There's quite a bit I can do differently, for one thing - such as far more and far more functional layer modes. Been there, done that - but for the other, who says I'm going to be marketing it? This isn't about competition in the marketplace. This is about "Screw me? No, screw you." I just said others might benefit, that's all.
Yeah, Adobe. Just finished dealing with them this morning. And by "finished", I mean finished.
I just set up a Mac with MacOS Sierra 10.12, and attempted to install my copy of Photoshop CS5. Sierra advised me to throw the installer in the trash. Seriously. That's the dialog I got. Adobe "support" told me "not compatible with 10.12", and also "there is no fix or upgrade" other than enter into a permanent wallet-sucking fest for their "subscription" based product. No. Not a chance.
So, that's the end of a multi-hundred dollar investment. Thanks, Adobe. Also, thanks, Apple. Whoever is responsible for the idiocy. Both, perhaps.
Well. So I'm screwed, right?
Not necessarily.
I know a "little bit" about image manipulation from making Windows image manipulation software. I'm retired, and previously really lacked the motivation to build an image manipulation app of my own for the Mac. Previously.
Insofar as my own needs go, I can definitely handle this, and in fairly short order, too. Others might end up benefitting as well. We will see.
Let's just see how many of those features I can move over from my (mostly very portable) existing image manipulation code. And how quick. Today serves as the starting line. Assuming age doesn't kick me nipples north in the short term, and no other unforeseen disaster shows its ugly face, I expect to be raising my figurative middle finger in Adobe's direction quite soon as these things go.
The USAF is in charge of our nukes, and *they* are the ones who actually push the launch button, and more importantly, they must *approve* of the president's decision to launch nukes
Would this come as a surprise to the officers of a boomer or other nuclear-armed naval vessel?
Regardless, pretty sure the chain of command on any nuke release is very, very short. Otherwise, those weapons could be destroyed where they sit. I do not, however, know the details. If you have details, I would like to learn about this. Please feel free to elaborate.
Some of this is web design (I use the word "design" very loosely) and some is application design:
o the "designer" mindset has gifted us with extreme low contrast backdrops and fonts - STOP THAT
o bloody pop-up/over dialogs that were not asked for are constantly used - THIS IS HOW TO MAKE ME GO AWAY
o menus drop without being requested because mouse went over them - WAIT FOR A BLOODY CLICK!
o Videos autoplay just because I've arrived, or because the mouse pointer went over them. Ever think *I* might want to control what damned noise comes out of my computer, or what data I want to stream on my phone? You should. Because while I'm desperately trying to figure out how to shut up / stop your video abortion, I am hating on you and everything you represent, and vowing to NEVER come back to your site, which I promptly implement via my hosts file because you SUCK.
o Do NOT change the web or application UI: NEVER make a modal UI. Present a consistent interface that can be learned and incorporated into muscle memory. Enable/disable elements as appropriate. IOW, if a document isn't NEW or Loaded, Save should be disabled - not GONE. This is so everything in the interface remains where it was. We want to work, not read your damn interface over and over and over and over just to see where we're at.
o Make ALL keyboard commands configurable. In some apps, some of the things I do most often have no shortcuts and no way to add one. How annoying. How stupid.
I swear, there are days when I'd like to hunt down these so-called "designers" and yell at them until my voice gave out.
All of the above is effete nonsense that designers engage in an attempt (which is actually abject failure) to justify their title; stop all that, and just do it right. Don't even try to be "fancy" unless you're writing a game.
Also, if you say "UX", I just want you to know you've made me work to suppress an urge to slap your face. Hard.
It's been moved forward because they don't like Trump. That's fundamentally the reason.
No, it's been moved forward because the man who is now president of the United States of America, a very heavily armed nuclear power, that has stated it is "at war" with terrorism, where terrorism is sourced from a fairly distinct group of countries, has said:
We have nuclear arsenals which are in very terrible shape
And in response to this remark by interviewer Matthews...
They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
Trump said:
Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
That's a "holy shit, the man is outright insane" remark. Period. That's not why we make them. We make them because of MAD; which is to say as a deterrent against others using them. Russa, China, even stupid little North Korea shoots them off, then we guarantee we will shoot ours off in response. IOW, whoever uses them gets to meet their own particular sky-daddy. Or hellspawn, as the case may be.
In response to interviewer Bolling, who said, in the context of using nuclear weapons:
Europe, what about that?
Trump responded:
Europe is a big place. I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability.
