Within the context of a general comparison of two competing technologies verifiable metrics have to be used. It is appropriate to say "better" and I explained what "better" meant in the context in which it was used.
This isn't youth soccer where there are no winners, in a scientific comparison, one can use "better," as long as it is clear what "better" is within a particular context.
It is very difficult to do this test. Vinyl has so many telling distortions, hiss and pops for instance, that it would be obvious just by that. Then there is the problem of the "audio data" it is seldom identical between the two formats. You will obviously recognize which comes from which format.
No one is saying that you don't like vinyl, some people like velvita, but that doesn't mean its actually cheese. A CD more faithfully reproduces the audio signal than does vinyl. No matter with what nonsense you try to cloud the issue, the facts are against you.
the human ear can hear things we can't measure yet. False, obviously false. This is a classic snakeoil response. We can put people on the moon, we can measure sub-atomic particles, but nope, we can't measure sound. Yup, our science is so lacking.
the ear does use phase-angle information to determine the location sounds originate from,
False, we have two ears and that's how we track position. There are some theories that pressure from sounds on our physical bodies may assist that, and that makes sense, but no, we do not use phase angle relationships.
Now, I did do some work on a phased-array ultrasonic range finder in the 1980s, that was fun, but the hammer, anvil, and stirrup in your ear certainly can't reproduce it.
16-bit audio absolutely destroys the waveform, especially in the high end It largely depends on the sampling frequency.
brightness? Audiophool nonsense.
isn't all messed up trying to fit a 16-kHz tone into three pieces of a 44kHz sampling rate. Sigh.
Audiophools are a prime example of a fundamentalist, just like christians or muslims, republicans, democrats, or Ron Paul supporters.
Audiophools must not understand electronics very well, as such any in depth discussion of why they are being foolish is lost because a lot of solid knowledge is needed. They don't seem to have the intellectual curiosity or something. They believe what they believe and that's enough. They learn enough jargon to support their position, and can spread it out thick enough for the average joe to say "that makes sense."
Some know they are lying, but they are doing it to sell equipment. Some are completely clueless people with no engineering or science background that have fallen for the junk science and merely parrot it back. Worse yet are the people who should know better.
In the world of audio electronics aka 20hz ~ 20khz, the parameters of transmission and storage of audio signals is well understood. It isn't rocket science. Digital is better than analog. Now, in the field of transducers, i.e. the devices that pick-up sound and those that re-create it, that's an interesting field that continues to advance, but that's more physics than electronics.
In the audiophool world, "warmer," "richer," "depth," "brightness," etc. are just nonsense describing the kind of distortion the system injects into the audio signal. There is a vocabulary for describing signals, and audiophools don't use it.
No I don't "LIKE" music, I LOVE music. Blues, classical, pop, yes even country, jazz, swing, all of it. Etta James, Erikah Badu, James Brown, Sam & Dave, the Bangles, Beatles, Mozart, Strauss, Zappa, damn!!! all of it.
What I don't like is LPs. I'm in my 40s now, and I remember LPs in their prime. I had LOTS of LPs. They sound distorted, with hiss and pop, yuck. I bought a CD player when my friend played Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon on it. Pure music, I was floored. It was as best as can be reproduced in my room with my speakers and amp, while considerable at the time, not a sound studio.
No, sorry, CDs were a restoration of music, they we better than LPs. Much like the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, it opened up a lot more color, and a lot of people didn't like it, but that didn't mean the pre-restoration was better.
You may think you are dealing with science, but you have no clue what you are talking about. What the hell is "Electrical coloration" and what the hell does it have to do with audio cables? Hint, there's a patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3891513.html
I understand "passion" but I detest the flawed logic and junk or pseudo science of audiophiles.
The point is that no one can demonstrate with a double blind test that finely stranded cables sufficiently sized by gauge sound any different than any other. Sure, with an oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer, you can show that one cable or another have different behaviors with RF frequencies, but hell you can do hat just by bending it different or putting a ferrous core at each end. With audio frequencies, the dust in the air has more affect on audio waves than any noise you are likely to pick up.
I am playing with vinyl for over 15 years now; got more than 30,000 now and it's one of the only formats I really ENJOY playing with. Not only it can be handled on a much more accurate way with immediate tactical response, it also gives the sounds "smoother" and "deeper" because the frequencies are not cut off at 44.1khz.
