Take one look at any of these gadgets and my first reaction is, "Huh, I bet that does a lot of cool stuff."
Funny, my first reaction is, "Yeah, right..." (sarcastically)
I mean, there designs are fine, I guess-- at least ok. But the idea of putting an iPod into a watch like that? That's not innovative. Figuring out how to make one that's light and easy to wear, has a reasonable amount of memory, bluetooth, a nice color screen, a convenient interface to your computer, and a price tag under $500-- that would be innovative.
I mean, I could imagine a whole computer built into a watch, thousands of times faster than any super-computer around today, with a neural interface that removes the need for an input interface, and bla bla bla... My imaginings might be interesting, but without any better insight into how it will be accomplished, my imaginings aren't much of an accomplishment.
I think you missed the point of the post. All the things he mentioned *did* happen already. The reason iPods costs so much, BTW, isn't that the prices are artificially or unreasonably inflated due to a monopoly. Component costs certainly have a lot to do with it, since the retail prices of the storage media alone often cost more than the iPods they're included in.
I guess Apple has a "monopoly" on iPods, but they don't have a monopoly on MP3 players.
You apparently have strong feelings about the XP GUI
No, as a matter of fact, I don't have particularly strong feelings, I just don't like it much. "Dread" might have been an overly-strong word, but having to reboot into a system that I like less for the sake of some minor task is a PITA, and I prefer to work in Gnome when possible.
Most superficially, I think Windows is ugly. If you use the classic windows themes, it's ugly. If you use Luna, it's ugly. I know you can theme it more than that, but as it comes from Microsoft: ugly. Some Longhorn screenshots I've seen have looked better, but as I said, Longhorn is still a ways off.
But that's not going too much into usability or anything-- that's just superficial, though I do find it matters. Looking at something that's visually abrasive for hours a day does take a toll.
I don't want to go into too much, because it's terribly off-topic when this is about X-Windows (not so much Gnome and KDE), but very quickly: I don't like the start menu. If we're going to go with that convention, I'd rather have the ability to break that out into a couple sub-menus, for which even Gnome's default division Applications, Places, and System seems sufficient for me. I like being able to create my own panels in Gnome/KDE. Though you can do this in Windows (sort of) the extra panels are limited to little more than shortcuts-- and you can't have the start menu, taskbar, and system tray on different panels. Also, I find that the way Gnome designers tend to break things up a little more sensible. I'm not sure how to talk about that, but Gnome tends to have more of a 1 application per task setup, whereas Windows lumps things together in weird ways. Why do I go into the same place to change my desktop wallpaper as to change my font-smoothing? They're both display settings... ok. Where do I go to remove the drop-shadow from my cursor? For some reason, it isn't in display settings, it's in the mouse settings. I don't know, I've been using Windows since Windows 3.1, so I know to expect these things, but they don't make sense to me.
But if you really want to talk about OSX's interface in general, that's a whole other animal. It's very nice, but it's too much to get into, and seems even further off-topic.
Personally, I view Gnome as more Mac-like and KDE as more Windows-like, and I doubt I'm alone in that view. Honestly, I'm fairly platform-agnostic, and when I'm running Firefox, I can easily forget whether I'm working on a Mac, Linux, or Windows box. But I don't think that the Linux/X Windows/Gnome setup really needs to "catch up" to Windows at all. Now that we have massive online package repositories, even installation of new programs isn't really *hard*.
However, back to being a little more on-topic, the issue of 3D eye-candy: Windows currently uses 3D effects to about the same degree as X-Windows, which is to say that you might have a transparent window or menu, you might use a drop-shadow with your cursor, and that's it. When I think of the question of "What more could be done that would actually be useful?" the first thing that comes to mind is OSX's Expose. Now, part of the reason Expose is so handy comes specifically from the fact that you don't have a taskbar in OSX, so you can't tell at a glance what windows are open from what apps (it's a little hard to explain if you don't use OSX). However, it's still a terrific use of OSX's 3D capabilities, and I know that Linux developers are looking into doing something similar.
I'll second this. As I type this on a computer set up to dual boot between Ubuntu and Windows XP, I dread having to boot up into XP (which is becoming a less frequent occurence every day).
I'll admit that there are still occasional rough edges, but I find the overall look and design of Gnome far more sensible and pleasant than Windows XP. For all the good Longhorn might bring (and since they're not done, given Microsoft's history of dropping features to get products out the door, it's still "might"), it isn't here yet.
