OK, I'll bite. At least in my own case, the argument in this sub-thread is a load of rubbish.
I'm a scientist, and my main machine's a MacBook Pro. I've been using Apple's pro line of laptops since, oh, about 2003. Prior to that, I'd routinely used various flavors of Unix, Linux & Windows. In my time, I've built custom kernels, debugged Linux USB WiFi drivers, built my own machines, renovated ThinkPads, all that sort of thing. I've had machines running Ubuntu since its earliest days, installed Slackware & Red Hat on Pentiums, and I wouldn't have touched Mac OS 9 with a ten-foot pole. I'm not trying to boast here, just make the point that I'm not one of the "Oooh! Shiny!" stereotypical morons that you seem to want to portray as Mac users.
I choose to use a Mac for the following reasons:
- I get all the benefits of a Unix workstation (multiple shells, system stability, Unix userland tools, security by design, etc.), coupled to a GUI that even a novice user can use.
- I get access to more-or-less all of the leading professional-class applications natively that Windows users have (Photoshop, MS Office, etc.). None of that mucking about with different versions of WINE is needed.
- If I want to, I can equally opt to go with the Open Source alternatives (the GIMP, OpenOffice, etc.). (Personally, I use a combination of both commercial and Free (in all senses) software. There are man OS X-optimized builds these days.
- There's all the full versions of the Apple software that are provided as standard with the machine (iLife, etc.).
- I can get all of this in a well-built box that (when purchased) was within $50 of the price of a Dell Windows laptop aimed at the same market ( I know: I specced up both machines myself).
- Less messing about in general to get functionality. I won't claim that "It Just Works", but "It's Generally Much Less Hassle" is probably true. For instance, I recently set up OpenVPN on my heterogeneous network at home. It took me 4 or 5 evenings to get OpenVPN up and running reliably on my Linux box, 1 evening to set it up on my Windows 7 machine, and 10 mins to set it up on my Mac. Now admittedly, the Linux box is acting as the server, and I did set it up on that first, but the number of patches, updates, etc. that needed to be applied was ridiculous on the Linux box.
Sure: it's not perfect: I think that Apple should be more serious about system security at times, and I do like the repository approach to package management (and it's clearly popular, as that's basically what the various mobile App stores are). I love the idea of Free software, and have a real soft spot for Linux.
However, gven the above, I personally consider the choice to be a no-brainer. And it's not just me: at a typical work meeting or conference (at least in my own field), Macs are usually represented at the 50% level. And there are plenty of people at those meetings that are smarter & better-funded than me.
As an addendum to the parent, it might also be wise to double-check the modes supported by the HDD manufacturers. I was just shopping for some 2TB drives for my shiny new QNAP box (4-bay, intended by me for home use), & came across second-hand reports of WD no longer officially supporting some of their non-enterprise drive models in RAID configurations.
Yeah, but what about at least being able to synch things like calendars, the address book, etc? That's not a large amount of data to shift by Bluetooth, especially once it's been diffed first, so that only changes are transferred. Being able to do that wirelessly is a necessary feature for me: I don't want to carry around even more cables than I already have to. How come I can do that with my Nokia cellphone and my Apple laptop (and it takes under a minute), but am not allowed to do it between an Apple iPhone and the same Apple laptop? That just doesn't make sense. OK, I get the whole idea of a single, simple unified UI for synching, but a "Wirelessly synch only Contacts, Calendar and Notes" button shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the UI wizards at Apple, surely? iSync already has all the code in place.
Also, Bluetooth file transfer between phones is something I personally use a lot. My current understanding (but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that the default BT stack on the iPhone doesn't do that either, so that's a big ol' "No Sale" for me right there. Why not just include a proper Bluetooth stack and let the user decide how he/she wants to use it? After all, the hardware's already there in the phone. The only reason I can think of is that there's a reluctance on the part of Apple due to a fear that people might Bluetooth songs to each other. That, and the fact that the current arrangement probably encourages take-up of MobileMe subscriptions. Neither of these possible reasons is in the interests of the actual phone user.
And for the record, I do buy Apple laptops almost exclusively, and own an iPod, and like them a lot - I'm not trying to troll here. It's just that this is one of the biggest remaining reasons why I won't be buying an iPhone, at least in its current incarnation: it's just too limited for my purposes.
