Before my wife, then my girlfriend, moved in, I had a similar setup and it was great; she enjoys the cable.
I'm not going to lie and say something like "I just watch a few hours a week, and only education shows on PBS". I probably don't watch the average of 4 hours a day of TV that most Americans do, but I watch my fair share. In my humble opinion TV is producing some of the best content right now (I'd rather watch a night of Lost or 6 Feet Under DVDs than many movies).
What worked great for me is no cable/antennea, then I got the 5 disc option from Netflix (3 discs weren't enough). With this setup I could watch a couple hours every night and never be without a disc. The rest of my video watching was downloaded; either commercial shows via Torrents or iTunes, or better yet, non-commercial programming, which although not as well produced, is often more interesting and unique than "professional" stuff.
Once you watch a serialized TV show on DVDs, it's really hard to go back to watching 1 show per week. Watching 3 episodes in a sitting, then 3 more the next night is the perfect way to consume TV.
You do have to wait until the next year to see the show, but there are so many out there, you can go back and watch all those years of Alias or Sopranos you never saw.
As for TFA, give me a break. Watching video on iTunes or the like, will only increase.
Yup, Apple doesn't have a monopoly, that's why I said "virtual monopoly". Nice rant though.
"Anti-apple whiners", cool, I've never been called that before; I kind of like that. Normally I get "Apple fan-boy", so it's a nice change of pace; like putting on a new shirt someone bought for you, looking in the mirror and thinking "it's kind of weird, but weirdly cool" as you nod up and down approvingly.
Come sit next to your uncle Stamen, I'll explain: Steve Jobs has been fighting with the media distributors since day 1 over raising the price of songs an other media; they wanted it higher, then they wanted it higher for some songs, etc. Plus the price of songs will go up, eventually, due to inflation and other factors. Because Mr J is now saying that Apple will sell the songs at a higher price, if they remove the DRM, says to me that Jobs is finally loosing this battle, and he is going to use that fact to his advantage. Like Jobs or not, he is shrewd, and I think he knows prices are going to go up anyways, so if he concedes a bit early, he can get something he wants. Thankfully for you and I it's something we want too.
Everyone assumes that Apple can do whatever it wants, which is just silly. Apple, because of their market clout has done things no one else has been able to do in regards to licensing of content, but the battle is ongoing. Of course the choice of having no DRM and the same or lower prices would be ideal; but you're assuming such a choice even exists.
Get rid of DRM now, even if it costs more. The price will change later depending on supply and demand, regardless of what it is set to now. However if DRM is removed, it will hard to get it back, as consumers will come to expect DRM-less media.
Love or hate Apple, at least they are using their current power to apply pressure in the right direction; no DRM. I don't mind the increase in price as much, because eventually they will increase it anyways based on inflation; so the bone Jobs is throwing them isn't very valuable, but he'll sell it like it is.
I hate monopolies, personally, but in this case it takes Apple's virtual monopoly in this space to fight the other monopolies (I know they are really a group of companies controlling everything, but you understand what I'm saying) in the media space. So I'll stand next to Apple on this one; for the time being.
Most people are selfish pricks. Smokers, prove this fact more than most. I could care less if they smoke, but the general attitude that when they throw trash on the ground, it's perfectly fine just gets me. Do what you want, but don't think I'm not going to do what I want to you.
I'm generally libertarian leaning, and don't like interfering with anyone else's business, and I like to stand up for those whose business is interfered with. However, most smokers complete lack of respect for anyone makes me just ignore the injustices inflicted on them. I've only so much time on my soapbox to stand up for peoples rights, I'll use that time for some other group, thank you.
>>"As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost."
Um no, go the "start menu" like thingy in the upper right called "Applications", select "Add/Remove...", select the software you want to install (with categories, ratings, and description), then click ok.
So I like Tetris, so I go up into Applications, look in Games, and I don't see it there (Mahjong and Sudoku are there, however, which is cool). So I look around and I see Add/Remove, I click on that, a list comes up with a Games category. I look in there and find a few Tetrises. I find one that is highly rated, click ok, then apply. It asks me for my password, for security reasons, then installs. Then I go up into Applications, look in Games, and it is there.
So what exactly is the process for my grandmother to install her favorite game on Vista?
Apple II had a GUI, really?
Re:Try Why the Lucky Stiff's guide
on
Beginning Ruby
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· Score: 1
This is the one thing that I think is kind of unique to the Ruby community, people like _Why. Also, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, the creator of Ruby, constantly is in the forums helping out newbs with their questions.
It's not often mentioned in threads about Ruby, but the community surrounding it is very good and, ultimately, that is very important.
It's also an awesome language, and although not hugely better than Python (another great language), better none-the-less (mainly for me, because of its fully object oriented-ness, and complete embrace of code blocks and closures).