If you want to compare X Windows/Gnome/KDE features to Longhorn, we should be comparing the features we might expect X Windows/Gnome/KDE to have in a couple years. If you want to compare current X Windows/Gnome/KDE features to Windows, let's stick with XP. It's only fair.
No it wouldn't mean linux is a joke if that happened, it'd mean redhat or whoever did it was a joke.
Huh? So a successful company making high-quality software is a "joke" if portions of their software are closed-source?
But this isn't fair, the closed parts of OSX are a little more than "just" a DE.
Hmmmm.... you could install Darwin, X11, and Gnome, and have a complete and functional system.
just because I don't think apple's source code openness is satisfactory to be considered open source doesn't mean I'm right or wrong.
Well, if you want to claim that OSX isn't completely open source, you'd be right. If you claim that OSX isn't open source at all, you'd be wrong. If you claimed that you would like them to be more open, then it seems you'd be right again. If you claim that the extent to which they are open isn't helpful to the FOSS movement, you'd be wrong again. I mean, there is such a thing as right and wrong, and when you say something that's not true, you'll tend to fall into the "wrong" category.
...but I'm not even going to debate that because you completely missed the point I was trying to make by even saying this. It was a comparative type of thing, but you took it literally.
It was a "comparative type thing" that I misunderstood? So, let me get this straight: You're saying that what you said-- what you literally said in your other post-- was not true? I just want to get that clear.
Darwin is just a joke, they open source a tiny piece of their operating system, and keep the important parts to themselves.
Or, in other words, they open-source their whole operating system and keep the DE closed source. If Redhat made a closed-source competitor to Gnome/X.org, would that mean that Linux was a "joke"?
To me, Mac OS X is not open source at all.
Well, that's fine so long as you recognize that how things are "to you" has no bearing on reality. Otherwise, the statement that "Mac OS X is not open source at all" runs into the problem of being factuallly incorrect.
It's as open source as if microsoft were to open source some tiny ass piece of windows code from the bowels of hell and all of the sudden the windows community starts claiming microsoft is god and helpful to OSS.
I think there would be quite a lot of instances where Microsoft opening even relatively small portions of code would be greatly appreciated. For example, if there were portions of Microsoft's code that would make it easy to access NTFS partitions or connect to Active Directory/SMB/Exchange servers, or if Microsoft released a complete breakdown of all the Microsoft Office file formats. Sure, a lot of that sort of thing has been reverse-engineered by now, but it would have made a big difference in Microsoft's public image if they hadn't stonewalled on these things.
But if Microsoft released the current Longhorn code-base to a GPL or BSD license? Yes, I think that would make quite a splash. Even if they reserved some of the code used for their interface and such and kept that proprietary, I think you would hear an occasional voice claiming that the move helped the open-source community.
Actually, I worry about Camino. I find myself in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to browser choice in OSX. I like Safari because it's fast, slick, and includes features like built-in spellcheck. You know, generally it has the polish you'd expect from Apple, and I don't have a lot of problems with it.
I like Firefox, especially for the fact that I can use the same browser on all my apps, but also for the extensions, and wide support among web-developers (it seems to me that Firefox is the second most supported after IE). However, it seems sluggish and out-of-place when compared to Safari, the interface isn't quite fitting in places, some fonts render ugly, etc.
Enter Camino, which I would hope would be the best of both worlds. I've been a fan of Camino for years now, and even when it hasn't been my browser of choice, I've been rooting for it. However, it only confuses my choices more. I think it offers a much nicer feel than Firefox, but still lacks Safari's polish. Some of the sites that give Safari trouble and force me to go to Firefox also give Camino trouble, not that I know why. I can't use extensions, from Firefox, and I can't get it to spell-check like Safari.
So, in my experience, instead of giving the best of both worlds, in gives kind of a mixed bag, some weaknesses and strengths from each. Unfortunately, it doesn't really serve to replace either Safari nor Firefox for me, and it doesn't offer anything which adds to my current Firefox/Safari combination. In the end, it sits on my hard drive unused.
I sort of wish Mozilla to do something to incorporate the two projects-- either work on moving Firefox into a nicer native cocoa browser on OSX, or focusing on Camino as THE Mozilla browser on OSX. Either way, it'd be nice to see them come up with a single native cocoa browser with all the advantages of Firefox, and end the duplication of effort. I know there would be downsides to such a decision, but I hope, at least, that this new page of Camino's will bring it some much needed and much deserved attention.
