, live in the woods, don't have bank account, don't drive a car and never leave the country) just object on principle. Personally, I don't see that one: in this world you need to prove your identity from time to time, and without having a "proper" identity scheme we end up using all sorts of inappropriate kludges (e.g. banks tend to ask for a gas or electricity bill).
Then there's the fear of police having the power to stop people and demand "papers". Now, that's a legitimate fear demanding eternal vigilance and all that but its really got naff all to do with ID cards: there's nothing fundamental about ID cards which says that police have to be given the power to inspect them. Plus, if the Fascists take over then it will take them a whole week to print and issue "papers".
Now we get to the more serious objections - primarily "mission creep". If the Government were simply rolling out a better alternative to current "ad hoc" methods of identity checking then it wouldn't be so bad. However, these are being touted as the answer to terrorism, fraud, illegal immigrants, healthcare provision and whatever was on the front page of the Daily Mail yesterday. Consequently, more and more bells and whistles are being added, meaning more and more information about individuals will be gathered to protect us against the barbarians at the gate, but will probably end up being used to police dog fouling.
Finally, even if the conspiracy theorists are right, the government's track record on large IT projects doesn't bode well. (1984 is scary enough, but Brazil is even scarier!) Currently, we're getting almost daily stories of government departments losing laptops, CDs and memory sticks containing personal information, which doesn't help.
Right, because socialism never had any unintended effects like the complete implosion of the second largest country in the world or anything.
I suspect that the sort of high-stakes crap game in which Wall Street has just thrown snake eyes has about as much in common with the ideals of capitalism as the old USSR had in common with the political ideals of socialism.
I thought capitalism was supposed to work because of "enlightened self-interest". Looks like the "enlightened" bit got outsourced.
I mean seriously - this is just too good to be true. Jack Thompson disbarred. The RIAA loses its first court case on their "making available" theory.
Wait till you get to the one about your government wanting $2000 of your money to bail out banks who apparently still thought that pyramid schemes were a good idea.
Looking at the paper on the Roberts study linked to TFA:
Tell some people bad stuff about a Republican, then tell them it isn't true. The pro-Democrats in the audience believe the bad stuff and ignore the rebuttal. The pro-Republicans... mostly ignored the bad stuff in the first place (or maybe didn't think it was so bad?)
Film at 11. Or, to put it another way, mud sticks.
I can't quickly see any link from the paper to the specific rebuttal of the ad which the participants were shown - but the paper assures us that it was a "a sharp, factual, bipartisan evisceration of its insinuations" - so that's alright then. (I'm reluctant to criticize a paper too deeply after a 2 minute skim, but that line made my red pen itch).
The authors of the paper seem to be taking as axiomatic that the ad was completely untrue and the rebuttal was compelling. After all, the title of the paper says "False political beliefs".
Note that the question in the study was "do you support Roberts for Supreme Court Justice" and not "do you believe that the ad was accurate". Any good propaganda will contain a grain of truth - however disingenuously presented. In this case, it was that one of the "nonviolent" protesters was a convicted violent protester. That shouldn't count for anything in a court of law, but it might reduce your audience's enthusiasm for the right to protest.
This study would be more interesting if it were done using a nice, well-defined reproducible or falsifiable scientific or mathematical fact and a common misconception. Actually, this has been done in science/math education and there is evidence that merely telling someone "your belief is wrong - here is the right answer" is ineffective unless you force them to see the absurd consequences of their belief. (go Google for "cognitive conflict").
Much as I like Douglas Adams, really, he's just paraphrasing Plato.
Actually, in 2159, the trustees of the Adams estate sent a copy of the H2G2 back though a time warp to ancient Greece and successfully sued Plato for copyright breach.
Isn't it terrible when people try and capitalize on the wise and witty sayings of others...?
Yes, a big bagless vacuum cleaner. In my theory I'll outline to time of the apocalypse, or as I call it, Dyson time.
Sorry, but Dyson (the vacuum cleaner co) had their geek card withdrawn when they released a vacuum cleaner with a large spherical wheel and called it the Dyson ball. What a missed opportunity... Looks like my next vacuum cleaner will have to be a Vax.
Release lame music format which combines the convenience, economy and logistical advantages of physical CDs with the sound quality of MP3 and the relative cheapness of flash memory.
Make big deal of how it is DRM free
???
Fail to profit
Announce that there is clearly no demand for DRM-free music.
Y'know, I don't think that business plan even needs the ??? step!
