Another possibility would be to accept that their mixed calculation doesn't add up. They could make the flatrates more expensive and add a variety of volume/time based options for "normal" people. It's not the fault of the customers if the current model fails because some people really use what they paid for.
Disclaimer: I don't know about Comcast's pricing model (and I can't really check without a valid address in the states). But wrong flatrate pricing seems to be a generic ISP problem nowadays
HAL really is scary, but I'm sure a modern version of this movie would be even freakier. Lip-reading might still be a problem for modern computers, but a modern version would feature cams and microphones everywhere. The computer might even use general-purpose circuits as a microphone. Maybe a remake would be quite interesting.
However, the lip-reading sequence is a manifestation of classic movie fear (just like the don't go into the basement scenes in horror movies). We've seen it so many times and exactly for that reason it's exciting to watch it ("don't go there, don't you see it will lead to utter destruction!?"). But in reality I'm more afraid of people using computers - some random mixup in a anti-terror database or someone finding out I downloaded a pirate copy of "Sim City 2000" years ago. I'm mentioning Sim City 2000 because it happened more than 10 years ago. The legal limitation of actions does apply for me in this case, so I can "brag" about it;)
Re:This is actually untrue
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
No... mistaking blockquote for br is almost as stupid as not using the preview button:/
Re:This is actually untrue
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 1
Mod parent up - this is the most insightful post so far.
On a related note I'm wondering since a few years if a more down-to-earth terminology in this field could help to gain more acceptance in the non-business world. Why do we have to call it "business ethics", if it's mostly about sound business practices? In similar vein terms like "corporate culture" sound pretty bold if you think about their actual meaning. It's not about managers performing a ritual dance before every meeting.
Yes, that's the case. However, this doesn't prevent software companies from filing them and most other countries in the EU accept them. The funny part is that they won't be of much use in court. I guess the reason why those companies do it anyways is because they hope that all those software patents become valid one day...
So the way the UK patent office handles applications for software patents doesn't change the status quo at all - it just makes a good headline...
I somehow like his reasoning (not because I'm a fan of high DVD prices, but because it seems way more honest than most statements I heard from content creators regarding this).
The way you described it illegal downloads are a substitute to legally obtained DVDs. A higher DVD price results in a higher demand for the substitute. This might be the case with normal goods like butter/margarine, but I'm not sure if it can be applied if the substitute is available for free. Products like DVDs for a small but loyal fanbase might behave like luxury-goods, which don't see much decline in demand if the price is higher (of course within certain limits). So what could happen is that those who want it on DVD will buy it regardless of a high/low price tag and those not willing to pay will download it anyways. Needless to say that one would sell such a product at a premium in order to make up for lost revenues (and maximize profit of course).
I could be very wrong about this, but it wouldn't surprise me if the prize tag had minor impact on piracy in this case...
But in some (very annoying) cases you need at least two. I'm a fan of touchpads, but for those preferring a mouse one port won't do the job whenever they want to plug in another device. There are wireless options, but most of them come with their own proprietary receiver. The wireless Mighty Mouse works, but at least in my opinion it's a terrible product compared to the average 3-button mouse we've seen in the last decade (yes, that's personal, however I might note that left and right click don't work so well on the mighty mouse and for people running parallels it's a real nightmare because it usually takes 2 restarts to get recognized by the OS).
There are other scenarios in which you need two ports. For example if you are using Elgato's EyeTV to record television and their Turbo to compress those recordings for your iPod, iPhone whatever. Of course all these problems can be solved with a USB-hub, but one of the reasons I switched from Linux to Mac was avoiding all the clutter in the first place...
PS: The lack of an Ethernet jack is also a big problem. Some people really need it on the road and even though there's an adaptor available for 29$ I'm not sure if that's the best solution to this - I use Ethernet much more than DVI...
Oh please, it's not like the new UI is terrible - it is quite useful for people with no experience with Office. But your hypothetical OSS implementation would offer a setting for changing back to the old view. The majority of users simply don't need this interface and there is no option to switch back - so there is no choice and OS implementations look so much better compared to MS' marketing... And trust me - the quality of word documents won't improve in the near future. I know of several S&P 500 companies which use Excel for their contracts, because it provides more freedom in layout than the very application which was designed for the purpose. Sad, but true
Hope the one modding me troll at the first time has to deal with.doc documents in his near future...
