It looks like forced activation and DRM is the wave of the future. MS gained their monopoly by creating an operating system (DOS and Windows up and including 2000) that can be ran on any old PC. MS used to not care about charging you for another license of Windows when you upgraded your PC multiple times; they figured that it was great that you were using Windows instead of OS/2, NEXTSTEP, DR-DOS, or the other alternatives at the time. Since they gained 95% market share, they repay you by implementing restrictive activation schemes that get worse with each release of Windows.
I say, no thanks. Me and thousands of other people will still hold on to our Windows 2000 disks. Even though I don't use Windows anymore (too bad Boot Camp for Mac doesn't support Windows 2000), I know plenty of people who haven't gone to XP because of this. Activation negatively inconviences (and sometimes even locks out) those who legally buy their software (no activation scheme is perfect); those who illegally obtain their software can just download a cracked version or a corporate version of it. I don't want treated as a pirate as a customer. But that is how MS wants to treat us. Oh well. I'm not buying any new versions of Windows or Office for this Mac; I'm sticking to Windows 2000 and Office 2000.
The beauty about open source software is that it can be anything that the developers want to make it. Want to create the ultimate OS for computer experts and hackers? You got that. Want to create the most usable OS that ever existed? You got the underlying infrastructure, just build on top of it. Want to create the ultimate research OS for systems research? Just take out the file system, memory management algorithms, schedulers, etc. and make your own. That is the beauty of open source software. It can be developed for anyone for any task. I, for one, welcome these efforts to create usable open source desktops. If open source software improves to the point that it is just as usable as the commercial offerings without having to spend time configuring things, then that will be beneficial to all of us.
The problem with Linux isn't the lack of eye candy. In fact, GNOME and KDE have far more eye-candy than OS X does, IMO, and I say this as a Mac user. Have you seen the XGL effects in GNOME, for example? Or the Beryl desktop? These themes are very nicely done and their eye candy amount is very large, almost to the point of superfluous in some aspects (do we need effects for everything. My only problem with Linux eye candy is the bad fonts available (Bitstream Vera is far uglier than Lucida Grande or Tahoma, IMO) and bad font quality, but that is due to font copyrights and rendering patents, respectively, which is a fact of life when dealing with free software.
What Linux needs is not more eye candy. What Linux needs is innovative usability. A pretty interface is lovely, but it means nothing if it isn't easy to use. Nobody is going to switch to Linux if the interfaces are just Windows (or even OS X) clones. Linux needs to bring something new to the table. I'll use KDE and GNOME as examples. KDE's biggest problems, for example, is the excessive amount of options and toolbars. Don't get me wrong, I love toolbars, and I was one of the original complainers when Microsoft decided to convert toolbars and menus to ribbons in Office 2007. I think that Office 97 is the high-water mark for Office usability. Customizability is very important for using an application. However, there is a such thing as too many toolbars and too many options shown on the screen. This illustrates some of my issues with KDE. Most Cocoa applications (and some Carbon applications) handle this on OS X by only displaying the most important options on the toolbar, and by placing the rest in an Inspector dialog box (which is a holdover from the NEXTSTEP days). As for GNOME, it has done a tremendous job with usability and addressed many of the problems that I've had with KDE. However, GNOME can use some improvement as well. I wish GNOME were more responsive (it just feels a bit slower than KDE or even OS X).
There are some common complaints that I have with both desktops. Both need to stop trying to be like Windows and add some new UI elements. OS X doesn't try to be Windows (or even OS 9 in some aspects); it has original features (or NEXTSTEP-derived features) such as Inspectors, drawers, search in many applications, full drag-and-drop, and much more. These innovative features have made my life easier and have made using Windows or Linux much more difficult. KDE and GNOME should try implementing some innovative features that would make me never boot into OS X. Imagine a Spotlight-like tool that utilized regular expressions and/or more complex queries for finding files based on their extended metadata. Imagine something a bit more powerful, quicker, and useful than Inspectors on OS X (coming from a Windows and Linux background, it took me a while to get used to the Inspector idea, but I see how well it integrates with OS X. Large rows of toolbars is not OS X).
What most users want is for them to be able to do their tasks without the UI getting in the way. I find that OS X achieves this in most categories. But it can be better, especially in the question of toolbars vs. Inspectors vs. ribbons. KDE and GNOME can (and should) capitalize on this. If somebody can create something that has the quickness of toolbars (one-click) but easy for new users to understand (like ribbons or Inspectors), then I'll really consider trying out your GUI.
I was talking about everyday, mainstream liberals, not leftist wannabe socialists like Michael Moore. I disagree with the entirety of leftism (I think their arguments are more emotional rather than logical, and they don't know the danger of their economic policies when fully implemented) and much of the economics of liberalism for the same reasons, but I do recognize that most liberals are not extreme. Although I disagree with their economic platform and some of their social platform (gun control is an example), at least they won't shoot me dead for disagreeing with them. Their socialist counterparts, as well as their symphasizers, are dangerous to a free society. It actually saddens me to see that there are still socialist and communist nations, even after the great fall of the Soviet Union. The whole world saw the failure of these extreme leftist ideologies, yet we still (especially in Latin America) have socialists and communists in power? That is sad.
I would rather deal with a Democrat president (with a Democratic Congress too) than to live with Chavez or Castro. The Democrat may, in the worst case, tax me higher and force me to pay for their universal health care and all of their other programs, but at least they won't fully destroy the market and lock me up for being an economic conservative. With a socialist dictator, I have to put up or shut up, or be either locked up or hanged up.
I know the parent will most likely be modded funny, but please do NOT conflate American liberalism with the brand of socialism that Chavez is pandering. American liberalism shouldn't even be called socialism; it's an insult to liberals. American liberals largely respect free markets and only wish to implement certain safety nets that they feel would lessen the blow whenever there are economic hard times (e.g., welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, etc.), and curtail monopolies (anti-trust laws). Socialists are concerned with overthrowing the market and having heavy government involvement in the economy to the point that the government basically runs it. Excessive government control over the economy proves dangerous to the livelihood of a nation; look at how well price controls worked in the Soviet Union, for example. Aside from economics, liberals fight tooth and nail to preserve civil liberties and natural rights, whereas some (but not all) socialists are willing to kill people who get in the way of their plans.
