Honestly, if someone would develop a compelling alternative to Windows for OS X users dissatisfied with Apple's direction of the Mac, then that would be wonderful and I'd switch in a heartbeat (I'm typing this on a 2013 MacBook Air; I'm want to buy PC hardware in light of today's keynote, but I don't like Windows and unfortunately desktop Linux still isn't polished yet, although I am a regular user of Linux and FreeBSD in servers and VMs for development). Back in the 1990s there were a few alternatives to the MS-DOS/Windows ecosystem; besides the Mac, there were IBM OS/2, NEXTSTEP, and BeOS. Unfortunately by the mid-1990s these alternatives couldn't compete with a growing Windows monopoly and a Microsoft that was willing to throw its weight around to squash the competition. But times are different today. While the Windows monopoly on PCs still exists, the computer ecosystem seems to be friendlier to alternative OSes these days, given the fact that much of the personal computing experience these days is Web-centric and thus platform-agnostic. Plus, Apple's increased marketshare over the years, as well as the presence of desktop Linux, has forced some developers to consider the fact that not all computer users run Windows.
I think the time is ripe for a Windows alternative for disaffected OS X users. In fact, I'm willing to contribute to such efforts. Who's with me?
I wholeheartedly agree. I've been a Mac user for a decade, and I bought my first Mac (a Core Duo MacBook) because of its well-polished Unix operating system out of the box. I loved my MacBook. Its RAM and hard disk were easily accessible and upgradeable; I originally bought mine with 512 MB RAM and upgraded it to 2GB a few years later. I also upgraded its hard drive twice; once to expand its capacity, and again when that drive failed.
Unfortunately for me and many other power users, sometime after the iPhone came out and became successful, Apple started changing from a computer company to a consumer electronics company, and with this transition Apple started actively making decisions that have been frustrating to us power users. Upgrade cycles have become very lengthy, and Macs have also increasingly become difficult, if not impossible, to upgrade to the point that even the Mac Mini featured soldered components. I thought about switching back to PCs in 2013 when my MacBook was long in the tooth, but I didn't want to move to Linux or Windows 8, so I held my nose and bought a MacBook Air, making sure to max out on RAM and get more storage than the default.
Now I'm facing the same decision given that my MacBook Air's AppleCare expired recently and I'm due for another laptop upgrade. On one hand, I still believe OS X is the best desktop operating system out there. Linux, in my opinion, is still rather inconvenient at times, and I find Windows an annoying operating system to use. On the other hand, Apple has shown repeatedly over the past four years or so that it doesn't care about power users and other highly-technical users. Based on what's being leaked, this upcoming keynote appears to be my final straw with Apple. What's the point of having a wonderful desktop OS if the hardware you're forced to use is dumbed-down, compromised, and non-upgradeable?
It would be nice if either Apple offered licenses to run OS X on non-Mac hardware or if a team would work on a Linux desktop that meets the needs of disaffected Mac power users. But I'm no longer going to wait for Apple to change direction and release my dream product: an updated 2006 MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Lion requires a Core 2 Duo or newer processor. Some of the early Intel Macs from 2006 have 32-bit Core Duo processors (like my MacBook), and I believe there was even a 32-bit Core Solo Mac Mini. These Macs can't run Lion.
Last night I looked at pictures of the new ThinkPad T431s. While looking at them, I thought to myself, "Hmmmm. How does this laptop look any different from any other high-end PC laptop?" I will be in the market this summer for a new laptop to replace my aging MacBook. I wanted to replace it with a ThinkPad due to the ThinkPad line's reputed reliability and its conservative design. The current ThinkPads, in my opinion, are well designed, and I don't mind the chiclet keys in current-generation ThinkPads such as the ThinkPad T430s and the X230 (although I sympathize with those who prefer traditional-style keys). However, the ThinkPad T431s, in my opinion, doesn't resemble a ThinkPad. Where are the mouse buttons? To me, the design looks like yet-another MacBook Pro clone.
Doesn't Lenovo understand that part of what makes the ThinkPad so desirable is its conservative design, including the keyboard layout? ThinkPads are like HP's calculator line in this regard, which have a similar fan following who likes the calculators' high quality and conservative designs. Older HP calculators from the 1980s and early 1990s such as the 15C, 32S, and 48GX are highly regarded due to their high quality (not to mention their support for RPN input). I have a HP 48S that I bought on eBay six years ago that I like a lot due to its feature set and its quality. However, HP's late-1990s offerings (during the Carly Fiorina era) deviated from the style and quality that were characteristic of HP's older calculators. These offerings were not well-received by HP's customers. HP's older calculators started to sell for very high prices on eBay. Thankfully HP listened to the input of its customers, and HP has recently been making calculators that nearly match the quality of their older models, such as the newer HP 35S and the HP 15c Collector's Edition models. Hopefully Lenovo realizes that they have a special brand with a loyal fan following, and that Lenovo doesn't make the same mistakes that HP made during the Fiorina era.