Hear hear. I've already had problems with corrupted Keychains on my Mac (OS 10.5) twice in the last year. The only way I was able to recover my encrypted list of passwords was by restoring from backup. There are few things more annoying than trying to access a deliberately-encrypted file and getting nothing but a notification window that reports "Access to this file is restricted". In light of this, there's no way I'm going to trust FileVault.
Mod parent up: it's a good, concise, balanced reply.
I'd also recommend that anyone interested in following up this story look up some of the stuff by (e.g.) John Bradley on this as well, to provide a bit of a counterpoint, as the headline-grabbing articles tend to lack scientifi balance. The following link's a good few years old, and the work has moved on a bit, but it is a pretty good potted summary of the arguments for and against a biological origin of these structures.
One thing to ask your self is would Apple (or other unnamed companies operating in the OS space) allow such a case of the above screen flickering, or would it be dealt with even if the X server had to be replaced (if that is the problem)
Not to try to be deliberately argumentative or sound like a fanboy, but I got used to using the GIMP without struggling too much while a penniless student. If there was something that I didn't know how to do, I could usually follow an online GIMP or Photoshop tutorial well enough to replicate the effect I was aiming for with the GIMP.
Fast-forward to a couple of years ago, and I finally got around to trying a 30-day trial of Photoshop on my Mac. I simply couldn't ever seem to find what I was looking for in its menu and tools system - things just felt as if they were in the wrong places to me. Nowadays, I'm fortunate enough to find myself in a position to be able to buy a copy of Photoshop these days for my own personal use, and I'd like to be able to learn enough to claim that I'm fairly handy with Photoshop as well, but my (admittedly limited) experience with it has rather put me off the idea.
For the record, I'm not any kind of professional graphic designer, & my use has been very limited, but I've got to state in all honesty that the GIMP works OK for my own relatively light use. Don't get me wrong: I know that Photoshop has some particular technical advantages (as amply detailed in other posts here), but the cost & (mostly) the time investment required for me to appreciate those is too great.
This is a fairly rambling post, but my point here is this: while I freely admit that my own experience might just be another example of "Good Enough is the enemy of Best", I think it's not unreasonable to acknowledge that every user tends to get used to certain ways of doing things. Photoshop is widely used (and widely pirated) - so much so that it's become a verb - and so there are probably many more regular users worldwide; consequently, the general consensus is that that's what's intuitive to more people. After all, isn't that perhaps at least part of the reason that (e.g.) Windows is still so popular, and OpenOffice looks the way it does?
Simply stating that the GIMP UI is "godawful" without providing some concrete justifications and suggestions for improvement is rather abstract, and not actually terribly helpful. "Make it more like Photoshop" doesn't count either, unless concrete examples of why the Photoshop way is actually better are also provided.
Now, for just US$60000, the busy Blade Runner about town can look for manufacturer's reference codes on synthetic snake scales from the comfort of his own home! No more standing out in the rain!
Consider out "Night of the Living Dead" movie mythology, if you see a zombie you just whack it with a shovel, they are only dangerous if you get mobbed. On the other hand imagine a "zombie" who was the full mental-and-spiritual embodiment of King Arthur, you are NOT going to win in combat against him, and if you oppose him you're pretty much automatically "the bad guy".
This is not the case, however, if a cricket bat is used...
Another shout out from this corner for Lem as arguably the greatest SF author of the 20th century. I fairly recently went back and read Arthur C. Clarke's classic "Childhood's End", and I've got to say that, while it's got some interesting ideas (some of which are a bit dated nowadays, but novel for the time), I found it overly depressing and definitely wanting in comparison to almost everything I've read by Lem, of which the above list given in the parent is a subset. While a lot of Lem's stuff is pretty pessimistic, it's usually leavened with at least a touch of mordant humour, even if it is often at the expense of the human condition.
"Fiasco" is my personal fave, and possibly my favourite SF novel so far. "HMV" is a book that, had it not been pigeonholed as Eastern European Science Fiction, probably should have won global acclaim simply as a work of literature. To the above list, I'd probably also have to recommend "Peace On Earth" - it's sublimely creative lunacy and yet makes total sense in its own context.
In terms of advice for new readers of Lem, I'd also point out that he wrote in at least two totally distinct styles. I'd therefore suggest that anyone trying him for the first time should at least read one of his absurdist comedies (e.g. "The Futurological Congress" or "Cyberiad") plus one of his hard SF stories (e.g. "Fiasco" or "Solaris"), as you might love one Lem but not enjoy the other.
