But Perl scripts and Visual Basic applications aren't computer science. A decent bachelor's in computer science program teaches you how to analyze and write algorithms, discrete math, the theory and application of various different technologies (compilers, operating systems, graphics), language theory, and other theory courses. This is a sample curriculum from a highly ranked public school. You might also want to look at this (another highly ranked public university) and this (from MIT). You'll also get a nice helping of calculus, statistics, differential equations, linear algebra, physics, chemistry, humanities courses, and some more.
If you want to spend your time learning Perl and VB, get an IT degree (like an MIS degree or a BS from Devry). If you want to spend your time learning the theory and application behind the interpreters that parse and interpret your Perl and VB code, you might want to get your BS in CS from a decent university.
A bachelor's degree (yet alone a master's or doctorate) isn't supposed to be job training; job training is left to trade schools (whose job is to teach people how to perform various jobs). An university degree is supposed to be used for education about a certain subject. If your job requires Perl and VB, learn them. Just don't expect the computer science department to teach you those languages; that's not computer science. This doesn't mean that the BS degree is a waste of time. You might be hired to help write the next Perl or Visual Basic.
Thanks for proving my point. There will now be an x86 monopoly on computers starting in 2007. No alternatives, no choices, and nowhere to run when Intel/AMD pull off their Trusted Computing schemes (they're both part of the Trusted Computing Group).
This is really sad, because the worst architecture ended up beating out some very nice ones (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC), and when there is no competition between chipsets, there will be no more innovation in processor design.
The only people who know what it even looks like is Intel, compiler writers, and OS programmers. Nobody else needs to deal with the instruction set. The only real downside is that compilers are harder to write, but who cares about that?
Compiler writers and OS programmers would love to use machines with a more elegant processor architecture, obviously. It's just too bad that most of the elegant processor architectures (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, SPARC) have been relegated to niche markets or have been killed.
And if compiler writers don't feel like writing compilers for an architecture, and if OS programmers don't feel like writing OSes for that architecture, then that architecture will fail quickly. The x86 is a market success, however, and people have been hired to make compilers and operating systems for that platform. A certain compiler and OS company ran by a certain Gates controls 95% of the OS market because he took advantage of the growth of the x86.
The x86 is a crappy architecture, but it succeeded in the market because it was cheap and performed reasonably well for its price. Unfortunately, it had killed off all of those nice architectures in the process.
Same with me. The Mac was the last bastion of hope for those who wanted to avoid the x86 platform without having to pay thousands of dollars for a Sun workstation. The Mac was a blend of elegant hardware (PowerPC and OpenFirmware) and elegant software (Mac OS X). There was nothing crappy about a Mac with OS X. It was something to lust after.
And in 2007, that elegance will be gone. Choice will be gone. There will be an x86 monopoly on computers (except for the SPARC, and who knows how long that will stay). The only choice we'll have left to make is whether to buy crappy hardware and run Linux/Windows on it, or to buy crappy hardware that comes bundled with Mac OS X.
The x86 is one of the worst processor architectures ever designed. It has a crappy instruction set and is filled with hacks. However, due to Joe Sixpack users who believe that higher megahertz == higher performace, and because of stupid companies who fell for that Itanic pile of BS and dropped their elegant architectures, the x86 somehow killed the MIPS, Alpha, Motorola 68k, PowerPC, and PA-RISC archiectures. The x86 isn't popular due to technical superiority. The x86 is only widespread because of some excellent marketroids running the company, and because Joe Average can't walk into the computer store and buy himself a MIPS or PowerPC machine.
I'm not really a Mac user, although I do own a Mac SE and a Performa 6220 (both machines I received about a year ago). I have always liked NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, and I have always lusted over a Mac with Mac OS X. Mac OS X is magnitudes better than Windows and *nix, IMO. The software available for Mac OS X is also wonderful and very easy to use. And the development environment is something to envy for.
However, a major part of the reason why I liked Macs a lot is because Macs aren't your everyday boring Intel x86 PCs. I completely despise the x86 PC platform and I think it is cheap utter crap. There is nothing elegant about x86 architecture, BIOS, legacy ports, and all of that utter crap that should have been replaced a decade ago. Compare that to PowerPC/Motorola 68k architecture, Open Firmware, USB/Firewire, and all of that other nice stuff Apple adopted over the years. Unfortunately, due to market issues (people wanting cheap machines instead of great machines), the MIPS and Alpha platforms are dead, Apple is now switching to x86 (which will kill the PowerPC), and the SPARC is still staying alive. The Power Mac G5 is of workstation quality. You got the best processors (two PowerPC G5s) and the best operating system (Mac OS X). Now in 2007 the Power Mac will lose what makes that Mac a Power Mac. I just hate seeing elegant platforms die.
With that being said, I hope that Apple releases Mac OS X for regular x86 computers. That would be the best thing that would ever happen for the x86 PC platform, since the only choices we have for operating systems are *nix and Windows. The x86 PC platform needs a better operating system, and Mac OS X will fill that void. Unfortunately, that would probably never happen, since that would completely cannibalize Apple's hardware sales and would lead to mass piracy. As for me buying a Mac, I don't think I'll buy an x86 Mac, but I might pick up a Power Mac G5 in a few years once they become cheaper.
Still, I wish that somebody would build new workstation-quality computers that had an elegant 64-bit RISC architecture, kind of like the Power Mac G5. Sure, a cheap $300 Dell is perfect for Joe Average who needs to check his mail, play his multimedia files, type some documents, and surf the Web. However, what about scientists, engineers, researchers, and other people who need a workstation to do their jobs? Everybody is focusing on Joe Average, but nobody is focusing on scientists, engineers, and researchers. Plus, we need more choices in the computer market. In 2007, we'll be completely stuck with the x86...forever. That completely scares me. We need more choices, soon. I don't want an Intel and AMD monopoly, where there is very little innovation. I want to see a mixture of different chips like we have seen back in the 1990s. Remember Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, Motorola 68k, and PA-RISC? I wish that we had this diversity in chipsets again.
By eliminating the subsidies used to build freeway systems that allow urban sprawl people will be enouraged to live closer to their places of work and play. PLEASE NOTE While I am opposed to sprawl I am not anti-sprawl. Developers should be allowed to build on their land more or less as they see fit. I am opposed to the spending of public funds to make said private land more valuable. If the developers want to get together and build a 5 line highway out to Clear Hidden Creek Golf Ridge Mystic Forest Hills Estates then so be it. So don't even go there.
So what do you want to do then? In this case, the Clear Hidden Creek Gold Ridge Mystic Forest Hills Estates should have never been built if there was no infrastructure (read: freeways) to support the development in the first place. A city shouldn't sprawl out until all of its traffic issues have been resolved. When a city has fixed its traffic issues, it then may sprawl out only if it builds more infrastructure to support the higher population. That's one of the biggest problems happening in many of these cities. Cities are haphazardly building all of these suburban bedroom communities without any jobs, entertainment, or roads, but because the cities won't build any roads because of NIMBYs, environmentalists, and other anti-road people, those people who live in those bedroom communities are pushed onto the same roads that the people who have lived in the city for decades have to use. Occasionally the cities may build mass transit, but they normally don't reach those suburban areas. The cities continue to build more and more subdivisions in order for them to make more tax revenue, but because there are no jobs and no improved infrastructure in those subdivisions, the entire city suffers from increased congestion, which means increased air pollution.