So, let me get this straight. Is it wrong to whack off to hentai when I have a +3 erection? Or is it just wrong at work, when a woman from HR is walking past my cubicle? If I cast a spell of concealment over my cubicle, would it be ok then?
Yes, that is exactly right, all things being equal and fair. That is hardly the case, often large companies maintain their market share not through capitalism but through good old fashion organized crime (Enron), or through good old fashion communism (state enforced monopolies, such as telcoms). What US is becoming is a Corporatocracy, which is just soviet style communism with a better marketing department.
Deskbar seems similar, but what I can tell Deskbar doesn't do the composition stuff that Quicksilver does (perhaps it does I didn't fire up my PC to check it). If you do a search or enter something in Deskbar, it gives you a list of choices, but in Quicksilver you can continue on after that and rout those results to other options, it's like a GUI pipe. Here is quick example: * If I type in "Joe S" as I type it shows different options when I've typed enough to get "Joe Smith" address book entry * I then type "," which means I want to select another person, then I do the same thing for, let's say, 5 more people * Now that I have a list of vcards, I can do something with them, I hit "tab" which pipes that list to another process (not really, but in concept) * I then type "Emai" until I've typed enough to get "Email To", then I press tab to pipe that to another process * I then type the first letters of who I want to email them to. And I'm done
If you were to do this in the command line, you'd create a comma delimited string of names, pass it to a program that would look up the vcards for each user, pipe the results to another program that would email them, and you'd specify who it was emailed to. So basically Quicksilver lets you, when you get good at it, do something like this in seconds using a GUI rather than the command-line. It's this ability to combine actions that makes Quicksilver different from all the other launchers, and I may be wrong, but I've never seen this anywhere before.
I should start using this in interviews to weed out people like you. You are talking about dynamic typing, not weak typing.
There is static/dynamic as well as weak/strong typing.
C and C++ are weak typed, you know those languages that a lot of OSs are written in. However they are static typed. Something like Ruby is strong and dynamically typed.
And dynamically typed languages are hardly dangerous; even the often mentioned "if you make a typo it doesn't catch it" reasoning isn't even correct most the time. Pleased to be explaining it to you:
In Ruby, for example, a variable is created when it's first assigned (and you don't specify its type), like this:
foo = "Hello"
if later you use foo, but miss-type it, it generates an error:
length = fooo.length
in this case, it will complain ("undefined local variable or method `fooo' for main:Object") and catch your typo.
In addition Ruby, as an example, is strongly typed you can't just add a string to an integer:
i = 0 foo = "1" i = i + foo
In this case i is an integer and foo is a string, you can't treat foo like an integer without an error, because although it is dynamically typed it is strongly typed.
I think your post needs to be repeating. People love stereo types, so I'm probably whistling in the wind, but there are many people like you out there, I'm one of them. People who are love Unix and also love OS X. However I do own an iPod, a few of them.
People have to realize that OS X is mostly open source, except for the windows manager and the user-land stuff. The first thing I install on OS X is XCode so that I have gcc, and then DarwinPorts so I can "port" myself to happy goodness.
Of course I'd rather OS X run on any PC (you can if you work at it), but Apple hardware is pretty decent, and contrary to popular belief it isn't much more than equal hardware from Dell or whomever (that was the queue for someone to point out that you can buy that 9 pound 2 inch thick Dell laptop for 600 bucks; come on, you know you want to). It's OS X that I really like, what it runs on isn't as important to me.
I think there a 3 distinct groups of people using OS X. * The home user who is attracted by the commercials that say how easy it is to use
* The artists/designers who use Photoshop/Final Cut Pro/etc
* People like me, *nix peeps that enjoy a really nice windows manager and seamless hardware drivers
Now saying all that, OS X on the server isn't so good, for that it's hard to beat BSD or Linux.
Just to add one minor note: Quicksilver is a Launcher app, as the parent mentions, but it so much more than that. And it's one of those things you can't describe real well, you have to spend some time using it to understand.
It's like saying that the command line is an app launcher, which is true, but that is only scratching the surface of what the console can do; the best way to describe Quicksilver is a visual command-line.
The two things that I miss the most when using Windows or Linux on the desktop are Quicksilver and TextMate. There just isn't anything like Quicksilver on any other platform.
Good post, I really like the "shut the ***** up" site.
I totally agree on backwards compatibility being the culprit. Microsoft, unfortunately for its fans and us that have to use it sometimes, is getting just too big to make bold moves anymore. They totally should of created a brand new OS, built from the ground up without regards to backwards compatibility. Then they could of built an emulation layer on top of that to help the transition. It must be a nightmare for Vista engineers to maintain backwards compatibility, something OS X engineers didn't have to deal with.