The ribbon just reminded me of the toolbar in iWorks.
I haven't used Office '07 too often, so I can't tell. I mostly had the Fluent interface in mind, which doesn't remind me of anything coming from Apple, but I haven't run comparisons deliberately...
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold.
If people could be trusted, I wouldn't need this passphrase.
That's still easier to crack than "DP;Oo.ohRH:zMcFv" for example. Plus their ability to memorize it enables them to share it with people I don't know at all (not really a matter of security, but most people who visit me with a laptop wouldn't know how to recover what they typed in).
I was using the term innovation in its most neutral sense - there is nothing about the new interface that I like. On the other hand there hasn't been much change between Office 5.0 and 2003 (IMO Office 97 is still the best). They introduced Layout View and some rather pointless features along the way and changed the document structure from time to time to ensure that everyone had to upgrade sometime. Now they came up with a new layout which is supposed to get rid of all this UI bloat which they collected over the years. In my opinion that's a rather gutsy move. They could have kept the UI the same and could advertise the new "open" document format - would have been easier for them. However, I still curse them for not implementing an option to switch back to the old UI, which I'm quite used to.
One thing about your comment really makes me wonder:
It's more the bastard love-child of several new interfaces, including (but not limited to) Apple's iWork interface
I'm using iWork quite a lot (especially Keynote) and I don't see any similarity to Office 2007. The Inspector reminds me of Office 2004, but both products came out at roughly the same time, so it's hard to say if there was any "stealing" involved. The Inspector feature is much better for my needs than this ugly bar on the right in Office 2004, but that doesn't mean that's a genuine apple invention which was copied by MS. I could rant some more if I had taken a look at Office 2008, but I saw no need to raise my blood pressure recently, so I didn't bother:)
Totally ot but since I'm already comparing Mac and Win: It would be so great if MS would ensure a higher VBA compatibility between those two. I've written some stuff for some customer which helps with replying to hotel-reservations in Outlook. There is no way of migrating this stuff to a Mac (which would spare me some calls when I don't need them) and I don't want to write it all again in some different scripting language + I don't know of any OSX or Linux solution suitable to such needs. Guess I have to finally check 2008 for its potential regarding this (but any effort from MS' side would surprise me - they don't have any incentive to make people switch to a different OS).
OpenOffice is similar enough in look, feel and use to MSOffice (Except for 2007, of course.)
And the fact that 2007 looks different isn't even a problem at all. I'm sure that Office 2003 will be available for a long time before MS pulls the plug, because those who have used Word from 1.0 for example will rather switch to open alternatives than being forced to upgrade. Office is MS' real cash cow and they won't destroy this part of their monopoly with a regular product life cycle like they use for Windows. Would be utterly ironic if the innovation of a new UI marked the end of MS' success.
Anyone who can't compete on the market is in urgent need of subsidies in order to maintain their business:)
If its not profitable to run such a farm in the long run one might ask why there is no switch to more profitable plants or a switch to a different industry. Most subsidies are nonsense because they waste a lot of money for preserving structures which are not profitable.
And if you don't believe that the US is performing quite bad in this regard I'd like to remind you that there is no other country in the world which uses similar amounts of corn-syrups in food production. There must be a reason why nobody else does it and I'm quite sure it's not a taste issue...
That's a good point and I can only assume why it's a different case:
There is no monopoly on Blue-Ray or HD-DVD. Both standards are provided by several companies
Both standards offer different features. CPUs on the other hand basically perform the same tasks (ok, sometimes one of the two major manufacturers has a new instruction set, but they exchange patents regarding this to ensure interoperability)
The global market for HD material is still quite small and we don't really depend on it. Both might be soft arguments, but regulation usually has a focus on essential industries
Essentially it adds another password to using the access point, since you need to know its name.
Which would help a lot if the SSID wouldn't be transmitted unencrypted whenever a client logs on. It's even possible to force a reconnect sending packets from outside, so staying connected all the time doesn't help as well.
Compared to using a dictionary based attack on a WPA encrypted WLAN it is rather trivial to bypass this hurdle. In this light it seems much more reasonable to invest time in creating a non-trivial password for WPA than to turn on such "features".
