well, not exactly. A 4-year-old PC will be dog-slow with the latest Windows. A 4-years-old Mac will be faster with the latest OSX (not by a whole lot, mind you). On the other hand, you can do a minimal Linux install on both and compare - but that's an unusual case even for the PC.
Long story short - the value of the default OS has a huge impact. And 'still useful' depends on what you need to use it for - neither will be good at playing high-res mpeg4 movies, for instance.
Unlike the courts, in competition such as this, the vast amounts of highly payed lawers cannot be of much use.
Sure they can: IP lawsuits. Or even threats thereof. We live in the SCO years, after all. Now, imagine a beefed-up version of SCO, with the same agenda, more cash and more cunning. With the current state of the legal system, we were lucky SCO was in only for the PR effect.
Never underestimate the competition - especially when they can bend the rules in their favor a lot easier than you can.
This forum thread was started by taking a private email and posting to a public forum without the author's permission.
I think you're wrong. This is not a private email by any standard, it's an official email saying 'we won't be using your theme as a default anymore'. For a project of Firefox's weight this kind of stuff is not private, as it affects too many people. One would even have expected some sort of public debate for this theme change. Think of it as posting the content of the pink slip you just received from your employer - or you consider that a private communication too/ (especially if it comes without any kind of prior notice or explanation)
I would very much like to have the decision-making process out in the open, thank you very much. If the 'consulting' of the current default's author only amounted to this email, this is quite a big issue about the openness of the project. Users have a right to know, otherwise we're back to the closed development model. Public decision making in large projects is an important part of F/OSS. Otherwise all the 'open' mantra is just smoke and mirrors.
I for one would hate to see Mozilla evolve into some kind of XFree86 bureaucracy.
This article indicates precisely why OGG Vorbis probably isn't a good idea on your ipod or mp3 player... namely, you get 25% LESS battery life.
and a big part of the reason for that is (next sentence in the article):
We didn't do a lot of optimisation, so it's running the Vorbis-supplied tremor decoder with only a few tweaks.
Everyone knows how well-optimized the reference Vorbis implementation is... all those fools with their alternate 'optimized' codecs are just nutcases, right?
NOW here's an experiment, take a phone book choose any phone number and ask the person that answers what OGG is, then ask them what MP3 is
And some answering options:
Don't know.
Don't care.
Dunno, the things Junior keeps getting off the 'net?
The music I was listening to the other day?
A digital audio compression scheme.
Wanna bet how many people would answer correctly for MP3? (hint: "don't know" is a better answer than "a music file").
All this shows is that the customer awareness for the MP3 name is larger, irrespective of technical specifics. Heck, Apple is trying to build customer awareness with AAC - add AAC to your experiment and compare. The more interesting question would be if you added WMA too, for that matter.
And, as a final point: how many consumer-type users even bother to enable the display of the file extension in Windows Explorer? as this makes the whole format point irrelevant to the ones that don't - they know it's music by the WMP icon and use WMP to listen to it. mp3? what the heck is that?
so what prevents your having the app in its own directory (under/usr/bin/local, for instance) and symlink the binaries to/usr/local/bin, the lib subdirectory to/usr/local/lib and so on? then uninstalling only adds the step of removing invalid symlinks after deleting the app directory - you could even make it a script (say,/usr/bin/uninstall).
and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Unless using an IE-only 'feature' (like ActiveX) is a requirement for that site, change the user agent string in Mozilla and it should work (most of the times, at least). The user agent switching extension is handy for that ^_^
You mean like a clipboard daemon? At least in KDE there's one (Klipper, not command-line though) that gives you a nice history of your selections. Quite useful at times.
... you got the/. front page, that will generate some traffic... erm... provided your server can handle it. Now if you can use traffic logs to convince advertisers that your site is heavily visited, you may get a swing at ads;-)
... it's not an essential part of the OS core??? hey, I wonder how did all those Windows users live (still do, as a matter of fact) without the amazing multimedia experience that comes with WMP10... err... will come.... nevermind.
