Ah, WebCT. What a crock of poop that is. I always have to force a WebCT page (any editor view, content is OK) to refresh manually by tweaking the browser window size to get it to display in Safari. I hope that's fixed too.
The question is not how failthful to the spirit of the book it is, since it's not the storyline that matters. It's how failthful to the spirit of DNA's WIT it is. From what I read in THAT review, it seems as if that's where the soul of this movie has got lost. Far from taking it with a grain of salt, sadly it rings all too true. So much so that I seriously doubt whether I could even go and watch the movie, for fear that it will taint my H2G2 personal culture. It's been with me for a very large part of my life, in a way I cherish it - for some fucked-up witless yanks to go and ruin it now is not an option.
Oh Puh-lease! This is NOT news...
on
New Mac System Specs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is a warmed over RUMOUR. It's not NEWS. For fuck's sake, let's not let Slashdot become just another Mac rumours site - god knows there's enough of them already. This isn't even original, I read this a couple of days ago elsewhere. These are not specs, they're speculations.
Look, I'm a Mac guy, I occasionally look at the rumour sites like everyone else, but I come to Slashdot because it's not full of one-sided Mac fanboyism. Sure, there's a hell of a lot of ignorance spouted, but at least there are different perspectives on things, and I like that. If I want to read rumours, I'll go to the rumour sites. If I want to read actual released specs of newly announced Macs, I'll go to Apple.com when they are officially released. Neither of these are Slashdot's role. This is a bad article, pointlessly posted, and it just a waste of space. Please, let's restrain ourselves - stop posting every damn tidbit about Macs just because they are flavour of the month at the moment. Keep focused, dammit! The worthwhile articles ar srtaing to get drowned in teh noise, and that doesn't serve anyone's interests.
Try clicking the little "editor" button in the toolbar, which then opens up a separate pane in the main project window and keeps everything together. Select a file on the left, its contents appear in the editor on the right. You can work in one window all the time, which is how I use it. The opening of separate windows can be handy if you want to look at several parts of your code at once, but I rarely need to use it that way. The only separate windows it otherwise opens are the runtime log and, if you're using it, the debugger.
OK, I'm late to this thread, and no doubt you have a clear picture already. But I'm a long-standing Mac developer steeped in C++ who also recently bit the bullet and changed the way I program on the Mac (from Carbon/C++ to Cocoa/Objective-C). OK you may say, but that's not as big a leap as Windows to Mac... well, I think it is. There are very few overlapping APIs, unless you want to use Carbon within Cocoa, which so far I have found very little need for except a bit of bridging to QuickTime.
So: 1. XCode comes with the OS. It comprehensive, it's good. I'm still learning it, but the basics are easy to grasp and you can fill in the finer detail as you go along.
2. Objective-C is a VERY SMALL addition to C. You can learn it in half an hour especially if you know C++. The syntax might look odd at first glance but it works, it's consistent, and it's only syntax!
3. The framework (Cocoa) is huge, and takes longer to learn. However, again you can get going very quickly because XCode will build a fully functioning app for you with no coding at all, then you can use that as a base on which to experiment. Personally I'd suggest you do spend a bit of time experimenting without trying to build a huge new app first go, because there are different ways of doing things, some not as good as others. But gradually the picture becomes clear.
4. Get a book. I recommend Aaron Hillegass's tome - well written, easy to understand, the examples work, and it touches on a lot of useful areas of the framework though in some cases could do with a bit more depth. The O'Reilly book is not as good in my opinion, I found it only started to make good sense after I'd read Hillegass and actually tried out some coding.
5. Be prepared to be amazed at what Cocoa can do and how it works. After years of C++ grinding, Cocoa is a breath of fresh air to me. Objective C is so much to the point, but avoids all that syntactical cruft that C++ has. It makes me realise that half the code I've ever written was there just to keep the language happy, rather than contributing to my actual productivity. Objective C's method lookup is incredibly flexible and makes things possible that you wouldn't even think of in C++. In that respect a C++ background can be a liability - many things turn out to be much simpler to do te Objective-C way than what you might think of at first. For me this was one of the steepest aspects to the learning curve, but also one of the biggest revelations. For example, look at how Undo is handled - it's gobsmackingly easy. After a while you'll start to wonder why other platforms don't have anything like this. Cocoa is what Java could and should have been.