128-bit RISC Processor. I would love to own one of these workstations built around it.
I would also like to see an usable exokernel operating system. I have heard great things about exokernels. Exokernels are a nice design concept and is focused on the idea to have nearly all functions of the operating system in user space, and the kernel only manages those functions. Think of an exokernel as a microkernel to the extreme.
I would like to see an open-source version of Display PostScript or Quartz, only better. That exokernel OS needs a very good window manager and desktop, right?
A new easy-to-use high level language, with a very easy to use API, would be very helpful to write applications in the aforementioned OS. I don't think we should be coding all applications in C or C++ forever.
Finally, I'd like to see the paradigm of mainstream word processors changed to something more like Apple Pages or LyX. Properly edited documents should be like properly edited web pages; the formatting and the content should be separated (just like XHTML and CSS). The problem with MS Word and similar word processors is that they have a very weak implementation of styles. If you don't know how styles work in Word, you'll be manually formatting your documents, which is painful in long papers and texts. When formatting and content is separated, the writer can focus on the content (the actual text, spelling, and grammar), while the word processor takes care of the formatting. The word processor should learn how to properly format an essay, a report, a textbook, a novel, etc., even though the user can tweak settings.
You might want to read this paper that Rob Pike wrote about five years ago about the state of systems research. What has happened in the computing world over the past decade is a lack of innovation, especially in computer architecture and in systems programming. In the architecture world (which Pike only tangentially covers), most of the RISC architectures and the Alpha are fading away in favor of the Intel x86 chips. In the operating systems world, the only decent and usable choices that we have are Unix clones/derivatives or Windows; Plan 9 failed to make a splash in the market, and most new OSes are heavily influenced by Unix's design. Ultra-fast and very elegant workstations are being displaced in favor of boring PCs. Even Apple is going to turn into yet another PC vendor in two years.
My goal is to be a computer scientist and to do research that would hopefully have an impact on computer science. However, I'm starting to worry about the state of the field in general. I hear more about outsourcing, architectures and OSes dying, and new DRM technologies more than I hear about the latest advancements in computing. On the flip side, look at game consoles and cell phones. The next generation of game consoles get all of the cool processors, and cell phones just get more innovative each week. If the computing field were truly innovative, in five years we'll see 128-bit processors with an elegant RISC architecture, running an exokernel operating system, featuring an ultra easy-to-use desktop, and is also very easy to develop with using a very high level programming language and a nice set of libraries to program. (Ok, I might have been dreaming in that last sentence). Knowing how the field is performing, in five years we'll still be using x86 PCs with either Linux/BSD, Mac OS X (only with Apple's proprietary x86 PCs), or Longhorn. But wait a minute. We will get the latest and greatest in DRM technology, since the only processor vendors left will be Intel and AMD, and they're both in the Trusted Computing Group. Oh boy.
I completely agree with you about the lack of innovation. Something needs to change before we start going into the computing dark ages.
According to what I've read, Plan 9 is a very good OS. It takes Unix's "everything is a file" philosophy to another level. Plan 9 has fixed all of the infrastructural issues with Unix, and uses its own windowing system instead of X. Unfortunately, not many people use Plan 9 as a production OS because of the lack of applications; sure there are text editors and a web browser available, but where are the multimedia and productivity applications? Plus, I don't think we'll ever see Plan 9 on the desktop; its window manager clearly is an extension of the Unix philosophy, and most regular users don't feel like piping and plumbing commands together. I guess most Plan 9 users use another OS (like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows) for their everyday tasks, and Plan 9 for exploration. Even Rob Pike uses Windows.
KDE, GNOME, XFCE this has nothing to do with linux, it affects BSDs too.
And, frankly, that's the biggest problem Linux faces toward desktop acceptance. No, forget Linux. That's the biggest problem Unix faces toward desktop acceptance, whether it is Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. Unix has been dependent on the X Window System for its non-console output needs. For those of you who don't know the story, let me tell the story.
The people over X didn't agree on a single toolkit that all X applications use, and left that work to other developers. Motif was the official X toolkit for one point, but Motif was closed source and therefore not embraced by BSD and Linux developers, not to mention Motif is ugly. LessTif (a Motif clone) was developed to allow Motif developers to compile/run their apps in Linux, and some projects (notable the GIMP), created their own toolkits. Years later, a Linux user comes along and says, "Motif is ugly and hard to code in. CDE isn't very user friendly, and they're both proprietary. Imagine if we had a toolkit that was easy to develop with, and a desktop environment that's easy to use, just like Windows/Macintosh. I'll call it KDE!" So this developer starts work on KDE, which uses the QT toolkit.
Unfortunately, QT was released under a license that wasn't compatible with the GNU GPL, which is one of the most common licenses used on OSS development. So, instead of the GNU folks writing a GPL-licensed QT clone so that way they can still ethically use the growing amount of KDE applications out there, they decided to write their own toolkit and their own desktop environment. They adopted Gimp's toolkit (GTK) and started work on GNOME. Before long, users now had two competing desktop environments (KDE and GNOME), multitudes of toolkits (Motif [which became open-sourced 5 years ago], QT [which was GPL'd for OSS projects], GTK, wxWindows, GNUstep), and vast amounts of software tied to one toolkit.
The problem with getting Linux on the desktop is that even though a "Joe Average-ready" distribution (like Mandrake, Linspire, Ubuntu, or Fedora) picks a desktop environment, picks the applications (which depends on the desktop environment), and develops its own installer, we all call them "Linux," as if you can go down to the store and buy yourself a box of Linux 2.6.11. The problem with that is each distribution should be really regarded as its own OS, since each distribution may use a different desktop environment. For example, we don't call Mac OS X "FreeBSD," even though much of the underlying OS is based on FreeBSD. However, we don't refer to Mandrake or Ubuntu as "Mandrake OS" or "Ubuntu OS." The biggest problem with this all is when the user tries to install software. Let's say that the user decides to install Ubuntu on his computer. IIRC, Ubuntu uses GNOME as its main desktop environment. The user doesn't know about GTK, GNOME, Bonobo, ATK, Gail, and all of that other technical mess. However, let's say that the user has heard of a wonderful application called KOffice which meets his needs perfectly. When the user installs KOffice, he finds out that he needs to install another toolkit (all of that KDE/QT stuff) in order to run that application. When he opens KWord, he notices that everything from the buttons, the menus, and even the ordering of the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons are different than from a "native" application such as Evolution or GEdit. Being ignorant about toolkits, he then installs some other applications such as xpdf, some GTK 1.2 applications, OpenOffice (which uses its own toolkit), some Java Swing applications, and more. By the time he's finished, he would have to deal with almost a separate toolkit for each application that he's using.
The biggest problem with the Unix desktop is the X Window System. There is no consistency with the look-and-feel of applications. There is also no consistency with toolkits. Mac OS X did it right with Aqua, but Aqua isn't the X Window S
C'mon. Some people (usually assembly hackers) just don't like the x86 platform at all, and want to do their development on a much cleaner architecture. Alternate architectures such as MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, and SPARC had a lot of things to offer. They had an elegant design (all except the Alpha were RISC chips) and performed very well. Unfortunately, due to market issues and corporate stupidity (especially on Compaq's and HP's mishandling of the Alpha and that Itanic mess that Intel has caused), the only non-Intel, non-x86 choice we have left after 2007 is the Sun SPARC.