On the other hand, I understand why Microsoft would want to maintain it, for business reasons. The problem is though, if you hold on to something too tight, you end up loosing it, and by the time you know you've lost it, it is too late.
I was responding to "Your *employees* shouldn't even SEE those warnings. Their machine should be locked down so they can't harm it".
You can't install most software in Vista without seeing warnings and elevating your rights, which a sensible OS shouldn't require unless you are updating the OS.
My second point, is you don't have to "lock down" OS X. It has the same level of security as Vista (some would argue higher), without requiring to be locked down, or having those terrible ISVs you mentioned change all their applications.
If my points still aren't clear: Windows sucks, OS X and Linux rules. Also vi over emacs, but TextMate is the best, and etc is pronounced etcee.
No, in my workplace all the employees log in as a normal user on their OS X workstations. This doesn't stop them form installing software, changing their wifi settings when they are at home, or any other normal user things. Because OS X is designed in way where these normal user operations don't require any kind of root/admin access.
Other than not running as root/admin, we don't lock down the workstations in any way, the users can install that little app that puts a cute kitten on their desktop that dances around, why should we care. We hire adults, not children, so we treat them as such. If they act like children, and don't do their job, we fire them. So if someone needs the admin password, which 99% of the time they don't, that'd be fine (such as a programmer who uses DarwinPorts).
How did we all manage to get any work done for so many centuries without having the technical ability to limit everything our employees do?
How about if the company's culture or their preferred business model does not require or even want user's machines to be "locked down". Basically, because there are so many problems with Windows, the only way to keep it reliable is to fully keep it "locked down"; by deciding to use Windows you are letting your technology dictate your business practices; how very nice for Microsoft.
Many things that UAC warns you about are perfectly acceptable for a user to perform, even in a "locked down" environment. I assume you aren't actually using Vista yet in the Enterprise.
It's funny how it's always the teacher who gets the brunt of this "hold them accountable" chant. How about, in addition to that, holding the Principles accountable, the administrators accountable, the school board accountable; all of which have more control over what and how children are taught than most teachers do.
Also, lets hold the parents accountable. When you have open school night, where parents are invited to meet the teacher and discuss their children, often you will have 4 parents surrounded by 25 empty seats.
Nah, who am I kidding, I must be new here too; get the firewood and the rope, I saw a teacher over there, grab her wrists, ankles, and someone get that fire going.
As you've noted, with your heavy lifting comment, measuring performance isn't an easy thing to do. But assuming you could figure out a good way to do that, there are other real problems. Here are some of the basic ones as I see it:
* Teachers, individually, often have very little power over how or what they teach their students. Giving them the responsibility to meet some measure of performance without the power to do so is just setting them up to fail; which I believe is what many administrators are intentionally doing to move focus of blame to the teachers and off of them.
* All efforts to make teachers perform better are useless if you have a shortage of teachers. And we have a shortage of teachers for many reasons. Fix that problem first, then when you have more teachers than you need, you can pick and choose the exceptional ones. The law of supply and demand doesn't stop working, just because we wish it would.
* Education isn't valued in the US. If you don't think that is true, then you really aren't paying much attention. As long as parents, and society as a whole, doesn't value education, and to a lesser extent teachers, don't plan on getting good teachers. Other countries actually do value education. How many hours do you think the average parent spends helping at school? How many hours do you think the average parent teaches their children at home? What percentage of a family's budget (not including clothes which you have to buy anyways) do you think parents spend on education? I don't know, but my guess it is either zero or close to zero (not including taxes paid). Now compare those numbers to other countries.
Teachers should be the masters in their field, and society should treat them as such. Our culture should put on a pedestal, and expect, a master of math/physics/english to teach those less skilled than them. Our society should emphasize that is everyone's patriotic duty to mentor and teach, and it is the highest calling. In short we should treat the really great teachers as least well as we treat the worst performing pro basketball player.
This is very true. However the key is to provide seamless backwards compatibility to allow the transition to occur, without that it will never work on the Corp desktop.
Windows did this well with allowing users to run DOS in a window. It took many, many years to transition all those old DOS apps into Windows, but it happened.
Apple does this very well too. They successfully went from OS 9 to OS X, which couldn't be a more different OS; they did this by providing Classic mode that allowed users to use their old apps until they were ported or rewritten for OS X. Then again later, they switched from PPC machines to Intel machines, and provided Rosetta technology that allows users to run PPC apps just as before until they are ported to Universal or Intel binaries. So basically they changed OSs twice in 6 years seamlessly.