One last detail: my understanding is that the English version of "Solaris" was translated from Polish into French and then into English, and so it doesn't flow quite as well as the straight Polish-to-English translations, particularly those by Michael Kandel. I always thought it a bit of a shame that, given the amount of time and money spent on the Soderbergh/Clooney film adaptation, no-one kicked back enough for a straight Polish-English translation of the original novel.
Nor can I particularly blame them, if I had made a $20million dollar game, and Gamestop were making more off it than I was, I would be upset too. Honestly now, wouldn't you?
Nope. In their capacity as a business, they already ran all their cost/risk/profit analyses before they greenlit the development of the software. They are the ones that chose to produce the game, and accept the first sale profits arising from that initial investment. If they'd wanted to make money on resales of games instead, then they should've opened a string of retail outlets with that money instead, like GameStop did. It's not like the resale business is a whole new idea at this point. They paid their money and made their choice - it's as simple as that. "Wah! Wah! Wah! We want more money!" is hardly a legitimate argument, although it is philosophically flexible (as you correctly note).
If you're going with bioweapons, I always rather liked the idea of Rat War, as used in "The Ballad of Halo Jones". Banned by interstellar peace conventions, the Rat War technique used a hive mind "Rat King" to control the rat population of a whole planet. The rats were used both to carry lethal diseases, and to attack in groups and eat any remaining population.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I'll bite. At least in my own case, the argument in this sub-thread is a load of rubbish.
I'm a scientist, and my main machine's a MacBook Pro. I've been using Apple's pro line of laptops since, oh, about 2003. Prior to that, I'd routinely used various flavors of Unix, Linux & Windows. In my time, I've built custom kernels, debugged Linux USB WiFi drivers, built my own machines, renovated ThinkPads, all that sort of thing. I've had machines running Ubuntu since its earliest days, installed Slackware & Red Hat on Pentiums, and I wouldn't have touched Mac OS 9 with a ten-foot pole. I'm not trying to boast here, just make the point that I'm not one of the "Oooh! Shiny!" stereotypical morons that you seem to want to portray as Mac users.
I choose to use a Mac for the following reasons:
- I get all the benefits of a Unix workstation (multiple shells, system stability, Unix userland tools, security by design, etc.), coupled to a GUI that even a novice user can use.
- I get access to more-or-less all of the leading professional-class applications natively that Windows users have (Photoshop, MS Office, etc.). None of that mucking about with different versions of WINE is needed.
- If I want to, I can equally opt to go with the Open Source alternatives (the GIMP, OpenOffice, etc.). (Personally, I use a combination of both commercial and Free (in all senses) software. There are man OS X-optimized builds these days.
- There's all the full versions of the Apple software that are provided as standard with the machine (iLife, etc.).
- I can get all of this in a well-built box that (when purchased) was within $50 of the price of a Dell Windows laptop aimed at the same market ( I know: I specced up both machines myself).
- Less messing about in general to get functionality. I won't claim that "It Just Works", but "It's Generally Much Less Hassle" is probably true. For instance, I recently set up OpenVPN on my heterogeneous network at home. It took me 4 or 5 evenings to get OpenVPN up and running reliably on my Linux box, 1 evening to set it up on my Windows 7 machine, and 10 mins to set it up on my Mac. Now admittedly, the Linux box is acting as the server, and I did set it up on that first, but the number of patches, updates, etc. that needed to be applied was ridiculous on the Linux box.
Sure: it's not perfect: I think that Apple should be more serious about system security at times, and I do like the repository approach to package management (and it's clearly popular, as that's basically what the various mobile App stores are). I love the idea of Free software, and have a real soft spot for Linux.
However, gven the above, I personally consider the choice to be a no-brainer. And it's not just me: at a typical work meeting or conference (at least in my own field), Macs are usually represented at the 50% level. And there are plenty of people at those meetings that are smarter & better-funded than me.
Actually, it reminded me of the movie "Toys".
Just as there is no point to an app store for your Linux or Windows desktop.
Perhaps you'd prefer the term "repository", then?
As an addendum to the parent, it might also be wise to double-check the modes supported by the HDD manufacturers. I was just shopping for some 2TB drives for my shiny new QNAP box (4-bay, intended by me for home use), & came across second-hand reports of WD no longer officially supporting some of their non-enterprise drive models in RAID configurations.