To sum up, I think both Camino and Firefox "cut it" on OSX, but the division of effort between them has kept either of them from reaching their full potential.
Re:It's as if icons peaked 2-4 years ago
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A History of Icons
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I've also noticed that there's been a big move to "photorealistic" icons, despite the fact that a more simple/symbolic icon would often be more quickly recognizable and easier to distinguish from other things. It's not even as though symbolic icons can't be as pretty as the photorealistic ones, but I guess people want to pretend they're interacting with real objects or something.
If I had to guess, they probably have added something in iTunes 4.7 that allows iTMS to request information from the client app that only iTunes will know before downloading begins. If they're smart, it's something more complicated than "Is this iTunes >4.7?" expecting the response, "Yes."
It's probably not unbreakable (after all, what is), but it'll probably take a little while for someone to figure it out. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to pre-encrypt it, which means that there will continue to be the opportunity to intercept the download before the DRM is attached. I'm not sure what they can do other than to authenticate that the client software is, in fact, iTunes.
Well, in terms of market share and ideological purity, all distros other than Comrade Penguin are evil, especially those that are supported by evil capitalist pig running dog companies (i.e., all companies that aren't owned by The People).
Which goes back to my point that Comrade Penguin *is* supported by evil capitalist pig running dog companies like IBM, Novell, and Redhat (and others). I know there are some who choose to believe that all things associated with Linux are all created by hobbyists in their spare time and no one is ever paid to work on it. I know there are those who think companies like IBM, Novell, Redhat, and Apple just leech off of the hard work of said hobbyists, and never give anything back. Well, it's not true.
I also know that some people like to paint this grand conflict between what's "good for FOSS" and the "evil corporations who seek to take advantage", but the truth is the well-being of these entities are not mutually exclusive. These "evil" companies are building their businesses around the use of FOSS, and in doing so, it becomes in their best interest to see those FOSS projects which they use succeed. To that end, these companies have given money and code to various projects as well as open-sourcing some of their own projects, all of which has benefitted us all.
So I really don't see the purpose of forming antagonistic relationships with these companies, when it's in everyone's best interests to work together.
(I know you were joking... or I hope you were joking....)
there's a huge difference between ibm novell and redhat and that is they are all selling (or promoting) linux. whereas apple is doing nothing of the sort.
Oh boo hoo, they don't sell Linux, they sell Darwin.... why do we need everyone using the same OS anyway? Monoculture is bad. I guess you're right that it's "bad for Linux" if what is "good for Linux" is a 100% market share, but then every other operating system is "bad for Linux".
Whatever is "good" or "bad" for Linux, it's good for us, people, to not-have a monoculture, to have several different operating systems which use open standards and open protocols so that you can interact with the rest of the world no matter what system you're using.
what's compatibility in the real world anyway? Not binary compatibility obviously. Office suite compatibility? Not like apple is doing anything there anyway, I'd look more towards the openoffice guys for that.
So what if there's no binary compatibility? There isn't binary capability between the same distro on PPC vs. x86. Oh, but I guess PPC Linux is "bad" for x86 Linux, huh?
I have a mac. When I bought my first Mac, being a long-time Windows user, I bought Norton Internet Security. I used it for several month, until I realized that the only time it ever activated was when I got an infected exe file in my e-mail, which was really no danger to me.
Maybe the days are coming when I'll have to install an anti-virus on my Powerbook, but I haven't seen or heard of an infected OSX machine yet. I'll start worrying when I hear about a virus in the wild that's spreading effectively.
Contrary to the popular belief, that might hurt linux.
It's possible, insofar as people feel OSX suits their needs better than Linux, that OSX would take market share that might otherwise go to Linux. In fact, I'm sure that's already happening in some cases. However, I sincerely doubt that everyone will choose OSX over Linux. There are lots of people who prefer one of the DE's available on Linux to the OSX, lots of instances where the situation is better suited to a specialized/customized system, and lots of people who prefer (for various reasons) to use a fully open-source system.
However, popularity of Unix-like systems will only increase compatibility and interoperability between your Unix-like system and the rest of the world. And this I believe is a key issue, since, so long as things use open standards, and the systems are interoperable, you are able to choose whatever system is more appropriate for the situation. Microsoft's current dominance is dependent on their continued violation of standards, and as Apple gains mainstream popularity, it puts increasing pressure on Microsoft to allow interoperability with non-Microsoft systems. If Apple gains a significant market share, I would expect the penalty for using non-Microsoft systems to generally diminish.