Oh well, you can bet they are building Longhorn around this baby as we speak, anyway - at least as far as the DOJ is concerned.
wonder if once its fully released if microsoft will say that there is a major flaw in previous version of media players and force people to upgrade to the newer version.
/me dons tinfoil hat
Well, if there isn't one now, who's to say what future WMP9 updates will carry in their picnic basket?
the X copy method includes all 3 available selections. the middle-click copy is just using one; to obtain what you want, use the Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V method involving the clipboard selection (if implemented by the application).
More flexible: you can implement the Windows-type behavior and more. The fact that the 'more' alone is not Windows-type is to be expected, don't you think?
Why would you want to? that's one assumption too many IMHO. Say you run several X servers on the machine. Which one should catch the global hotkey? and so on.
It's actually meant to be treated by the app - if it wants to do copy/paste, handle the event, otherwise ignore it. But handle it properly if compatibility is expected.
explicit cut/copy commands (i.e. menu items, toolbar buttons) should always set CLIPBOARD to the currently-selected data (i.e. conceptually copy PRIMARY to CLIPBOARD)
Ho-hum... your 'mother test' is actually the 'Windows user test'. X copy/paste predates Windows copy/paste. And it's more flexible (this being currently the problem). This is the correct behavior for X, not for Windows.
If the 'typical mother' had started with a DEC instead of Win3.x/Win9x, middle click paste would have been the 'correct and expected behavior'.
Between the 10% magnification difference and inherently dimmer pentamirror construction, the 10D will be much easier to use.
No argument there:-) Night shooting for one is particularly sensitive to this.;-)
Your suggestion to get the 1Ds or the 1D Mark II are asinine, though, if they're looking at $800 and $1,000 bodies. Last I checked, the 1D Mark II costs $6,000, and the 1Ds costs $10,000, not to mention the weight increase from even 10D.
For $800-$1000 bodies, it's a choice of vendors. But the 1D* prices you quote are a bit on the high side (on amazon.com, not exactly the best place to shop for cameras, 1Ds is around $7500 + tax and mark II is $4500 + tax). The point is, for professional shooting you'll get your money back for a higher initial investment. If photography is a hobby, you have to choose on price/performance, so if ~$2k for 10D body + lens is too much for you, 300D is the only Canon option. But dissing a camera just because the body is plastic is anisine. (just for the sake of the argument, if 300D were actually a full 10D mechanics with just the cheaper plastic outer body + lens, how would this critique stand?) On a similar line, the weight increase for 10D -> 1D* is not exactly the best argument. Check the specs (no, not the 'megapixel' part, the full specs).
OK, this might sound like trolling, but if you take into account the main market 300D is targeted towards, in too many cases the user's skill would make more of a difference than the extra 10D features (it's the cheapest DSLR, for heaven's sake, intended for consumers who want to pay a little more than for a PowerShot).
I'll admit, I was mostly annoyed by the trolling about the plastic body and 'pay a little more for the 10D' on/. There are spec differences, but here too few cared and would just argue the plastic feel of the body.
You're right that the body spec of the D70 is better, but the lens problem is not that big: the 300D body with an ultra-wide EF USM zoom is still cheaper by some $200 if I calculated this correctly. Now if some of the limitations of the 300D body are actually artificial, that would further blur the line if Canon could be bothered to enable them.
On the other hand, the intended target market is obviously different. And Canon is capitalizing on the fact that the vast number of buyers will not really need the extra features of, say, 10D (or even D70) - just look at how successful the consumer digital market is. This is probably more like a step up from PowerShot than a step down from 10D.
$1.5k is not expensive in the pro market. Actually, it's the very low limit. Check the prices for the top Canons (up to $8k body only) and add to that the lens price - heck, professional Canon lenses can cost way more than the 10D body.
People, the 10D is an entry-level pro camera, barely above the 300D! Get some perspective here!