You HAVE to present to people a tangible long term issue with using closed-source software that they can UNDERSTAND. Geek ideology isn't enough, and if that's all that you've got, then no wonder closed-source tech is still going to dominate.
I agree completely, and I would like to point out one area that open source can make some inroads in: file formats. Many users of closed-source software use applications that store their data in proprietary file formats. While this may not be a serious problem for users using de-facto standard tools such as Microsoft Office where finding a copy (even an older version) is not difficult and where competitors have created tools that are mostly compatible with these file formats, this is a problem for users who are using less-popular proprietary software applications, where conversion tools may be hard to find or even non-existent. This may be a serious problem if the user decides to upgrade his or her computer and/or switch platforms, or if the user plans on storing those files for long period of time. From proprietary email archive formats, to the often-mentioned scenario of a small business using a database application written in 1994 by a software company that went out of business in 1997, and many other cases, it's a common problem.
While emulators are helpful in such cases, it would be nice if a user in a similar situation had an up-to-date, cross-platform tool that can handle the file. Had the user used an open-source product, there is a higher chance that somebody might have made a tool that handles that file format; the file format specification is available, the source code of the reference implementation is also available, and there were probably other users of the tool, including the developers of it. If a tool is not available, the user could even make a donation to help a technically inclined person write a conversion tool; the open source nature of the tool makes it possible. With a closed file format, however, the user is out of luck in this situation; even if he or she paid a technically inclined person to write a tool, the technical person would have to reverse engineer the file format, which may be very difficult and may be prohibitively expensive for the user (those files would need to be very important for a user to take this route).
This is one case where I believe users can benefit from using open-source software, although I do know that proprietary software products sometimes use open file formats; this is more of an issue of open file formats than open source software.
In the school district that my charter school was part of (regarded as one of the best school districts in my area), all high school students had to take a one-semester economics course. I learned about Adam Smith, communism, and Keynesian economics in that class (I also learned about Marxism from a philosophy elective that I took that same semester), as well as mercantilism. We even learned about supply-side economics, too. Interestingly enough, my economics teacher was the wife of a businessman who was running for congress as a Republican that semester (he ended up losing, though; he was running in a place in California where the Democrat usually gets elected by a wide margin). We did not learn about Chicago School or Austrian School economics, but my textbook did have sections featuring Milton Friedman and Walter Williams. I learned about the Chicago School and about the Austrian School from reading Slashdot postings from libertarians and by subsequently reading books and articles from Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and other similar economists.
I'm not sure what the uproar is about...if you agree to develop apps for Apple's devices, this is the agreement you sign. If you don't like it, don't make apps for Apple products.
Well, if enough developers grow frustrated with Apple's restrictions to the point that they heed your advice, then Apple would have some problems selling iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads. I usually don't quote Steve Ballmer, but he was right when he paraded on stage many years ago about "developers, developers, developers!" One important key to the viability of a software platform is how well the developers writing software for the platform are treated. If developers have access to high-quality tools that work well and are easy to use and well-documented, and if developers are not stymied by too many burdensome restrictions, then developers will be very enthusiastic for developing for the platform. The converse is also true; platforms with bad tools and restrictive development environments usually do not garner much support unless there is another factor (such as marketshare money) that motivates developers to develop software for the platform.
Now, judging by the amount of software available for the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad, there are a lot of developers who do not feel bothered at all by Apple's restrictions. Developers are also willing to develop for platforms that have a large marketshare, no matter how restrictive (as in the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) or unglamorous (I'm looking at you, x86 instruction set) it is. However, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that the iPhone platform would have much more software available if Apple treated it like they treat Mac OS X or how Microsoft treats Windows, where anybody can come, develop any software for the platform, and have no say over how the software is distributed. The iPhone, as well as the iPad, has a lot of potential as a small, hackable device; it can go in many directions that Apple has not dreamed of. But due to Apple's restrictions, these developers will have to implement these directions on a platform that is more conducive to hacking. Perhaps if those alternative platforms start taking off due to the free, unrestricted availability of software, then those alternative platforms may gain more users, and Apple may reconsider their iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad restrictions and start opening up their platform.
But, yeah, my point and opinion is that a closed development policy can only work well for so long. Once hackers start showing off the true potential of portable devices that are not stymied by restrictions, then the iPhone and its siblings may face serious competition, competition that it might not face if the iPhone were open like Mac OS X and Windows from the start.