Apple is just a company out to make money like any other company, they'll help open source out only if it benefits themselves more.
IBM and Novell and Redhat are also companies out to make money, and they help open-source products because they believe it benefits them. So what? If you take out all the contributions to open-source software, in terms of both code and money, that have been made by companies who believe it's in their interest to do so, it would be a significant hurt to the open-source community.
I) I'm not so much starving for karma, evidenced by the fact that my post started at 2
b) Given that it's my post was repeting what others are saying, I'd expect that I'm as likely to get modded Redundant as anything else
3) Whereas most people were posting "No, you should have bought Apple a while ago!" which is about the specifics surrounding Apple's stock history, I was posting the general rule, which is that you don't tend to rush out and buy stock after the good news comes out as the stock has probably gone up pretty much as soon as the news is posted. It kinda goes against the whole "buy low, sell high" thing.
V) I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to respond to an AC
It seems to me there's room for both Linux and OSX in both the corporate and consumer market. If you're a tinkerer/DIY sort of IT department or individual, you might want to go with Linux and provide yourself the sort of flexibility and financial savings of Linux. If you're looking for a pre-packaged one-size-fits-all type system, OSX is pretty decent for both consumers and corporations. After all, Gnome and KDE are getting to be pretty user-friendly DEs, and Apple sells desktops, workstations, and servers.
Best of all, the fact that they share so much in terms of code and architecture means they play well together.
Maybe 20% of iPod users don't play games (yeah, some people use their computers for things other than video games)? Maybe 20% will be happy with the games that are available for Mac (yeah, there are some games. A goodly portion of the good games make it over sooner or later). Maybe 20% of iPod users also have Playstations. Maybe 20% are willing to take the chance that more games will be ported over as the market share grows?
Each of these possibilities are imaginable, so I think "Never happen" might be a little premature.
There are many faults with the school system. Parents have to realise that they are one of the problems.
Parents are one of the problems. Maybe it could be said that when there's a problem with a child, the parents are usually the cheif point-of-failure (either by something they're doing or something they fail to do). I've heard that the single biggest determining factor of the education level that a child will reach is the education level of that child's parents.
Honestly, I'm not sure it's the teacher's responsibility to make children learn, in that it's impossible to "make" someone learn if they won't have it. However, none of this excuses the poor job being done by many teachers I've seen in my lifetime. None of it makes bad teachers better teachers.
I guess how much the discrepancies matter depend partially on how much the movie was intended to be a strict adaptation of the book. I mean, the book is really a transcription of an oral-history/poem as it was at the time it was transcribed, and one might argue that the legend has some independance from the poem itself, the legend being much older than the poem as we have it, especially when we consider that there have been thousands of years in the meantime to interpret and reinterpret the story.
And it's not even as if the movie was titled "Homer's The Illiad" or anything like that. Simply "Troy". In such a case, I'd allow a little latitude to think the filmmakers were producing their own interpretation of the legend rather than an attempt to exactly transfer the poem's medium from book to film.
American students don't have the same respect for education.
Nor do most American teachers (in my experience). Or maybe not "most", but many. And enough that it serves as a partial explanation as to why students don't respect education.
Sure, teachers are extremely interested in having their students read and memorize trivia, doing exactly as their told at ever turn, but contrary to popular belief, that isn't "good education". What they're teaching kids is how to be bored and boring zombies, good little inefficient worker bees.
Probably the best way to make people disinterested in education is to force them to sit through 6 hours a day of mind-numming drek, and then force them to repeat the process at home for another 4 hours, repeat that whole process 5 days a week, 10 months a year, for 12 years, and call that "education".
The whole idea of a "work ethic" tends to be used in a bogus manner-- as though some people just have a mysterious virtue of being willing to work hard for no good reason. However, the truth is that people who have a good "work ethic" have usually been educated first that their work means something-- that their efforts are worth something. Expecting people to work hard, with no real purpose or meaning, by virtue of a mysterious "work ethic"... well, I have my doubts it will happen, and if it did, I'm not sure it would be a good thing.
But sufficiently advanced minds aren't always interested in these things.
I dunno.... I'm usually pretty interested in my dog's attempts to communicate. We study ancient/primative cultures. There's no reason to think that aliens wouldn't find us cute.