Most liberals that I know are just as skeptical, if not, much more skeptical about Hugo Chavez than they are about President Bush. Liberals may be a little left-leaning, but they would rather associate with a moderate libertarian or even a conservative than with an outright socialist.
Disclaimer: I am a libertarian who is somewhat sympathetic to liberalism.
Being forced to "buy" a private island and then pay travel fees to go there emphasizes the OP's point: You've been forced into this situation, and if you don't like it, *you* have to change.
As somebody who loves innovation and change, and sometimes dream of the pie in the sky, I normally hate this saying with a passion, but I must say it. C'est la vie. There is nothing else I can say. You have to either live with the current system, work and change the current system from within, or relocate to a place where the laws and values matches yours. There are no alternatives. Although I have libertarian-leaning views and I remain a staunch individualist, I also recognize that we don't live in a vacuum; it is very inconvienent (and almost impossible these days) to live on an island or another secluded area by yourself, with no help from anybody. Nobody to grow your food, nobody to make your clothes, nobody to build your housing, nothing. Nobody to talk to, nobody to be with, just lonely. There is a cost to living in a society. We all have some implicit social contract to obey both the explicit rules of society (governmental laws) as well as the implicit rules (moral codes). Sometimes those rules are bad rules that are flawed, foolish, or downright stupid. But you must either live with them, change them, or leave.
Is a private island with your own rules, your own laws, and your own government (assuming that you have one) worth the seclusion, the loneliness, and lack of help and resources from the outside world? If living with my loved ones and friends meant not being able to legally download movies and music on BitTorrent, then I'll choose my loved ones and friends. My free movies and music can stay on Utopia Island.
My guess is that he nor any of his users ever got any chance to vote on any copyright law. Can't say I have. Have you? Have you ever gotten to vote on any copyright issue?
No, I haven't gotten to vote on any copyright issue. However, we can vote for people who are willing to change copyright laws (or any other laws). That is how a representative democracy works. We don't vote directly on issues, we vote for representatives that have their own set of positions on certain issues.
Plus, you still have to obey the law if you don't want to deal with the consequences of breaking them, even if you didn't vote on those issues. Did we vote for speed limits, seatbelt laws, and other related traffic laws? No. Did I ever vote for the drinking age raise (from state controlled, usually at 18, to 21 nationally) in the mid-1980s? No. Heck, did I ever vote for federal income taxes? No, most Slashdotters weren't alive in 1913. But we still have to recognize the consequences of breaking those laws, no matter how much we dislike the laws.
Hell, I never even agreed to be any citizen of any country. Show me a signature where I did. So therefore, how do any laws apply to him, or me? As far as I'm concerned, if you have no say so in the making of a law, then you have no obligation whatsoever to have to abide by it.
You may not have chosen to become a citizen of your country, but according to the US Constitution, you are a citizen of that country at birth. And, yes, we do have say in the creation of our laws. It is called electing representatives who share your beliefs in what you want changed in this country.
Kind of like your neighbors down the street getting together and making an assinine aggreement, that all windows in the neighborhood must be left open in the winter time. And then enforcing that law on you. Fining you and or imprisoning you when you don't abide by it. Assembling a police force of patrollers to enforce this rule and smashing down the door and taking prisoner those who are in violation of it. Conformity and enforcement at the end of a barrel of gun.
Your analogy is flawed. In a representative democracy, you get to effectively choose the neighbors who make the assinine agreement. And if they get too assinine, you can try to kick them out of your neighborhood. Democracy isn't a perfect (or even great) form of government, but it's better than all of the alternatives (including anarchy, which has many of its own flaws). If you don't like the current federal laws, talk to your local representatives or senators about it and give them your reasoning. If they don't change, try to vote them out. Try to make it a local issue. Run for office yourself if you are adamant about removing the laws that you don't like.
Part of living in a nation under a democratic government (republican or direct-democracy) is dealing with decisions made by a majority of people, whether it is 50.1% of the population or 66% of the representatives. It may suck at times, but what are your alternatives? A benevolent dictator (remember that one person's benevolent dictator is another person's dictator from hell)? Anarchy (which has some of its own problems, such as private arbitration instead of the police)? Some of these laws are very bad, but you have to work to change them within the governmental system. Voting is important, but also writing your congresscritters, making it a big issue for the next election, and informing the public are also very effective. Change takes a long time, but that is just how democracy works.
There is much more to a nice interface than eye candy. Aqua is more about usability than it is about eye candy. All of the features of OS X, from the dialog sheets for opening and saving files, to Expose, to fast user switching, to Spaces and Time Machine in the Leopard demo, have a wonderful way of integrating eye candy with usability to create the ultimate user interface.
I was a longtime KDE user on FreeBSD before buying a Mac a few months ago. KDE is a very great desktop environment. However, I feel that its default themes and artwork are created by programmers who want eye candy for the sake of having eye candy instead of seasoned graphics artists and designers who know all of the theories and practices behind graphic communication with user interfaces. Look at the fonts and icon sizes of a typical KDE desktop, for example. Look at that of a OS X desktop, and compare. I'm not saying that KDE is a bad desktop (it's a very great desktop); I'm just saying that some more polish is needed for their themes. Eye candy for the sake of having eye candy hurts my eyes. Eye candy with a regard for graphic communication and UI makes for a very pleasing computing experience.
Most people do not back up their data, so a simple rm -rf command at the root directory (or, in OS X, their home directory, since user files are stored there) is much more catastrophic to most users than a worm that just sits in the background and hogs resources.
Sure they could. It's called a script or C application wrapped around a Cocoa GUI that executes rm -rf ~. They don't even have to do that. They can create applications that mail themselves over the Internet and take advantage of address books, just like the viruses of 1999-2000.
Macs aren't immune to malicious applications. Somebody could create one easily for Unix programs that thrash your home directory, read your Address Book and mass mail themselves, or do other malicious things. It's just that since OS X doesn't have the marketshare, virus writers haven't gotten around to writing Mac viruses. No OS can stop that above code without some annoyances in other areas.