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the idea of buying music without in some way being able to damage the environment has been KILLING me.
Don't worry - all that industrial grade server and networking hardware needed to give you 24/7 broadband internet access is doing its bit for turning irreplacable fossil fuels into nice, warming carbon dioxide - and, before you know it, will be obsolete and happily sitting in a landfill leeching crap into the water table.
I suspect that its still better than moving lumps of plastic around in big trucks, but if you're worried about not doing your bit to destroy the planet, fear not - every little helps and the laws of thermodynamics are right behind you. In the end, entropy will even beat City Hall and the IRS.
Actually (as others in this thread have stated) violent crime is going down. (see page 19 of The British Crime Survey - warning, 200+ page PDF - I couldn't quickly find a news report because for every article on this there are a dozen about someone being stabbed in a fight). There might be some rise in knife crime amongst younger people, but that might be because the fscking media have got every kid in the country convinced that every other kid is carrying.
As is your prerogative. However, I'm not selling you anything or claiming to have proven some scientific truth - just offering an anecdote to illustrate my observation about different cultures having different sensitivities.
(I could also mention things like adverts for prescription medicines or unregulated political commercials which are commonplace in the US but would be unthinkable in the UK).
Anecdote is not evidence - but then a Slashdot comment is not a scientific paper or an article in The Economist so please excuse me if I didn't spend a week trying to locate an online archives of 1990s PBS announcer links., Its also vaguely possible that it was some other US TV network with a penchant for airing BBC dramas.
How did the English, who once ruled a vast empire, become such sissified little bitches?
We have knives.
The USA has Janet Jackson's nipple... or, in some states, try mentioning dice (gambling!) or magic (religion!) in a school maths book.
I remember once, while visiting the USA, I caught a showing of the British political satire/thriller "To Play The King" on PBS. PBS felt it necessary to prefix the show with a patronising lecture on why monarchies were a bad thing and the US had fought a war of independence against the idea. I was astounded - we might get warnings about potentially offensive material/flashing lights/may contain nuts before a show, we might get slightly edited versions of shows which are shown when the kids are awake, we might get "helpline numbers" if a show mentions child abuse or AIDS but we do not get lectured on how we should interpret the show we are about to see.
Different folks, different disproportionate obsessions, I suppose. Now, the knife crime figures are being shamelessly talked up at the moment, but I think its pretty safe to say that they account for more deaths than "wardrobe malfunction".
If at Xmas, your Significant Other/Parent/Dear Grandmama (delete as apppropriate) gave you a DVD, would you send it back to him/her explaining that you couldn't accept it since it used a patent-encumbered codec and an awful (in every sense of the word) encryption system?
If your answer is yes, then you are morally entitled to object on ideological grounds to Canonical's undermining of the Four Freedoms and tacit endorsement of the corrupt patent system.
At that point, people distributing Ubuntu to friends need to specifically say that it costs $90.
Those in the know will use the free drivers (and tell their friends where to get them).
Free-as-in-speech software purists need proprietary codecs like a vegan needs a steak-knife, so they have nothing to complain about - unless they think that Joe Potential-Switcher, given the choice between (a) sticking with Windows/Mac or (b) converting their entire media collection to open formats (which you can't do without a codec for the source format anyway) is going to choose (b).
...if you do decide to fork out $90, that isn't a lot if you offset it against the metric shitload of OS and application software you just got for free, and if that includes a nice little something for Canonical on the side then, well, they deserve it.
Using RFC 1149 of course. Great news for Open Source since Linux's preferred carrier type placed severe limitations on overland RFC1149 performance*, but is ideally suited to a marine environment.
Firefox is a trademark, Mozilla need to defend that trademark
Since when did defending a trademark require that you get your customers to agree to an EULA? Do cans of a well-known brand of fizzy drink contain the words "by pulling this tab you agree to..."? Nope - the little "tm" after the name seems to suffice.
Now, if you're going to re-distribute the product, that the little "(c)" on the splash screen reminds you that nothing gives you the right to do that unless you can find the license that says otherwise - no need to make every user agree to a license.
and it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel"
Personally, I think that in a user-friendly Unix the web browser should be called "Web Browser", the word-processor "Word Processor", the spreadsheet "Spreadsheet" and the photo editor... well, anything other than "gimp" really:-)
Power users could re-map those to their favorite applications using some obviously-named utility like "kSPAD".
it's that they actively broke WebKit on Mac, so it doesn't even compile anymore
So Chrome relies on patches to Webkit? If Google have made the strategic decision to prioritize Windows and port later, then the fact that these patches are currently Windows-only is hardly surprising and doesn't detract from the fact that the vast bulk of Webkit is already written for them.