6. Enjoy yourself - it's fun to program in Cocoa. Once you get on top of it you may find, as I have, that your programming ambition suddenly increases enormously. With Cocoa I feel I COULD write a Photoshop killer, if I wanted to....
No, I also think core data looks great. Not that supporting Undo right now is difficult - in fact it's amazing! (As my sig suggests). However, anything that helps take the coding required away from the framework and into your unique stuff has got to be good - I'm really looking forward to having a look at the new APIs (since I am not in a position to afford an ADC Select membership or wangle one through my current job).
I do hope that for the average user the Finder is better though - I guess the addition of Smart Folders will pretty much address any shortcoming in the out of the box FGinder, assuming they've imp,emented it similar to the way I'm imagining it....
Just plug them together with any ethernet cable. Unless you really know you way around the IP settings on the PC, changing the Mac's IP (or just using Rendezvous) is the easier route to connectivity in my experience.
Because they cannot edit out the permanent rumble of Douglas Adams rolling in his grave. A grave, I might add, that stress over this bloody travesty put him in.
They should give the project to an untried British crew of film-makers, give them a ton of money (about half what this cost should do nicely), keep the script more or less intact from the radio series and let them run with it. It'd be a massive cult success, guaranteed.
You actually quote a correct use of "its", then go and fuck up your own "its" by sticking an unwanted apostrophe in there. If you can't even learn by simply copying someone else's correct writing, then clearly there's no hope that even the dimmest slashdotter will ever improve himself.
It's not a law, it's an observation. Did you know the term 'law' for a scientific theory was coined by Isaac Newton, who felt that his 'Laws of Motion' were so right and pervaded the universe so deeply that they had to be a law? He wanted to convey they had a deeper significance than a mere theory. In time of course, even these 'laws' came to be shown to be incomplete or only true for slow moving objects. Ever since, every theory both worthy and crackpot has been called a 'law'. It's about time we returned to the humbler 'theory', 'theorem' or 'observation'. In the case of Moore's 'Law', it's not even a very good theory, since it only describes a very general trend, it cannot predict with any accuracy exactly how fast/how many transistors or elements a chip will have at any time in the future.
By the way, if the Itanium has 1.7 billion transistors, (I'll take the poster's word for it) then one has to ask - are they all pulling their weight? It seems a hell of a lot for what it does. Surely one way to squeeze more out of Moore's Observation is to come up with more efficient architectures and use fewer devices, working more efficiently/smarter/harder. Just a thought.
Self-preservation is bollocks. Everyone dies in the end, you may as well have some excitement whilst you wait. Also you might be surprised to know that most fights don't end in death.
Well personally I can think of thousands of better ways to pass the time waiting for death than being beaten up, but eh - each to their own.
Why are you scared of being beaten up? In case you get injured or scarred? A perfect stock body is worthless.
Eh? "Worthless" - what are you blithering about? Or are you one of those shallow types that thinks a scar or two is "cool"? It's just a matter of balance - on the whole, getting into fights over stupid trivialities (like, e.g. someone 'looks funny' at my girlfriend or something, which seems to be a common source of provocation at least in the popular imagination) seems ridiculous. I'm just not that quick to take offence. "Leave it, it's not worth it!" is wise counsel, because usually it's true.
When people are cowards and push-overs, you can always tell, their mannerisms and body-language usually gives them away.
Perhaps, but I never said I wouldn't be prepared to do it if it really was the only way, it's just that I can't really think of a situation that would warrant it. I'm definitely no coward - but there are many forms of bravery and readiness to stick your fist into someone else's face simply doesn't count as one in my mind. It merely means your thinking brain has given up and allowed your primitive animal brain to override it. Maybe that's how YOU arrive at respect for another person but, well, you're welcome to it.