I was a KDE user on FreeBSD before I bought a Mac a few months ago. I was generally very happy with my KDE experience, and they seemed to have done a great job with their desktop. There are a few complaints that I've had:
All of the themes look too "plasticky" and fake to me. You may find this very strange coming from a OS X user, but compared to OS X's Aqua or the Windows Classic theme (or even GNOME's themes), the KDE themes just don't feel right to me. I want something either a bit more serious (like Windows Classic) or something that does a great job with fanciness (like Aqua or even Vista's Aero). The KDE themes aren't terrible, but they can use some more work. I am also somebody who spend hours on web sites finding alternate themes, either; I call that a waste of time that can be better spent actually doing work.
Now that I've been using OS X for an extended period of time, I can't live without Expose and Spotlight now. Expose is easily doable; I've seen GNOME and KDE clones of that feature. A clone of Spotlight is much harder; the closest thing that I've seen to it is Beagle. I'll like to see an effort to introduce something like Spotlight or even the long-delayed WinFS to the Linux world. Heck, I may strongly consider contributing to such a project.
This page describes a few more complaints that I have about KDE. As an ex-Windows user (I dual-booted between FreeBSD and Windows XP), I like toolbars (I was upset with the Office 2007 ribbons because operations that used to require just one click on the toolbar may require two or three clicks, and there is no customizability). However, there is a such thing as too many default toolbars and too many options on the screen, which I notice in KDE applications. Many OS X applications handle access to features with Inspectors, which are dialog boxes that contain all of the main functionality of a program stored in tabs. The toolbar is only used for very commonly-used operations. Whenever I get to work, I just want a good-sized window to work with, along with a toolbar that contains some commonly-used operations. I don't want my workspace to be hidden by gobs of menus, toolbars, and other options. However, I don't want my functionality compromized either. Inspectors are a nice way of handling this. KDE can improve in this regard.
Those are my only complaints about KDE. KDE is a very nice desktop environment. These improvements will make it the perfect desktop environment for me, and a serious contender to GNOME, Windows, and OS X for most other users. Keep up the good work.
After about 2.5 months of use, I love my MacBook. It not only does everything that I want, but it does it in the way that I want it to work. I now can't live without Expose and Spotlight; going to a Windows box is now painful. Having access to the command line from a terminal icon on the Dock is very important to me, since I am a CS major and Unix user. I've had no problems finding compatible hardware nor installing hardware, and installing software is easy.
My only complaint about switching to OS X is the fact that finding very good, OS X native free software is difficult. NeoOffice is too slow for me and still not very Mac like (I guess I'm already getting that attitude), so I ended up shelling out $49 (I'm a student) for iWork, which has an excellent presentations program and a nice word processor (I pray that iWork 2007 comes with a spreadsheet; there are no free spreadsheets for OS X other than NeoOffice Calc. But I can put up with that, since I don't use spreadsheets for everything). I would have bought MS Office 2004 if it were a Universal Binary. However, all of the software that I've paid for (or plan on paying for; I'm thrilled with the OmniGraffle trial) is of very excellent quality. Going from free software (or an arsenal of old already paid for software; I've used Office 2000 on Windows for many years until I left Windows. I was also a FreeBSD user) to shelling out $$$ is a big change, but you get what you pay for. I think I'm getting used to the idea of paying for quality software.
I think I'm getting a bit more anti-Windows each day. Just bundle a spreadsheet in iWork, give me a free Mac version of Paint, and give me a Japanese word processor and dictionary of the quality of JWPce (I've been learning Japanese for nearly 7 years), and my dream of a perfect environment to work in is now complete.
Users may not care about the actual file system, but the actual features provided by a file system that uses relational databases for metadata management can be very beneficial to users. For example, Apple Spotlight is a tool used for searching files based on the metadata of the files. Although it is a database that sits on top of the file system, it is seamlessly integrated nonetheless. Spotlight makes searching very quick and very easy. WinFS was a very similar concept (it sits on top of NTFS; it doesn't outright replace any file systems), but it took a few steps futher than Spotlight did. For example, WinFS had very powerful querying features that Spotlight doesn't (currently) have.
Users can care less about the actual file system. They don't (and shouldn't) care about FAT, NTFS, UFS, HFS+, ext3, and all of the other acronyms that we file system researchers and enthusiasts throw around. However, users do benefit from new features in new file systems that makes their lives easier. Try searching for a file in Windows XP, which scans through the hard drive and is based on the file name and file metadata specified by the file system, which doesn't take in account for metadata stored inside of the file, especially if that metadata is proprietary. Now, try searching for a file in Safari. There is a huge difference between the speed and the experience.
Windows Vista would have had a file system similar to Apple's Spotlight on a much larger technical scale, but they gutted out that feature. Instead, we get Windows Indexing Services, which indexes all of the files in a database. It makes querying for files easier, but it doesn't provide the rich APIs used for storing extended metadata in files that WinFS or Apple Spotlight provides, making it only better than Windows XP in speed, not in functionality. If you forget the file name, or its time of creation, or any other OS-provided metadata, tough. WinFS and Spotlight are different. It would have been wonderful for Windows users to have advanced file searching based on the files' metadata. But it isn't happening, which is sad for 2006 and 2007, IMO.
I mean, what is Vista about these days? First, they gutted out the Monad shell and WinFS, two features that would have possibly made me wait for Vista and get a PC instead of switching to a Mac. Secondly, they add new DRM restrictions that weren't present on Windows XP. Now, you can't even run the cheaper versions of Vista in a virtual machine due to licensing issues. As a Mac user, I don't feel like installing Windows natively with Boot Camp; I'd rather use a product like Parallels so that way I can run OS X and Windows simulataneously.