In both cases, after he said these things, he walked them back. However, he said them, and given the usual word salad he spews, they have to serve as a window into his attitudes. You can only pick out individual remarks in Trump's meanderings; he presents incoherent verbal streams when taken more than a sentence at a time (which is why Twitter kind of works for him... he has to limit his remarks to 140 characters. It provides the structure he is incapable of providing for himself.)
Interviewer Dickerson:
They talk about the presidency and who has the finger on the button. The United States has not used nuclear weapons since 1945. When should it?
Trump responds:
Well, it is an absolute last stance. And, you know, I use the word unpredictable. You want to be unpredictable.
Let's just be perfectly clear about this: No sane person wants the USA to be "unpredictable" about its policy for use of nuclear weapons. This is a window into the fact that Trump is a fucking idiot. Not just any fucking idiot, but THE fucking idiot with his finger on the button. He's insane.
This is the root of the problem. Trump's obviously not like previous presidents. So people are paying very, very close attention to what he says. And there are times when what he says is very, very worrisome. As above.
So yes, there's a reason people are thinking we're closer to the use of nuclear weapons, and that reason isn't a dislike of Trump; it's just actually listening to what the man has said on the subject. A sane person would not make the remarks Trump has made. Simply would not. He is visibly, obviously, and frighteningly batshit. And he's the guy who can shoot them off. If it's North Korea he decides to make glow, or some little Arab country, we might not see an escalation; then again, we might. Perhaps if we fire, Israel will too; perhaps Russia will feel it needs to step in. Pakistan. India. Etc.
It's also worth noting that Trump has spent the last two years making severe economic threats in China's direction. China is another nuclear power, and they are not like us in their thinking. It is not wise to severely piss off people you do not understand -- and it is patently obvious that Trump does not understand China at all. I mean, quite aside from the demonstrated fact that he doesn't understand why we have nuc
I just set my phone to use cell data when wifi isn't available. Works fine. I never, ever get even close to my data cap. Surely your provider gives you some data without extra fees?
Or is this a paranoia thing? Because if it is, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but malware is unlikely to care what your settings are. Traditional black hat, corporate black hat, or government black hat. Just keep your phone free of things that are compromising and cease worrying. Or, if its your location you're concerned with, take the battery out. Though at that point, whether the phone has a voice assistant or not is moot.
I'm not "on my phone." I'm just talking to someone, same as if you were in the passenger seat. My hands are on the wheel where they belong, and my eyes are on the road.
Or are you advocating for zero conversation with drivers? If so, I at least see your point, but I consider it unreasonable.
I'm not "on my phone", that's the whole point. I'm just talking to someone, same as if you were in the passenger seat. My hands are on the wheel where they belong, and my eyes are on the road.
Technically, this is a hardware problem and may be resolved at some point, but as it is presently integral to the process, I'm pretty comfortable with "vaop(u)r is extremely harmful"
No, the specific issue is that if you put your data in "the cloud": It's out of your control. You've put your trust in people who are out of your control and who are almost certainly motivated entirely by money and power, not your well-being or security, except as that drives the first. Data storage providers can -- and will -- do things with your data without telling you that are completely out of your control. Including hand over the data to any entity that can apply enough monetary or threat pressure to motivate them -- like a government or an advertiser.
Unless the data is of absolutely no consequence, putting data in "the cloud" is a very poor decision.
"The cloud" is a touchy-feely name for a monumentally risky choice in data storage. More honestly, it could be called "Untrustworthy storage." Even that's a little too friendly.
many Mac owners are waking up to the fact that they can get a PC with better specs than a Mac at less than 1/3 the cost.
Unfortunately, no MacOS, and no Mac apps.
So it doesn't matter what hardware we can get.
I have no doubt at all Apple is so far behind in hardware design because they are really busy, you know, doing critically important work like removing earphone jacks and function keys and user-upgrade-capable features like RAM and drives and network ports and batteries and card slots and drive bays. That has got to be some challenging engineering!
But the fact remains, we buy your fabulous hardware -- and I'm totally giving you the benefit of the doubt there, certainly we could buy newer hardware just as you describe, likely less expensive just as you said, plus all manner of fabulous I/O and bays and slots -- and we still can't legally, or even reliably, run any of our software. Hackintoshes are not a good solution at all.
Which makes the fabulous new hardware exactly as useful as a boat anchor, minus the ability to really get a hook on the bottom.
What a lot of people who rant about price and performance just don't seem to get is that people buy computers primarily to run software on them and connect them to things that the computer can control and otherwise add value to, or vice-versa, inevitably using said software. If a particular computer won't run the software, you can describe how fabulous it is and the huge price advantage(s) until your vocal cords fail you, and it will do you not a bit of good.