Contributing to open source projects is not research; it is development focused on open-source products instead of closed-source products. Research would be developing new ways to improve operating systems, compilers, and web servers, for example, based on certain criteria (performance, security, design, etc.). For example, Plan 9 is a research project. There is plenty of research in academia and industry that are geared toward solving real-world problems. For example, many of the advances in computer hardware, such as deep pipelines and multicore processors, started out as research problems. But contributing to an open source project is different from research. I fail to see how contributing to GCC or WebKit per se solves any problems in computer science, which is the definition of research, unless those contributions are a result of research.
I'm a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I do remember it hailing a few times in early 2006 on campus for about a minute or so. It hails occasionally, but rarely.
Before I bought my Mac in summer 2006, I was a FreeBSD user. At the time, FreeBSD users were not able to download FreeBSD binaries of the latest versions of Java due to a licensing agreement IIRC; instead, they had to either download a binary of the older version, download the Linux binary and use FreeBSD's Linux binary emulation, or download the source code of Java (with a very restrictive license) and compile it, which took a long time. Now that Java will be fully open-source in the near future, life for FreeBSD users (as well as other platforms where Java is unsupported) would be much easier, as pre-compiled binaries would be allowed to be distributed without Sun's permission. A lot of us don't have the time to waste multiple hours compiling software.
As much as I don't like the TSA's policies, boycotting them is like boycotting the IRS by not working. There are some jobs that require flying. If I needed to go across country for a conference, it's much easier to just fly there than to spend a few days on a bus or train. If I needed to go overseas, I have no real choice but to fly.
I'm doing fine in my math and science, but I'm betting not everybody is. I'm not quite sure why you need all of this excessive math and science (except when the Computer Science is in the School of Engineering--but not all colleges are like this).
As a 3rd year undergraduate computer science student, here is my best answer:
Undergraduate education is about "well-roundedness." They want everybody to at least familiarize themselves with at least one topic in every major area of academia. Computer science students are required to do science courses for this reason, partly.
Computer science is much more than just programming. Learning math and the other sciences exposes you to the reasoning and problem-solving skills that are also important in computer science, and also forces you to deal with the problem of learning a new area that you don't have much exposure or prior interest (something that will occur in graduate school or on the job).
I can't say much about the sciences, but mathematics is heavily used in computer science, especially discrete math and combinatorics. Certain applications of computer science, such as computer graphics, use linear algebra and physics heavily. There are many interesting interdisciplinary fields that combine a science with the applications of computer science (e.g., bioinformatics). In my favorite area of computer science (information retrieval, which is also highly interdisciplinary), statistics is heavily used.
An undergraduate education is about exposing you to new things in a wide range of disciplines, while providing a detailed (but not too narrow) view of your major. You might not like your physics courses (it's sad for me to say, but I didn't), but at least you were exposed to it, learned something from it, and lived to tell the tale XD. Specialization within your major is what graduate school and starting your career is for.
I use TeXShop for all of my LaTeX needs. It's not just a LaTeX editor, but also contains an easy-to-use environment to create PDFs on the fly. It is also bundled with a graphical BiBTeX editor to store bibliographies. Way better than the command-line tools that I've used on my old FreeBSD machine:).
As for LaTeX tutorials, I use "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2E." It's a very good tutorial that will get you started working with LaTeX code. I use LaTeX for all of my research papers except for those that employ the MLA format (LaTeX was designed for scientists and mathematicians, not keeping English and history majors in mind. But sometimes a science/math student needs to write an English paper, and I haven't been satisfied with existing MLA themes for LaTeX). If you must use MLA, just stick with Word.
Like many other Macintosh users, I downloaded the iWorks '08 trial and promptly purchased it. I've used OpenOffice/NeoOffice (on Linux and Mac OS). iWork looks, feels, and behaves like a native program. *Office doesn't.
After purchasing my MacBook last year (I was previously a Windows and *nix user, now my Mac is my sole computer), I tried (and eventually purchased iWork 06. I love Keynote (I bought it solely for Keynote, in fact) and believe that Keynote > PowerPoint > OO Impress, but I'm just not really into Pages no matter how many times I've used it. I like the concepts of styles and use LaTeX for all of my non-MLA papers, but whenever writing any other type of document, I prefer the more "free" structure of Word/OO Writer/AbiWord/etc. to Pages's strict enforcement of styles. My biggest problem with iWork (don't know about iWork 2008, however) is its very imperfect compatibility with MS Office file formats. The basics are correct, but anything that requires tables, exact layout, more complex styles, etc. starts to look jarbled. So, I like iWork a lot (much speedier than MS Office 2004 due to my having an Intel Mac, not to mention cheaper [$49 vs $149 for students]), but for perfect compatibility, I don't trust it.