Not to downplay the appreciation the NeoOffice guys deserve, but it sure would be nice if the OpenOffice guys jumped on board and started releasing OSX native versions parallel to the Linux/Windows versions.
I mean, I'm glad that NeoOffice is out there, but by not being an Official port by OpenOffice, it has fewer people working on it, and work being done on OpenOffice is done without regard for the OSX port.
I dunno. Innovation can be nice and all, but then again, it's a little hard to control innovation. I mean, it's great to say, "we should be innovative," but you try to create new paradigms for document management from scratch. It's not so easy as all that, there isn't always agreement about what needs innovation, since sometimes a convention is the convention for good reason. To clarify further: I think it's great to reevaluate old conventions, looking for better ways to go about things, but perhaps asking for innovation is a little like asking for inspiration-- it doesn't always come on command.
Besides, it's not clear that innovation is really what's needed from OOo. Businesses (which are arguably the primary market for Office apps) are often far more interested in things like reliability, productivity, interoperability, and costs (both up-front and support costs). The fact that it's similar to MS Office might even be a plus, in that it requires little new training. That software is "innovative" is of much smaller appeal.
However, I will totally grant that a *major* innovation that will account for a large improvement in reliability, productivity, interoperability, and lower costs would catch a lot of eyes. However, going back to my first point, how do you force that innovation along?
I guess this response is written largely because I've read a number of posts on/. which claim that OSS isn't innovative enough and copies proprietary software too much, but it strikes me that very few of those posts include any innovative ideas themselves. They merely complain or urge others to be innovative and creative, which I believe people are probably already trying to do, but coming up with brilliant ideas is a little harder than sitting down and deciding to come up with brilliant ideas.
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Funny, my first reaction is, "Yeah, right..." (sarcastically)
I mean, there designs are fine, I guess-- at least ok. But the idea of putting an iPod into a watch like that? That's not innovative. Figuring out how to make one that's light and easy to wear, has a reasonable amount of memory, bluetooth, a nice color screen, a convenient interface to your computer, and a price tag under $500-- that would be innovative.
I mean, I could imagine a whole computer built into a watch, thousands of times faster than any super-computer around today, with a neural interface that removes the need for an input interface, and bla bla bla... My imaginings might be interesting, but without any better insight into how it will be accomplished, my imaginings aren't much of an accomplishment.
Yeah, I don't want to play music on my watch... However, a very small wrist-mounted iPod would be cool. And, as we know iPods have clocks in them...
I think you missed the point of the post. All the things he mentioned *did* happen already. The reason iPods costs so much, BTW, isn't that the prices are artificially or unreasonably inflated due to a monopoly. Component costs certainly have a lot to do with it, since the retail prices of the storage media alone often cost more than the iPods they're included in.
I guess Apple has a "monopoly" on iPods, but they don't have a monopoly on MP3 players.
No, as a matter of fact, I don't have particularly strong feelings, I just don't like it much. "Dread" might have been an overly-strong word, but having to reboot into a system that I like less for the sake of some minor task is a PITA, and I prefer to work in Gnome when possible.
Most superficially, I think Windows is ugly. If you use the classic windows themes, it's ugly. If you use Luna, it's ugly. I know you can theme it more than that, but as it comes from Microsoft: ugly. Some Longhorn screenshots I've seen have looked better, but as I said, Longhorn is still a ways off.
But that's not going too much into usability or anything-- that's just superficial, though I do find it matters. Looking at something that's visually abrasive for hours a day does take a toll.
I don't want to go into too much, because it's terribly off-topic when this is about X-Windows (not so much Gnome and KDE), but very quickly: I don't like the start menu. If we're going to go with that convention, I'd rather have the ability to break that out into a couple sub-menus, for which even Gnome's default division Applications, Places, and System seems sufficient for me. I like being able to create my own panels in Gnome/KDE. Though you can do this in Windows (sort of) the extra panels are limited to little more than shortcuts-- and you can't have the start menu, taskbar, and system tray on different panels. Also, I find that the way Gnome designers tend to break things up a little more sensible. I'm not sure how to talk about that, but Gnome tends to have more of a 1 application per task setup, whereas Windows lumps things together in weird ways. Why do I go into the same place to change my desktop wallpaper as to change my font-smoothing? They're both display settings... ok. Where do I go to remove the drop-shadow from my cursor? For some reason, it isn't in display settings, it's in the mouse settings. I don't know, I've been using Windows since Windows 3.1, so I know to expect these things, but they don't make sense to me.