Linux has Wine, and Crossover, Java, MONO, and VMWare, but all these don't cover everything, and the VMWare solution is less than ideal. Like the parent says, all companies have mission critical legacy applications written in VB, Access, FoxPro, etc that have to run in order for them to even consider switching desktop OSs. Perhaps a Crossover marketed to the enterprises, with emphasis on the development environments such as VB, Access, etc, with strong consulting services to fix the few applications that don't work under it.
Obviously since many applications are developed as web apps today, this problem is going way, thankfully.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you would get laughed at if you suggested Windows would be used in the office, this was around the Windows 3.0 days. Novell ruled the smaller server space, and Word Perfect and DOS were king.
Windows started to penetrate the desktop first with Windows 3.1 (IIRC) and Office. Then Novell made some serious mistakes, like making it hard for Windows desktops to connect to Novell servers (actually Microsoft did this, but Novell could of done much better), and not supporting TCP/IP and going with their IPX protocol instead. Because of those two things, as well as others, it started to become easier to use Windows Server or Windows for Workgroups (peer to peer serving) instead of Novell server, even though it wasn't even close in regards to performance, ease of administration, or reliability (you could do some very cool things with Novell NetWare).
Linux is starting the other way, with the servers, and then going to the desktop. So it's a different challenge. But one thing, IMO, that Linux needs to do is develop some features (not just copying Windows or OS X) that aren't available anywhere else that makes people demand it on the desktop. LInux does, of course, have the very real benefit of not having many issues with viruses and malware, but it needs more than that. If you take a look at the history lesson above, perhaps Linux Desktop could leverage the large install base of Linux on the server to solve integration issues that you just can't on Windows, making it so that the IT people demand Linux on the desktop, as we use to demand Windows on the server (before we got smart and started demanding Linux on the server:-) ).
This is why we should all start learning Mandarin or learn to speak with an Indian accent. This attitude of most Americans (I'm one too) that they "can't" give their children excellent educations, because they aren't "rich" enough; it's just sad really.
When people say this, they actually mean they can't give their children excellent FREE or very CHEAP educations, educations that won't cut into their car or satellite TV budgets. We just don't value education like the many parts of the world do, we value other things. In many parts of the world, there is no free education at all; in South Africa, many families live in shacks without running water, but manage to scrape together enough money to send their son, daughter, or grand daughter to school (they also pay for the books and uniforms). In many places people are willing to spend 60 or 70% of their income on school. In the US, if a family was at the poverty level, 60% of their income would amount to $10,000 a year spent on education. What percentage a year, of your budget, do you spend on education?
Every American gets a free education. It's true that many schools are sub standard, and need radical changes IMHO. But for a little amount of money a parent can augment this free education by paying for after-school tutoring, or educational programs, or at the very least spending a few hours of home-schooling a day, which with free libraries doesn't cost anything; of course this will cut into the the average 4 hours a day we watch TV. The next step is to send the children to private school, which can be from $5,000 and up a year.
We've established a world class education system in the US, and this is why people come from all around the world to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. But I fear that we have been coasting on this previous work and are not maintaining it. We won't see the results for many, many years, but education is a long term investment, one which others are willing to sacrifice for, it's sad that we aren't.
I think people get confused as to what memory "used" means. Here is a article by Apple on what OS X's memory means:
"Four types of memory appear in the System Memory pie chart: Wired, Active, Inactive, and Free. "Used" is simply the total of the first three.
The total of the four types equals the amount of random-access memory (RAM) in your computer. RAM is the high-speed memory used to store information that is in use or used most recently. Information in RAM is loaded from your hard disk, and the RAM is emptied when you turn off your computer.
The "VM size" refers to virtual memory, a system of putting information in RAM or caching it to your hard disk as needed. Thus Mac OS X can "virtually" use more memory than the amount of RAM you have. The hard disk is much slower than RAM, so the virtual memory system automatically distributes information between disk space and RAM for efficient performance. "Page ins/outs" refers to the number of times Mac OS X has moved information between RAM and disk space.
Wired memory This information can't be cached to disk, so it must stay in RAM. The amount depends on what applications you are using.
Active memory This information is currently in RAM and actively being used.
Inactive memory This information is no longer being used and has been cached to disk, but it will remain in RAM until another application needs the space. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later.
Free memory This memory is not being used.
What does all this mean? This means you shouldn't worry when the Free memory is low. The only time Free memory should be high is right after the computer starts up. As you use applications or services, memory is used and transitions to Inactive. Applications that need more memory will take from the Inactive, but the Inactive is there just in case you need it again. If the combination of Free and Inactive is very low, then you might need more memory. "
A very simple small book, that covers the basics. All developers that do any sort of UI should read it, and live it.
Proper visual design is easy and algorithmic, a programmer has absolutely no excuse creating a crap UI, when the rules of proper design are so few and so simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Before my wife, then my girlfriend, moved in, I had a similar setup and it was great; she enjoys the cable.