I'm not trolling. I'm not anti-Windows either; I've been a Windows user up until a few months ago and liked my Windows experience. In fact, typing this in my MacBook, I miss certain Windows software, and I was looking at Vista news to see whether or not installing Vista on my computer was worthwhile. But this is my last straw with Vista. How can a company sit on their butts for 5 years, not update their operating system (other than security upgrades), and rest on their laurels with the next major version of their operating system is beyond me. Windows XP is ancient compared to OS X's and Linux's fast adoptation of new technologies, new innovative features (Expose, Spotlight or Beagle), new development tools (look at Python's and Ruby's penetration in Linux), new internet browsers (Safari, Firefox, Konqueror), etc. Five years in computing is an eternity. And after five years, all we get is a half-baked clone of OS X with more licensing restrictions, more DRM, and a higher price tag (why should I spend $399 for full-featured Windows Vista Ultimate when I can get OS X for $129 [yes, I know that $129 is subsidized by Apple, you can't run OS X on a PC legally, blah blah blah, but $129
I was looking forward to Vista until recently. Now I wish Microsoft would delay it another year so that way they can release it with all of its promised features. They also need to cut the BS restrictions with licensing as well. It looks like MS has lost me as a customer. They will continue to lose me unless they port the Windows API to OpenBSD....
I don't even know why judgment ever became an acceptable spelling (and I'm speaking as an American whose native language is English). The spelling judgement acknowledges that the g is a soft g and not a hard g. The combination dg doesn't acknowledge anything by itself. Judgment looks like an odd, lazy spelling that for some reason was allowed to pass and become acceptable, although it doesn't phonetically and orthographically make sense. Perhaps Vanna ran out of E's or something, I don't know. I always spell it judgement; that reinforces the fact that the g is soft, nobody marks you wrong (since judgement is still an acceptable spelling, and the correct British spelling), and it looks better than judgment looks. Then again, that's English for you, where words have arbitrary pronunciation and an even more arbitrary pronunciation. This is one American spelling that I disagree with (I also prefer theatre and jewellery to theater and jewelry for similar, but different, reasons, mostly because the British spellings look better and are closer to their etymological roots).
I agree with you. I am getting sick and tired of the anti-road, anti-car, anti-low density, and anti-suburban arguments made by environmentalists who wish to kick us out of our cars and suburban homes and force us into high-density apartments and onto buses and light rail. I don't want to live in a high-rise 10-story housing project, just because it's "smart growth" and "more environmentally friendly than a suburban 2-story house." I don't want to ride a stinky, crowded, and slow bus or light rail train with odd characters and other dangers. I want my cars and my freeways, darn it! Automobiles are still much faster at getting from point A to point B for daily tasks than public transportation is, even with the growing amount of traffic thanks to California's not building of any major roads since the 1970s (except for some examples like Highway 85 in Santa Clara County and Interstate 105 in LA), along with the amount of growth.
This culture of NIMBYism, extreme environmentalist politics, "smart growth," and other related politics, I feel, is a threat to our quality of life. These groups don't care about quickness and efficiency with transportation. These groups don't care about the quality of life that you have in a suburban neighborhood vs. that in an urban environment. Although I feel the environment is important, what about efficiency, convenience, and having peace and quiet in your home? Is forcing everybody to go from a 30 minute commute on a freeway to work to a 1-2 hour commute involving public transportation and cycling really the way to go? Is raising gas prices astronomically just to "give back to society the damage that oil causes the environment" the way to encourage people to switch to more environmentally-friendly fuels, or to encourage oil companies to invest in alternatives? California needs to reverse the trends started by the Jerry Brown administration of not building, and return to the days of the Pat Brown administration, back when we had good roads, good schools, and a good quality of life. We need to start building public works projects again. We need to get our road system back into shape and upgrade, widen, and expand our road network. Environmentalists need to work on promoting technology that still allows us to live in our suburbs and drive our freeways and expressways yet makes them more environmentally friendly (for example, promoting people to drive cars with alternative fuels instead of forcing everybody to take public transportation). I refuse to listen to environmentalists who want to change my life and knock me back into the days of horses-and-buggies. I want to see technology, not ludditism.
As for the quote about liberals, remember that some conservatives are also pushing for "smart-growth" and other related ideas. This isn't about liberalism or conservatism; this is about people who want to force people to live in their version of utopia versus people who want people to live in whatever manner they feel fit.
My first suggestion is to find some other students at your school interested in computer science. A school isn't going to add a computer science course unless there is a sizable amount of students who are interested. After you find other interested students, get a proposal for a new class going. Get a few signatures of students and parents (and maybe some interested teachers) and take it to the principal's office (or whomever else deals with course offerings). If it works, then great. If not, then try again next year.
In the meanwhile, I suggest that you read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. This is the book that is used for the freshman computer science class at MIT. Find yourself a Scheme interpreter (and maybe even invest some time into learning Unix and maybe installing Linux or BSD if you're a Windows user. Unix, not Windows, is the main operating system used in computer science.). This book can get difficult, but you'll be very knowledgeable about the true meaning of computer science via that book. Then, after reading and finishing that book, then move on to learning C (for structured programming) and C++ or Java (for OO programming). Now that you have the theoretical background of programming understood, now you should learn some practical programming languages that you'll use for upper-division CS courses (operating systems, software engineering, systems programming, and the like) and in future industry jobs or research.
Finally, during your junior year of high school, start finding some good CS schools to apply to. MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, University of Texas at Austin, Harvey Mudd, and others that I've forgot now are very good undergraduate computer science schools. These schools are challenging enough to fully teach you computer science and prepare you for either a career in software engineering and development, or a research career.
I wish you a successful start in computer science.
It seems like there is a growing lack of respect for academic integrity now of days. Most of these cheaters have only one goal in college: graduate and make big bucks at all costs. They don't care about academic integrity; they just care about the fat paychecks that they think that they'll receive after they graduate. It's not about learning; it's about getting through school at all costs.
It does no good for somebody to have a college degree if he or she didn't learn anything in the entire process. That is the trouble with cheating. Sure a cheater may be able to bypass an exam, a class, or even a few semesters. However, he or she wouldn't have learned as much (if anything) during school, and the cheater won't be effective when he or she goes to work. Imagine if the engineers that built our transportation systems, buildings, and other structures that we rely on, cheated through school and on the engineering licensing exams? Imagine if our doctors cheated their way through school? Cheating may be the easy way out of a test or class, but it is very detrimental to the cheater in the long run, even if the cheater never gets caught. And, in some extreme cases, cheaters may cost other people money, or even lives.