Me, I just shop EBay. I paid $1500 for a 12/24 core, 3x 1-terabyte drive, ~3GHz Mac Pro just last week. It's not the latest thing, but on the other hand, it's still pretty quick, and in terms of resources and ports, it's great. The actual price/performance... outstanding.
Apple made nothing off that deal. But they deserve that in my view as they tried to foist that trashcan thing off on me. Could have had my money with just a proper tower design. Instead, they sent me to EBay. Clearly, I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand their marketing plan, that's all. [waves in California's general direction]
I can't understand why people keep saying Mac sales are dead or dying.
Just in the last week, I bought a 64GB, 3GHz, triple one-terabyte drive, 12/24 core Mac Pro with a graphics card that will more than do what I need. Beautiful tall thing, truly awesome case design, lots of ports, three open card slots, expandable, physically secure, latest MacOS installed.
For ~$1500.00, with free shipping and 30 days return privileges to make sure it arrives safely and works as specified.
I bought it at what has become my absolute favorite Mac store, EBay.
Keep your $50 dumbphone turned off or in Airplane Mode when you're not actively using it, and the ability to track you dwindles to essentially zero.
No. The only way to absolutely stop a tracking system from following you via your phone is to take the battery out. When it's "off", that doesn't mean it can't listen or use the radio. That "off" button is a softkey. Not a power switch. You think "I'm turning it off", it's going "hey, user pressed a button... now, what shall I do in response..."
However, no electrons available is a complete show-stopper.
Just because shit looks good on TV doesn't mean it will work in real life.
Doesn't mean it won't, either. Because, you know, it's TV. But it does mean there's an interest in it when it's pervasive and repeated. As those things are. And if there's a way, and there's interest...
And the holodeck, at least, doesn't have any particular physics laws standing in the way.
Warp drive, well, there's that whole Alcubierre thing. It looks not actually impossible, so there's that.
Slashdot Mirror
There's quite a bit I can do differently, for one thing - such as far more and far more functional layer modes. Been there, done that - but for the other, who says I'm going to be marketing it? This isn't about competition in the marketplace. This is about "Screw me? No, screw you." I just said others might benefit, that's all.
Yeah, Adobe. Just finished dealing with them this morning. And by "finished", I mean finished.
I just set up a Mac with MacOS Sierra 10.12, and attempted to install my copy of Photoshop CS5. Sierra advised me to throw the installer in the trash. Seriously. That's the dialog I got. Adobe "support" told me "not compatible with 10.12", and also "there is no fix or upgrade" other than enter into a permanent wallet-sucking fest for their "subscription" based product. No. Not a chance.
So, that's the end of a multi-hundred dollar investment. Thanks, Adobe. Also, thanks, Apple. Whoever is responsible for the idiocy. Both, perhaps.
Well. So I'm screwed, right?
Not necessarily.
I know a "little bit" about image manipulation from making Windows image manipulation software. I'm retired, and previously really lacked the motivation to build an image manipulation app of my own for the Mac. Previously.
Insofar as my own needs go, I can definitely handle this, and in fairly short order, too. Others might end up benefitting as well. We will see.
Surely just an empty claim, amiright?
Well, take a Look: My bonafides begin right here.
Let's just see how many of those features I can move over from my (mostly very portable) existing image manipulation code. And how quick. Today serves as the starting line. Assuming age doesn't kick me nipples north in the short term, and no other unforeseen disaster shows its ugly face, I expect to be raising my figurative middle finger in Adobe's direction quite soon as these things go.
Would this come as a surprise to the officers of a boomer or other nuclear-armed naval vessel?
Regardless, pretty sure the chain of command on any nuke release is very, very short. Otherwise, those weapons could be destroyed where they sit. I do not, however, know the details. If you have details, I would like to learn about this. Please feel free to elaborate.
Apple is the worst at this, where they have policy documents that force app creators to behave the wrong way
FTFY.
"Hey, let's make them put the app configuration deep in the device preferences instead of in the app" ...morons.