For the average user or the average developer, it is "just a CPU." However, there is no competition to the x86 platform for computers except for the Sun SPARC. (AMD vs. Intel doesn't count, because they're both x86 manufacturers). All of those other architectures are now gone or have disappeared from computing. The PowerPC will disappear from computing in 2007. When there is no competition, there is no innovation. When there is no competition, prices will rise. When there is no innovation, we suffer because we have no choices. Before we know it, we'll be looking at an Intel monopoly, with AMD remaining just so Intel won't look bad. That's happening with the CPU market. In 2007 we'll have almost no choices. It's either a x86, a Sun workstation, or nothing.
System 7 was a drastic redesign over System 6. System 7 was solid, useful, and feature-rich.
Alright, the original System 7 and System 7.1 were very stable. They had very useful features (such as multitasking) and didn't crash too often. I have a Mac SE with System 7 that I received about a year ago. It is pretty stable and pretty useful for small tasks, even though I don't use it much because I have no modem for it, nor do I have a way to transfer files to a PC from it.
However, the later versions of Mac OS 7 (such as Mac OS 7.5.x) are much less stable, and Apple had to introduce tons of patches in order to bring the stability to a reasonable level. During this time, Apple was in the midst of developing Copland (which we all know where that went).
You must not completely redesign each version in order for it to be viable. In fact, you shouldn't need to.
That is true in many cases. However, as time grew on, the infrastructure of the classic Mac OS was starting to show age. Cooperative multitasking in the late 1990s? No real memory management? No malloc() for developers? The classic Mac OS was built for a 8MHz Motorola 68000 with 128K RAM. Apple had to make the OS adapt to changes in processor speed (and even processors with the PowerPC switch), memory sizes, hard disk space, and other resources. What may be acceptable in the days of the 8MHz Motorola 68000 and 128K RAM might not be efficient when you have a 300MHz PowerPC 604e chip with 64MB RAM. That's what happened to the classic Mac OS. They had to add features (such as multitasking, which didn't exist on the original Mac and didn't become part of the OS until 1991) without completely rewriting the OS. It was easy at first, but as time grows on, it becomes very hard to add memory management and preemptive multitasking to an OS whose design didn't support it in the first place. Those issues are what led Apple to develop Taligent and Copland (which both failed), which led to the acquisition of NeXT and ultimately led to the development of Mac OS X.
I'm not saying that the classic Mac OS releases were completely unviable. Despite their infrastructural shortcomings, the classic Mac OS is a pinnacle of GUI usability only matched by NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X, IMO. It is also a much nicer environment to work in than DOS and early versions of Windows (pre-Windows NT), unless you're a developer. The classic Mac OS is also home to many great applications such as ClarisWorks (back when it was comparable to Office), Photoshop, Word 5.1, and other nice apps. There are still many people who haven't upgraded to Mac OS X, and they don't want to purchase new versions of Office and graphics design products.
I believe that the original poster was referring to the classic Mac OS as a thrown-together OS, and not Mac OS X. Apple did a good job selling PowerPC Macs from 1994-2001, and the hardware was nice (with a few exceptions, like the PowerMac 4400 and the PowerMac/Performa x200 series), but the operating system was stuck in the 1980s and started to fall behind in the area of stability compared to more advanced OSes such as Linux/BSD, NEXTSTEP, and even Windows NT (in 1999, which OS would you use from a programmer's standpoint? Mac OS 9 or Windows 2000? I'd take Windows 2000 any day). Part of buying a computer is knowing which operating system does it run on (or, now of days, knowing which operating systems it can run on). A computer can have excellent graphics, huge amounts of RAM and hard disk space, and a very fast processor, but it doesn't mean anything when the OS running on top of it crashes daily and fails to take advantage of that nice hardware. (The reverse is also true). The classic Mac OS has been hacked by Apple countless times to try to get it to adapt it to later technologies, and the final result clearly shows. Mac OS 9 added hacks to OS 8, which added hacks to OS 7, which added hacks to System 6, which is a hack of the original System 1. I feel sorry for those still using Mac OS 9 on their production machines; developers don't feel like developing for them anymore as they moved on to greener pastures (Mac OS X). There isn't even an updated browser for the platform (which Mac OS 9 was released in 1999), even though I can install the latest Mozilla/Firefox on Windows 95.
Apple spent most of the 1990s trying to find a way to replace its old aging Mac OS with a new OS that fixed all of the infrastructural problems with the old one.
that/. readers go apoplectic over the Supreme Court decision to let the government of the city of New London, CT take property from private individuals to give to developers, but are more than happy to suggest further intrusions on property and basic economic rights when it comes to alternative energy and environmental pet issues.
The reason why many Slashdotters support such government involvement (or interference, depending on how you look at it) is because many Slashdotters are liberals, even though Slashdot has a sizeable libertarian and conservative population. Liberals support government involvement in social and environmental issues (in the name of "public good"), even if they do come at odds with personal and economic freedom. Liberals are among the first people to support massive federal government regulation of the environment, even if it does have a damaging effect on the economy. And remember that the two Democrats and three Republicans (who weren't acting very conservatively that day) on the Supreme Court voted to let the city government take away people's private property rights, because those hotels were supposedly for the "public good." (The four dissenters were all conservative Republicans). I think that was the libertarian/conservative faction of Slashdot speaking out against the ruling.
I'm a libertarian, and I agree with your viewpoint. What form of energy we should use should be dictated by the market, not by the government. The market should do the R&D, not the government. The government has no right to interfere with economic decisions, no matter what reason.
There will always be room for some high-end gear, but total marketshare for high-end stuff isn't growing and some of the high-end players have died.
However, what would happen if there is no high end? There is a market for high end computers. Sure, Joe Sixpack's computational power is best reflected in a Dell or even a Mac Mini/XBox. His major tasks are playing his music, looking at his pr0n^Wphoto collection, typing some documents for homework, crunching a few spreadsheets, and surfing the web. He doesn't need a multiprocessor box with high end graphics. Computer scientists, mathematicians, computational physicists, biologists, and graphics designers are just some of the people who benefit from having high-end workstations on their desktops, mostly because of the work that they have to do, whether it is researching the speed of certain algorithms (or compiling Gentoo), crunching some very complex mathematical equations, or sequencing the genome of rats.
The problem is that there are more Joe Sixpacks than there are scientists, and because of market demands and the Intel/Microsoft juggernaut (thank you Itanic and Windows for destroying much of the industry), most of the high end computer companies have folded (DEC, and now SGI) or discontinued their high end machines (HP, and Apple in 2007). The people who really do need high end workstations are now looking into Beowulf clusters and the like because they're running out of high end options.
Err, the SPARC is still alive and shows no signs of dying, even though Sun is now selling Opteron workstations. I believe you can buy a 500MHz SPARC workstation for about $1,400 or so. I don't know how fast it is in comparison to x86 machines (I'm typing this on a 475MHz K6-2), but at least Sun is still making them.
But yes, this is sad. All we have left is the PowerPC (which we only have a year left before Apple goes to the Dark Side(TM)), and the Sun SPARC. All of the elegant and good architectures have been destroyed based on the Microsoft/Intel juggernaut, compatibility with ancient DOS programs from 1983, and cost. It just shows that just because something is technically superior doesn't mean that it will succeed in the marketplace; look at NeXT for instance (even though it didn't die, it was able to buy Apple for negative $400 million). If a product doesn't make it through the Joe Sixpacks and the PHBs of the world, with their malware-encumbered computers and probably don't even know what a processor is, it automatically fails, no matter how good it is.