I've also tried NeoOffice on my machine. As stated earlier, I vastly prefer Writer to Pages. NeoOffice was a necessity to me because of its spreadsheet (iWork 06 doesn't have a spreadsheet; that changed with iWork 08; I still need to try it). NeoOffice's compatibility with MS Office documents is superb, and I use NeoOffice to open and save documents where compatibility is very important. However, my complaint with NeoOffice is its speed (it is dog slow on my 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook with 512MB RAM, but I plan on upgrading to 2GB). The fact that the widgets are non-native and fake-looking do not add to the problem, either.
Personally, I'm waiting for MS Office 2008 to come out (finally a native version for Intel Macs). However, if iWork 08 is a major improvement with compatibility, or if NeoOffice makes big improvements with speed and its interface, then I might not have to shell out the cash.
As a recently graduated CS student, I find this type of thinking to be incredibly infuriating at times. Companies only want to hire people with experience. Yet to gain this experience, I need a job. The circular logic goes round and round until you have a brain aneurism.
There is a way for CS students to gain experience while in school: internships. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and many of the other big companies have summer internship programs. Students can also try to find a small company in their area. Sometimes a professor may have a research project that needs to be implemented during the summer; that counts as development experience, also.
Yes, it is tough to obtain such internships at times. But this it what it takes to get started on the experience treadmill in industry. If you can't get an internship, try contributing to a open-source project, particularly a high-profile one. Many companies like open source projects, and they will also count this as development experience.
You know, I disagree. I think the current right-wing activists are intentionally confusing you with their propaganda -- namely verbalizing that they want "less government, less taxes" but in practice causing "more beauracracy, more spending"
There was a time when politicians stated that they wanted "less government, less taxes," and practiced what they preached. Look at the terms of Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge, for example. But I do agree with you about current right-wing activists. They hook you in with stating that they'll cut government, and then wind up doing the complete opposite (Reagan's term, for example; and don't forget the "Republican Revolution" of 1994).
The truth is that they don't want either. Want they want is *Unrestricted power for the Executive*. If they need new laws and restrictions, so be it. If they need to demolish watchdog agencies, so be it. It's not that it's more government (which would require rule by law), it's just pure and unfettered power in the hands of one semi-religious king-like figure.
Agreed. In other words, "government by the government, for the government, and to the government." It's not about what they say. It's a power grab.
Their propaganda is cunningly constructed to make people think about "both sides of a debate", when neither one does anything but obscure the main goal. Unrestricted personal power for the President, and unrestricted economic power for the biggest corporate interests.
Unrestricted economic power for big corporate interests and governments, and restricted power for the rest of us who don't have "connections."
Well said. I use 1933 as a continuous point, but I do know that there have been plenty of abuses of the Constitution long before 1933. In fact, this was debated back in 1787 with the Federalists who wanted a strong national government (Hamilton and Co.) versus the Anti-Federalists who wanted decentralized government and states' rights (Jefferson and Co.). The Jeffersonians might had had the upper hand during the first few decades of rule under the Constitution, but since 1861, Lincoln, and the Civil War, with the exception of presidents such as Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge, it's all been Hamiltonian. In fact, the federal government has grown so big that I think even Hamilton would be scared if he could see what is happening.
So, yes, I recognize that we've been deviating from the Constitution almost as soon as the ink dried off the paper.
I am convinced this nation is under the control of anarchists who wish to push this nation to civil war.
Anarchists? If Bush and Co. were anarchists of the true definition of the word (i.e., people who want no government), we'd have balanced budgets, very little corruption, a massive reduction in the size of government, no war, etc. I don't think anarchist is the word that you are looking for. Quite the contrary, we're dealing with the near opposite of anarchism. (Disclaimer: I'm not an anarchist, but I am a strict constitutionalist who believe in limited government.)
Our nation for the past 75 years has been controlled by people who want to expand the power and influence of government at the expense of our liberties. Anything in the Constitution that limits the power of the federal government (e.g., the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) have been ignored consistently for the past 70 years. The federal government's growth has gone nearly unchecked since 1933. What we've been getting for decades is "government by the politicians, for the politicians."
I don't see any foreseeable change. All of the mainstream presidential candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, are still interested in maintaining the status quo of expanding government. More laws, more spending, more taxes, or some permutation of the three. The best that we could do is vote for the people who best maintain our Constitution, and brace ourselves.
MS Office for Mac is definitely NOT a stagnant product. Back in January, there was a preview for MS Office 2008 for Mac at MacWorld. It will be a universal binary, which is great news for Intel Mac owners.