Slashdot Mirror
well, not exactly. A 4-year-old PC will be dog-slow with the latest Windows. A 4-years-old Mac will be faster with the latest OSX (not by a whole lot, mind you). On the other hand, you can do a minimal Linux install on both and compare - but that's an unusual case even for the PC.
Long story short - the value of the default OS has a huge impact. And 'still useful' depends on what you need to use it for - neither will be good at playing high-res mpeg4 movies, for instance.
He said a server for his studies in databases and OS: None (he uses SuSE). Did you actually read the post?
Unlike the courts, in competition such as this, the vast amounts of highly payed lawers cannot be of much use.
Sure they can: IP lawsuits. Or even threats thereof. We live in the SCO years, after all. Now, imagine a beefed-up version of SCO, with the same agenda, more cash and more cunning. With the current state of the legal system, we were lucky SCO was in only for the PR effect.
Never underestimate the competition - especially when they can bend the rules in their favor a lot easier than you can.
This forum thread was started by taking a private email and posting to a public forum without the author's permission.
I think you're wrong. This is not a private email by any standard, it's an official email saying 'we won't be using your theme as a default anymore'. For a project of Firefox's weight this kind of stuff is not private, as it affects too many people. One would even have expected some sort of public debate for this theme change. Think of it as posting the content of the pink slip you just received from your employer - or you consider that a private communication too/ (especially if it comes without any kind of prior notice or explanation)
I would very much like to have the decision-making process out in the open, thank you very much. If the 'consulting' of the current default's author only amounted to this email, this is quite a big issue about the openness of the project. Users have a right to know, otherwise we're back to the closed development model. Public decision making in large projects is an important part of F/OSS. Otherwise all the 'open' mantra is just smoke and mirrors.
I for one would hate to see Mozilla evolve into some kind of XFree86 bureaucracy.
and a big part of the reason for that is (next sentence in the article):
Everyone knows how well-optimized the reference Vorbis implementation is
And some answering options:
Wanna bet how many people would answer correctly for MP3? (hint: "don't know" is a better answer than "a music file").
All this shows is that the customer awareness for the MP3 name is larger, irrespective of technical specifics. Heck, Apple is trying to build customer awareness with AAC - add AAC to your experiment and compare. The more interesting question would be if you added WMA too, for that matter.
And, as a final point: how many consumer-type users even bother to enable the display of the file extension in Windows Explorer? as this makes the whole format point irrelevant to the ones that don't - they know it's music by the WMP icon and use WMP to listen to it. mp3? what the heck is that?
so what prevents your having the app in its own directory (under /usr/bin/local, for instance) and symlink the binaries to /usr/local/bin, the lib subdirectory to /usr/local/lib and so on? then uninstalling only adds the step of removing invalid symlinks after deleting the app directory - you could even make it a script (say, /usr/bin/uninstall).
a distro that does away with Unix paths such as /usr/bin and /lib and uses things like /System/Settings/X11 instead
For all those thinking "what a nice idea":
afaik LSB requires FHS which, in turn, requires the standard directory structure. Does this mean we should throw the whole LSB out now?
And no, OSX is not LSB compliant - go figure.
Not very pretty, but you can try something like:
/*insert some warning style change here*/
*[onmouseover^="javascript:window.open"]
{
}
in userContent.css to warn you about that. Otherwise, using a policy can take care of the issue (downside: you have to edit it yourself)
and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Unless using an IE-only 'feature' (like ActiveX) is a requirement for that site, change the user agent string in Mozilla and it should work (most of the times, at least). The user agent switching extension is handy for that ^_^
You mean like a clipboard daemon? At least in KDE there's one (Klipper, not command-line though) that gives you a nice history of your selections. Quite useful at times.
... you got the /. front page, that will generate some traffic ... erm ... provided your server can handle it. Now if you can use traffic logs to convince advertisers that your site is heavily visited, you may get a swing at ads ;-)
... it's not an essential part of the OS core??? hey, I wonder how did all those Windows users live (still do, as a matter of fact) without the amazing multimedia experience that comes with WMP10 ... err ... will come .... nevermind.