Students need to learn the value of their education. Undergraduate school is a greuling, grinding, seemingly never ending stream of courses (I'm a sophomore CS major now), but cheating is just a quick fix (if not caught) that certainly doesn't help in future courses, future jobs, and especially for future academics. College is hard. Cheating is a terrible way of dealing with college academics, and it is certainly an ineffective way to learn something.
This is exciting that we have a FOSS and functional equivalent of MS-DOS 6.22 (with some other features like long file names). I can run my old DOS games on my Mac with QEMU. Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?
I was specifically referring to iTunes Music Store purchased music. I just so happen to own about 30 songs or so from iTunes, as well as an iPod nano (and I know a few people who have much more; and no, I'm not rich; far from it), so I believe that I have the right so say something about Linux and iPods.
Now, I am aware that if you plug an iPod to a Linux machine, you can mount it as a FAT32 partition (as long as it is formatted as such) as if it were a regular USB/Firewire drive. It is the DRM'd music from iTunes that is the problem, not the iPod itself. But as long as you don't buy your music from them, that isn't a problem.
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It looks like forced activation and DRM is the wave of the future. MS gained their monopoly by creating an operating system (DOS and Windows up and including 2000) that can be ran on any old PC. MS used to not care about charging you for another license of Windows when you upgraded your PC multiple times; they figured that it was great that you were using Windows instead of OS/2, NEXTSTEP, DR-DOS, or the other alternatives at the time. Since they gained 95% market share, they repay you by implementing restrictive activation schemes that get worse with each release of Windows.
I say, no thanks. Me and thousands of other people will still hold on to our Windows 2000 disks. Even though I don't use Windows anymore (too bad Boot Camp for Mac doesn't support Windows 2000), I know plenty of people who haven't gone to XP because of this. Activation negatively inconviences (and sometimes even locks out) those who legally buy their software (no activation scheme is perfect); those who illegally obtain their software can just download a cracked version or a corporate version of it. I don't want treated as a pirate as a customer. But that is how MS wants to treat us. Oh well. I'm not buying any new versions of Windows or Office for this Mac; I'm sticking to Windows 2000 and Office 2000.
Viva Windows 2000!
The beauty about open source software is that it can be anything that the developers want to make it. Want to create the ultimate OS for computer experts and hackers? You got that. Want to create the most usable OS that ever existed? You got the underlying infrastructure, just build on top of it. Want to create the ultimate research OS for systems research? Just take out the file system, memory management algorithms, schedulers, etc. and make your own. That is the beauty of open source software. It can be developed for anyone for any task. I, for one, welcome these efforts to create usable open source desktops. If open source software improves to the point that it is just as usable as the commercial offerings without having to spend time configuring things, then that will be beneficial to all of us.
The problem with Linux isn't the lack of eye candy. In fact, GNOME and KDE have far more eye-candy than OS X does, IMO, and I say this as a Mac user. Have you seen the XGL effects in GNOME, for example? Or the Beryl desktop? These themes are very nicely done and their eye candy amount is very large, almost to the point of superfluous in some aspects (do we need effects for everything. My only problem with Linux eye candy is the bad fonts available (Bitstream Vera is far uglier than Lucida Grande or Tahoma, IMO) and bad font quality, but that is due to font copyrights and rendering patents, respectively, which is a fact of life when dealing with free software.
What Linux needs is not more eye candy. What Linux needs is innovative usability. A pretty interface is lovely, but it means nothing if it isn't easy to use. Nobody is going to switch to Linux if the interfaces are just Windows (or even OS X) clones. Linux needs to bring something new to the table. I'll use KDE and GNOME as examples. KDE's biggest problems, for example, is the excessive amount of options and toolbars. Don't get me wrong, I love toolbars, and I was one of the original complainers when Microsoft decided to convert toolbars and menus to ribbons in Office 2007. I think that Office 97 is the high-water mark for Office usability. Customizability is very important for using an application. However, there is a such thing as too many toolbars and too many options shown on the screen. This illustrates some of my issues with KDE. Most Cocoa applications (and some Carbon applications) handle this on OS X by only displaying the most important options on the toolbar, and by placing the rest in an Inspector dialog box (which is a holdover from the NEXTSTEP days). As for GNOME, it has done a tremendous job with usability and addressed many of the problems that I've had with KDE. However, GNOME can use some improvement as well. I wish GNOME were more responsive (it just feels a bit slower than KDE or even OS X).
There are some common complaints that I have with both desktops. Both need to stop trying to be like Windows and add some new UI elements. OS X doesn't try to be Windows (or even OS 9 in some aspects); it has original features (or NEXTSTEP-derived features) such as Inspectors, drawers, search in many applications, full drag-and-drop, and much more. These innovative features have made my life easier and have made using Windows or Linux much more difficult. KDE and GNOME should try implementing some innovative features that would make me never boot into OS X. Imagine a Spotlight-like tool that utilized regular expressions and/or more complex queries for finding files based on their extended metadata. Imagine something a bit more powerful, quicker, and useful than Inspectors on OS X (coming from a Windows and Linux background, it took me a while to get used to the Inspector idea, but I see how well it integrates with OS X. Large rows of toolbars is not OS X).
What most users want is for them to be able to do their tasks without the UI getting in the way. I find that OS X achieves this in most categories. But it can be better, especially in the question of toolbars vs. Inspectors vs. ribbons. KDE and GNOME can (and should) capitalize on this. If somebody can create something that has the quickness of toolbars (one-click) but easy for new users to understand (like ribbons or Inspectors), then I'll really consider trying out your GUI.
I was talking about everyday, mainstream liberals, not leftist wannabe socialists like Michael Moore. I disagree with the entirety of leftism (I think their arguments are more emotional rather than logical, and they don't know the danger of their economic policies when fully implemented) and much of the economics of liberalism for the same reasons, but I do recognize that most liberals are not extreme. Although I disagree with their economic platform and some of their social platform (gun control is an example), at least they won't shoot me dead for disagreeing with them. Their socialist counterparts, as well as their symphasizers, are dangerous to a free society. It actually saddens me to see that there are still socialist and communist nations, even after the great fall of the Soviet Union. The whole world saw the failure of these extreme leftist ideologies, yet we still (especially in Latin America) have socialists and communists in power? That is sad.