I'm not going to lie and say something like "I just watch a few hours a week, and only education shows on PBS". I probably don't watch the average of 4 hours a day of TV that most Americans do, but I watch my fair share. In my humble opinion TV is producing some of the best content right now (I'd rather watch a night of Lost or 6 Feet Under DVDs than many movies).
What worked great for me is no cable/antennea, then I got the 5 disc option from Netflix (3 discs weren't enough). With this setup I could watch a couple hours every night and never be without a disc. The rest of my video watching was downloaded; either commercial shows via Torrents or iTunes, or better yet, non-commercial programming, which although not as well produced, is often more interesting and unique than "professional" stuff.
Once you watch a serialized TV show on DVDs, it's really hard to go back to watching 1 show per week. Watching 3 episodes in a sitting, then 3 more the next night is the perfect way to consume TV.
You do have to wait until the next year to see the show, but there are so many out there, you can go back and watch all those years of Alias or Sopranos you never saw.
As for TFA, give me a break. Watching video on iTunes or the like, will only increase.
Yup, Apple doesn't have a monopoly, that's why I said "virtual monopoly". Nice rant though.
"Anti-apple whiners", cool, I've never been called that before; I kind of like that. Normally I get "Apple fan-boy", so it's a nice change of pace; like putting on a new shirt someone bought for you, looking in the mirror and thinking "it's kind of weird, but weirdly cool" as you nod up and down approvingly.
Come sit next to your uncle Stamen, I'll explain: Steve Jobs has been fighting with the media distributors since day 1 over raising the price of songs an other media; they wanted it higher, then they wanted it higher for some songs, etc. Plus the price of songs will go up, eventually, due to inflation and other factors. Because Mr J is now saying that Apple will sell the songs at a higher price, if they remove the DRM, says to me that Jobs is finally loosing this battle, and he is going to use that fact to his advantage. Like Jobs or not, he is shrewd, and I think he knows prices are going to go up anyways, so if he concedes a bit early, he can get something he wants. Thankfully for you and I it's something we want too.
Everyone assumes that Apple can do whatever it wants, which is just silly. Apple, because of their market clout has done things no one else has been able to do in regards to licensing of content, but the battle is ongoing. Of course the choice of having no DRM and the same or lower prices would be ideal; but you're assuming such a choice even exists.
Get rid of DRM now, even if it costs more. The price will change later depending on supply and demand, regardless of what it is set to now. However if DRM is removed, it will hard to get it back, as consumers will come to expect DRM-less media.
Love or hate Apple, at least they are using their current power to apply pressure in the right direction; no DRM. I don't mind the increase in price as much, because eventually they will increase it anyways based on inflation; so the bone Jobs is throwing them isn't very valuable, but he'll sell it like it is.
I hate monopolies, personally, but in this case it takes Apple's virtual monopoly in this space to fight the other monopolies (I know they are really a group of companies controlling everything, but you understand what I'm saying) in the media space. So I'll stand next to Apple on this one; for the time being.
Most people are selfish pricks. Smokers, prove this fact more than most. I could care less if they smoke, but the general attitude that when they throw trash on the ground, it's perfectly fine just gets me. Do what you want, but don't think I'm not going to do what I want to you.
I'm generally libertarian leaning, and don't like interfering with anyone else's business, and I like to stand up for those whose business is interfered with. However, most smokers complete lack of respect for anyone makes me just ignore the injustices inflicted on them. I've only so much time on my soapbox to stand up for peoples rights, I'll use that time for some other group, thank you.
>>"As soon as you say "Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get (package)", you've lost."
Um no, go the "start menu" like thingy in the upper right called "Applications", select "Add/Remove...", select the software you want to install (with categories, ratings, and description), then click ok.
So I like Tetris, so I go up into Applications, look in Games, and I don't see it there (Mahjong and Sudoku are there, however, which is cool). So I look around and I see Add/Remove, I click on that, a list comes up with a Games category. I look in there and find a few Tetrises. I find one that is highly rated, click ok, then apply. It asks me for my password, for security reasons, then installs. Then I go up into Applications, look in Games, and it is there.
So what exactly is the process for my grandmother to install her favorite game on Vista?
Apple II had a GUI, really?
This is the one thing that I think is kind of unique to the Ruby community, people like _Why. Also, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, the creator of Ruby, constantly is in the forums helping out newbs with their questions.
It's not often mentioned in threads about Ruby, but the community surrounding it is very good and, ultimately, that is very important.
It's also an awesome language, and although not hugely better than Python (another great language), better none-the-less (mainly for me, because of its fully object oriented-ness, and complete embrace of code blocks and closures).