Most public schools receive federal funding. In order to receive federal funding, you must abide by federal rules. This is one of those rules.
Yes, such federal funding requirements are used to bypass the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For other examples, see the 55mph speed limit (before it got repealed), the 21 year old drinking age, the Clean Air Act and how it relates to highway funding, etc. (and all of the examples I gave are just in the realm of highway funding. There are plenty of other examples.).
Seems like an interesting research project. The research seems new (I see no published papers on Tortola, although I do see some slides and an extended abstract), so it will be interesting to see how it develops. I am very interested in seeing how an operating system would interact with Tortola.
The Libertarian solution to every problem doesn't always work, and in this case, it won't work
The truly libertarian solution would be to get rid of copyright. Copyright is a governmental construct, not a natural right. We wouldn't have all of these issues of the MPAA trying to increase copyright length if there were no copyright to increase in the first place.
Just how does he feel that the federal government would be able to provide for the defense of the land without income tax?
The United States got by fine without an income tax until 1913, although there were some brief periods where there was an income tax, notably during the Civil War. Much of our revenue in those days were from tariffs and excise taxes (which have always been constitutional). And with Ron Paul's noninterventionist beliefs regarding foreign policy, we shouldn't have to spend as much on the military as we currently do.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, if someone would develop a compelling alternative to Windows for OS X users dissatisfied with Apple's direction of the Mac, then that would be wonderful and I'd switch in a heartbeat (I'm typing this on a 2013 MacBook Air; I'm want to buy PC hardware in light of today's keynote, but I don't like Windows and unfortunately desktop Linux still isn't polished yet, although I am a regular user of Linux and FreeBSD in servers and VMs for development). Back in the 1990s there were a few alternatives to the MS-DOS/Windows ecosystem; besides the Mac, there were IBM OS/2, NEXTSTEP, and BeOS. Unfortunately by the mid-1990s these alternatives couldn't compete with a growing Windows monopoly and a Microsoft that was willing to throw its weight around to squash the competition. But times are different today. While the Windows monopoly on PCs still exists, the computer ecosystem seems to be friendlier to alternative OSes these days, given the fact that much of the personal computing experience these days is Web-centric and thus platform-agnostic. Plus, Apple's increased marketshare over the years, as well as the presence of desktop Linux, has forced some developers to consider the fact that not all computer users run Windows.
I think the time is ripe for a Windows alternative for disaffected OS X users. In fact, I'm willing to contribute to such efforts. Who's with me?
I wholeheartedly agree. I've been a Mac user for a decade, and I bought my first Mac (a Core Duo MacBook) because of its well-polished Unix operating system out of the box. I loved my MacBook. Its RAM and hard disk were easily accessible and upgradeable; I originally bought mine with 512 MB RAM and upgraded it to 2GB a few years later. I also upgraded its hard drive twice; once to expand its capacity, and again when that drive failed.
Unfortunately for me and many other power users, sometime after the iPhone came out and became successful, Apple started changing from a computer company to a consumer electronics company, and with this transition Apple started actively making decisions that have been frustrating to us power users. Upgrade cycles have become very lengthy, and Macs have also increasingly become difficult, if not impossible, to upgrade to the point that even the Mac Mini featured soldered components. I thought about switching back to PCs in 2013 when my MacBook was long in the tooth, but I didn't want to move to Linux or Windows 8, so I held my nose and bought a MacBook Air, making sure to max out on RAM and get more storage than the default.
Now I'm facing the same decision given that my MacBook Air's AppleCare expired recently and I'm due for another laptop upgrade. On one hand, I still believe OS X is the best desktop operating system out there. Linux, in my opinion, is still rather inconvenient at times, and I find Windows an annoying operating system to use. On the other hand, Apple has shown repeatedly over the past four years or so that it doesn't care about power users and other highly-technical users. Based on what's being leaked, this upcoming keynote appears to be my final straw with Apple. What's the point of having a wonderful desktop OS if the hardware you're forced to use is dumbed-down, compromised, and non-upgradeable?
It would be nice if either Apple offered licenses to run OS X on non-Mac hardware or if a team would work on a Linux desktop that meets the needs of disaffected Mac power users. But I'm no longer going to wait for Apple to change direction and release my dream product: an updated 2006 MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Lion requires a Core 2 Duo or newer processor. Some of the early Intel Macs from 2006 have 32-bit Core Duo processors (like my MacBook), and I believe there was even a 32-bit Core Solo Mac Mini. These Macs can't run Lion.