I seem to recall that the case involved men nailing each others' scrotums to a table in some form of sexual experiment. Personally I felt that this was absolutely none of the state's business, and they had no right to interfere. However, there is something a bit different to this compared with being assaulted in a bar, say, or even picking a fight (hence 'consenting'). It's hard to pin down in a nutshell what the differences are, but if I was on a jury hearing the first case, i'd lobby to have the charge overturned - in the second, well, it would depend.
I don't pretend to hold that opinion, I do hold that opinion. As for being scared of a fight, well, I guess maybe I am, in general. That's called self-preservation. Working so far... Since I don't believe that getting into a fight either a) settles anything important or b) is likely to go my way (which may or may not be the case, but I'm in general unwilling to put that to the test), I tend to steer clear of them.
As for respect, there is one kind of respect that goes with being beaten in a fight, but it's probably not the kind of respect that really matters. Having witnessed a number of situations where others have lost their tempers and come to blows, it's my observation that BOTH parties end up losing respect, massively, unless the "fight" was one-sided to begin with, in which case usually the one who starts it loses ALL respect.
Maybe you just move in a different kind of social/work circle to mine.
Boxing is regulated - unofficial boxing matches are also illegal.
Re:Save yourself a couple hundred bucks...
on
Games That Shoot Back
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home are not legally permitted to beat the shit out of each other
Consenting? I think the law operates as it does because in fact consenting to being beaten up is really pretty unlikely, and the vast majority of situations where this might occur are cases of domestic violence, which surely no sane person would prefer the law turned a blind eye to. If you and a mate want a fight, go ahead - but make sure you don't create a disturbance, damage property or get any third parties involved. Usually by the time you've arranged all this you can be fairly sure the law will leave you to it - but by then presumably cool heads will have prevailed and realised the whole matter can't be settled by a fight. Fights are the last refuge of the idiot, and because society at large believes that, the law upholds that view.
Excuse my obvious ignorance, but the downloads are in a format with extension.tbz. I don't know what this is. Neither does Safari, so clicking the "download" link opens a page of garbage. If this is going to be aimed at Mac users, it needs to be packaged in a way that Mac users can use, such as plain old.zip, or a.dmg file.
Why can't somebody come up with a decent design? And why are the Apple guys able to just get it right? And not just once, but most of their stuff looks really amazing. It's not like there aren't any designers out there...
I think it's partly because they just don't know what good design actually looks like. It's the same with cars - the Japanese make some fine cars, but most of them have very dull and pedestrian styling. The Italians on the other hand, have always made beautiful cars - they know how to put a sculptural form together that stirs the soul. Even a humble Fiat is usually oozing a million percent more charisma than, umm, the Nissan Charisma. The engineering however, hasn't always been 100%. It's the (styling) difference between a Lexus and Mercedes - almost identical, yet somehow light years apart. Why the Japanese don't simply get an Italian stylist in whenever they make a new model is beyond me - after all, they could easily afford it. I think they don't because they simply cannot see what's not quite there about their in-house efforts. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Same with PCs - Samsung etc put together a laptop that, to them, looks fine, with all its unnecessary curves and bulges and bumps, and of course slightly compromised due to the effort of actually fitting all the hardware in. They just don't see it the way Apple does. They are the Pininfarina of the computer world...
it's nearly impossible to have two instances of XCode running in parallel
Two instances? That's fucked up. The Mac doesn't let you (easily) run two instances of an app. Perhaps you meant opening more than one project in a single instance? In which case, what's the problem? Two projects = two windows. Turn on the inline editor view and you don't have top open each file in a separate window, just click the file you want to work on and it appears right in the main window.
To me, the MDI interface on Windows is one of the most confusing things I've ever encountered as a Mac user. Windows INSIDE windows? That's very fucked up, and totally counter-intuitive to me. It doesn't reduce clutter, it just encapsulates it in an even less manageable way.