The only downside is that it's quite annoying to dictate 16-char urandom passwords whenever some friend comes along and wants to connect. Plus all these non-geek people get assurance that I'm truly paranoid (heck, when 16 chars random becomes the standard I'll just move on to radius to convince these people;) )
The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the consumer electronics industry to be eligible to attend the show. Due to the investment made by our exhibitors, International CES show management wants to ensure that its attendees are members of the trade.
So it's not open, but I wouldn't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Public technology related trade shows have become less popular in recent years, because there are cheaper and more convenient ways for both sides to communicate. I went to such shows ~15 years ago because they really offered lot's of information I would have missed otherwise. Today it's much easier to look up some review on the web or to hear about new gadgets in the media. Furthermore product cycles don't really match fairs and trade shows anymore (which can be seen as a cause or a consequence for their decline in popularity).
Maybe it won't lead to better politics, but at least in a democracy wider anticipation is always a good thing, because the more people back up political decisions the better. I personally don't see democracy as "the best" form of governance, but in the long run it grants the highest satisfaction of citizens one can archive. However, decisions become rather arbitrary if most people don't vote anymore. Hence it's a good thing if college kids vote even if most of them vote differently than you or me...
On a more general note the percentage of people using such services and being able to vote might be quite low, but some of them are what can be called "disseminators". If you convince them then they might influence many people in their surrounding...
I totally agree that a vaccine for nicotine would be great. Take it once and never ever think about starting again.
However, while finishing another pack I'm wondering how much nicotine the antibodies could take out before reaching the nerve system. There must be a physical limit which chain smokers might be able to reach. Some people might simply smoke more to get to the level they feel comfortable on (which would result in a higher production of antibodies on the other hand). I don't know where the balance point of this is, but people like me might end up smoking 3 packs a day and feeling miserable nevertheless.
I'm not going to defend Nigeria's scammers here, but most scams and spam I get still comes from the US (ranked 2nd is Brazil, which is amazing because I live in central Europe and don't even speak Portuguese). Nigeria has become an icon on scamming, even though a very small group has contributed to this image...
On a side-note: Most of my knowledge of drugs comes from US-spam advertising anti-depressants, libido-enhancing drugs or sedatives. Most of the Brazilian spam is about marketing companies, real estate or plastic surgery and I can assure you that my language skills are getting better every day - algumas coisas bacanas...
I totally agree that this doesn't qualify as an invention - it is just a matter of common sense to add some chars for the local market.
On the other hand I think there is nothing wrong about letting US-based institutions experience what their government has been supporting since the cold war - even if they are non-profit. It's not because I love preventing people to help, but because I believe it would encourage legislation to abandon a flawed system, because the odds of said system become rather obvious under such circumstances...
We mostly agree (and I'm in no way affiliated with the AC replying to your post). There's just one thing I don't get:
If you explicitally told then not to go down there then that's circumstantial evidence of your guilt. Otherwise they should be treated as likely a suspect as you.
Do you think this has any practical consequences to a real investigation? Demanding not to go down there might give a hint of who did it but the request of the owner might also be based on reasons which are totally legal. So it should not make a difference for a court if the person went down there even though he/she was instructed not to. Furthermore those two parties described would make contradicting claims in court and without neutral witnesses it will be really hard to say whether someone was supposed to be down there or not.
-nerdbert
While we do not know all the facts on this, it sounds like the tech went looking for it.
Based on my rate of finding stuff I'm not supposed to look at while doing computer support (without having any intention) I'd say the chances are not so low that he found it without looking for private stuff. In this particular case I'd guess that the chances are 50-50, so it's pure speculation. A side note: It's sometimes impossible to avoid private documents when trying to fix a problem. Problems with mail-clients for example usually "force" me to look at an e-mail or two. However, my clients are well aware of it and delete all child-porn before I start working;)
A general note: I believe that there are two cases regarding evidence which should be treated in a different manner: Law-enforcement and "normal" people. If the police searches your house without a warrant everything they come up with should be ignored by the court. Legal limitations for their work are in place for a reason - they want to get you busted and only the law is preventing them to skim trough your private stuff every other day. But if you ask someone to clean your house for example and he finds a corpse in the basement there should not be a restriction on investigating it. Even if you told him not to go down there, because that's just part of a private contract. Breaking it doesn't prevent public institutions from taking action. Otherwise you could avoid any legal problems by forcing people to sign a NDA before entering your house or fixing your computer.