Audiophile nonsense, do you think you can hear 44khz? Are you smoking crack? "Smoother?" "deeper?" Nice nonsense words. What are you trying to say? Use an acceptable descriptive vocabulary please. Do you think your speakers can reproduce 44khz? The best tweeters cut off around 25khz. Now, if you have a gold foil ultrasonic transducer in your speakers, you may be able to get 44khz, but only the bats will hear it.
Now on to the TOTAL nonsense of expensive cables. PLEASE in the AUDIO frequency range, a good finely stranded wire from a hardware store of sufficient gauge to carry the current driving the speakers is indistinguishable from anything more expensive. Unless you can claim that (1) speakers can reproduce RF noise and (2) you can hear it. You can do better just keeping them away from 60hz AC, but even then, it is hard to induce enough power into a single wire to actually hear. Even then, slip you hardware store wire into an electric drill and make twisted pair.
None of the continuing arguments address the premise of my post: "A CD delivers a more faithful reproduction of the source audio." Please keep the audiophile babble to a minimum. You may "prefer" on over the other, but that is YOUR preference, you just happen to like the distortion of vinyl.
"Warmer" an "Nuanced" and other such words that have absolutely NO quantitative value re used regularly by the snakeoil salesmen called Audiophiles.
There is absolutely NO way that vinyl sounds "better" than CDs. What ever argument you want to put forward, to human beings with our method of processing sounds, A CD with the same source of audio data will reproduce that audio data more faithfully than vinyl. Period, end of discussion. It is up to the audiophiles to disprove this statement.
The nonsense words like "nuanced" and "warmer" and so on are merely way audiophiles with seemingly no real background in engineering, or like fundamentalist christians, somehow fail to shine the lite of reason on their beliefs, are merely ways of describing the distortion that vinyl mechanics adds into the audio.
Now, "sound" and "music" are different and I will grant that there are a lot of things that make recordings sound "pleasing" that are not the quantifiable, but somehow I don't think it is the job of the audio delivery system to inject its own crap into the system.
Also, Audiophiles have an impossible and contradictory view on audio. They'll argue that $7000 speaker cables are worth the money (http://www.pearcable.com/) while also arguing that vinyl is better because it is "warmer" i.e. distorted.
Audiophiles are idiots and they are nothing more stupid people with too much money to spend on stuff that is he electrical/audio equivalent of placebos. In psycho-acoustic terms, if you think it sounds better, then it sounds better. If you are gonna pay $7000 for a cable set and $1000 on your turntable, you have a vested interest in the sound of your system sounding better, so it will. (to you)
Maybe I shouldn't argue with Audiophiles, maybe I should sell them "oxygen free" copper cables at $250 a foot.
I sometimes feel that this whole thing has got to have nothing to do with actual pirating. Every study has shown has indicated that people who share and download music are more likely to buy the music they like.
I don't believe the motivation, and I have a real tin foil worry in that it *isn't* about money, it is about control. If the public are unable to archive media, then only the official owners of the media may keep it. History is a LOT easier to re-write when no one can produce conflicting details because it can't be used anymore because the DRM scheme is obsolete and unsupported, or that "sharing" any such information is a violation of law that will cost you everything you own.
We need to ensure that citizens NOT F*&&KING "Consumers" are protected and REAL history and news is preserved.
How is giving away vaccinations profitable or anti-competitive?
Look very carefully in to the business dealings Microsoft has with the governments or local industries. We all know that charitable contributions to 3rd world nations are just concealed bribes. Yea, maybe a third gets there to prove the charity was legitimate, but most of the money always lines the pockets of the officials.
You were okay until you dragged the Gates foundations into it.
What do you think the Gates foundation is? Nothing more than a "charity" to provide altruistic seeming bribes to governments when Microsoft is being challenged. Trust me, the foundation is nothing more than a tool of the "robber baron" Gates. A separate and "independent" institution that can funnel funds which would be illegal or damaging for Microsoft to do publicly.
The foundation may, occasionally, do something that seems altruistic, but every "front" for illegal activity still has to conduct legal commerce to establish legitimacy, the gates foundation is no different, it has to do some actual charity work to hide its true purpose.
Look carefully at the business dealings in the nations in which the Gates foundation contributes and look at the nature of the contributions and the overall results of Microsoft's business dealings.
Lastly, the Gates foundation is taking money essentially stolen from end-user's by Microsoft's illegal maintenance of their monopoly. Most everyone who uses a personal computer contributes in some way to Microsoft's bottom line BECAUSE of their illegal activity. Now, to turn that stolen money over to a charity to absolve guilt and improve public opinion is disgusting.