So, let me get this straight. Is it wrong to whack off to hentai when I have a +3 erection? Or is it just wrong at work, when a woman from HR is walking past my cubicle? If I cast a spell of concealment over my cubicle, would it be ok then?
Just askin'
Yes, that is exactly right, all things being equal and fair. That is hardly the case, often large companies maintain their market share not through capitalism but through good old fashion organized crime (Enron), or through good old fashion communism (state enforced monopolies, such as telcoms). What US is becoming is a Corporatocracy, which is just soviet style communism with a better marketing department.
Deskbar seems similar, but what I can tell Deskbar doesn't do the composition stuff that Quicksilver does (perhaps it does I didn't fire up my PC to check it). If you do a search or enter something in Deskbar, it gives you a list of choices, but in Quicksilver you can continue on after that and rout those results to other options, it's like a GUI pipe. Here is quick example:
* If I type in "Joe S" as I type it shows different options when I've typed enough to get "Joe Smith" address book entry
* I then type "," which means I want to select another person, then I do the same thing for, let's say, 5 more people
* Now that I have a list of vcards, I can do something with them, I hit "tab" which pipes that list to another process (not really, but in concept)
* I then type "Emai" until I've typed enough to get "Email To", then I press tab to pipe that to another process
* I then type the first letters of who I want to email them to. And I'm done
If you were to do this in the command line, you'd create a comma delimited string of names, pass it to a program that would look up the vcards for each user, pipe the results to another program that would email them, and you'd specify who it was emailed to. So basically Quicksilver lets you, when you get good at it, do something like this in seconds using a GUI rather than the command-line. It's this ability to combine actions that makes Quicksilver different from all the other launchers, and I may be wrong, but I've never seen this anywhere before.
I should start using this in interviews to weed out people like you. You are talking about dynamic typing, not weak typing.
There is static/dynamic as well as weak/strong typing.
C and C++ are weak typed, you know those languages that a lot of OSs are written in. However they are static typed. Something like Ruby is strong and dynamically typed.
And dynamically typed languages are hardly dangerous; even the often mentioned "if you make a typo it doesn't catch it" reasoning isn't even correct most the time. Pleased to be explaining it to you:
In Ruby, for example, a variable is created when it's first assigned (and you don't specify its type), like this:
foo = "Hello"
if later you use foo, but miss-type it, it generates an error:
length = fooo.length
in this case, it will complain ("undefined local variable or method `fooo' for main:Object") and catch your typo.
In addition Ruby, as an example, is strongly typed you can't just add a string to an integer:
i = 0
foo = "1"
i = i + foo
In this case i is an integer and foo is a string, you can't treat foo like an integer without an error, because although it is dynamically typed it is strongly typed.
I think your post needs to be repeating. People love stereo types, so I'm probably whistling in the wind, but there are many people like you out there, I'm one of them. People who are love Unix and also love OS X. However I do own an iPod, a few of them.
People have to realize that OS X is mostly open source, except for the windows manager and the user-land stuff. The first thing I install on OS X is XCode so that I have gcc, and then DarwinPorts so I can "port" myself to happy goodness.
Of course I'd rather OS X run on any PC (you can if you work at it), but Apple hardware is pretty decent, and contrary to popular belief it isn't much more than equal hardware from Dell or whomever (that was the queue for someone to point out that you can buy that 9 pound 2 inch thick Dell laptop for 600 bucks; come on, you know you want to). It's OS X that I really like, what it runs on isn't as important to me.
I think there a 3 distinct groups of people using OS X.
* The home user who is attracted by the commercials that say how easy it is to use
* The artists/designers who use Photoshop/Final Cut Pro/etc
* People like me, *nix peeps that enjoy a really nice windows manager and seamless hardware drivers
Now saying all that, OS X on the server isn't so good, for that it's hard to beat BSD or Linux.
Just to add one minor note: Quicksilver is a Launcher app, as the parent mentions, but it so much more than that. And it's one of those things you can't describe real well, you have to spend some time using it to understand.
It's like saying that the command line is an app launcher, which is true, but that is only scratching the surface of what the console can do; the best way to describe Quicksilver is a visual command-line.
The two things that I miss the most when using Windows or Linux on the desktop are Quicksilver and TextMate. There just isn't anything like Quicksilver on any other platform.
Good post, I really like the "shut the ***** up" site.
I totally agree on backwards compatibility being the culprit. Microsoft, unfortunately for its fans and us that have to use it sometimes, is getting just too big to make bold moves anymore. They totally should of created a brand new OS, built from the ground up without regards to backwards compatibility. Then they could of built an emulation layer on top of that to help the transition. It must be a nightmare for Vista engineers to maintain backwards compatibility, something OS X engineers didn't have to deal with.