Of course, anohter question is, did he or somebody else at the store plant it?
That's the part which is really interesting. In my IANAL-worldview it should be treated as evidence which has to be proven by ISP-logs or other data found in the owner's house. Only the fact that child-porn was found on the laptop after he gave it away doesn't prove that he is guilty.
If the cost to build something is high enough an industry might form a natural monopoly because one (or few) companies can provide the product cheaper than several producing the same thing - it would be more costly for everyone if several companies had to invest in the same maschine/infrastructure/whatever they need to make the product. Water supply companies for example have natural monopolies. It wouldn't make much sense to open your own and lay your own pipes to customers, because the infrastructure cost would be way too high to compete.
Of course the isotopes we are talking about are not like rice or oil, since trade is limited to certain institutions with a license, but it's still a global market.
I'm not an expert on the market for isotopes (I guess only few people are in this field), but the way I understand it supply and demand worked quite well until 2 Reactors had to be taken down - one of them unscheduled.
I totally agree that more reactors of this kind should be in operation to prevent shortages, because constant supply is so vital. But I'm sure a new competitor wouldn't be able to undercut current prices or to even make profit out of it. They simply can't save cost in reactor design or staff. Government regulation make cost savings in nuclear plants quite hard, which actually is a good thing...
The few older people I've guided through the OS are having severe usability problems, some of which are stuff which is actually done better in Windows. For example, OS X doesn't have a way to lock the Dock from accidental drags by default. I dislike the Start Bar but at least there Joe Average won't accidentally remove his apps by one misguided click'n'drag.
I was always wondering why they only implemented this for the start bar. I got so many calls in my live because someone couldn't find the bars in Outlook anymore. Especially true for situations in which one account is used by several people. A way to lock such bars would really save me some time. On a mac it's harder to accidentally hide such things (the dock and some MS products being the only exception).
Regarding usability, there is just one thing on the Mac which really bugs me: It's sometimes really hard to reach all windows of one app without using expose. For example Skype downloads are often hidden behind the main window and chat window. This confuses many mac noobs I know and telling them about expose doesn't make it easier for them.
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Another possibility would be to accept that their mixed calculation doesn't add up. They could make the flatrates more expensive and add a variety of volume/time based options for "normal" people. It's not the fault of the customers if the current model fails because some people really use what they paid for.
Disclaimer: I don't know about Comcast's pricing model (and I can't really check without a valid address in the states). But wrong flatrate pricing seems to be a generic ISP problem nowadays
Seriously off-topic
HAL really is scary, but I'm sure a modern version of this movie would be even freakier. Lip-reading might still be a problem for modern computers, but a modern version would feature cams and microphones everywhere. The computer might even use general-purpose circuits as a microphone. Maybe a remake would be quite interesting.
However, the lip-reading sequence is a manifestation of classic movie fear (just like the don't go into the basement scenes in horror movies). We've seen it so many times and exactly for that reason it's exciting to watch it ("don't go there, don't you see it will lead to utter destruction!?"). But in reality I'm more afraid of people using computers - some random mixup in a anti-terror database or someone finding out I downloaded a pirate copy of "Sim City 2000" years ago. I'm mentioning Sim City 2000 because it happened more than 10 years ago. The legal limitation of actions does apply for me in this case, so I can "brag" about it
No... mistaking blockquote for br is almost as stupid as not using the preview button :/
The question mark isn't even necessary: AT&T's CEO said in November that a 3G iPhone is coming in 2008.
;)
Makes me wish for a job at Forbes though - I could predict such great things like Vista SP1 coming in march
Yes, that's the case. However, this doesn't prevent software companies from filing them and most other countries in the EU accept them. The funny part is that they won't be of much use in court. I guess the reason why those companies do it anyways is because they hope that all those software patents become valid one day...
So the way the UK patent office handles applications for software patents doesn't change the status quo at all - it just makes a good headline...
I somehow like his reasoning (not because I'm a fan of high DVD prices, but because it seems way more honest than most statements I heard from content creators regarding this).
The way you described it illegal downloads are a substitute to legally obtained DVDs. A higher DVD price results in a higher demand for the substitute. This might be the case with normal goods like butter/margarine, but I'm not sure if it can be applied if the substitute is available for free. Products like DVDs for a small but loyal fanbase might behave like luxury-goods, which don't see much decline in demand if the price is higher (of course within certain limits). So what could happen is that those who want it on DVD will buy it regardless of a high/low price tag and those not willing to pay will download it anyways. Needless to say that one would sell such a product at a premium in order to make up for lost revenues (and maximize profit of course).