Last night I looked at pictures of the new ThinkPad T431s. While looking at them, I thought to myself, "Hmmmm. How does this laptop look any different from any other high-end PC laptop?" I will be in the market this summer for a new laptop to replace my aging MacBook. I wanted to replace it with a ThinkPad due to the ThinkPad line's reputed reliability and its conservative design. The current ThinkPads, in my opinion, are well designed, and I don't mind the chiclet keys in current-generation ThinkPads such as the ThinkPad T430s and the X230 (although I sympathize with those who prefer traditional-style keys). However, the ThinkPad T431s, in my opinion, doesn't resemble a ThinkPad. Where are the mouse buttons? To me, the design looks like yet-another MacBook Pro clone.
Doesn't Lenovo understand that part of what makes the ThinkPad so desirable is its conservative design, including the keyboard layout? ThinkPads are like HP's calculator line in this regard, which have a similar fan following who likes the calculators' high quality and conservative designs. Older HP calculators from the 1980s and early 1990s such as the 15C, 32S, and 48GX are highly regarded due to their high quality (not to mention their support for RPN input). I have a HP 48S that I bought on eBay six years ago that I like a lot due to its feature set and its quality. However, HP's late-1990s offerings (during the Carly Fiorina era) deviated from the style and quality that were characteristic of HP's older calculators. These offerings were not well-received by HP's customers. HP's older calculators started to sell for very high prices on eBay. Thankfully HP listened to the input of its customers, and HP has recently been making calculators that nearly match the quality of their older models, such as the newer HP 35S and the HP 15c Collector's Edition models. Hopefully Lenovo realizes that they have a special brand with a loyal fan following, and that Lenovo doesn't make the same mistakes that HP made during the Fiorina era.
For a moment I thought the article was discussing WordPerfect 7.
I agree completely, and I would like to point out one area that open source can make some inroads in: file formats. Many users of closed-source software use applications that store their data in proprietary file formats. While this may not be a serious problem for users using de-facto standard tools such as Microsoft Office where finding a copy (even an older version) is not difficult and where competitors have created tools that are mostly compatible with these file formats, this is a problem for users who are using less-popular proprietary software applications, where conversion tools may be hard to find or even non-existent. This may be a serious problem if the user decides to upgrade his or her computer and/or switch platforms, or if the user plans on storing those files for long period of time. From proprietary email archive formats, to the often-mentioned scenario of a small business using a database application written in 1994 by a software company that went out of business in 1997, and many other cases, it's a common problem.
While emulators are helpful in such cases, it would be nice if a user in a similar situation had an up-to-date, cross-platform tool that can handle the file. Had the user used an open-source product, there is a higher chance that somebody might have made a tool that handles that file format; the file format specification is available, the source code of the reference implementation is also available, and there were probably other users of the tool, including the developers of it. If a tool is not available, the user could even make a donation to help a technically inclined person write a conversion tool; the open source nature of the tool makes it possible. With a closed file format, however, the user is out of luck in this situation; even if he or she paid a technically inclined person to write a tool, the technical person would have to reverse engineer the file format, which may be very difficult and may be prohibitively expensive for the user (those files would need to be very important for a user to take this route).
This is one case where I believe users can benefit from using open-source software, although I do know that proprietary software products sometimes use open file formats; this is more of an issue of open file formats than open source software.
In the school district that my charter school was part of (regarded as one of the best school districts in my area), all high school students had to take a one-semester economics course. I learned about Adam Smith, communism, and Keynesian economics in that class (I also learned about Marxism from a philosophy elective that I took that same semester), as well as mercantilism. We even learned about supply-side economics, too. Interestingly enough, my economics teacher was the wife of a businessman who was running for congress as a Republican that semester (he ended up losing, though; he was running in a place in California where the Democrat usually gets elected by a wide margin). We did not learn about Chicago School or Austrian School economics, but my textbook did have sections featuring Milton Friedman and Walter Williams. I learned about the Chicago School and about the Austrian School from reading Slashdot postings from libertarians and by subsequently reading books and articles from Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and other similar economists.
Well, if enough developers grow frustrated with Apple's restrictions to the point that they heed your advice, then Apple would have some problems selling iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads. I usually don't quote Steve Ballmer, but he was right when he paraded on stage many years ago about "developers, developers, developers!" One important key to the viability of a software platform is how well the developers writing software for the platform are treated. If developers have access to high-quality tools that work well and are easy to use and well-documented, and if developers are not stymied by too many burdensome restrictions, then developers will be very enthusiastic for developing for the platform. The converse is also true; platforms with bad tools and restrictive development environments usually do not garner much support unless there is another factor (such as marketshare money) that motivates developers to develop software for the platform.