If you follow a couple of links from TFA you'll find the Mac port status page, according to which the chrome version of Webkit does compile on Mac. I'm not doubting your claim that, at some stage, it didn't, but that clearly wasn't a big job. Heck, even repackaging a complex codebase as an XCode project takes time!
they spent their time hacking on WebKit in a poorly-conceived, poorly-planned, or just plain incompetent manner.
I think that claim needs a bit more evidence... Least hypothesis is that their patches were along the lines of "#ifdef WINDOWS dothis() #else TODO".
Bottom line is that it takes far longer to develop and for 3 platforms than for 1 platform - especially if you want to optimize for each platform rather than use a lowest-common-denominator system. In the case of Chrome there is a pretty important test:
Chrome for Windows out the door (at least in beta) before IE8 launches: PASS
Chrome for Windows, Mac and Linux launched together, six months after IE8 SP1 when 80% of windows users have made the switch to IE8: FAIL
Not really - they want a Windows browser to deliver their apps on which, largely thanks to the Google name, might stand a chance of making some inroads against IE.
Mac and Linux versions would be nice too - but those users already use either Firefox or Webkit/Safari which have a better reputation for standards compliance and aren't controlled by Microsoft. That last is particularly important if your name is Google and you produce webapps which compete with Microsofts office products.
So why again is the Mac port "closer to start than finish"
Because they obviously chose to develop for Windows and port later, rather than develop all 3 versions in parallel. So maybe they delayed the Mac and Linux versions at the expense of Windows, but the upshot is that they got the Windows beta out before IE8 launches. Kinda strategic.
Chrome is based on Webkit
So what if they don't have to write WebKit for Mac? They didn't have to write WebKit for Windows, either! What Google are spending their time on will be the not insubstantial bits that wrap around Webkit to make it Chrome.
it's not like there aren't any cross-platform widget sets out there
Looks to me like they're using their own Widget set. Plus (as both MS and Mozilla have found in the past) Mac users tend to come down hard on apps that don't look as if they were born and bred on a Mac.
What would you expect if you admitted you're a drunken dope user on Facebook? An award for honesty?
Its fine as long as it stops at that.
However, what would you expect if you stated in an online debate that drugs should be legalized? Or if a "psychological analysis*" of your/. postings revealed that you had difficulty forming relationships, a hostile attitude to authority and a tendency to drop F-bombs?
...because sure as eggs is eggs, companies will start to outsource this work to "profiling" services who will apply zero-intelligence keyword searches and pseudo-psychology to the job - and witch hunters don't get paid unless they find witches.
(* as in, "this guy posts to slashdot, therefore...")
The proof? Do you react negativly to say an american indian as a european? No, you never dealt with them, never heard negative stories about them, didn't see them hanging on street corners, so you start the encounter with a blank slate.
Unfortunately, I think you'll find that well-educated Europeans will have at least some notion of the issues affecting native Americans, while less-well-informed Europeans will have been exposed to the best negative stereotypes that Hollywood can sell.
Also, sadly, the first time Europeans met American Indians it didn't turn out so well, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they enter this field
You mean like the Apple eMate from 1997?
Ok, its hardly a "netbook" - but ubiquitous WiFi and mobile internet weren't really on the menu in 1997. Actually, the failure of this, and also the Psion Series 7 might suggest that mobile web browsing was the missing ingredient needed to get the "small, cheap laptop" market off the ground.
As for the MacBook Air, I think Apple were a bit unlucky with the timing: it was clearly intended to compete with other "premium" ultra-compact laptops from Sony et. al. - instead, everybody seemed to put it head-to-head with the (brilliant, but more Fischer Price than Jonathan Ive) EEE PC 701.
I have a passport already I can take to a bank if I open a new account.
But what is a passport, if not a form of identity card? Thing is, not everybody has a passport. Not everybody is entitled to a UK passport - so the banks start asking for a utility bill (what if you're not responsible for utility bills where you live) or a birth certificate (scratty little bit of paper with illegible doctor's handwriting) or some other evidence never designed as proof of ID.