I was looking at developing software for an innovative pen-based computer system named go!. It was cool, it was radically different, and when they started lining up real interest, suddenly Microsoft had "Pen Windows!" Support dropped away like autumn leaves. How could someone competing with Microsoft succeed?
My bet is that Microsoft is making lots of noise saying that XP will be on the XO, and use that as a stalling method. Governments and institutions will wait for Windows XO, before buying the XO, thus depriving the OLPC non-profit for income to "break even" and continue operation. They have to make some money, right? Otherwise they'd give it away for free.
Nothing Microsoft or the Gates Foundation does is for the common good. It is alway for profitable or anti-competitive. Always. Never forget that. I have been in this industry too long and I have seen too many things for anyone to convince me otherwise.
This is why I've used AMD for years
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Negroponte vs Intel
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· Score: 2, Informative
Intel is no different than Microsoft, does anyone remember Zylog? Intel will do to chip makers what Microsoft will do to software makers.
I can't say AMD is more ethical, but it is at least a counterpoint to the Intel near monopoly of P.C. CPUs.
Prove it. I don't believe the premise. You have to show that the Mac can't be what it is on X11, and you can't do that because X11 can support the Mac desktop. How is a Mac *more* usable with the removal of X11 features?
Make no mistake, apple is pulling a Microsoft here, obscuring the API so that programs written for the mac are difficult to port to other platforms.
Remember that whenever we're talking about this kind of stuff, the statement is what makes it more or less usable for you.
I appreciate your zeal in defending the Mac, it is fully expected. Regardless, a valuable and useful functionality was eliminated from the UNIX platform and despite what you wish to argue, it makes the Mac unusable for a number of users.
I believe I read that when it was posted. I don't know if you are a software engineer or not, but the list sounds like a "why I don't want to do it" list rather than "Why it can't be done" list.
If you look at beryl (sp?) ask yourself, could they not implement any of the Mac interface on it These all sound like, well I wouldn't say trivial, but manageable extensions to X11.
Hey, it was Apples decision not to use X11, and it is my opinion that, for the reasons previously stated, it makes the whole system less usable.
It is not as flexible because X11 didn't have the capabilities Apple wanted,
X11 is fully extensible, so this is a flawed premise.
tacking them on would have removed the flexibility of X11
Have you seen the stuff GNOME and KDE are doing with X11? I can't imagine Apple having a problem implementing Tiger on it.
Sometimes you just have to leave the old tech behind in order to move forward
This is sometime true, but less often true than claimed. Those darned transistors. That damned wheel thing. Mac's UI has no features that exclude X11. It is a vendor lock-in strategy. Vendor lock-in is often sold as an innovation.
If I want to run iTunes on my laptop and display it on my desktop, why can't I?
Because the Mac UI is not made for networking. It is made for GPU accelerated, multi-layer composited local display. Apple decided not to go the X11 route because it wouldn't look much like X11 once all the extra features they planned were in it, making it not compatible with any other X11 system, thus blowing the point of having X11 in the first place.
Exactly. It isn't as usable as X11. It doesn't have the flexibility or the capability. It forces user's to do things the way Apple decides, not they way they decide.
That's true. You have to use Apple's remoting software for remote graphical administration. But most of Apple's configuration can actually be done through the shell. For example, you have to use the shell if you want access to the more advanced power management settings. Thus, a terminal session should give you what you need.
You Mac people seem so obtuse it is frustrating having a conversation. You're worse than Windows zealots, you simply have a better platform.
What part of "Mac UI is not X and thus limited to the local machine" don't you get? I don't want to have to kobble together some solution. If I want to run iTunes on my laptop and display it on my desktop, why can't I? If I want to run Safari the same way, why can't I? Why can't I copy and paste between the two systems?
With Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, NetBSD, and etc. using X11 I can run a program on any system and display it on any other system. I can use X2X and make a virtual desktop across the systems.
I don't have a Mac hatred. Like I said, my wife and son, as well as my mom has all Macs. I bought them for them. The issues I have with Mac is that I'm spoiled with Linux. Both Mac and Windows come from a proprietary "lock-in" environment and to do anything will nickel and dime you to death, or force you to search for open source apps that build on Windows or Mac.
With Kubuntu, I just open adept, find the app that I want, select it, and press apply. Violla! it works.