Oh well, you can bet they are building Longhorn around this baby as we speak, anyway - at least as far as the DOJ is concerned.
And, of course, nothing really requires XP or IE for download. Firefox on Linux saved the installer just nice after switching the user agent string.
Next question is, does it work with wine? ^_^
(not that I'd use it anyway when mplayer is just a click away)
Well, if there isn't one now, who's to say what future WMP9 updates will carry in their picnic basket?
the X copy method includes all 3 available selections. the middle-click copy is just using one; to obtain what you want, use the Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V method involving the clipboard selection (if implemented by the application).
More flexible: you can implement the Windows-type behavior and more. The fact that the 'more' alone is not Windows-type is to be expected, don't you think?
Ah, but how about catching it as a global hotkey?
Why would you want to? that's one assumption too many IMHO. Say you run several X servers on the machine. Which one should catch the global hotkey? and so on.
It's actually meant to be treated by the app - if it wants to do copy/paste, handle the event, otherwise ignore it. But handle it properly if compatibility is expected.
Tell me about it! especially in Firefox, with everything looking just like in Linux. select, middle-click ... wtf??? oh, right ... keyboard :-(
No matter how much windows users complain about it, middle click selections are sooooo useful if you understand them.
Ho-hum ... your 'mother test' is actually the 'Windows user test'. X copy/paste predates Windows copy/paste. And it's more flexible (this being currently the problem). This is the correct behavior for X, not for Windows.
If the 'typical mother' had started with a DEC instead of Win3.x/Win9x, middle click paste would have been the 'correct and expected behavior'.
For that matter, there's no actual button on mac mice - unless, of course, you mean the mouse IS the button ^_^
The current consensus on freedesktop.org is something along the lines of:
The problem is that some apps use only the primary selection for all copy/paste operations, so it can get confusing.
For more info, look here
No argument there
For $800-$1000 bodies, it's a choice of vendors. But the 1D* prices you quote are a bit on the high side (on amazon.com, not exactly the best place to shop for cameras, 1Ds is around $7500 + tax and mark II is $4500 + tax). The point is, for professional shooting you'll get your money back for a higher initial investment. If photography is a hobby, you have to choose on price/performance, so if ~$2k for 10D body + lens is too much for you, 300D is the only Canon option. But dissing a camera just because the body is plastic is anisine. (just for the sake of the argument, if 300D were actually a full 10D mechanics with just the cheaper plastic outer body + lens, how would this critique stand?) On a similar line, the weight increase for 10D -> 1D* is not exactly the best argument. Check the specs (no, not the 'megapixel' part, the full specs).
OK, this might sound like trolling, but if you take into account the main market 300D is targeted towards, in too many cases the user's skill would make more of a difference than the extra 10D features (it's the cheapest DSLR, for heaven's sake, intended for consumers who want to pay a little more than for a PowerShot).
good points :-)
/. There are spec differences, but here too few cared and would just argue the plastic feel of the body.
I'll admit, I was mostly annoyed by the trolling about the plastic body and 'pay a little more for the 10D' on
You're right that the body spec of the D70 is better, but the lens problem is not that big: the 300D body with an ultra-wide EF USM zoom is still cheaper by some $200 if I calculated this correctly. Now if some of the limitations of the 300D body are actually artificial, that would further blur the line if Canon could be bothered to enable them.
On the other hand, the intended target market is obviously different. And Canon is capitalizing on the fact that the vast number of buyers will not really need the extra features of, say, 10D (or even D70) - just look at how successful the consumer digital market is. This is probably more like a step up from PowerShot than a step down from 10D.
$1.5k is not expensive in the pro market. Actually, it's the very low limit. Check the prices for the top Canons (up to $8k body only) and add to that the lens price - heck, professional Canon lenses can cost way more than the 10D body.
People, the 10D is an entry-level pro camera, barely above the 300D! Get some perspective here!