I largely believe that it's a case of what you're used to - and as TFA says, spending a little time learning the differences might be more fruitful in the long run than simply looking for similarities. However, being forced to learn a fucked-up paradigm like MDI just to work a simple app in Windows is one of the reasons that I usually avoid using the system as much as I can get away with. Working on Windows leaves me feeling frazzled and stressed unless I really work myself into a zen-like state of ultra-patience beforehand. It rarely works for long. Any computer system that requires you to meditate at length before you can use it must have something seriously wrong with it.
I don't think Jef was offering a new way of explaining where lift comes from, instead he was offering an alternative way of thinking about the effect. Both Bernoulli and Coanda are valid - they are just different ways of examining the same phenomenon. Ultimately, lift comes from Newton's Laws - air flowing over a wing has its direction changed, and the force that gives rise to is lift. Bernoulli examines this from the point of view of pressure changes, Coanda is a more direct and possibly more intuitive way of visualising how the direction change occurs. However, the reason for the Coanda effect is, as far as I know, still not really understood - therefore most aerodynamicists prefer to stick to Bernoulli as a design tool.
Sigh. It's very easy to find out the truth about this, yet still the myth persists. Xerox developed some of the GUI concepts (bitmapped display, windows, mouse input, buttons), but Apple were INVITED to view their work in return for investment in the company. What they saw inspired the Lisa and later Mac interface, but Apple added: overlapping moveable windows, pull down menus, the menu bar, mouse dragging, icons, self-refreshing windows, the entire direct manipulation interface for the file system (Finder), resources, drag and drop, and numerous other details that we take for granted today. None of these came from Xerox. Apple employed a number of engineers that started out at Xerox, and it's certain they brought their knowledge with them and extended it at Apple. Is that theft? If they didn't sign a contract forbidding use of intellectual property after leaving the company, then no. (And who ever had that in their contract in those days?). Apple overlooked one thing however, and that's the SmallTalk language - if they had brought object-oriented programming to the Mac along with the GUI concepts right from the start then perhaps Apple's place in history might have been even greater....
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, WebCT. What a crock of poop that is. I always have to force a WebCT page (any editor view, content is OK) to refresh manually by tweaking the browser window size to get it to display in Safari. I hope that's fixed too.
The question is not how failthful to the spirit of the book it is, since it's not the storyline that matters. It's how failthful to the spirit of DNA's WIT it is. From what I read in THAT review, it seems as if that's where the soul of this movie has got lost. Far from taking it with a grain of salt, sadly it rings all too true. So much so that I seriously doubt whether I could even go and watch the movie, for fear that it will taint my H2G2 personal culture. It's been with me for a very large part of my life, in a way I cherish it - for some fucked-up witless yanks to go and ruin it now is not an option.
This is a warmed over RUMOUR. It's not NEWS. For fuck's sake, let's not let Slashdot become just another Mac rumours site - god knows there's enough of them already. This isn't even original, I read this a couple of days ago elsewhere. These are not specs, they're speculations.
Look, I'm a Mac guy, I occasionally look at the rumour sites like everyone else, but I come to Slashdot because it's not full of one-sided Mac fanboyism. Sure, there's a hell of a lot of ignorance spouted, but at least there are different perspectives on things, and I like that. If I want to read rumours, I'll go to the rumour sites. If I want to read actual released specs of newly announced Macs, I'll go to Apple.com when they are officially released. Neither of these are Slashdot's role. This is a bad article, pointlessly posted, and it just a waste of space. Please, let's restrain ourselves - stop posting every damn tidbit about Macs just because they are flavour of the month at the moment. Keep focused, dammit! The worthwhile articles ar srtaing to get drowned in teh noise, and that doesn't serve anyone's interests.
Try clicking the little "editor" button in the toolbar, which then opens up a separate pane in the main project window and keeps everything together. Select a file on the left, its contents appear in the editor on the right. You can work in one window all the time, which is how I use it. The opening of separate windows can be handy if you want to look at several parts of your code at once, but I rarely need to use it that way. The only separate windows it otherwise opens are the runtime log and, if you're using it, the debugger.
Newton's Laws held for 250 years - pretty impressive. It doesn't mean they were right though.