Some of this is web design (I use the word "design" very loosely) and some is application design:
o the "designer" mindset has gifted us with extreme low contrast backdrops and fonts - STOP THAT
o bloody pop-up/over dialogs that were not asked for are constantly used - THIS IS HOW TO MAKE ME GO AWAY
o menus drop without being requested because mouse went over them - WAIT FOR A BLOODY CLICK!
o Videos autoplay just because I've arrived, or because the mouse pointer went over them. Ever think *I* might want to control what damned noise comes out of my computer, or what data I want to stream on my phone? You should. Because while I'm desperately trying to figure out how to shut up / stop your video abortion, I am hating on you and everything you represent, and vowing to NEVER come back to your site, which I promptly implement via my hosts file because you SUCK.
o Do NOT change the web or application UI: NEVER make a modal UI. Present a consistent interface that can be learned and incorporated into muscle memory. Enable/disable elements as appropriate. IOW, if a document isn't NEW or Loaded, Save should be disabled - not GONE. This is so everything in the interface remains where it was. We want to work, not read your damn interface over and over and over and over just to see where we're at.
o Make ALL keyboard commands configurable. In some apps, some of the things I do most often have no shortcuts and no way to add one. How annoying. How stupid.
I swear, there are days when I'd like to hunt down these so-called "designers" and yell at them until my voice gave out.
All of the above is effete nonsense that designers engage in an attempt (which is actually abject failure) to justify their title; stop all that, and just do it right. Don't even try to be "fancy" unless you're writing a game.
Also, if you say "UX", I just want you to know you've made me work to suppress an urge to slap your face. Hard.
No, it's been moved forward because the man who is now president of the United States of America, a very heavily armed nuclear power, that has stated it is "at war" with terrorism, where terrorism is sourced from a fairly distinct group of countries, has said:
And in response to this remark by interviewer Matthews...
Trump said:
That's a "holy shit, the man is outright insane" remark. Period. That's not why we make them. We make them because of MAD; which is to say as a deterrent against others using them. Russa, China, even stupid little North Korea shoots them off, then we guarantee we will shoot ours off in response. IOW, whoever uses them gets to meet their own particular sky-daddy. Or hellspawn, as the case may be.
In response to interviewer Bolling, who said, in the context of using nuclear weapons:
Trump responded:
In both cases, after he said these things, he walked them back. However, he said them, and given the usual word salad he spews, they have to serve as a window into his attitudes. You can only pick out individual remarks in Trump's meanderings; he presents incoherent verbal streams when taken more than a sentence at a time (which is why Twitter kind of works for him... he has to limit his remarks to 140 characters. It provides the structure he is incapable of providing for himself.)
Interviewer Dickerson:
Trump responds:
Let's just be perfectly clear about this: No sane person wants the USA to be "unpredictable" about its policy for use of nuclear weapons. This is a window into the fact that Trump is a fucking idiot. Not just any fucking idiot, but THE fucking idiot with his finger on the button. He's insane.
This is the root of the problem. Trump's obviously not like previous presidents. So people are paying very, very close attention to what he says. And there are times when what he says is very, very worrisome. As above.
So yes, there's a reason people are thinking we're closer to the use of nuclear weapons, and that reason isn't a dislike of Trump; it's just actually listening to what the man has said on the subject. A sane person would not make the remarks Trump has made. Simply would not. He is visibly, obviously, and frighteningly batshit. And he's the guy who can shoot them off. If it's North Korea he decides to make glow, or some little Arab country, we might not see an escalation; then again, we might. Perhaps if we fire, Israel will too; perhaps Russia will feel it needs to step in. Pakistan. India. Etc.
It's also worth noting that Trump has spent the last two years making severe economic threats in China's direction. China is another nuclear power, and they are not like us in their thinking. It is not wise to severely piss off people you do not understand -- and it is patently obvious that Trump does not understand China at all. I mean, quite aside from the demonstrated fact that he doesn't understand why we have nuc
Why would you be without a network connection?
I just set my phone to use cell data when wifi isn't available. Works fine. I never, ever get even close to my data cap. Surely your provider gives you some data without extra fees?
Or is this a paranoia thing? Because if it is, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but malware is unlikely to care what your settings are. Traditional black hat, corporate black hat, or government black hat. Just keep your phone free of things that are compromising and cease worrying. Or, if its your location you're concerned with, take the battery out. Though at that point, whether the phone has a voice assistant or not is moot.
I'm not "on my phone." I'm just talking to someone, same as if you were in the passenger seat. My hands are on the wheel where they belong, and my eyes are on the road.
Or are you advocating for zero conversation with drivers? If so, I at least see your point, but I consider it unreasonable.
I'm not "on my phone", that's the whole point. I'm just talking to someone, same as if you were in the passenger seat. My hands are on the wheel where they belong, and my eyes are on the road.
Works fine with my phone -- an S7. I've not had it make a mistake yet. It's very useful.
Well, but there is this...