Now, in a perfect world, you could envisage a high-tech electronic ID card with top-notch encryption beautifully set up so that it only told the reader what they were entitled to know: the barman slots it in a reader and all it tells him is that you are over 18. The cellphone company slot it in, type in the address you've given them and the ID card says "yes, that's right". The policeman swipes your card, lets you go on your way and he doesn't even discover your name until he persuades a judge that there is a valid reason to unlock the encrypted record.
Produce one of those and I'd sign up because it would be less invasive than what currently happens... except there is One Small Problem: the odds of our beloved government getting it right are about the same as... (hmm: Monkeys writing Shakespeare? Moles building a Large Hadron Collider? Crows building an Olympic stadium? Oh, wait, I know) ..are about the same as the odds of the government successfully delivering any ambitious IT project.
What's wrong with carrying an ID card?
Well, some people (who, presumably, live in the woods, don't have bank account, don't drive a car and never leave the country) just object on principle. Personally, I don't see that one: in this world you need to prove your identity from time to time, and without having a "proper" identity scheme we end up using all sorts of inappropriate kludges (e.g. banks tend to ask for a gas or electricity bill).
Then there's the fear of police having the power to stop people and demand "papers". Now, that's a legitimate fear demanding eternal vigilance and all that but its really got naff all to do with ID cards: there's nothing fundamental about ID cards which says that police have to be given the power to inspect them. Plus, if the Fascists take over then it will take them a whole week to print and issue "papers".
Now we get to the more serious objections - primarily "mission creep". If the Government were simply rolling out a better alternative to current "ad hoc" methods of identity checking then it wouldn't be so bad. However, these are being touted as the answer to terrorism, fraud, illegal immigrants, healthcare provision and whatever was on the front page of the Daily Mail yesterday. Consequently, more and more bells and whistles are being added, meaning more and more information about individuals will be gathered to protect us against the barbarians at the gate, but will probably end up being used to police dog fouling.
Finally, even if the conspiracy theorists are right, the government's track record on large IT projects doesn't bode well. (1984 is scary enough, but Brazil is even scarier!) Currently, we're getting almost daily stories of government departments losing laptops, CDs and memory sticks containing personal information, which doesn't help.
Right, because socialism never had any unintended effects like the complete implosion of the second largest country in the world or anything.
I suspect that the sort of high-stakes crap game in which Wall Street has just thrown snake eyes has about as much in common with the ideals of capitalism as the old USSR had in common with the political ideals of socialism.
I thought capitalism was supposed to work because of "enlightened self-interest". Looks like the "enlightened" bit got outsourced.
I mean seriously - this is just too good to be true. Jack Thompson disbarred. The RIAA loses its first court case on their "making available" theory.
Wait till you get to the one about your government wanting $2000 of your money to bail out banks who apparently still thought that pyramid schemes were a good idea.
Looking at the paper on the Roberts study linked to TFA:
Tell some people bad stuff about a Republican, then tell them it isn't true. The pro-Democrats in the audience believe the bad stuff and ignore the rebuttal. The pro-Republicans... mostly ignored the bad stuff in the first place (or maybe didn't think it was so bad?)
Film at 11. Or, to put it another way, mud sticks.
I can't quickly see any link from the paper to the specific rebuttal of the ad which the participants were shown - but the paper assures us that it was a "a sharp, factual, bipartisan evisceration of its insinuations" - so that's alright then. (I'm reluctant to criticize a paper too deeply after a 2 minute skim, but that line made my red pen itch).
The authors of the paper seem to be taking as axiomatic that the ad was completely untrue and the rebuttal was compelling. After all, the title of the paper says "False political beliefs".
Note that the question in the study was "do you support Roberts for Supreme Court Justice" and not "do you believe that the ad was accurate". Any good propaganda will contain a grain of truth - however disingenuously presented. In this case, it was that one of the "nonviolent" protesters was a convicted violent protester. That shouldn't count for anything in a court of law, but it might reduce your audience's enthusiasm for the right to protest.
This study would be more interesting if it were done using a nice, well-defined reproducible or falsifiable scientific or mathematical fact and a common misconception. Actually, this has been done in science/math education and there is evidence that merely telling someone "your belief is wrong - here is the right answer" is ineffective unless you force them to see the absurd consequences of their belief. (go Google for "cognitive conflict").
Much as I like Douglas Adams, really, he's just paraphrasing Plato.
Actually, in 2159, the trustees of the Adams estate sent a copy of the H2G2 back though a time warp to ancient Greece and successfully sued Plato for copyright breach.