OK, I'm late to this thread, and no doubt you have a clear picture already. But I'm a long-standing Mac developer steeped in C++ who also recently bit the bullet and changed the way I program on the Mac (from Carbon/C++ to Cocoa/Objective-C). OK you may say, but that's not as big a leap as Windows to Mac... well, I think it is. There are very few overlapping APIs, unless you want to use Carbon within Cocoa, which so far I have found very little need for except a bit of bridging to QuickTime.
So: 1. XCode comes with the OS. It comprehensive, it's good. I'm still learning it, but the basics are easy to grasp and you can fill in the finer detail as you go along.
2. Objective-C is a VERY SMALL addition to C. You can learn it in half an hour especially if you know C++. The syntax might look odd at first glance but it works, it's consistent, and it's only syntax!
3. The framework (Cocoa) is huge, and takes longer to learn. However, again you can get going very quickly because XCode will build a fully functioning app for you with no coding at all, then you can use that as a base on which to experiment. Personally I'd suggest you do spend a bit of time experimenting without trying to build a huge new app first go, because there are different ways of doing things, some not as good as others. But gradually the picture becomes clear.
4. Get a book. I recommend Aaron Hillegass's tome - well written, easy to understand, the examples work, and it touches on a lot of useful areas of the framework though in some cases could do with a bit more depth. The O'Reilly book is not as good in my opinion, I found it only started to make good sense after I'd read Hillegass and actually tried out some coding.
5. Be prepared to be amazed at what Cocoa can do and how it works. After years of C++ grinding, Cocoa is a breath of fresh air to me. Objective C is so much to the point, but avoids all that syntactical cruft that C++ has. It makes me realise that half the code I've ever written was there just to keep the language happy, rather than contributing to my actual productivity. Objective C's method lookup is incredibly flexible and makes things possible that you wouldn't even think of in C++. In that respect a C++ background can be a liability - many things turn out to be much simpler to do te Objective-C way than what you might think of at first. For me this was one of the steepest aspects to the learning curve, but also one of the biggest revelations. For example, look at how Undo is handled - it's gobsmackingly easy. After a while you'll start to wonder why other platforms don't have anything like this. Cocoa is what Java could and should have been.
6. Enjoy yourself - it's fun to program in Cocoa. Once you get on top of it you may find, as I have, that your programming ambition suddenly increases enormously. With Cocoa I feel I COULD write a Photoshop killer, if I wanted to....
TextEdit could probably handle something like 80% of the documents people ever work on now.
Another 19% with Pages, leaving Word with a 1% niche market... Oh, the joy!!!
No, I also think core data looks great. Not that supporting Undo right now is difficult - in fact it's amazing! (As my sig suggests). However, anything that helps take the coding required away from the framework and into your unique stuff has got to be good - I'm really looking forward to having a look at the new APIs (since I am not in a position to afford an ADC Select membership or wangle one through my current job).
I do hope that for the average user the Finder is better though - I guess the addition of Smart Folders will pretty much address any shortcoming in the out of the box FGinder, assuming they've imp,emented it similar to the way I'm imagining it....
Just plug them together with any ethernet cable. Unless you really know you way around the IP settings on the PC, changing the Mac's IP (or just using Rendezvous) is the easier route to connectivity in my experience.
Because they cannot edit out the permanent rumble of Douglas Adams rolling in his grave. A grave, I might add, that stress over this bloody travesty put him in.
They should give the project to an untried British crew of film-makers, give them a ton of money (about half what this cost should do nicely), keep the script more or less intact from the radio series and let them run with it. It'd be a massive cult success, guaranteed.
You actually quote a correct use of "its", then go and fuck up your own "its" by sticking an unwanted apostrophe in there. If you can't even learn by simply copying someone else's correct writing, then clearly there's no hope that even the dimmest slashdotter will ever improve himself.
...but it still tastes like crap.