I would rather deal with a Democrat president (with a Democratic Congress too) than to live with Chavez or Castro. The Democrat may, in the worst case, tax me higher and force me to pay for their universal health care and all of their other programs, but at least they won't fully destroy the market and lock me up for being an economic conservative. With a socialist dictator, I have to put up or shut up, or be either locked up or hanged up.
I know the parent will most likely be modded funny, but please do NOT conflate American liberalism with the brand of socialism that Chavez is pandering. American liberalism shouldn't even be called socialism; it's an insult to liberals. American liberals largely respect free markets and only wish to implement certain safety nets that they feel would lessen the blow whenever there are economic hard times (e.g., welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, etc.), and curtail monopolies (anti-trust laws). Socialists are concerned with overthrowing the market and having heavy government involvement in the economy to the point that the government basically runs it. Excessive government control over the economy proves dangerous to the livelihood of a nation; look at how well price controls worked in the Soviet Union, for example. Aside from economics, liberals fight tooth and nail to preserve civil liberties and natural rights, whereas some (but not all) socialists are willing to kill people who get in the way of their plans.
Most liberals that I know are just as skeptical, if not, much more skeptical about Hugo Chavez than they are about President Bush. Liberals may be a little left-leaning, but they would rather associate with a moderate libertarian or even a conservative than with an outright socialist.
Disclaimer: I am a libertarian who is somewhat sympathetic to liberalism.
As somebody who loves innovation and change, and sometimes dream of the pie in the sky, I normally hate this saying with a passion, but I must say it. C'est la vie. There is nothing else I can say. You have to either live with the current system, work and change the current system from within, or relocate to a place where the laws and values matches yours. There are no alternatives. Although I have libertarian-leaning views and I remain a staunch individualist, I also recognize that we don't live in a vacuum; it is very inconvienent (and almost impossible these days) to live on an island or another secluded area by yourself, with no help from anybody. Nobody to grow your food, nobody to make your clothes, nobody to build your housing, nothing. Nobody to talk to, nobody to be with, just lonely. There is a cost to living in a society. We all have some implicit social contract to obey both the explicit rules of society (governmental laws) as well as the implicit rules (moral codes). Sometimes those rules are bad rules that are flawed, foolish, or downright stupid. But you must either live with them, change them, or leave.
Is a private island with your own rules, your own laws, and your own government (assuming that you have one) worth the seclusion, the loneliness, and lack of help and resources from the outside world? If living with my loved ones and friends meant not being able to legally download movies and music on BitTorrent, then I'll choose my loved ones and friends. My free movies and music can stay on Utopia Island.
No, I haven't gotten to vote on any copyright issue. However, we can vote for people who are willing to change copyright laws (or any other laws). That is how a representative democracy works. We don't vote directly on issues, we vote for representatives that have their own set of positions on certain issues.
Plus, you still have to obey the law if you don't want to deal with the consequences of breaking them, even if you didn't vote on those issues. Did we vote for speed limits, seatbelt laws, and other related traffic laws? No. Did I ever vote for the drinking age raise (from state controlled, usually at 18, to 21 nationally) in the mid-1980s? No. Heck, did I ever vote for federal income taxes? No, most Slashdotters weren't alive in 1913. But we still have to recognize the consequences of breaking those laws, no matter how much we dislike the laws.
You may not have chosen to become a citizen of your country, but according to the US Constitution, you are a citizen of that country at birth. And, yes, we do have say in the creation of our laws. It is called electing representatives who share your beliefs in what you want changed in this country.
Your analogy is flawed. In a representative democracy, you get to effectively choose the neighbors who make the assinine agreement. And if they get too assinine, you can try to kick them out of your neighborhood. Democracy isn't a perfect (or even great) form of government, but it's better than all of the alternatives (including anarchy, which has many of its own flaws). If you don't like the current federal laws, talk to your local representatives or senators about it and give them your reasoning. If they don't change, try to vote them out. Try to make it a local issue. Run for office yourself if you are adamant about removing the laws that you don't like.
Part of living in a nation under a democratic government (republican or direct-democracy) is dealing with decisions made by a majority of people, whether it is 50.1% of the population or 66% of the representatives. It may suck at times, but what are your alternatives? A benevolent dictator (remember that one person's benevolent dictator is another person's dictator from hell)? Anarchy (which has some of its own problems, such as private arbitration instead of the police)? Some of these laws are very bad, but you have to work to change them within the governmental system. Voting is important, but also writing your congresscritters, making it a big issue for the next election, and informing the public are also very effective. Change takes a long time, but that is just how democracy works.
There is much more to a nice interface than eye candy. Aqua is more about usability than it is about eye candy. All of the features of OS X, from the dialog sheets for opening and saving files, to Expose, to fast user switching, to Spaces and Time Machine in the Leopard demo, have a wonderful way of integrating eye candy with usability to create the ultimate user interface.
I was a longtime KDE user on FreeBSD before buying a Mac a few months ago. KDE is a very great desktop environment. However, I feel that its default themes and artwork are created by programmers who want eye candy for the sake of having eye candy instead of seasoned graphics artists and designers who know all of the theories and practices behind graphic communication with user interfaces. Look at the fonts and icon sizes of a typical KDE desktop, for example. Look at that of a OS X desktop, and compare. I'm not saying that KDE is a bad desktop (it's a very great desktop); I'm just saying that some more polish is needed for their themes. Eye candy for the sake of having eye candy hurts my eyes. Eye candy with a regard for graphic communication and UI makes for a very pleasing computing experience.
Most people do not back up their data, so a simple rm -rf command at the root directory (or, in OS X, their home directory, since user files are stored there) is much more catastrophic to most users than a worm that just sits in the background and hogs resources.
Sure they could. It's called a script or C application wrapped around a Cocoa GUI that executes rm -rf ~. They don't even have to do that. They can create applications that mail themselves over the Internet and take advantage of address books, just like the viruses of 1999-2000.
Macs aren't immune to malicious applications. Somebody could create one easily for Unix programs that thrash your home directory, read your Address Book and mass mail themselves, or do other malicious things. It's just that since OS X doesn't have the marketshare, virus writers haven't gotten around to writing Mac viruses. No OS can stop that above code without some annoyances in other areas.