But if you really want to talk about OSX's interface in general, that's a whole other animal. It's very nice, but it's too much to get into, and seems even further off-topic.
Personally, I view Gnome as more Mac-like and KDE as more Windows-like, and I doubt I'm alone in that view. Honestly, I'm fairly platform-agnostic, and when I'm running Firefox, I can easily forget whether I'm working on a Mac, Linux, or Windows box. But I don't think that the Linux/X Windows/Gnome setup really needs to "catch up" to Windows at all. Now that we have massive online package repositories, even installation of new programs isn't really *hard*.
However, back to being a little more on-topic, the issue of 3D eye-candy: Windows currently uses 3D effects to about the same degree as X-Windows, which is to say that you might have a transparent window or menu, you might use a drop-shadow with your cursor, and that's it. When I think of the question of "What more could be done that would actually be useful?" the first thing that comes to mind is OSX's Expose. Now, part of the reason Expose is so handy comes specifically from the fact that you don't have a taskbar in OSX, so you can't tell at a glance what windows are open from what apps (it's a little hard to explain if you don't use OSX). However, it's still a terrific use of OSX's 3D capabilities, and I know that Linux developers are looking into doing something similar.
I'll admit that there are still occasional rough edges, but I find the overall look and design of Gnome far more sensible and pleasant than Windows XP. For all the good Longhorn might bring (and since they're not done, given Microsoft's history of dropping features to get products out the door, it's still "might"), it isn't here yet.
If you want to compare X Windows/Gnome/KDE features to Longhorn, we should be comparing the features we might expect X Windows/Gnome/KDE to have in a couple years. If you want to compare current X Windows/Gnome/KDE features to Windows, let's stick with XP. It's only fair.
Huh? So a successful company making high-quality software is a "joke" if portions of their software are closed-source?
But this isn't fair, the closed parts of OSX are a little more than "just" a DE.
Hmmmm.... you could install Darwin, X11, and Gnome, and have a complete and functional system.
just because I don't think apple's source code openness is satisfactory to be considered open source doesn't mean I'm right or wrong.
Well, if you want to claim that OSX isn't completely open source, you'd be right. If you claim that OSX isn't open source at all, you'd be wrong. If you claimed that you would like them to be more open, then it seems you'd be right again. If you claim that the extent to which they are open isn't helpful to the FOSS movement, you'd be wrong again. I mean, there is such a thing as right and wrong, and when you say something that's not true, you'll tend to fall into the "wrong" category.
It was a "comparative type thing" that I misunderstood? So, let me get this straight: You're saying that what you said-- what you literally said in your other post-- was not true? I just want to get that clear.
Or, in other words, they open-source their whole operating system and keep the DE closed source. If Redhat made a closed-source competitor to Gnome/X.org, would that mean that Linux was a "joke"?
To me, Mac OS X is not open source at all.
Well, that's fine so long as you recognize that how things are "to you" has no bearing on reality. Otherwise, the statement that "Mac OS X is not open source at all" runs into the problem of being factuallly incorrect.
It's as open source as if microsoft were to open source some tiny ass piece of windows code from the bowels of hell and all of the sudden the windows community starts claiming microsoft is god and helpful to OSS.
I think there would be quite a lot of instances where Microsoft opening even relatively small portions of code would be greatly appreciated. For example, if there were portions of Microsoft's code that would make it easy to access NTFS partitions or connect to Active Directory/SMB/Exchange servers, or if Microsoft released a complete breakdown of all the Microsoft Office file formats. Sure, a lot of that sort of thing has been reverse-engineered by now, but it would have made a big difference in Microsoft's public image if they hadn't stonewalled on these things.
But if Microsoft released the current Longhorn code-base to a GPL or BSD license? Yes, I think that would make quite a splash. Even if they reserved some of the code used for their interface and such and kept that proprietary, I think you would hear an occasional voice claiming that the move helped the open-source community.
I like Firefox, especially for the fact that I can use the same browser on all my apps, but also for the extensions, and wide support among web-developers (it seems to me that Firefox is the second most supported after IE). However, it seems sluggish and out-of-place when compared to Safari, the interface isn't quite fitting in places, some fonts render ugly, etc.