It's not a law, it's an observation. Did you know the term 'law' for a scientific theory was coined by Isaac Newton, who felt that his 'Laws of Motion' were so right and pervaded the universe so deeply that they had to be a law? He wanted to convey they had a deeper significance than a mere theory. In time of course, even these 'laws' came to be shown to be incomplete or only true for slow moving objects. Ever since, every theory both worthy and crackpot has been called a 'law'. It's about time we returned to the humbler 'theory', 'theorem' or 'observation'. In the case of Moore's 'Law', it's not even a very good theory, since it only describes a very general trend, it cannot predict with any accuracy exactly how fast/how many transistors or elements a chip will have at any time in the future.
By the way, if the Itanium has 1.7 billion transistors, (I'll take the poster's word for it) then one has to ask - are they all pulling their weight? It seems a hell of a lot for what it does. Surely one way to squeeze more out of Moore's Observation is to come up with more efficient architectures and use fewer devices, working more efficiently/smarter/harder. Just a thought.
Self-preservation is bollocks. Everyone dies in the end, you may as well have some excitement whilst you wait. Also you might be surprised to know that most fights don't end in death.
Well personally I can think of thousands of better ways to pass the time waiting for death than being beaten up, but eh - each to their own.
Why are you scared of being beaten up? In case you get injured or scarred? A perfect stock body is worthless.
Eh? "Worthless" - what are you blithering about? Or are you one of those shallow types that thinks a scar or two is "cool"? It's just a matter of balance - on the whole, getting into fights over stupid trivialities (like, e.g. someone 'looks funny' at my girlfriend or something, which seems to be a common source of provocation at least in the popular imagination) seems ridiculous. I'm just not that quick to take offence. "Leave it, it's not worth it!" is wise counsel, because usually it's true.
When people are cowards and push-overs, you can always tell, their mannerisms and body-language usually gives them away.
Perhaps, but I never said I wouldn't be prepared to do it if it really was the only way, it's just that I can't really think of a situation that would warrant it. I'm definitely no coward - but there are many forms of bravery and readiness to stick your fist into someone else's face simply doesn't count as one in my mind. It merely means your thinking brain has given up and allowed your primitive animal brain to override it. Maybe that's how YOU arrive at respect for another person but, well, you're welcome to it.
I seem to recall that the case involved men nailing each others' scrotums to a table in some form of sexual experiment. Personally I felt that this was absolutely none of the state's business, and they had no right to interfere. However, there is something a bit different to this compared with being assaulted in a bar, say, or even picking a fight (hence 'consenting'). It's hard to pin down in a nutshell what the differences are, but if I was on a jury hearing the first case, i'd lobby to have the charge overturned - in the second, well, it would depend.
I don't pretend to hold that opinion, I do hold that opinion. As for being scared of a fight, well, I guess maybe I am, in general. That's called self-preservation. Working so far... Since I don't believe that getting into a fight either a) settles anything important or b) is likely to go my way (which may or may not be the case, but I'm in general unwilling to put that to the test), I tend to steer clear of them.
As for respect, there is one kind of respect that goes with being beaten in a fight, but it's probably not the kind of respect that really matters. Having witnessed a number of situations where others have lost their tempers and come to blows, it's my observation that BOTH parties end up losing respect, massively, unless the "fight" was one-sided to begin with, in which case usually the one who starts it loses ALL respect.
Maybe you just move in a different kind of social/work circle to mine.
Boxing is regulated - unofficial boxing matches are also illegal.
two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home are not legally permitted to beat the shit out of each other
Consenting? I think the law operates as it does because in fact consenting to being beaten up is really pretty unlikely, and the vast majority of situations where this might occur are cases of domestic violence, which surely no sane person would prefer the law turned a blind eye to. If you and a mate want a fight, go ahead - but make sure you don't create a disturbance, damage property or get any third parties involved. Usually by the time you've arranged all this you can be fairly sure the law will leave you to it - but by then presumably cool heads will have prevailed and realised the whole matter can't be settled by a fight. Fights are the last refuge of the idiot, and because society at large believes that, the law upholds that view.
First final candidate was 8A420, this is 8A428... assuming that the build is incremented by one, it implies 8 bugfixes....