Yeah, but what about at least being able to synch things like calendars, the address book, etc? That's not a large amount of data to shift by Bluetooth, especially once it's been diffed first, so that only changes are transferred. Being able to do that wirelessly is a necessary feature for me: I don't want to carry around even more cables than I already have to. How come I can do that with my Nokia cellphone and my Apple laptop (and it takes under a minute), but am not allowed to do it between an Apple iPhone and the same Apple laptop? That just doesn't make sense. OK, I get the whole idea of a single, simple unified UI for synching, but a "Wirelessly synch only Contacts, Calendar and Notes" button shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the UI wizards at Apple, surely? iSync already has all the code in place.
Also, Bluetooth file transfer between phones is something I personally use a lot. My current understanding (but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that the default BT stack on the iPhone doesn't do that either, so that's a big ol' "No Sale" for me right there. Why not just include a proper Bluetooth stack and let the user decide how he/she wants to use it? After all, the hardware's already there in the phone. The only reason I can think of is that there's a reluctance on the part of Apple due to a fear that people might Bluetooth songs to each other. That, and the fact that the current arrangement probably encourages take-up of MobileMe subscriptions. Neither of these possible reasons is in the interests of the actual phone user.
And for the record, I do buy Apple laptops almost exclusively, and own an iPod, and like them a lot - I'm not trying to troll here. It's just that this is one of the biggest remaining reasons why I won't be buying an iPhone, at least in its current incarnation: it's just too limited for my purposes.
Hear hear. I've already had problems with corrupted Keychains on my Mac (OS 10.5) twice in the last year. The only way I was able to recover my encrypted list of passwords was by restoring from backup. There are few things more annoying than trying to access a deliberately-encrypted file and getting nothing but a notification window that reports "Access to this file is restricted". In light of this, there's no way I'm going to trust FileVault.
Mod parent up: it's a good, concise, balanced reply.
I'd also recommend that anyone interested in following up this story look up some of the stuff by (e.g.) John Bradley on this as well, to provide a bit of a counterpoint, as the headline-grabbing articles tend to lack scientifi balance. The following link's a good few years old, and the work has moved on a bit, but it is a pretty good potted summary of the arguments for and against a biological origin of these structures.
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec97/LifeonMarsUpdate2.html
(Disclaimer: I'm an astrophysicist that works on astrochemistry, but I also don't personally do lab work on meteorites).
One thing to ask your self is would Apple (or other unnamed companies operating in the OS space)
allow such a case of the above screen flickering, or would it be dealt with even if the X server had to be replaced (if that is the problem)
Actually, yes they would:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329627-263.html
(Caveat: This has been fixed now. I mention this, though, because it drove me nuts on my unibody MacBook Pro for a good while).
No Hard Disk?
All Your Data Are Belong To Us!
Not to try to be deliberately argumentative or sound like a fanboy, but I got used to using the GIMP without struggling too much while a penniless student. If there was something that I didn't know how to do, I could usually follow an online GIMP or Photoshop tutorial well enough to replicate the effect I was aiming for with the GIMP.
Fast-forward to a couple of years ago, and I finally got around to trying a 30-day trial of Photoshop on my Mac. I simply couldn't ever seem to find what I was looking for in its menu and tools system - things just felt as if they were in the wrong places to me. Nowadays, I'm fortunate enough to find myself in a position to be able to buy a copy of Photoshop these days for my own personal use, and I'd like to be able to learn enough to claim that I'm fairly handy with Photoshop as well, but my (admittedly limited) experience with it has rather put me off the idea.
For the record, I'm not any kind of professional graphic designer, & my use has been very limited, but I've got to state in all honesty that the GIMP works OK for my own relatively light use. Don't get me wrong: I know that Photoshop has some particular technical advantages (as amply detailed in other posts here), but the cost & (mostly) the time investment required for me to appreciate those is too great.
This is a fairly rambling post, but my point here is this: while I freely admit that my own experience might just be another example of "Good Enough is the enemy of Best", I think it's not unreasonable to acknowledge that every user tends to get used to certain ways of doing things. Photoshop is widely used (and widely pirated) - so much so that it's become a verb - and so there are probably many more regular users worldwide; consequently, the general consensus is that that's what's intuitive to more people. After all, isn't that perhaps at least part of the reason that (e.g.) Windows is still so popular, and OpenOffice looks the way it does?
Simply stating that the GIMP UI is "godawful" without providing some concrete justifications and suggestions for improvement is rather abstract, and not actually terribly helpful. "Make it more like Photoshop" doesn't count either, unless concrete examples of why the Photoshop way is actually better are also provided.