SGI machines remind me of the NeXT machines; they were extremely powerful workstations. You can't get the graphics and the processor performance from some inferior cheap x86 box. Yet, the philosophy of "worse is better" holds true again, and before we know it, us computer scientists, graphic designers, and other people who really do need ultra-powerful workstations will have to rely on Dells to do their work. You can clearly see that I'm pissed off.
Wait a minute... Yee's a D-California??? And he's worried about indecency? Wow! Who would have thought! (Yes, humorless mods, that's a joke.)
The Commun^WDemocrats are as rabid as getting the state involved in our personal lives as much as the Republicans are. The only difference I see with the two is that Democrats are pushing socialist and statist policies (social programs, higher taxes, gun control, and don't forget that the Democrats on the Supreme Court voted to destroy some of our private property rights weeks ago) while the Republicans have been taken over by religious fundamentalists who force their views on morality on everybody else. Both want more governmental control on our personal lives, which would ultimately lead to a totalitarian government, where we will have no freedom left. All in the name of "thinking about the children."
In a free society, the parents should be the ones dictating what is indecent in their homes, not the government, no matter if it's local, state, or federal. Government should stop worrying about whether or not somebody sees a bare breast and worry more about protecting freedoms. America is supposed to be "the land of the free," and not 1984.
IE with a popup blocker, firewall, and not as root doesn't seem too bad. However, as a Mozilla/Firefox user since March 2004, I have found using IE painful, especially if SP2 isn't installed on the computer. I cannot live without AdBlock, popup blocking (a non-issue with SP2), tabbed browsing, the search bar for Google/EBay/Amazon/Dictionary.com, and the find shortcut in Firefox (type the forward slash and type the text that you want to find). I also find myself being much more careful browsing in IE than browsing in Firefox, because one bad click can thrash the computer.
But hey, just use whatever works for you. I also agree that the book is a bit much; why would anyone buy a book in order to learn how to use something as simple as a web browser?
Re:I for one do not welcome our advertising overlo
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Don't Click on the Blue E
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Why would anyone need a book to learn how to use a web browser? Web browsers are just about the easiest software to use.
Over a year ago, I was able to switch my parents and siblings to the Mozilla suite. They were using Windows 95 and IE 5.5, and were having some problems with spyware. After trying spyware removal programs (to no avail), I finally introduced them to Mozilla. I took a while for my parents to switch (they used IE's feature of remembering passwords to credit cards and other stuff, so they had to reset them), but after that, they have switched to Mozilla permanently and seem to like it. They love the popup blocking and the AdBlock extension, even though they don't use tabbed browsing (they visit one site at a time and they don't really use the Internet as much as I do.) After a few months of Mozilla use, I removed the IE icon from the desktop, and I haven't received a single complaint. Haven't seen malware, viruses, or worms on that computer since.
Switching people to different browsers is just the matter of telling them the dangers of IE and show them the virtues of alternative browsers. As long as they have no sites that are holding them back to IE, the switch to be relatively easy. Now, switching people to different operating systems is an entirely different story....
Easier said than done. Geeks like myself can easily dump Windows for Linux/BSD (provided that we're not serious gamers or are Windows developers), but nongeeks will be completely lost; if they cannot keep malware off their Windows machines (which isn't very difficult; just enable the firewall and use Firefox), then they probably cannot even install Linux at all. And buying a Mac isn't a sufficient answer for a lot of people; they don't feel like spending $499 or more for another computer. Next, some people need Microsoft Office (which I've never had a problem with), and some people need software that runs only on Windows. Remember, people won't switch OSes or platforms unless it is easy to use, has all of the applications that they need, and won't make a dent in their pocketbooks. Windows sucks and blows, and loves to have its holes exploited by malware, but none of that matters to a majority of users of all of the alternatives are either not easy to use, require purchasing a new computer, or don't have the software that they need.
Over the years there have been many great OSes that now see little use. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, BeOS, and Plan 9 are very nice operating systems. *STEP is the direct ancestor of Mac OS X and brought a lot of new, innovative features to operating systems, such as Display Postscript (predecessor of Quartz), Interface Builder (predecessor of XCode), the dock, etc., not to mention boatloads of innovative software packages (such as Mathematica, Lotus Improv, and the entire Lighthouse Design software collection) and it showed the world how Unix for the masses should be built (which KDE and GNOME still have lots of catching up to do). BeOS has a nice infrastructure (compared to other OSes of the time like Mac OS 8/9 and Windows 9x), and is easy to use. Plan 9 is a different beast altogether compared to the other OSes that I mentioned; Plan 9 takes Unix's idea of "everything is a file" to another level; for example, the window manager supports pipes and filters just like any other traditional command line program. And all of the operating systems can run on any old 486 or Pentium.
What happened to all of these OSes? NeXT was bought by Apple (and didn't release a version of Mac OS X for commodity x86 machines, for obvious business reasons), BeOS's parent company was going through business issues and ended up being discontinued, and Plan 9 is virtually unheard of unless you're an operating systems researcher. All three failed to make a big splash for various reasons. NeXT had the software, a supportive development group and development infrastructure (especially from Lighthouse Design and the Omni Group) and (for the first few years) had the hardware, but the x86+Windows juggernauts and the steep pricing were issues too huge to overcome for a lot of people, which ultimately led to NeXT's near demise (until NeXT bought Apple for -$400 million). BeOS had a nice infrastructure, but it didn't catch on because of Windows's mass acceptance in the marketplace, lack of huge productivity applications (which is caused by a lack of interested developers), and corporate drama. Plan 9 isn't replacing *nix because most of us "geeks" are very content with our beloved Unix (no matter how flawed it is sometimes) and see no need to change, and Plan 9 doesn't have all of the applications that users need (like productivity suites, for starters).
Whether or not an operating system succeeds or not depends on user's acceptance and developer's acceptance. User's won't dump Windows/Mac OS for another OS until it is easy to use, has all of the applications that they need, comes at a reasonable price, and is compatible with whatever they used to use. Developers won't develop for a new operating system until development is relatively painless, comes at a reasonable price, doesn't require having to learn obscure programming languages and environments, and the developers feel like making their applications run on a new operating system would be beneficial to themselves.
That's what happening to SkyOS and Syllable right now. Users from Windows/Mac/*nix see no compelling reason to switch (ranging from ease of use, hackability, and avaliable applications), and developers have no compelling reason to develop applications that will attract a lot of people to the platform (such as a productivity suite). An operating system that expects to be widely used cannot go far without important applications such as productivity applications. And an operating system without a huge amount of developers developing applications for it shouldn't expect to be going anywhere.
As soon as you send their president $50 to put inside a bank account, in which $50 million will be deposited into the account, and you'll get 20% of it. He promises it.
Re:Finally catching up with Apple...
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Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 3, Funny
So, I guess Linux will be catching up to Mac OS X in 6 to 10 more years!!!!
Speaking as a libertarian whose not rich by any means, my problem with the "elite liberals" is that instead of the "elite liberals" wanting to give their money away as charity, they want to force everybody, especially the rich, to pay for the welfare state and other socialist programs, which are inefficient, perpetuate the cycle of poverty, and very expensive. In their efforts to create an egalitarian society (in which everybody has an equal outcome), they seem to support measures that infringe on the rights of individuals. The rich shouldn't have to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the poor; the rich doesn't even need these social programs, so why should the rich heavily finance wealth redistribution?