I was a KDE user on FreeBSD before I bought a Mac a few months ago. I was generally very happy with my KDE experience, and they seemed to have done a great job with their desktop. There are a few complaints that I've had:
Those are my only complaints about KDE. KDE is a very nice desktop environment. These improvements will make it the perfect desktop environment for me, and a serious contender to GNOME, Windows, and OS X for most other users. Keep up the good work.
Wow! I didn't notice that. Thanks.
After about 2.5 months of use, I love my MacBook. It not only does everything that I want, but it does it in the way that I want it to work. I now can't live without Expose and Spotlight; going to a Windows box is now painful. Having access to the command line from a terminal icon on the Dock is very important to me, since I am a CS major and Unix user. I've had no problems finding compatible hardware nor installing hardware, and installing software is easy.
My only complaint about switching to OS X is the fact that finding very good, OS X native free software is difficult. NeoOffice is too slow for me and still not very Mac like (I guess I'm already getting that attitude), so I ended up shelling out $49 (I'm a student) for iWork, which has an excellent presentations program and a nice word processor (I pray that iWork 2007 comes with a spreadsheet; there are no free spreadsheets for OS X other than NeoOffice Calc. But I can put up with that, since I don't use spreadsheets for everything). I would have bought MS Office 2004 if it were a Universal Binary. However, all of the software that I've paid for (or plan on paying for; I'm thrilled with the OmniGraffle trial) is of very excellent quality. Going from free software (or an arsenal of old already paid for software; I've used Office 2000 on Windows for many years until I left Windows. I was also a FreeBSD user) to shelling out $$$ is a big change, but you get what you pay for. I think I'm getting used to the idea of paying for quality software.
I think I'm getting a bit more anti-Windows each day. Just bundle a spreadsheet in iWork, give me a free Mac version of Paint, and give me a Japanese word processor and dictionary of the quality of JWPce (I've been learning Japanese for nearly 7 years), and my dream of a perfect environment to work in is now complete.
Users may not care about the actual file system, but the actual features provided by a file system that uses relational databases for metadata management can be very beneficial to users. For example, Apple Spotlight is a tool used for searching files based on the metadata of the files. Although it is a database that sits on top of the file system, it is seamlessly integrated nonetheless. Spotlight makes searching very quick and very easy. WinFS was a very similar concept (it sits on top of NTFS; it doesn't outright replace any file systems), but it took a few steps futher than Spotlight did. For example, WinFS had very powerful querying features that Spotlight doesn't (currently) have.
Users can care less about the actual file system. They don't (and shouldn't) care about FAT, NTFS, UFS, HFS+, ext3, and all of the other acronyms that we file system researchers and enthusiasts throw around. However, users do benefit from new features in new file systems that makes their lives easier. Try searching for a file in Windows XP, which scans through the hard drive and is based on the file name and file metadata specified by the file system, which doesn't take in account for metadata stored inside of the file, especially if that metadata is proprietary. Now, try searching for a file in Safari. There is a huge difference between the speed and the experience.
Windows Vista would have had a file system similar to Apple's Spotlight on a much larger technical scale, but they gutted out that feature. Instead, we get Windows Indexing Services, which indexes all of the files in a database. It makes querying for files easier, but it doesn't provide the rich APIs used for storing extended metadata in files that WinFS or Apple Spotlight provides, making it only better than Windows XP in speed, not in functionality. If you forget the file name, or its time of creation, or any other OS-provided metadata, tough. WinFS and Spotlight are different. It would have been wonderful for Windows users to have advanced file searching based on the files' metadata. But it isn't happening, which is sad for 2006 and 2007, IMO.
I mean, what is Vista about these days? First, they gutted out the Monad shell and WinFS, two features that would have possibly made me wait for Vista and get a PC instead of switching to a Mac. Secondly, they add new DRM restrictions that weren't present on Windows XP. Now, you can't even run the cheaper versions of Vista in a virtual machine due to licensing issues. As a Mac user, I don't feel like installing Windows natively with Boot Camp; I'd rather use a product like Parallels so that way I can run OS X and Windows simulataneously.
I'm not trolling. I'm not anti-Windows either; I've been a Windows user up until a few months ago and liked my Windows experience. In fact, typing this in my MacBook, I miss certain Windows software, and I was looking at Vista news to see whether or not installing Vista on my computer was worthwhile. But this is my last straw with Vista. How can a company sit on their butts for 5 years, not update their operating system (other than security upgrades), and rest on their laurels with the next major version of their operating system is beyond me. Windows XP is ancient compared to OS X's and Linux's fast adoptation of new technologies, new innovative features (Expose, Spotlight or Beagle), new development tools (look at Python's and Ruby's penetration in Linux), new internet browsers (Safari, Firefox, Konqueror), etc. Five years in computing is an eternity. And after five years, all we get is a half-baked clone of OS X with more licensing restrictions, more DRM, and a higher price tag (why should I spend $399 for full-featured Windows Vista Ultimate when I can get OS X for $129 [yes, I know that $129 is subsidized by Apple, you can't run OS X on a PC legally, blah blah blah, but $129
I was looking forward to Vista until recently. Now I wish Microsoft would delay it another year so that way they can release it with all of its promised features. They also need to cut the BS restrictions with licensing as well. It looks like MS has lost me as a customer. They will continue to lose me unless they port the Windows API to OpenBSD....
I don't even know why judgment ever became an acceptable spelling (and I'm speaking as an American whose native language is English). The spelling judgement acknowledges that the g is a soft g and not a hard g. The combination dg doesn't acknowledge anything by itself. Judgment looks like an odd, lazy spelling that for some reason was allowed to pass and become acceptable, although it doesn't phonetically and orthographically make sense. Perhaps Vanna ran out of E's or something, I don't know. I always spell it judgement; that reinforces the fact that the g is soft, nobody marks you wrong (since judgement is still an acceptable spelling, and the correct British spelling), and it looks better than judgment looks. Then again, that's English for you, where words have arbitrary pronunciation and an even more arbitrary pronunciation. This is one American spelling that I disagree with (I also prefer theatre and jewellery to theater and jewelry for similar, but different, reasons, mostly because the British spellings look better and are closer to their etymological roots).