I could be very wrong about this, but it wouldn't surprise me if the prize tag had minor impact on piracy in this case...
But in some (very annoying) cases you need at least two. I'm a fan of touchpads, but for those preferring a mouse one port won't do the job whenever they want to plug in another device. There are wireless options, but most of them come with their own proprietary receiver. The wireless Mighty Mouse works, but at least in my opinion it's a terrible product compared to the average 3-button mouse we've seen in the last decade (yes, that's personal, however I might note that left and right click don't work so well on the mighty mouse and for people running parallels it's a real nightmare because it usually takes 2 restarts to get recognized by the OS).
There are other scenarios in which you need two ports. For example if you are using Elgato's EyeTV to record television and their Turbo to compress those recordings for your iPod, iPhone whatever.
Of course all these problems can be solved with a USB-hub, but one of the reasons I switched from Linux to Mac was avoiding all the clutter in the first place...
PS: The lack of an Ethernet jack is also a big problem. Some people really need it on the road and even though there's an adaptor available for 29$ I'm not sure if that's the best solution to this - I use Ethernet much more than DVI...
Oh please, it's not like the new UI is terrible - it is quite useful for people with no experience with Office. But your hypothetical OSS implementation would offer a setting for changing back to the old view. The majority of users simply don't need this interface and there is no option to switch back - so there is no choice and OS implementations look so much better compared to MS' marketing... And trust me - the quality of word documents won't improve in the near future. I know of several S&P 500 companies which use Excel for their contracts, because it provides more freedom in layout than the very application which was designed for the purpose. Sad, but true
.doc documents in his near future...
Hope the one modding me troll at the first time has to deal with
One thing about your comment really makes me wonder:I'm using iWork quite a lot (especially Keynote) and I don't see any similarity to Office 2007. The Inspector reminds me of Office 2004, but both products came out at roughly the same time, so it's hard to say if there was any "stealing" involved. The Inspector feature is much better for my needs than this ugly bar on the right in Office 2004, but that doesn't mean that's a genuine apple invention which was copied by MS. I could rant some more if I had taken a look at Office 2008, but I saw no need to raise my blood pressure recently, so I didn't bother
Totally ot but since I'm already comparing Mac and Win: It would be so great if MS would ensure a higher VBA compatibility between those two. I've written some stuff for some customer which helps with replying to hotel-reservations in Outlook. There is no way of migrating this stuff to a Mac (which would spare me some calls when I don't need them) and I don't want to write it all again in some different scripting language + I don't know of any OSX or Linux solution suitable to such needs. Guess I have to finally check 2008 for its potential regarding this (but any effort from MS' side would surprise me - they don't have any incentive to make people switch to a different OS).
Anyone who can't compete on the market is in urgent need of subsidies in order to maintain their business :)
If its not profitable to run such a farm in the long run one might ask why there is no switch to more profitable plants or a switch to a different industry. Most subsidies are nonsense because they waste a lot of money for preserving structures which are not profitable.
And if you don't believe that the US is performing quite bad in this regard I'd like to remind you that there is no other country in the world which uses similar amounts of corn-syrups in food production. There must be a reason why nobody else does it and I'm quite sure it's not a taste issue...
- There is no monopoly on Blue-Ray or HD-DVD. Both standards are provided by several companies
- Both standards offer different features. CPUs on the other hand basically perform the same tasks (ok, sometimes one of the two major manufacturers has a new instruction set, but they exchange patents regarding this to ensure interoperability)
- The global market for HD material is still quite small and we don't really depend on it. Both might be soft arguments, but regulation usually has a focus on essential industries
Just a few thoughts...Compared to using a dictionary based attack on a WPA encrypted WLAN it is rather trivial to bypass this hurdle. In this light it seems much more reasonable to invest time in creating a non-trivial password for WPA than to turn on such "features".