Capitalism is like a racing match. You're going to have those who come in first, those who come in the middle, and those who come in last. Leftists (especially of the socialist/communist type) wants to guarantee that everybody comes in the same place, no matter how well (or badly) the contestants performed. Equality of outcome doesn't work in the real world. People should have equal opportunity and should have all of their liberties, but they shouldn't all be expected to turn out the same way. There will always be people who will have higher paying jobs, higher educations, higher quality of living, etc. Why should the janitor or burger flipper get paid as much as an engineer or doctor, or vice versa? Why should the welfare recipient and the rich maintain the same quality of living? I'll close with a quote from Milton Friedman, in Free to Choose:
A society that puts equality--in the sense of equality of outcome--ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of forcce to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
That's what happened to socialism and communism; the people thought that it would be an utopia, but it led to totalitarianism, terrible economies, and an even deeper divide of the poor and the rich, even though socialism and communism were all about "helping the poor" and "saving the proletariat," respecively. Now some of the remaining communist countries (like China) are adopting many capitalist ideas, while still enforcing totalitarian rule.
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But Perl scripts and Visual Basic applications aren't computer science. A decent bachelor's in computer science program teaches you how to analyze and write algorithms, discrete math, the theory and application of various different technologies (compilers, operating systems, graphics), language theory, and other theory courses. This is a sample curriculum from a highly ranked public school. You might also want to look at this (another highly ranked public university) and this (from MIT). You'll also get a nice helping of calculus, statistics, differential equations, linear algebra, physics, chemistry, humanities courses, and some more.
If you want to spend your time learning Perl and VB, get an IT degree (like an MIS degree or a BS from Devry). If you want to spend your time learning the theory and application behind the interpreters that parse and interpret your Perl and VB code, you might want to get your BS in CS from a decent university.
A bachelor's degree (yet alone a master's or doctorate) isn't supposed to be job training; job training is left to trade schools (whose job is to teach people how to perform various jobs). An university degree is supposed to be used for education about a certain subject. If your job requires Perl and VB, learn them. Just don't expect the computer science department to teach you those languages; that's not computer science. This doesn't mean that the BS degree is a waste of time. You might be hired to help write the next Perl or Visual Basic.
Thanks for proving my point. There will now be an x86 monopoly on computers starting in 2007. No alternatives, no choices, and nowhere to run when Intel/AMD pull off their Trusted Computing schemes (they're both part of the Trusted Computing Group).
This is really sad, because the worst architecture ended up beating out some very nice ones (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC), and when there is no competition between chipsets, there will be no more innovation in processor design.
(sigh)
Compiler writers and OS programmers would love to use machines with a more elegant processor architecture, obviously. It's just too bad that most of the elegant processor architectures (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, SPARC) have been relegated to niche markets or have been killed.
And if compiler writers don't feel like writing compilers for an architecture, and if OS programmers don't feel like writing OSes for that architecture, then that architecture will fail quickly. The x86 is a market success, however, and people have been hired to make compilers and operating systems for that platform. A certain compiler and OS company ran by a certain Gates controls 95% of the OS market because he took advantage of the growth of the x86.
The x86 is a crappy architecture, but it succeeded in the market because it was cheap and performed reasonably well for its price. Unfortunately, it had killed off all of those nice architectures in the process.
Same with me. The Mac was the last bastion of hope for those who wanted to avoid the x86 platform without having to pay thousands of dollars for a Sun workstation. The Mac was a blend of elegant hardware (PowerPC and OpenFirmware) and elegant software (Mac OS X). There was nothing crappy about a Mac with OS X. It was something to lust after.
And in 2007, that elegance will be gone. Choice will be gone. There will be an x86 monopoly on computers (except for the SPARC, and who knows how long that will stay). The only choice we'll have left to make is whether to buy crappy hardware and run Linux/Windows on it, or to buy crappy hardware that comes bundled with Mac OS X.
The x86 is one of the worst processor architectures ever designed. It has a crappy instruction set and is filled with hacks. However, due to Joe Sixpack users who believe that higher megahertz == higher performace, and because of stupid companies who fell for that Itanic pile of BS and dropped their elegant architectures, the x86 somehow killed the MIPS, Alpha, Motorola 68k, PowerPC, and PA-RISC archiectures. The x86 isn't popular due to technical superiority. The x86 is only widespread because of some excellent marketroids running the company, and because Joe Average can't walk into the computer store and buy himself a MIPS or PowerPC machine.
I'm not really a Mac user, although I do own a Mac SE and a Performa 6220 (both machines I received about a year ago). I have always liked NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, and I have always lusted over a Mac with Mac OS X. Mac OS X is magnitudes better than Windows and *nix, IMO. The software available for Mac OS X is also wonderful and very easy to use. And the development environment is something to envy for.
However, a major part of the reason why I liked Macs a lot is because Macs aren't your everyday boring Intel x86 PCs. I completely despise the x86 PC platform and I think it is cheap utter crap. There is nothing elegant about x86 architecture, BIOS, legacy ports, and all of that utter crap that should have been replaced a decade ago. Compare that to PowerPC/Motorola 68k architecture, Open Firmware, USB/Firewire, and all of that other nice stuff Apple adopted over the years. Unfortunately, due to market issues (people wanting cheap machines instead of great machines), the MIPS and Alpha platforms are dead, Apple is now switching to x86 (which will kill the PowerPC), and the SPARC is still staying alive. The Power Mac G5 is of workstation quality. You got the best processors (two PowerPC G5s) and the best operating system (Mac OS X). Now in 2007 the Power Mac will lose what makes that Mac a Power Mac. I just hate seeing elegant platforms die.
With that being said, I hope that Apple releases Mac OS X for regular x86 computers. That would be the best thing that would ever happen for the x86 PC platform, since the only choices we have for operating systems are *nix and Windows. The x86 PC platform needs a better operating system, and Mac OS X will fill that void. Unfortunately, that would probably never happen, since that would completely cannibalize Apple's hardware sales and would lead to mass piracy. As for me buying a Mac, I don't think I'll buy an x86 Mac, but I might pick up a Power Mac G5 in a few years once they become cheaper.
Still, I wish that somebody would build new workstation-quality computers that had an elegant 64-bit RISC architecture, kind of like the Power Mac G5. Sure, a cheap $300 Dell is perfect for Joe Average who needs to check his mail, play his multimedia files, type some documents, and surf the Web. However, what about scientists, engineers, researchers, and other people who need a workstation to do their jobs? Everybody is focusing on Joe Average, but nobody is focusing on scientists, engineers, and researchers. Plus, we need more choices in the computer market. In 2007, we'll be completely stuck with the x86...forever. That completely scares me. We need more choices, soon. I don't want an Intel and AMD monopoly, where there is very little innovation. I want to see a mixture of different chips like we have seen back in the 1990s. Remember Alpha, SPARC, PowerPC, Motorola 68k, and PA-RISC? I wish that we had this diversity in chipsets again.