Isn't it terrible when people try and capitalize on the wise and witty sayings of others...?
Yes, a big bagless vacuum cleaner. In my theory I'll outline to time of the apocalypse, or as I call it, Dyson time.
Sorry, but Dyson (the vacuum cleaner co) had their geek card withdrawn when they released a vacuum cleaner with a large spherical wheel and called it the Dyson ball. What a missed opportunity... Looks like my next vacuum cleaner will have to be a Vax.
Y'know, I don't think that business plan even needs the ??? step!
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the idea of buying music without in some way being able to damage the environment has been KILLING me.
Don't worry - all that industrial grade server and networking hardware needed to give you 24/7 broadband internet access is doing its bit for turning irreplacable fossil fuels into nice, warming carbon dioxide - and, before you know it, will be obsolete and happily sitting in a landfill leeching crap into the water table.
I suspect that its still better than moving lumps of plastic around in big trucks, but if you're worried about not doing your bit to destroy the planet, fear not - every little helps and the laws of thermodynamics are right behind you. In the end, entropy will even beat City Hall and the IRS.
but crime rates are still going up.
Actually (as others in this thread have stated) violent crime is going down. (see page 19 of The British Crime Survey - warning, 200+ page PDF - I couldn't quickly find a news report because for every article on this there are a dozen about someone being stabbed in a fight). There might be some rise in knife crime amongst younger people, but that might be because the fscking media have got every kid in the country convinced that every other kid is carrying.
I do not believe you.
As is your prerogative. However, I'm not selling you anything or claiming to have proven some scientific truth - just offering an anecdote to illustrate my observation about different cultures having different sensitivities. (I could also mention things like adverts for prescription medicines or unregulated political commercials which are commonplace in the US but would be unthinkable in the UK).
Anecdote is not evidence - but then a Slashdot comment is not a scientific paper or an article in The Economist so please excuse me if I didn't spend a week trying to locate an online archives of 1990s PBS announcer links., Its also vaguely possible that it was some other US TV network with a penchant for airing BBC dramas.
How did the English, who once ruled a vast empire, become such sissified little bitches?
We have knives.
The USA has Janet Jackson's nipple... or, in some states, try mentioning dice (gambling!) or magic (religion!) in a school maths book.
I remember once, while visiting the USA, I caught a showing of the British political satire/thriller "To Play The King" on PBS. PBS felt it necessary to prefix the show with a patronising lecture on why monarchies were a bad thing and the US had fought a war of independence against the idea. I was astounded - we might get warnings about potentially offensive material/flashing lights/may contain nuts before a show, we might get slightly edited versions of shows which are shown when the kids are awake, we might get "helpline numbers" if a show mentions child abuse or AIDS but we do not get lectured on how we should interpret the show we are about to see.
Different folks, different disproportionate obsessions, I suppose. Now, the knife crime figures are being shamelessly talked up at the moment, but I think its pretty safe to say that they account for more deaths than "wardrobe malfunction".
Universe destroys Large Hadron Collider!
If you're so worried that you have to cover up even an obvious joke
Clearly not that obvious... When will Slashcode get round to implementing those <irony> tags?
How can anyone see this as bad?
If at Xmas, your Significant Other/Parent/Dear Grandmama (delete as apppropriate) gave you a DVD, would you send it back to him/her explaining that you couldn't accept it since it used a patent-encumbered codec and an awful (in every sense of the word) encryption system?
If your answer is yes, then you are morally entitled to object on ideological grounds to Canonical's undermining of the Four Freedoms and tacit endorsement of the corrupt patent system.
But, face it, this year you're gonna get socks!
For the rest of us, its a good idea.
At that point, people distributing Ubuntu to friends need to specifically say that it costs $90.
Those in the know will use the free drivers (and tell their friends where to get them).
Free-as-in-speech software purists need proprietary codecs like a vegan needs a steak-knife, so they have nothing to complain about - unless they think that Joe Potential-Switcher, given the choice between (a) sticking with Windows/Mac or (b) converting their entire media collection to open formats (which you can't do without a codec for the source format anyway) is going to choose (b).
...if you do decide to fork out $90, that isn't a lot if you offset it against the metric shitload of OS and application software you just got for free, and if that includes a nice little something for Canonical on the side then, well, they deserve it.
Psst... wanna buy a DVD of The Dark Night*? Only 5 bucks!
(* sic - don't want to get Slashdot DCMAd by a RIAA webcrawler, do we?)