Yup. For those Slashdotters lacking some of the background on Mandelson's suddenly-developed interest in copyright law:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6797844.ece
(Not that I'm a Times reader or anything, but this story covers the background as well as many others).
Mod parent up.
I've been able to run frodo unrestricted on several of my Nokia Communicators for years...
Now, for just US$60000, the busy Blade Runner about town can look for manufacturer's reference codes on synthetic snake scales from the comfort of his own home! No more standing out in the rain!
Well, in the interests of full disclosure, & just to clarify this point:
Mad science doesn't kill people. People and my limitless armies of robot-brained atomic monster cows kill people.
"You must think in Russian. Slowly..."
He'll be fine. Bruce Wayne will bail him out.
>
Playing off backups? Well, if you buy a lamp and knock it over, Wal-Mart doesn't owe you a new lamp.
True. They also don't claim that you only paid for a license to use that lamp, and that you never actually owned it...
Bender: "Hey, what's this? Hermes' dreadlocks, and his arm? Leela, I'm shocked! Food goes in the disposal, hair and flesh go in the trash."
Actually, you can hack your way around that hardware limitation using the Source of Traken. You need admin permissions for that, though.
Consider out "Night of the Living Dead" movie mythology, if you see a zombie you just whack it with a shovel, they are only dangerous if you get mobbed. On the other hand imagine a "zombie" who was the full mental-and-spiritual embodiment of King Arthur, you are NOT going to win in combat against him, and if you oppose him you're pretty much automatically "the bad guy".
This is not the case, however, if a cricket bat is used...
Definitely south via Paddington...
Another shout out from this corner for Lem as arguably the greatest SF author of the 20th century. I fairly recently went back and read Arthur C. Clarke's classic "Childhood's End", and I've got to say that, while it's got some interesting ideas (some of which are a bit dated nowadays, but novel for the time), I found it overly depressing and definitely wanting in comparison to almost everything I've read by Lem, of which the above list given in the parent is a subset. While a lot of Lem's stuff is pretty pessimistic, it's usually leavened with at least a touch of mordant humour, even if it is often at the expense of the human condition.
"Fiasco" is my personal fave, and possibly my favourite SF novel so far. "HMV" is a book that, had it not been pigeonholed as Eastern European Science Fiction, probably should have won global acclaim simply as a work of literature. To the above list, I'd probably also have to recommend "Peace On Earth" - it's sublimely creative lunacy and yet makes total sense in its own context.
In terms of advice for new readers of Lem, I'd also point out that he wrote in at least two totally distinct styles. I'd therefore suggest that anyone trying him for the first time should at least read one of his absurdist comedies (e.g. "The Futurological Congress" or "Cyberiad") plus one of his hard SF stories (e.g. "Fiasco" or "Solaris"), as you might love one Lem but not enjoy the other.
One last detail: my understanding is that the English version of "Solaris" was translated from Polish into French and then into English, and so it doesn't flow quite as well as the straight Polish-to-English translations, particularly those by Michael Kandel. I always thought it a bit of a shame that, given the amount of time and money spent on the Soderbergh/Clooney film adaptation, no-one kicked back enough for a straight Polish-English translation of the original novel.
Nor can I particularly blame them, if I had made a $20million dollar game, and Gamestop were making more off it than I was, I would be upset too. Honestly now, wouldn't you?
Nope. In their capacity as a business, they already ran all their cost/risk/profit analyses before they greenlit the development of the software. They are the ones that chose to produce the game, and accept the first sale profits arising from that initial investment. If they'd wanted to make money on resales of games instead, then they should've opened a string of retail outlets with that money instead, like GameStop did. It's not like the resale business is a whole new idea at this point. They paid their money and made their choice - it's as simple as that. "Wah! Wah! Wah! We want more money!" is hardly a legitimate argument, although it is philosophically flexible (as you correctly note).
"World's largest and most powerful".
Yeah, except for the 42-m E-ELT, also slated for 2018-ish. And that's still excluding radio telescopes...
If you're going with bioweapons, I always rather liked the idea of Rat War, as used in "The Ballad of Halo Jones". Banned by interstellar peace conventions, the Rat War technique used a hive mind "Rat King" to control the rat population of a whole planet. The rats were used both to carry lethal diseases, and to attack in groups and eat any remaining population.