On the other hand, I understand why Microsoft would want to maintain it, for business reasons. The problem is though, if you hold on to something too tight, you end up loosing it, and by the time you know you've lost it, it is too late.
I was responding to "Your *employees* shouldn't even SEE those warnings. Their machine should be locked down so they can't harm it".
You can't install most software in Vista without seeing warnings and elevating your rights, which a sensible OS shouldn't require unless you are updating the OS.
My second point, is you don't have to "lock down" OS X. It has the same level of security as Vista (some would argue higher), without requiring to be locked down, or having those terrible ISVs you mentioned change all their applications.
If my points still aren't clear: Windows sucks, OS X and Linux rules. Also vi over emacs, but TextMate is the best, and etc is pronounced etcee.
No, in my workplace all the employees log in as a normal user on their OS X workstations. This doesn't stop them form installing software, changing their wifi settings when they are at home, or any other normal user things. Because OS X is designed in way where these normal user operations don't require any kind of root/admin access.
Other than not running as root/admin, we don't lock down the workstations in any way, the users can install that little app that puts a cute kitten on their desktop that dances around, why should we care. We hire adults, not children, so we treat them as such. If they act like children, and don't do their job, we fire them. So if someone needs the admin password, which 99% of the time they don't, that'd be fine (such as a programmer who uses DarwinPorts).
How did we all manage to get any work done for so many centuries without having the technical ability to limit everything our employees do?
This is pure Windows IT admin think (tm).
How about if the company's culture or their preferred business model does not require or even want user's machines to be "locked down". Basically, because there are so many problems with Windows, the only way to keep it reliable is to fully keep it "locked down"; by deciding to use Windows you are letting your technology dictate your business practices; how very nice for Microsoft.
Many things that UAC warns you about are perfectly acceptable for a user to perform, even in a "locked down" environment. I assume you aren't actually using Vista yet in the Enterprise.
It's funny how it's always the teacher who gets the brunt of this "hold them accountable" chant. How about, in addition to that, holding the Principles accountable, the administrators accountable, the school board accountable; all of which have more control over what and how children are taught than most teachers do.
Also, lets hold the parents accountable. When you have open school night, where parents are invited to meet the teacher and discuss their children, often you will have 4 parents surrounded by 25 empty seats.
Nah, who am I kidding, I must be new here too; get the firewood and the rope, I saw a teacher over there, grab her wrists, ankles, and someone get that fire going.
As you've noted, with your heavy lifting comment, measuring performance isn't an easy thing to do. But assuming you could figure out a good way to do that, there are other real problems. Here are some of the basic ones as I see it:
* Teachers, individually, often have very little power over how or what they teach their students. Giving them the responsibility to meet some measure of performance without the power to do so is just setting them up to fail; which I believe is what many administrators are intentionally doing to move focus of blame to the teachers and off of them.
* All efforts to make teachers perform better are useless if you have a shortage of teachers. And we have a shortage of teachers for many reasons. Fix that problem first, then when you have more teachers than you need, you can pick and choose the exceptional ones. The law of supply and demand doesn't stop working, just because we wish it would.
* Education isn't valued in the US. If you don't think that is true, then you really aren't paying much attention. As long as parents, and society as a whole, doesn't value education, and to a lesser extent teachers, don't plan on getting good teachers. Other countries actually do value education. How many hours do you think the average parent spends helping at school? How many hours do you think the average parent teaches their children at home? What percentage of a family's budget (not including clothes which you have to buy anyways) do you think parents spend on education? I don't know, but my guess it is either zero or close to zero (not including taxes paid). Now compare those numbers to other countries.
Teachers should be the masters in their field, and society should treat them as such. Our culture should put on a pedestal, and expect, a master of math/physics/english to teach those less skilled than them. Our society should emphasize that is everyone's patriotic duty to mentor and teach, and it is the highest calling. In short we should treat the really great teachers as least well as we treat the worst performing pro basketball player.
This is very true. However the key is to provide seamless backwards compatibility to allow the transition to occur, without that it will never work on the Corp desktop.
Windows did this well with allowing users to run DOS in a window. It took many, many years to transition all those old DOS apps into Windows, but it happened.
Apple does this very well too. They successfully went from OS 9 to OS X, which couldn't be a more different OS; they did this by providing Classic mode that allowed users to use their old apps until they were ported or rewritten for OS X. Then again later, they switched from PPC machines to Intel machines, and provided Rosetta technology that allows users to run PPC apps just as before until they are ported to Universal or Intel binaries. So basically they changed OSs twice in 6 years seamlessly.
Linux has Wine, and Crossover, Java, MONO, and VMWare, but all these don't cover everything, and the VMWare solution is less than ideal. Like the parent says, all companies have mission critical legacy applications written in VB, Access, FoxPro, etc that have to run in order for them to even consider switching desktop OSs. Perhaps a Crossover marketed to the enterprises, with emphasis on the development environments such as VB, Access, etc, with strong consulting services to fix the few applications that don't work under it.