The only downside is that it's quite annoying to dictate 16-char urandom passwords whenever some friend comes along and wants to connect. Plus all these non-geek people get assurance that I'm truly paranoid (heck, when 16 chars random becomes the standard I'll just move on to radius to convince these people
I went to such shows ~15 years ago because they really offered lot's of information I would have missed otherwise. Today it's much easier to look up some review on the web or to hear about new gadgets in the media. Furthermore product cycles don't really match fairs and trade shows anymore (which can be seen as a cause or a consequence for their decline in popularity).
Maybe it won't lead to better politics, but at least in a democracy wider anticipation is always a good thing, because the more people back up political decisions the better. I personally don't see democracy as "the best" form of governance, but in the long run it grants the highest satisfaction of citizens one can archive. However, decisions become rather arbitrary if most people don't vote anymore. Hence it's a good thing if college kids vote even if most of them vote differently than you or me...
On a more general note the percentage of people using such services and being able to vote might be quite low, but some of them are what can be called "disseminators". If you convince them then they might influence many people in their surrounding...
I totally agree that a vaccine for nicotine would be great. Take it once and never ever think about starting again.
However, while finishing another pack I'm wondering how much nicotine the antibodies could take out before reaching the nerve system. There must be a physical limit which chain smokers might be able to reach. Some people might simply smoke more to get to the level they feel comfortable on (which would result in a higher production of antibodies on the other hand).
I don't know where the balance point of this is, but people like me might end up smoking 3 packs a day and feeling miserable nevertheless.
Just an uninformed theory...
I'm not going to defend Nigeria's scammers here, but most scams and spam I get still comes from the US (ranked 2nd is Brazil, which is amazing because I live in central Europe and don't even speak Portuguese). Nigeria has become an icon on scamming, even though a very small group has contributed to this image...
On a side-note: Most of my knowledge of drugs comes from US-spam advertising anti-depressants, libido-enhancing drugs or sedatives. Most of the Brazilian spam is about marketing companies, real estate or plastic surgery and I can assure you that my language skills are getting better every day - algumas coisas bacanas...
I totally agree that this doesn't qualify as an invention - it is just a matter of common sense to add some chars for the local market.
On the other hand I think there is nothing wrong about letting US-based institutions experience what their government has been supporting since the cold war - even if they are non-profit. It's not because I love preventing people to help, but because I believe it would encourage legislation to abandon a flawed system, because the odds of said system become rather obvious under such circumstances...
A general note: I believe that there are two cases regarding evidence which should be treated in a different manner: Law-enforcement and "normal" people. If the police searches your house without a warrant everything they come up with should be ignored by the court. Legal limitations for their work are in place for a reason - they want to get you busted and only the law is preventing them to skim trough your private stuff every other day. But if you ask someone to clean your house for example and he finds a corpse in the basement there should not be a restriction on investigating it. Even if you told him not to go down there, because that's just part of a private contract. Breaking it doesn't prevent public institutions from taking action. Otherwise you could avoid any legal problems by forcing people to sign a NDA before entering your house or fixing your computer. That's the part which is really interesting. In my IANAL-worldview it should be treated as evidence which has to be proven by ISP-logs or other data found in the owner's house. Only the fact that child-porn was found on the laptop after he gave it away doesn't prove that he is guilty.
If the cost to build something is high enough an industry might form a natural monopoly because one (or few) companies can provide the product cheaper than several producing the same thing - it would be more costly for everyone if several companies had to invest in the same maschine/infrastructure/whatever they need to make the product.
Water supply companies for example have natural monopolies. It wouldn't make much sense to open your own and lay your own pipes to customers, because the infrastructure cost would be way too high to compete.
Of course the isotopes we are talking about are not like rice or oil, since trade is limited to certain institutions with a license, but it's still a global market.
I'm not an expert on the market for isotopes (I guess only few people are in this field), but the way I understand it supply and demand worked quite well until 2 Reactors had to be taken down - one of them unscheduled.
I totally agree that more reactors of this kind should be in operation to prevent shortages, because constant supply is so vital. But I'm sure a new competitor wouldn't be able to undercut current prices or to even make profit out of it. They simply can't save cost in reactor design or staff. Government regulation make cost savings in nuclear plants quite hard, which actually is a good thing...
Regarding usability, there is just one thing on the Mac which really bugs me: It's sometimes really hard to reach all windows of one app without using expose. For example Skype downloads are often hidden behind the main window and chat window. This confuses many mac noobs I know and telling them about expose doesn't make it easier for them.