I've filed a couple of bug reports against GPL'ed software on this, because GPL specifically says you don't need to agree to it to use the software.
By clicking "I Agree" you agree that you don't need to agree to anything.
By clicking "I Disagree" you agree that Segmentation fault - core dumped
Using RFC 1149 of course. Great news for Open Source since Linux's preferred carrier type placed severe limitations on overland RFC1149 performance*, but is ideally suited to a marine environment.
(*because penguins can't fly)
Firefox is a trademark, Mozilla need to defend that trademark
Since when did defending a trademark require that you get your customers to agree to an EULA? Do cans of a well-known brand of fizzy drink contain the words "by pulling this tab you agree to..."? Nope - the little "tm" after the name seems to suffice.
Now, if you're going to re-distribute the product, that the little "(c)" on the splash screen reminds you that nothing gives you the right to do that unless you can find the license that says otherwise - no need to make every user agree to a license.
and it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel"
Personally, I think that in a user-friendly Unix the web browser should be called "Web Browser", the word-processor "Word Processor", the spreadsheet "Spreadsheet" and the photo editor... well, anything other than "gimp" really :-)
Power users could re-map those to their favorite applications using some obviously-named utility like "kSPAD".
it's that they actively broke WebKit on Mac, so it doesn't even compile anymore
So Chrome relies on patches to Webkit? If Google have made the strategic decision to prioritize Windows and port later, then the fact that these patches are currently Windows-only is hardly surprising and doesn't detract from the fact that the vast bulk of Webkit is already written for them.
If you follow a couple of links from TFA you'll find the Mac port status page, according to which the chrome version of Webkit does compile on Mac. I'm not doubting your claim that, at some stage, it didn't, but that clearly wasn't a big job. Heck, even repackaging a complex codebase as an XCode project takes time!
they spent their time hacking on WebKit in a poorly-conceived, poorly-planned, or just plain incompetent manner.
I think that claim needs a bit more evidence... Least hypothesis is that their patches were along the lines of "#ifdef WINDOWS dothis() #else TODO".
Bottom line is that it takes far longer to develop and for 3 platforms than for 1 platform - especially if you want to optimize for each platform rather than use a lowest-common-denominator system. In the case of Chrome there is a pretty important test:
So they want to develop a cross-platform browser.
Not really - they want a Windows browser to deliver their apps on which, largely thanks to the Google name, might stand a chance of making some inroads against IE.
Mac and Linux versions would be nice too - but those users already use either Firefox or Webkit/Safari which have a better reputation for standards compliance and aren't controlled by Microsoft. That last is particularly important if your name is Google and you produce webapps which compete with Microsofts office products.
So why again is the Mac port "closer to start than finish"
Because they obviously chose to develop for Windows and port later, rather than develop all 3 versions in parallel. So maybe they delayed the Mac and Linux versions at the expense of Windows, but the upshot is that they got the Windows beta out before IE8 launches. Kinda strategic.
Chrome is based on Webkit
So what if they don't have to write WebKit for Mac? They didn't have to write WebKit for Windows, either! What Google are spending their time on will be the not insubstantial bits that wrap around Webkit to make it Chrome.
it's not like there aren't any cross-platform widget sets out there
Looks to me like they're using their own Widget set. Plus (as both MS and Mozilla have found in the past) Mac users tend to come down hard on apps that don't look as if they were born and bred on a Mac.
What would you expect if you admitted you're a drunken dope user on Facebook? An award for honesty?
Its fine as long as it stops at that.
However, what would you expect if you stated in an online debate that drugs should be legalized? Or if a "psychological analysis*" of your /. postings revealed that you had difficulty forming relationships, a hostile attitude to authority and a tendency to drop F-bombs?
...because sure as eggs is eggs, companies will start to outsource this work to "profiling" services who will apply zero-intelligence keyword searches and pseudo-psychology to the job - and witch hunters don't get paid unless they find witches.
(* as in, "this guy posts to slashdot, therefore...")
The proof? Do you react negativly to say an american indian as a european? No, you never dealt with them, never heard negative stories about them, didn't see them hanging on street corners, so you start the encounter with a blank slate.
Unfortunately, I think you'll find that well-educated Europeans will have at least some notion of the issues affecting native Americans, while less-well-informed Europeans will have been exposed to the best negative stereotypes that Hollywood can sell.
Also, sadly, the first time Europeans met American Indians it didn't turn out so well, either.