Obviously since many applications are developed as web apps today, this problem is going way, thankfully.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you would get laughed at if you suggested Windows would be used in the office, this was around the Windows 3.0 days. Novell ruled the smaller server space, and Word Perfect and DOS were king.
:-) ).
Windows started to penetrate the desktop first with Windows 3.1 (IIRC) and Office. Then Novell made some serious mistakes, like making it hard for Windows desktops to connect to Novell servers (actually Microsoft did this, but Novell could of done much better), and not supporting TCP/IP and going with their IPX protocol instead. Because of those two things, as well as others, it started to become easier to use Windows Server or Windows for Workgroups (peer to peer serving) instead of Novell server, even though it wasn't even close in regards to performance, ease of administration, or reliability (you could do some very cool things with Novell NetWare).
Linux is starting the other way, with the servers, and then going to the desktop. So it's a different challenge. But one thing, IMO, that Linux needs to do is develop some features (not just copying Windows or OS X) that aren't available anywhere else that makes people demand it on the desktop. LInux does, of course, have the very real benefit of not having many issues with viruses and malware, but it needs more than that. If you take a look at the history lesson above, perhaps Linux Desktop could leverage the large install base of Linux on the server to solve integration issues that you just can't on Windows, making it so that the IT people demand Linux on the desktop, as we use to demand Windows on the server (before we got smart and started demanding Linux on the server
I am, I cracked up... now get off my damn lawn kids (oh, and you don't need an IDE to program, or debugger for that matter, damn kids these days)
This is why we should all start learning Mandarin or learn to speak with an Indian accent. This attitude of most Americans (I'm one too) that they "can't" give their children excellent educations, because they aren't "rich" enough; it's just sad really.
When people say this, they actually mean they can't give their children excellent FREE or very CHEAP educations, educations that won't cut into their car or satellite TV budgets. We just don't value education like the many parts of the world do, we value other things. In many parts of the world, there is no free education at all; in South Africa, many families live in shacks without running water, but manage to scrape together enough money to send their son, daughter, or grand daughter to school (they also pay for the books and uniforms). In many places people are willing to spend 60 or 70% of their income on school. In the US, if a family was at the poverty level, 60% of their income would amount to $10,000 a year spent on education. What percentage a year, of your budget, do you spend on education?
Every American gets a free education. It's true that many schools are sub standard, and need radical changes IMHO. But for a little amount of money a parent can augment this free education by paying for after-school tutoring, or educational programs, or at the very least spending a few hours of home-schooling a day, which with free libraries doesn't cost anything; of course this will cut into the the average 4 hours a day we watch TV. The next step is to send the children to private school, which can be from $5,000 and up a year.
We've established a world class education system in the US, and this is why people come from all around the world to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. But I fear that we have been coasting on this previous work and are not maintaining it. We won't see the results for many, many years, but education is a long term investment, one which others are willing to sacrifice for, it's sad that we aren't.
I think people get confused as to what memory "used" means. Here is a article by Apple on what OS X's memory means:
"Four types of memory appear in the System Memory pie chart: Wired, Active, Inactive, and Free. "Used" is simply the total of the first three.
The total of the four types equals the amount of random-access memory (RAM) in your computer. RAM is the high-speed memory used to store information that is in use or used most recently. Information in RAM is loaded from your hard disk, and the RAM is emptied when you turn off your computer.
The "VM size" refers to virtual memory, a system of putting information in RAM or caching it to your hard disk as needed. Thus Mac OS X can "virtually" use more memory than the amount of RAM you have. The hard disk is much slower than RAM, so the virtual memory system automatically distributes information between disk space and RAM for efficient performance. "Page ins/outs" refers to the number of times Mac OS X has moved information between RAM and disk space.
Wired memory
This information can't be cached to disk, so it must stay in RAM. The amount depends on what applications you are using.
Active memory
This information is currently in RAM and actively being used.
Inactive memory
This information is no longer being used and has been cached to disk, but it will remain in RAM until another application needs the space. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later.
Free memory
This memory is not being used.
What does all this mean?
This means you shouldn't worry when the Free memory is low. The only time Free memory should be high is right after the computer starts up. As you use applications or services, memory is used and transitions to Inactive. Applications that need more memory will take from the Inactive, but the Inactive is there just in case you need it again. If the combination of Free and Inactive is very low, then you might need more memory. "
A very simple small book, that covers the basics. All developers that do any sort of UI should read it, and live it.
Proper visual design is easy and algorithmic, a programmer has absolutely no excuse creating a crap UI, when the rules of proper design are so few and so simple.