Enter Camino, which I would hope would be the best of both worlds. I've been a fan of Camino for years now, and even when it hasn't been my browser of choice, I've been rooting for it. However, it only confuses my choices more. I think it offers a much nicer feel than Firefox, but still lacks Safari's polish. Some of the sites that give Safari trouble and force me to go to Firefox also give Camino trouble, not that I know why. I can't use extensions, from Firefox, and I can't get it to spell-check like Safari.
So, in my experience, instead of giving the best of both worlds, in gives kind of a mixed bag, some weaknesses and strengths from each. Unfortunately, it doesn't really serve to replace either Safari nor Firefox for me, and it doesn't offer anything which adds to my current Firefox/Safari combination. In the end, it sits on my hard drive unused.
I sort of wish Mozilla to do something to incorporate the two projects-- either work on moving Firefox into a nicer native cocoa browser on OSX, or focusing on Camino as THE Mozilla browser on OSX. Either way, it'd be nice to see them come up with a single native cocoa browser with all the advantages of Firefox, and end the duplication of effort. I know there would be downsides to such a decision, but I hope, at least, that this new page of Camino's will bring it some much needed and much deserved attention.
To sum up, I think both Camino and Firefox "cut it" on OSX, but the division of effort between them has kept either of them from reaching their full potential.
I've also noticed that there's been a big move to "photorealistic" icons, despite the fact that a more simple/symbolic icon would often be more quickly recognizable and easier to distinguish from other things. It's not even as though symbolic icons can't be as pretty as the photorealistic ones, but I guess people want to pretend they're interacting with real objects or something.
It's probably not unbreakable (after all, what is), but it'll probably take a little while for someone to figure it out. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to pre-encrypt it, which means that there will continue to be the opportunity to intercept the download before the DRM is attached. I'm not sure what they can do other than to authenticate that the client software is, in fact, iTunes.
Which goes back to my point that Comrade Penguin *is* supported by evil capitalist pig running dog companies like IBM, Novell, and Redhat (and others). I know there are some who choose to believe that all things associated with Linux are all created by hobbyists in their spare time and no one is ever paid to work on it. I know there are those who think companies like IBM, Novell, Redhat, and Apple just leech off of the hard work of said hobbyists, and never give anything back. Well, it's not true.
I also know that some people like to paint this grand conflict between what's "good for FOSS" and the "evil corporations who seek to take advantage", but the truth is the well-being of these entities are not mutually exclusive. These "evil" companies are building their businesses around the use of FOSS, and in doing so, it becomes in their best interest to see those FOSS projects which they use succeed. To that end, these companies have given money and code to various projects as well as open-sourcing some of their own projects, all of which has benefitted us all.
So I really don't see the purpose of forming antagonistic relationships with these companies, when it's in everyone's best interests to work together.
(I know you were joking... or I hope you were joking....)
Oh boo hoo, they don't sell Linux, they sell Darwin.... why do we need everyone using the same OS anyway? Monoculture is bad. I guess you're right that it's "bad for Linux" if what is "good for Linux" is a 100% market share, but then every other operating system is "bad for Linux".
Whatever is "good" or "bad" for Linux, it's good for us, people, to not-have a monoculture, to have several different operating systems which use open standards and open protocols so that you can interact with the rest of the world no matter what system you're using.
what's compatibility in the real world anyway? Not binary compatibility obviously. Office suite compatibility? Not like apple is doing anything there anyway, I'd look more towards the openoffice guys for that.
So what if there's no binary compatibility? There isn't binary capability between the same distro on PPC vs. x86. Oh, but I guess PPC Linux is "bad" for x86 Linux, huh?
Maybe the days are coming when I'll have to install an anti-virus on my Powerbook, but I haven't seen or heard of an infected OSX machine yet. I'll start worrying when I hear about a virus in the wild that's spreading effectively.
It's possible, insofar as people feel OSX suits their needs better than Linux, that OSX would take market share that might otherwise go to Linux. In fact, I'm sure that's already happening in some cases. However, I sincerely doubt that everyone will choose OSX over Linux. There are lots of people who prefer one of the DE's available on Linux to the OSX, lots of instances where the situation is better suited to a specialized/customized system, and lots of people who prefer (for various reasons) to use a fully open-source system.
However, popularity of Unix-like systems will only increase compatibility and interoperability between your Unix-like system and the rest of the world. And this I believe is a key issue, since, so long as things use open standards, and the systems are interoperable, you are able to choose whatever system is more appropriate for the situation. Microsoft's current dominance is dependent on their continued violation of standards, and as Apple gains mainstream popularity, it puts increasing pressure on Microsoft to allow interoperability with non-Microsoft systems. If Apple gains a significant market share, I would expect the penalty for using non-Microsoft systems to generally diminish.