--end lingusitics rant.
Wine isn't perfect. Some Windows applications do not work well under Wine.
I agree with you. I am getting sick and tired of the anti-road, anti-car, anti-low density, and anti-suburban arguments made by environmentalists who wish to kick us out of our cars and suburban homes and force us into high-density apartments and onto buses and light rail. I don't want to live in a high-rise 10-story housing project, just because it's "smart growth" and "more environmentally friendly than a suburban 2-story house." I don't want to ride a stinky, crowded, and slow bus or light rail train with odd characters and other dangers. I want my cars and my freeways, darn it! Automobiles are still much faster at getting from point A to point B for daily tasks than public transportation is, even with the growing amount of traffic thanks to California's not building of any major roads since the 1970s (except for some examples like Highway 85 in Santa Clara County and Interstate 105 in LA), along with the amount of growth.
This culture of NIMBYism, extreme environmentalist politics, "smart growth," and other related politics, I feel, is a threat to our quality of life. These groups don't care about quickness and efficiency with transportation. These groups don't care about the quality of life that you have in a suburban neighborhood vs. that in an urban environment. Although I feel the environment is important, what about efficiency, convenience, and having peace and quiet in your home? Is forcing everybody to go from a 30 minute commute on a freeway to work to a 1-2 hour commute involving public transportation and cycling really the way to go? Is raising gas prices astronomically just to "give back to society the damage that oil causes the environment" the way to encourage people to switch to more environmentally-friendly fuels, or to encourage oil companies to invest in alternatives? California needs to reverse the trends started by the Jerry Brown administration of not building, and return to the days of the Pat Brown administration, back when we had good roads, good schools, and a good quality of life. We need to start building public works projects again. We need to get our road system back into shape and upgrade, widen, and expand our road network. Environmentalists need to work on promoting technology that still allows us to live in our suburbs and drive our freeways and expressways yet makes them more environmentally friendly (for example, promoting people to drive cars with alternative fuels instead of forcing everybody to take public transportation). I refuse to listen to environmentalists who want to change my life and knock me back into the days of horses-and-buggies. I want to see technology, not ludditism.
As for the quote about liberals, remember that some conservatives are also pushing for "smart-growth" and other related ideas. This isn't about liberalism or conservatism; this is about people who want to force people to live in their version of utopia versus people who want people to live in whatever manner they feel fit.
My first suggestion is to find some other students at your school interested in computer science. A school isn't going to add a computer science course unless there is a sizable amount of students who are interested. After you find other interested students, get a proposal for a new class going. Get a few signatures of students and parents (and maybe some interested teachers) and take it to the principal's office (or whomever else deals with course offerings). If it works, then great. If not, then try again next year.
In the meanwhile, I suggest that you read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs . This is the book that is used for the freshman computer science class at MIT. Find yourself a Scheme interpreter (and maybe even invest some time into learning Unix and maybe installing Linux or BSD if you're a Windows user. Unix, not Windows, is the main operating system used in computer science.). This book can get difficult, but you'll be very knowledgeable about the true meaning of computer science via that book. Then, after reading and finishing that book, then move on to learning C (for structured programming) and C++ or Java (for OO programming). Now that you have the theoretical background of programming understood, now you should learn some practical programming languages that you'll use for upper-division CS courses (operating systems, software engineering, systems programming, and the like) and in future industry jobs or research.
Finally, during your junior year of high school, start finding some good CS schools to apply to. MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, University of Texas at Austin, Harvey Mudd, and others that I've forgot now are very good undergraduate computer science schools. These schools are challenging enough to fully teach you computer science and prepare you for either a career in software engineering and development, or a research career.
I wish you a successful start in computer science.
It seems like there is a growing lack of respect for academic integrity now of days. Most of these cheaters have only one goal in college: graduate and make big bucks at all costs. They don't care about academic integrity; they just care about the fat paychecks that they think that they'll receive after they graduate. It's not about learning; it's about getting through school at all costs.
It does no good for somebody to have a college degree if he or she didn't learn anything in the entire process. That is the trouble with cheating. Sure a cheater may be able to bypass an exam, a class, or even a few semesters. However, he or she wouldn't have learned as much (if anything) during school, and the cheater won't be effective when he or she goes to work. Imagine if the engineers that built our transportation systems, buildings, and other structures that we rely on, cheated through school and on the engineering licensing exams? Imagine if our doctors cheated their way through school? Cheating may be the easy way out of a test or class, but it is very detrimental to the cheater in the long run, even if the cheater never gets caught. And, in some extreme cases, cheaters may cost other people money, or even lives.
Students need to learn the value of their education. Undergraduate school is a greuling, grinding, seemingly never ending stream of courses (I'm a sophomore CS major now), but cheating is just a quick fix (if not caught) that certainly doesn't help in future courses, future jobs, and especially for future academics. College is hard. Cheating is a terrible way of dealing with college academics, and it is certainly an ineffective way to learn something.
Is all of that money worth all of the pain and abuse from all of those chairs flung at you whenever Microsoft gets mad?
This is exciting that we have a FOSS and functional equivalent of MS-DOS 6.22 (with some other features like long file names). I can run my old DOS games on my Mac with QEMU. Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?
...with all of the chairs being tossed around by Steve Ballmer (according to Slashdot), you'd think that Microsoft ran out of chairs by now.
Honycomb? Honycomb? Honycomb? Me want honycomb? I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Last time I checked, it is honeycomb, with an e.
I was specifically referring to iTunes Music Store purchased music. I just so happen to own about 30 songs or so from iTunes, as well as an iPod nano (and I know a few people who have much more; and no, I'm not rich; far from it), so I believe that I have the right so say something about Linux and iPods.
Now, I am aware that if you plug an iPod to a Linux machine, you can mount it as a FAT32 partition (as long as it is formatted as such) as if it were a regular USB/Firewire drive. It is the DRM'd music from iTunes that is the problem, not the iPod itself. But as long as you don't buy your music from them, that isn't a problem.