Technically, this is a hardware problem and may be resolved at some point, but as it is presently integral to the process, I'm pretty comfortable with "vaop(u)r is extremely harmful"
No, the specific issue is that if you put your data in "the cloud": It's out of your control. You've put your trust in people who are out of your control and who are almost certainly motivated entirely by money and power, not your well-being or security, except as that drives the first. Data storage providers can -- and will -- do things with your data without telling you that are completely out of your control. Including hand over the data to any entity that can apply enough monetary or threat pressure to motivate them -- like a government or an advertiser.
Unless the data is of absolutely no consequence, putting data in "the cloud" is a very poor decision.
"The cloud" is a touchy-feely name for a monumentally risky choice in data storage. More honestly, it could be called "Untrustworthy storage." Even that's a little too friendly.
Thank you. :)
Let me help you out. The answer is, "Yes."
Honestly, as a MacOS user, I would welcome that day.
They sure as hell haven't shown they are able to make cutting edge products. Just (cough) "courageous" ones.
It'd be killer to be able to set up a legit MacOS system with the latest innards.
Unfortunately, no MacOS, and no Mac apps.
So it doesn't matter what hardware we can get.
I have no doubt at all Apple is so far behind in hardware design because they are really busy, you know, doing critically important work like removing earphone jacks and function keys and user-upgrade-capable features like RAM and drives and network ports and batteries and card slots and drive bays. That has got to be some challenging engineering!
But the fact remains, we buy your fabulous hardware -- and I'm totally giving you the benefit of the doubt there, certainly we could buy newer hardware just as you describe, likely less expensive just as you said, plus all manner of fabulous I/O and bays and slots -- and we still can't legally, or even reliably, run any of our software. Hackintoshes are not a good solution at all.
Which makes the fabulous new hardware exactly as useful as a boat anchor, minus the ability to really get a hook on the bottom.
What a lot of people who rant about price and performance just don't seem to get is that people buy computers primarily to run software on them and connect them to things that the computer can control and otherwise add value to, or vice-versa, inevitably using said software. If a particular computer won't run the software, you can describe how fabulous it is and the huge price advantage(s) until your vocal cords fail you, and it will do you not a bit of good.
Me, I just shop EBay. I paid $1500 for a 12/24 core, 3x 1-terabyte drive, ~3GHz Mac Pro just last week. It's not the latest thing, but on the other hand, it's still pretty quick, and in terms of resources and ports, it's great. The actual price/performance... outstanding.
Apple made nothing off that deal. But they deserve that in my view as they tried to foist that trashcan thing off on me. Could have had my money with just a proper tower design. Instead, they sent me to EBay. Clearly, I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand their marketing plan, that's all. [waves in California's general direction]
I can't understand why people keep saying Mac sales are dead or dying.
Just in the last week, I bought a 64GB, 3GHz, triple one-terabyte drive, 12/24 core Mac Pro with a graphics card that will more than do what I need. Beautiful tall thing, truly awesome case design, lots of ports, three open card slots, expandable, physically secure, latest MacOS installed.
For ~$1500.00, with free shipping and 30 days return privileges to make sure it arrives safely and works as specified.
I bought it at what has become my absolute favorite Mac store, EBay.
Looks to me like Mac sales are doing awesome.
No, no. Billy Big Mouth is a fish. Well, an ersatz fish, anyway.
Yeah, you bet. Being able to blindly thumb one button on my phone in the car and say "call Deb, put it on speaker" is absolutely useless.
I'm totally with ya.
++++++++++insightful.
Sorry. I'm a little compulsive when people say utterly silly things. :)
Someone needs to give Elon a nice train set, with lots of tunnels, so he'll settle down.
Orwell was an Optimist
Just what ya see, pal.
No. The only way to absolutely stop a tracking system from following you via your phone is to take the battery out. When it's "off", that doesn't mean it can't listen or use the radio. That "off" button is a softkey. Not a power switch. You think "I'm turning it off", it's going "hey, user pressed a button... now, what shall I do in response..."
However, no electrons available is a complete show-stopper.
Doesn't mean it won't, either. Because, you know, it's TV. But it does mean there's an interest in it when it's pervasive and repeated. As those things are. And if there's a way, and there's interest...
And the holodeck, at least, doesn't have any particular physics laws standing in the way.
Warp drive, well, there's that whole Alcubierre thing. It looks not actually impossible, so there's that.
What Bill said.
Keep your eye on the open efforts for TTS and STT. Those are where our best hopes lie.
Not in fixing ourselves to the rear bumper of some corporation with a bloody chain made of links of extracted personal information.
C'mon, people. If we're smart (I know, I know) we will wrest back control of our own destinies.
(Oh, and BTW, Google, that survey was incredibly lame. Who wrote that? A fourth grader?)