Apple is just a company out to make money like any other company, they'll help open source out only if it benefits themselves more.
IBM and Novell and Redhat are also companies out to make money, and they help open-source products because they believe it benefits them. So what? If you take out all the contributions to open-source software, in terms of both code and money, that have been made by companies who believe it's in their interest to do so, it would be a significant hurt to the open-source community.
I) I'm not so much starving for karma, evidenced by the fact that my post started at 2
b) Given that it's my post was repeting what others are saying, I'd expect that I'm as likely to get modded Redundant as anything else
3) Whereas most people were posting "No, you should have bought Apple a while ago!" which is about the specifics surrounding Apple's stock history, I was posting the general rule, which is that you don't tend to rush out and buy stock after the good news comes out as the stock has probably gone up pretty much as soon as the news is posted. It kinda goes against the whole "buy low, sell high" thing.
V) I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to respond to an AC
Best of all, the fact that they share so much in terms of code and architecture means they play well together.
Each of these possibilities are imaginable, so I think "Never happen" might be a little premature.
As others are pointing out, the time to buy stock is really before the good news comes out, not after.
Parents are one of the problems. Maybe it could be said that when there's a problem with a child, the parents are usually the cheif point-of-failure (either by something they're doing or something they fail to do). I've heard that the single biggest determining factor of the education level that a child will reach is the education level of that child's parents.
Honestly, I'm not sure it's the teacher's responsibility to make children learn, in that it's impossible to "make" someone learn if they won't have it. However, none of this excuses the poor job being done by many teachers I've seen in my lifetime. None of it makes bad teachers better teachers.
And it's not even as if the movie was titled "Homer's The Illiad" or anything like that. Simply "Troy". In such a case, I'd allow a little latitude to think the filmmakers were producing their own interpretation of the legend rather than an attempt to exactly transfer the poem's medium from book to film.
Not that I liked the movie-- I didn't.
Nor do most American teachers (in my experience). Or maybe not "most", but many. And enough that it serves as a partial explanation as to why students don't respect education.
Sure, teachers are extremely interested in having their students read and memorize trivia, doing exactly as their told at ever turn, but contrary to popular belief, that isn't "good education". What they're teaching kids is how to be bored and boring zombies, good little inefficient worker bees.
Probably the best way to make people disinterested in education is to force them to sit through 6 hours a day of mind-numming drek, and then force them to repeat the process at home for another 4 hours, repeat that whole process 5 days a week, 10 months a year, for 12 years, and call that "education".
The whole idea of a "work ethic" tends to be used in a bogus manner-- as though some people just have a mysterious virtue of being willing to work hard for no good reason. However, the truth is that people who have a good "work ethic" have usually been educated first that their work means something-- that their efforts are worth something. Expecting people to work hard, with no real purpose or meaning, by virtue of a mysterious "work ethic"... well, I have my doubts it will happen, and if it did, I'm not sure it would be a good thing.
But I guess I'm being off-topic.
Unfortunately, I think my mind isn't sufficiently advanced to get much of a message from trees. Have you witnessed these attempts to communicate?
I dunno.... I'm usually pretty interested in my dog's attempts to communicate. We study ancient/primative cultures. There's no reason to think that aliens wouldn't find us cute.
I mean, I'm glad that NeoOffice is out there, but by not being an Official port by OpenOffice, it has fewer people working on it, and work being done on OpenOffice is done without regard for the OSX port.
Besides, it's not clear that innovation is really what's needed from OOo. Businesses (which are arguably the primary market for Office apps) are often far more interested in things like reliability, productivity, interoperability, and costs (both up-front and support costs). The fact that it's similar to MS Office might even be a plus, in that it requires little new training. That software is "innovative" is of much smaller appeal.
However, I will totally grant that a *major* innovation that will account for a large improvement in reliability, productivity, interoperability, and lower costs would catch a lot of eyes. However, going back to my first point, how do you force that innovation along?
I guess this response is written largely because I've read a number of posts on /. which claim that OSS isn't innovative enough and copies proprietary software too much, but it strikes me that very few of those posts include any innovative ideas themselves. They merely complain or urge others to be innovative and creative, which I believe people are probably already trying to do, but coming up with brilliant ideas is a little harder than sitting down and deciding to come up with brilliant ideas.