Now, judging by the amount of software available for the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad, there are a lot of developers who do not feel bothered at all by Apple's restrictions. Developers are also willing to develop for platforms that have a large marketshare, no matter how restrictive (as in the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) or unglamorous (I'm looking at you, x86 instruction set) it is. However, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that the iPhone platform would have much more software available if Apple treated it like they treat Mac OS X or how Microsoft treats Windows, where anybody can come, develop any software for the platform, and have no say over how the software is distributed. The iPhone, as well as the iPad, has a lot of potential as a small, hackable device; it can go in many directions that Apple has not dreamed of. But due to Apple's restrictions, these developers will have to implement these directions on a platform that is more conducive to hacking. Perhaps if those alternative platforms start taking off due to the free, unrestricted availability of software, then those alternative platforms may gain more users, and Apple may reconsider their iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad restrictions and start opening up their platform.
But, yeah, my point and opinion is that a closed development policy can only work well for so long. Once hackers start showing off the true potential of portable devices that are not stymied by restrictions, then the iPhone and its siblings may face serious competition, competition that it might not face if the iPhone were open like Mac OS X and Windows from the start.
Contributing to open source projects is not research; it is development focused on open-source products instead of closed-source products. Research would be developing new ways to improve operating systems, compilers, and web servers, for example, based on certain criteria (performance, security, design, etc.). For example, Plan 9 is a research project. There is plenty of research in academia and industry that are geared toward solving real-world problems. For example, many of the advances in computer hardware, such as deep pipelines and multicore processors, started out as research problems. But contributing to an open source project is different from research. I fail to see how contributing to GCC or WebKit per se solves any problems in computer science, which is the definition of research, unless those contributions are a result of research.
I'm a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I do remember it hailing a few times in early 2006 on campus for about a minute or so. It hails occasionally, but rarely.
That was Milton Friedman who supported Pinochet's economic policies in Chile, not Hayek. See this for more information.
Before I bought my Mac in summer 2006, I was a FreeBSD user. At the time, FreeBSD users were not able to download FreeBSD binaries of the latest versions of Java due to a licensing agreement IIRC; instead, they had to either download a binary of the older version, download the Linux binary and use FreeBSD's Linux binary emulation, or download the source code of Java (with a very restrictive license) and compile it, which took a long time. Now that Java will be fully open-source in the near future, life for FreeBSD users (as well as other platforms where Java is unsupported) would be much easier, as pre-compiled binaries would be allowed to be distributed without Sun's permission. A lot of us don't have the time to waste multiple hours compiling software.
As much as I don't like the TSA's policies, boycotting them is like boycotting the IRS by not working. There are some jobs that require flying. If I needed to go across country for a conference, it's much easier to just fly there than to spend a few days on a bus or train. If I needed to go overseas, I have no real choice but to fly.
As a 3rd year undergraduate computer science student, here is my best answer:
An undergraduate education is about exposing you to new things in a wide range of disciplines, while providing a detailed (but not too narrow) view of your major. You might not like your physics courses (it's sad for me to say, but I didn't), but at least you were exposed to it, learned something from it, and lived to tell the tale XD. Specialization within your major is what graduate school and starting your career is for.
I use TeXShop for all of my LaTeX needs. It's not just a LaTeX editor, but also contains an easy-to-use environment to create PDFs on the fly. It is also bundled with a graphical BiBTeX editor to store bibliographies. Way better than the command-line tools that I've used on my old FreeBSD machine :).
As for LaTeX tutorials, I use "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2E." It's a very good tutorial that will get you started working with LaTeX code. I use LaTeX for all of my research papers except for those that employ the MLA format (LaTeX was designed for scientists and mathematicians, not keeping English and history majors in mind. But sometimes a science/math student needs to write an English paper, and I haven't been satisfied with existing MLA themes for LaTeX). If you must use MLA, just stick with Word.
After purchasing my MacBook last year (I was previously a Windows and *nix user, now my Mac is my sole computer), I tried (and eventually purchased iWork 06. I love Keynote (I bought it solely for Keynote, in fact) and believe that Keynote > PowerPoint > OO Impress, but I'm just not really into Pages no matter how many times I've used it. I like the concepts of styles and use LaTeX for all of my non-MLA papers, but whenever writing any other type of document, I prefer the more "free" structure of Word/OO Writer/AbiWord/etc. to Pages's strict enforcement of styles. My biggest problem with iWork (don't know about iWork 2008, however) is its very imperfect compatibility with MS Office file formats. The basics are correct, but anything that requires tables, exact layout, more complex styles, etc. starts to look jarbled. So, I like iWork a lot (much speedier than MS Office 2004 due to my having an Intel Mac, not to mention cheaper [$49 vs $149 for students]), but for perfect compatibility, I don't trust it.