So what do you want to do then? In this case, the Clear Hidden Creek Gold Ridge Mystic Forest Hills Estates should have never been built if there was no infrastructure (read: freeways) to support the development in the first place. A city shouldn't sprawl out until all of its traffic issues have been resolved. When a city has fixed its traffic issues, it then may sprawl out only if it builds more infrastructure to support the higher population. That's one of the biggest problems happening in many of these cities. Cities are haphazardly building all of these suburban bedroom communities without any jobs, entertainment, or roads, but because the cities won't build any roads because of NIMBYs, environmentalists, and other anti-road people, those people who live in those bedroom communities are pushed onto the same roads that the people who have lived in the city for decades have to use. Occasionally the cities may build mass transit, but they normally don't reach those suburban areas. The cities continue to build more and more subdivisions in order for them to make more tax revenue, but because there are no jobs and no improved infrastructure in those subdivisions, the entire city suffers from increased congestion, which means increased air pollution.
You might want to read this paper that Rob Pike wrote about five years ago about the state of systems research. What has happened in the computing world over the past decade is a lack of innovation, especially in computer architecture and in systems programming. In the architecture world (which Pike only tangentially covers), most of the RISC architectures and the Alpha are fading away in favor of the Intel x86 chips. In the operating systems world, the only decent and usable choices that we have are Unix clones/derivatives or Windows; Plan 9 failed to make a splash in the market, and most new OSes are heavily influenced by Unix's design. Ultra-fast and very elegant workstations are being displaced in favor of boring PCs. Even Apple is going to turn into yet another PC vendor in two years.
My goal is to be a computer scientist and to do research that would hopefully have an impact on computer science. However, I'm starting to worry about the state of the field in general. I hear more about outsourcing, architectures and OSes dying, and new DRM technologies more than I hear about the latest advancements in computing. On the flip side, look at game consoles and cell phones. The next generation of game consoles get all of the cool processors, and cell phones just get more innovative each week. If the computing field were truly innovative, in five years we'll see 128-bit processors with an elegant RISC architecture, running an exokernel operating system, featuring an ultra easy-to-use desktop, and is also very easy to develop with using a very high level programming language and a nice set of libraries to program. (Ok, I might have been dreaming in that last sentence). Knowing how the field is performing, in five years we'll still be using x86 PCs with either Linux/BSD, Mac OS X (only with Apple's proprietary x86 PCs), or Longhorn. But wait a minute. We will get the latest and greatest in DRM technology, since the only processor vendors left will be Intel and AMD, and they're both in the Trusted Computing Group. Oh boy.
I completely agree with you about the lack of innovation. Something needs to change before we start going into the computing dark ages.
According to what I've read, Plan 9 is a very good OS. It takes Unix's "everything is a file" philosophy to another level. Plan 9 has fixed all of the infrastructural issues with Unix, and uses its own windowing system instead of X. Unfortunately, not many people use Plan 9 as a production OS because of the lack of applications; sure there are text editors and a web browser available, but where are the multimedia and productivity applications? Plus, I don't think we'll ever see Plan 9 on the desktop; its window manager clearly is an extension of the Unix philosophy, and most regular users don't feel like piping and plumbing commands together. I guess most Plan 9 users use another OS (like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows) for their everyday tasks, and Plan 9 for exploration. Even Rob Pike uses Windows.
And, frankly, that's the biggest problem Linux faces toward desktop acceptance. No, forget Linux. That's the biggest problem Unix faces toward desktop acceptance, whether it is Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. Unix has been dependent on the X Window System for its non-console output needs. For those of you who don't know the story, let me tell the story.
The people over X didn't agree on a single toolkit that all X applications use, and left that work to other developers. Motif was the official X toolkit for one point, but Motif was closed source and therefore not embraced by BSD and Linux developers, not to mention Motif is ugly. LessTif (a Motif clone) was developed to allow Motif developers to compile/run their apps in Linux, and some projects (notable the GIMP), created their own toolkits. Years later, a Linux user comes along and says, "Motif is ugly and hard to code in. CDE isn't very user friendly, and they're both proprietary. Imagine if we had a toolkit that was easy to develop with, and a desktop environment that's easy to use, just like Windows/Macintosh. I'll call it KDE!" So this developer starts work on KDE, which uses the QT toolkit.
Unfortunately, QT was released under a license that wasn't compatible with the GNU GPL, which is one of the most common licenses used on OSS development. So, instead of the GNU folks writing a GPL-licensed QT clone so that way they can still ethically use the growing amount of KDE applications out there, they decided to write their own toolkit and their own desktop environment. They adopted Gimp's toolkit (GTK) and started work on GNOME. Before long, users now had two competing desktop environments (KDE and GNOME), multitudes of toolkits (Motif [which became open-sourced 5 years ago], QT [which was GPL'd for OSS projects], GTK, wxWindows, GNUstep), and vast amounts of software tied to one toolkit.
The problem with getting Linux on the desktop is that even though a "Joe Average-ready" distribution (like Mandrake, Linspire, Ubuntu, or Fedora) picks a desktop environment, picks the applications (which depends on the desktop environment), and develops its own installer, we all call them "Linux," as if you can go down to the store and buy yourself a box of Linux 2.6.11. The problem with that is each distribution should be really regarded as its own OS, since each distribution may use a different desktop environment. For example, we don't call Mac OS X "FreeBSD," even though much of the underlying OS is based on FreeBSD. However, we don't refer to Mandrake or Ubuntu as "Mandrake OS" or "Ubuntu OS." The biggest problem with this all is when the user tries to install software. Let's say that the user decides to install Ubuntu on his computer. IIRC, Ubuntu uses GNOME as its main desktop environment. The user doesn't know about GTK, GNOME, Bonobo, ATK, Gail, and all of that other technical mess. However, let's say that the user has heard of a wonderful application called KOffice which meets his needs perfectly. When the user installs KOffice, he finds out that he needs to install another toolkit (all of that KDE/QT stuff) in order to run that application. When he opens KWord, he notices that everything from the buttons, the menus, and even the ordering of the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons are different than from a "native" application such as Evolution or GEdit. Being ignorant about toolkits, he then installs some other applications such as xpdf, some GTK 1.2 applications, OpenOffice (which uses its own toolkit), some Java Swing applications, and more. By the time he's finished, he would have to deal with almost a separate toolkit for each application that he's using.
The biggest problem with the Unix desktop is the X Window System. There is no consistency with the look-and-feel of applications. There is also no consistency with toolkits. Mac OS X did it right with Aqua, but Aqua isn't the X Window S
C'mon. Some people (usually assembly hackers) just don't like the x86 platform at all, and want to do their development on a much cleaner architecture. Alternate architectures such as MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, and SPARC had a lot of things to offer. They had an elegant design (all except the Alpha were RISC chips) and performed very well. Unfortunately, due to market issues and corporate stupidity (especially on Compaq's and HP's mishandling of the Alpha and that Itanic mess that Intel has caused), the only non-Intel, non-x86 choice we have left after 2007 is the Sun SPARC.
For the average user or the average developer, it is "just a CPU." However, there is no competition to the x86 platform for computers except for the Sun SPARC. (AMD vs. Intel doesn't count, because they're both x86 manufacturers). All of those other architectures are now gone or have disappeared from computing. The PowerPC will disappear from computing in 2007. When there is no competition, there is no innovation. When there is no competition, prices will rise. When there is no innovation, we suffer because we have no choices. Before we know it, we'll be looking at an Intel monopoly, with AMD remaining just so Intel won't look bad. That's happening with the CPU market. In 2007 we'll have almost no choices. It's either a x86, a Sun workstation, or nothing.