Excuse my obvious ignorance, but the downloads are in a format with extension .tbz. I don't know what this is. Neither does Safari, so clicking the "download" link opens a page of garbage. If this is going to be aimed at Mac users, it needs to be packaged in a way that Mac users can use, such as plain old .zip, or a .dmg file.
Ah but that was BEFORE he got caught. There is such a thing as "learning one's lesson". If he does it again, well, that really would be stupid.
Why can't somebody come up with a decent design? And why are the Apple guys able to just get it right? And not just once, but most of their stuff looks really amazing. It's not like there aren't any designers out there ...
I think it's partly because they just don't know what good design actually looks like. It's the same with cars - the Japanese make some fine cars, but most of them have very dull and pedestrian styling. The Italians on the other hand, have always made beautiful cars - they know how to put a sculptural form together that stirs the soul. Even a humble Fiat is usually oozing a million percent more charisma than, umm, the Nissan Charisma. The engineering however, hasn't always been 100%. It's the (styling) difference between a Lexus and Mercedes - almost identical, yet somehow light years apart. Why the Japanese don't simply get an Italian stylist in whenever they make a new model is beyond me - after all, they could easily afford it. I think they don't because they simply cannot see what's not quite there about their in-house efforts. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Same with PCs - Samsung etc put together a laptop that, to them, looks fine, with all its unnecessary curves and bulges and bumps, and of course slightly compromised due to the effort of actually fitting all the hardware in. They just don't see it the way Apple does. They are the Pininfarina of the computer world...
it's nearly impossible to have two instances of XCode running in parallel
Two instances? That's fucked up. The Mac doesn't let you (easily) run two instances of an app. Perhaps you meant opening more than one project in a single instance? In which case, what's the problem? Two projects = two windows. Turn on the inline editor view and you don't have top open each file in a separate window, just click the file you want to work on and it appears right in the main window.
To me, the MDI interface on Windows is one of the most confusing things I've ever encountered as a Mac user. Windows INSIDE windows? That's very fucked up, and totally counter-intuitive to me. It doesn't reduce clutter, it just encapsulates it in an even less manageable way.
I largely believe that it's a case of what you're used to - and as TFA says, spending a little time learning the differences might be more fruitful in the long run than simply looking for similarities. However, being forced to learn a fucked-up paradigm like MDI just to work a simple app in Windows is one of the reasons that I usually avoid using the system as much as I can get away with. Working on Windows leaves me feeling frazzled and stressed unless I really work myself into a zen-like state of ultra-patience beforehand. It rarely works for long. Any computer system that requires you to meditate at length before you can use it must have something seriously wrong with it.
I don't think Jef was offering a new way of explaining where lift comes from, instead he was offering an alternative way of thinking about the effect. Both Bernoulli and Coanda are valid - they are just different ways of examining the same phenomenon. Ultimately, lift comes from Newton's Laws - air flowing over a wing has its direction changed, and the force that gives rise to is lift. Bernoulli examines this from the point of view of pressure changes, Coanda is a more direct and possibly more intuitive way of visualising how the direction change occurs. However, the reason for the Coanda effect is, as far as I know, still not really understood - therefore most aerodynamicists prefer to stick to Bernoulli as a design tool.
Sigh. It's very easy to find out the truth about this, yet still the myth persists. Xerox developed some of the GUI concepts (bitmapped display, windows, mouse input, buttons), but Apple were INVITED to view their work in return for investment in the company. What they saw inspired the Lisa and later Mac interface, but Apple added: overlapping moveable windows, pull down menus, the menu bar, mouse dragging, icons, self-refreshing windows, the entire direct manipulation interface for the file system (Finder), resources, drag and drop, and numerous other details that we take for granted today. None of these came from Xerox. Apple employed a number of engineers that started out at Xerox, and it's certain they brought their knowledge with them and extended it at Apple. Is that theft? If they didn't sign a contract forbidding use of intellectual property after leaving the company, then no. (And who ever had that in their contract in those days?). Apple overlooked one thing however, and that's the SmallTalk language - if they had brought object-oriented programming to the Mac along with the GUI concepts right from the start then perhaps Apple's place in history might have been even greater....