I've also tried NeoOffice on my machine. As stated earlier, I vastly prefer Writer to Pages. NeoOffice was a necessity to me because of its spreadsheet (iWork 06 doesn't have a spreadsheet; that changed with iWork 08; I still need to try it). NeoOffice's compatibility with MS Office documents is superb, and I use NeoOffice to open and save documents where compatibility is very important. However, my complaint with NeoOffice is its speed (it is dog slow on my 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook with 512MB RAM, but I plan on upgrading to 2GB). The fact that the widgets are non-native and fake-looking do not add to the problem, either.
Personally, I'm waiting for MS Office 2008 to come out (finally a native version for Intel Macs). However, if iWork 08 is a major improvement with compatibility, or if NeoOffice makes big improvements with speed and its interface, then I might not have to shell out the cash.
There is a way for CS students to gain experience while in school: internships. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and many of the other big companies have summer internship programs. Students can also try to find a small company in their area. Sometimes a professor may have a research project that needs to be implemented during the summer; that counts as development experience, also.
Yes, it is tough to obtain such internships at times. But this it what it takes to get started on the experience treadmill in industry. If you can't get an internship, try contributing to a open-source project, particularly a high-profile one. Many companies like open source projects, and they will also count this as development experience.
There was a time when politicians stated that they wanted "less government, less taxes," and practiced what they preached. Look at the terms of Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge, for example. But I do agree with you about current right-wing activists. They hook you in with stating that they'll cut government, and then wind up doing the complete opposite (Reagan's term, for example; and don't forget the "Republican Revolution" of 1994).
Agreed. In other words, "government by the government, for the government, and to the government." It's not about what they say. It's a power grab.
Unrestricted economic power for big corporate interests and governments, and restricted power for the rest of us who don't have "connections."
Well said. I use 1933 as a continuous point, but I do know that there have been plenty of abuses of the Constitution long before 1933. In fact, this was debated back in 1787 with the Federalists who wanted a strong national government (Hamilton and Co.) versus the Anti-Federalists who wanted decentralized government and states' rights (Jefferson and Co.). The Jeffersonians might had had the upper hand during the first few decades of rule under the Constitution, but since 1861, Lincoln, and the Civil War, with the exception of presidents such as Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge, it's all been Hamiltonian. In fact, the federal government has grown so big that I think even Hamilton would be scared if he could see what is happening.
So, yes, I recognize that we've been deviating from the Constitution almost as soon as the ink dried off the paper.
Anarchists? If Bush and Co. were anarchists of the true definition of the word (i.e., people who want no government), we'd have balanced budgets, very little corruption, a massive reduction in the size of government, no war, etc. I don't think anarchist is the word that you are looking for. Quite the contrary, we're dealing with the near opposite of anarchism. (Disclaimer: I'm not an anarchist, but I am a strict constitutionalist who believe in limited government.)
Our nation for the past 75 years has been controlled by people who want to expand the power and influence of government at the expense of our liberties. Anything in the Constitution that limits the power of the federal government (e.g., the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) have been ignored consistently for the past 70 years. The federal government's growth has gone nearly unchecked since 1933. What we've been getting for decades is "government by the politicians, for the politicians."
I don't see any foreseeable change. All of the mainstream presidential candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, are still interested in maintaining the status quo of expanding government. More laws, more spending, more taxes, or some permutation of the three. The best that we could do is vote for the people who best maintain our Constitution, and brace ourselves.
MS Office for Mac is definitely NOT a stagnant product. Back in January, there was a preview for MS Office 2008 for Mac at MacWorld. It will be a universal binary, which is great news for Intel Mac owners.
Most public schools receive federal funding. In order to receive federal funding, you must abide by federal rules. This is one of those rules.
Yes, such federal funding requirements are used to bypass the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For other examples, see the 55mph speed limit (before it got repealed), the 21 year old drinking age, the Clean Air Act and how it relates to highway funding, etc. (and all of the examples I gave are just in the realm of highway funding. There are plenty of other examples.).
Tortola Project
Seems like an interesting research project. The research seems new (I see no published papers on Tortola, although I do see some slides and an extended abstract), so it will be interesting to see how it develops. I am very interested in seeing how an operating system would interact with Tortola.
The truly libertarian solution would be to get rid of copyright. Copyright is a governmental construct, not a natural right. We wouldn't have all of these issues of the MPAA trying to increase copyright length if there were no copyright to increase in the first place.
The United States got by fine without an income tax until 1913, although there were some brief periods where there was an income tax, notably during the Civil War. Much of our revenue in those days were from tariffs and excise taxes (which have always been constitutional). And with Ron Paul's noninterventionist beliefs regarding foreign policy, we shouldn't have to spend as much on the military as we currently do.