Alright, the original System 7 and System 7.1 were very stable. They had very useful features (such as multitasking) and didn't crash too often. I have a Mac SE with System 7 that I received about a year ago. It is pretty stable and pretty useful for small tasks, even though I don't use it much because I have no modem for it, nor do I have a way to transfer files to a PC from it.
However, the later versions of Mac OS 7 (such as Mac OS 7.5.x) are much less stable, and Apple had to introduce tons of patches in order to bring the stability to a reasonable level. During this time, Apple was in the midst of developing Copland (which we all know where that went).
That is true in many cases. However, as time grew on, the infrastructure of the classic Mac OS was starting to show age. Cooperative multitasking in the late 1990s? No real memory management? No malloc() for developers? The classic Mac OS was built for a 8MHz Motorola 68000 with 128K RAM. Apple had to make the OS adapt to changes in processor speed (and even processors with the PowerPC switch), memory sizes, hard disk space, and other resources. What may be acceptable in the days of the 8MHz Motorola 68000 and 128K RAM might not be efficient when you have a 300MHz PowerPC 604e chip with 64MB RAM. That's what happened to the classic Mac OS. They had to add features (such as multitasking, which didn't exist on the original Mac and didn't become part of the OS until 1991) without completely rewriting the OS. It was easy at first, but as time grows on, it becomes very hard to add memory management and preemptive multitasking to an OS whose design didn't support it in the first place. Those issues are what led Apple to develop Taligent and Copland (which both failed), which led to the acquisition of NeXT and ultimately led to the development of Mac OS X.
I'm not saying that the classic Mac OS releases were completely unviable. Despite their infrastructural shortcomings, the classic Mac OS is a pinnacle of GUI usability only matched by NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X, IMO. It is also a much nicer environment to work in than DOS and early versions of Windows (pre-Windows NT), unless you're a developer. The classic Mac OS is also home to many great applications such as ClarisWorks (back when it was comparable to Office), Photoshop, Word 5.1, and other nice apps. There are still many people who haven't upgraded to Mac OS X, and they don't want to purchase new versions of Office and graphics design products.
I believe that the original poster was referring to the classic Mac OS as a thrown-together OS, and not Mac OS X. Apple did a good job selling PowerPC Macs from 1994-2001, and the hardware was nice (with a few exceptions, like the PowerMac 4400 and the PowerMac/Performa x200 series), but the operating system was stuck in the 1980s and started to fall behind in the area of stability compared to more advanced OSes such as Linux/BSD, NEXTSTEP, and even Windows NT (in 1999, which OS would you use from a programmer's standpoint? Mac OS 9 or Windows 2000? I'd take Windows 2000 any day). Part of buying a computer is knowing which operating system does it run on (or, now of days, knowing which operating systems it can run on). A computer can have excellent graphics, huge amounts of RAM and hard disk space, and a very fast processor, but it doesn't mean anything when the OS running on top of it crashes daily and fails to take advantage of that nice hardware. (The reverse is also true). The classic Mac OS has been hacked by Apple countless times to try to get it to adapt it to later technologies, and the final result clearly shows. Mac OS 9 added hacks to OS 8, which added hacks to OS 7, which added hacks to System 6, which is a hack of the original System 1. I feel sorry for those still using Mac OS 9 on their production machines; developers don't feel like developing for them anymore as they moved on to greener pastures (Mac OS X). There isn't even an updated browser for the platform (which Mac OS 9 was released in 1999), even though I can install the latest Mozilla/Firefox on Windows 95.
Apple spent most of the 1990s trying to find a way to replace its old aging Mac OS with a new OS that fixed all of the infrastructural problems with the old one.
Re: Everything Enabled? (Score:3, Funny)
Could it be the same way a question can be moderated funny?
I guess so.
The reason why many Slashdotters support such government involvement (or interference, depending on how you look at it) is because many Slashdotters are liberals, even though Slashdot has a sizeable libertarian and conservative population. Liberals support government involvement in social and environmental issues (in the name of "public good"), even if they do come at odds with personal and economic freedom. Liberals are among the first people to support massive federal government regulation of the environment, even if it does have a damaging effect on the economy. And remember that the two Democrats and three Republicans (who weren't acting very conservatively that day) on the Supreme Court voted to let the city government take away people's private property rights, because those hotels were supposedly for the "public good." (The four dissenters were all conservative Republicans). I think that was the libertarian/conservative faction of Slashdot speaking out against the ruling.
I'm a libertarian, and I agree with your viewpoint. What form of energy we should use should be dictated by the market, not by the government. The market should do the R&D, not the government. The government has no right to interfere with economic decisions, no matter what reason.
However, what would happen if there is no high end? There is a market for high end computers. Sure, Joe Sixpack's computational power is best reflected in a Dell or even a Mac Mini/XBox. His major tasks are playing his music, looking at his pr0n^Wphoto collection, typing some documents for homework, crunching a few spreadsheets, and surfing the web. He doesn't need a multiprocessor box with high end graphics. Computer scientists, mathematicians, computational physicists, biologists, and graphics designers are just some of the people who benefit from having high-end workstations on their desktops, mostly because of the work that they have to do, whether it is researching the speed of certain algorithms (or compiling Gentoo), crunching some very complex mathematical equations, or sequencing the genome of rats.
The problem is that there are more Joe Sixpacks than there are scientists, and because of market demands and the Intel/Microsoft juggernaut (thank you Itanic and Windows for destroying much of the industry), most of the high end computer companies have folded (DEC, and now SGI) or discontinued their high end machines (HP, and Apple in 2007). The people who really do need high end workstations are now looking into Beowulf clusters and the like because they're running out of high end options.
Err, the SPARC is still alive and shows no signs of dying, even though Sun is now selling Opteron workstations. I believe you can buy a 500MHz SPARC workstation for about $1,400 or so. I don't know how fast it is in comparison to x86 machines (I'm typing this on a 475MHz K6-2), but at least Sun is still making them.
But yes, this is sad. All we have left is the PowerPC (which we only have a year left before Apple goes to the Dark Side(TM)), and the Sun SPARC. All of the elegant and good architectures have been destroyed based on the Microsoft/Intel juggernaut, compatibility with ancient DOS programs from 1983, and cost. It just shows that just because something is technically superior doesn't mean that it will succeed in the marketplace; look at NeXT for instance (even though it didn't die, it was able to buy Apple for negative $400 million). If a product doesn't make it through the Joe Sixpacks and the PHBs of the world, with their malware-encumbered computers and probably don't even know what a processor is, it automatically fails, no matter how good it is.
SGI machines remind me of the NeXT machines; they were extremely powerful workstations. You can't get the graphics and the processor performance from some inferior cheap x86 box. Yet, the philosophy of "worse is better" holds true again, and before we know it, us computer scientists, graphic designers, and other people who really do need ultra-powerful workstations will have to rely on Dells to do their work. You can clearly see that I'm pissed off.
Now if you excuse me, I'll go off and mourn.
The Commun^WDemocrats are as rabid as getting the state involved in our personal lives as much as the Republicans are. The only difference I see with the two is that Democrats are pushing socialist and statist policies (social programs, higher taxes, gun control, and don't forget that the Democrats on the Supreme Court voted to destroy some of our private property rights weeks ago) while the Republicans have been taken over by religious fundamentalists who force their views on morality on everybody else. Both want more governmental control on our personal lives, which would ultimately lead to a totalitarian government, where we will have no freedom left. All in the name of "thinking about the children."
In a free society, the parents should be the ones dictating what is indecent in their homes, not the government, no matter if it's local, state, or federal. Government should stop worrying about whether or not somebody sees a bare breast and worry more about protecting freedoms. America is supposed to be "the land of the free," and not 1984.
IE with a popup blocker, firewall, and not as root doesn't seem too bad. However, as a Mozilla/Firefox user since March 2004, I have found using IE painful, especially if SP2 isn't installed on the computer. I cannot live without AdBlock, popup blocking (a non-issue with SP2), tabbed browsing, the search bar for Google/EBay/Amazon/Dictionary.com, and the find shortcut in Firefox (type the forward slash and type the text that you want to find). I also find myself being much more careful browsing in IE than browsing in Firefox, because one bad click can thrash the computer.
But hey, just use whatever works for you. I also agree that the book is a bit much; why would anyone buy a book in order to learn how to use something as simple as a web browser?
Why would anyone need a book to learn how to use a web browser? Web browsers are just about the easiest software to use.
Over a year ago, I was able to switch my parents and siblings to the Mozilla suite. They were using Windows 95 and IE 5.5, and were having some problems with spyware. After trying spyware removal programs (to no avail), I finally introduced them to Mozilla. I took a while for my parents to switch (they used IE's feature of remembering passwords to credit cards and other stuff, so they had to reset them), but after that, they have switched to Mozilla permanently and seem to like it. They love the popup blocking and the AdBlock extension, even though they don't use tabbed browsing (they visit one site at a time and they don't really use the Internet as much as I do.) After a few months of Mozilla use, I removed the IE icon from the desktop, and I haven't received a single complaint. Haven't seen malware, viruses, or worms on that computer since.
Switching people to different browsers is just the matter of telling them the dangers of IE and show them the virtues of alternative browsers. As long as they have no sites that are holding them back to IE, the switch to be relatively easy. Now, switching people to different operating systems is an entirely different story....
Easier said than done. Geeks like myself can easily dump Windows for Linux/BSD (provided that we're not serious gamers or are Windows developers), but nongeeks will be completely lost; if they cannot keep malware off their Windows machines (which isn't very difficult; just enable the firewall and use Firefox), then they probably cannot even install Linux at all. And buying a Mac isn't a sufficient answer for a lot of people; they don't feel like spending $499 or more for another computer. Next, some people need Microsoft Office (which I've never had a problem with), and some people need software that runs only on Windows. Remember, people won't switch OSes or platforms unless it is easy to use, has all of the applications that they need, and won't make a dent in their pocketbooks. Windows sucks and blows, and loves to have its holes exploited by malware, but none of that matters to a majority of users of all of the alternatives are either not easy to use, require purchasing a new computer, or don't have the software that they need.
Over the years there have been many great OSes that now see little use. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, BeOS, and Plan 9 are very nice operating systems. *STEP is the direct ancestor of Mac OS X and brought a lot of new, innovative features to operating systems, such as Display Postscript (predecessor of Quartz), Interface Builder (predecessor of XCode), the dock, etc., not to mention boatloads of innovative software packages (such as Mathematica, Lotus Improv, and the entire Lighthouse Design software collection) and it showed the world how Unix for the masses should be built (which KDE and GNOME still have lots of catching up to do). BeOS has a nice infrastructure (compared to other OSes of the time like Mac OS 8/9 and Windows 9x), and is easy to use. Plan 9 is a different beast altogether compared to the other OSes that I mentioned; Plan 9 takes Unix's idea of "everything is a file" to another level; for example, the window manager supports pipes and filters just like any other traditional command line program. And all of the operating systems can run on any old 486 or Pentium.
What happened to all of these OSes? NeXT was bought by Apple (and didn't release a version of Mac OS X for commodity x86 machines, for obvious business reasons), BeOS's parent company was going through business issues and ended up being discontinued, and Plan 9 is virtually unheard of unless you're an operating systems researcher. All three failed to make a big splash for various reasons. NeXT had the software, a supportive development group and development infrastructure (especially from Lighthouse Design and the Omni Group) and (for the first few years) had the hardware, but the x86+Windows juggernauts and the steep pricing were issues too huge to overcome for a lot of people, which ultimately led to NeXT's near demise (until NeXT bought Apple for -$400 million). BeOS had a nice infrastructure, but it didn't catch on because of Windows's mass acceptance in the marketplace, lack of huge productivity applications (which is caused by a lack of interested developers), and corporate drama. Plan 9 isn't replacing *nix because most of us "geeks" are very content with our beloved Unix (no matter how flawed it is sometimes) and see no need to change, and Plan 9 doesn't have all of the applications that users need (like productivity suites, for starters).
Whether or not an operating system succeeds or not depends on user's acceptance and developer's acceptance. User's won't dump Windows/Mac OS for another OS until it is easy to use, has all of the applications that they need, comes at a reasonable price, and is compatible with whatever they used to use. Developers won't develop for a new operating system until development is relatively painless, comes at a reasonable price, doesn't require having to learn obscure programming languages and environments, and the developers feel like making their applications run on a new operating system would be beneficial to themselves.
That's what happening to SkyOS and Syllable right now. Users from Windows/Mac/*nix see no compelling reason to switch (ranging from ease of use, hackability, and avaliable applications), and developers have no compelling reason to develop applications that will attract a lot of people to the platform (such as a productivity suite). An operating system that expects to be widely used cannot go far without important applications such as productivity applications. And an operating system without a huge amount of developers developing applications for it shouldn't expect to be going anywhere.
As soon as you send their president $50 to put inside a bank account, in which $50 million will be deposited into the account, and you'll get 20% of it. He promises it.
So, I guess Linux will be catching up to Mac OS X in 6 to 10 more years!!!!
I can hardly wait!
Speaking as a libertarian whose not rich by any means, my problem with the "elite liberals" is that instead of the "elite liberals" wanting to give their money away as charity, they want to force everybody, especially the rich, to pay for the welfare state and other socialist programs, which are inefficient, perpetuate the cycle of poverty, and very expensive. In their efforts to create an egalitarian society (in which everybody has an equal outcome), they seem to support measures that infringe on the rights of individuals. The rich shouldn't have to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the poor; the rich doesn't even need these social programs, so why should the rich heavily finance wealth redistribution?
Capitalism is like a racing match. You're going to have those who come in first, those who come in the middle, and those who come in last. Leftists (especially of the socialist/communist type) wants to guarantee that everybody comes in the same place, no matter how well (or badly) the contestants performed. Equality of outcome doesn't work in the real world. People should have equal opportunity and should have all of their liberties, but they shouldn't all be expected to turn out the same way. There will always be people who will have higher paying jobs, higher educations, higher quality of living, etc. Why should the janitor or burger flipper get paid as much as an engineer or doctor, or vice versa? Why should the welfare recipient and the rich maintain the same quality of living? I'll close with a quote from Milton Friedman, in Free to Choose:
That's what happened to socialism and communism; the people thought that it would be an utopia, but it led to totalitarianism, terrible economies, and an even deeper divide of the poor and the rich, even though socialism and communism were all about "helping the poor" and "saving the proletariat," respecively. Now some of the remaining communist countries (like China) are adopting many capitalist ideas, while still enforcing totalitarian rule.