Secondly, to me, Mac isn't usable. Its GUI is not based on X11. This means that while I may be able to display external application in a crippled X11 window, I simply can not run Mac applications remotely on other machines. I actually do this a lot.
The Mac is fine for people who's work habits fit into what Apple's usability gurus this is good, but if you want to do something different, it gets in your way. If I can say one thing about Linux, is that it tries to get out of your way. Neither Windows nor Mac make it easy for you to be different.
Yes, yes, I know that *have* X11 that runs on the Mac, but the Mac does not run on X11, so the example of running the Mac control panel applet on a separate machine still is an issue.
My wife and son have Macs. I use Linux, I tell you, there is so much more you can do with Linux than you can with Windows or Macintosh. I've tried to use their computers but there aren't enough applications available, every time I want to do something I can't find an easy application to do it. Obviously I'm not talking about office applications and stuff like that, but playing media on a mac is painful unless it is directly supported. There is no real choice to play music but on iTunes.
And yes, I know Mac is based on Darwin which is based on FreeBSD, but the UI is not X11 and is thus crap for anything but local display. Try running a Mac's control panel applet on a different system. Oh, sure, maybe you can find a VNC server for it, but good luck.
I will agree that Linux suffers from chaos in the light of so many distros, but freedom and creativity are chaotic.
Lastly, I doubt that Linux on the desktop is less than 1%, from my own experience, I'd bet at least 2%-4% for a number of reasons: computers run longer with Linux so a computer off "their" radar as unusably old may still be in use with Linux. Many Windows P.C.s become Linux boxes right away or over time, this creates a double error: a missed count for Linux and false count for Windows. Lastly, you download Linux, there is no financial transaction to track installations.
Oh the stories I could tell about various open source projects I've worked with. This isn't a good or bad thing, just "Open Source."
The difference between open source and proprietary code is that "open source" (at least of yore) is built by passionate and driven people while closed source gets built by who get paid. It takes a lot of drive and passion to work on things that don't pay. You do it for ego, you do it for creative release, you do it for personal reasons, thus the work you do is personal.
This Zed guy is just caught in the middle of some ego battles and bad personalities, and he has is own issues as well to boot. Any slashdotters free of this may cast the first stone.
My advice to the Zed guy, take a chill pill, Zen out a bit, and clean up the rant but keep the criticism, its important.
Well, unless it was an operating system problem and not bad data or bad programming, what's the point in mentioning that other than childish bashing?
In an isolated discussion, your comment makes complete sense, but in reality Windows is really at fault here, and if it isn't, we are merely applying blame based on probability. You can say it is a problem with "this" or "that," but in the end, these sorts of things are very common on Windows and that leaves me frequently wondering why these sorts of things are always happening on Windows.
Similarly, it is like MySQL. Sure, a *bad* programmer may do something wrong, and get a "cannot access database" message, but in my surfing experience, it is typically MySQL.
So, be it programmer error, OS error, there MUST be something inherent in Windows that makes this stuff common. Its too easy to dismiss it as something else, sooner or later you have to look at the lowest common denominator, and that is the Windows platform.
The sad part about your post is that you are missing the point completely. You may not feel the need nor want to accept that we are all public figures in this day and age, but facts do not very much care for what people feel or want.
In the days of internet, cell phone cameras, virtually every public action or reference being searchable, everyone has an internet presence whether they want it or not. It just *is*. We may not want locks on our doors, but it is ridiculous to assume that we don't need them.
The facts of life, as we live today is that we need to manage our public image. In a sense, we've always had to do it in a small way with our neighbors, friends, and family, but today, our public image is viewable world wide via the internet.
While I think there should be complete separation between what you do for a living and what you do privately for fun, that separation is an ideal that has never really existed. There are valid arguments on both sides of the discussion, societal trends will change over time as well. Discretion has always been a valuable quality.
That being said, everyone of us is a famous public figure on the internet. Our "public" image needs to be "crafted" and managed. Your "public" statements need to be well considered and support the positions you wish to define yourself. The stuff you would be embarrassed to have as public knowledge or considered by your employer or customer should be done fairly anonymously.
Here's the most important part: make sure you have a "good" public searchable persona and use multiple various hotmail accounts when you are going to say something that is going to cause trouble.
Remember, the technology that allows "them" to find you, also allows you to hide from them. Just make sure you do.
Slashdot Mirror
Within the context of a general comparison of two competing technologies verifiable metrics have to be used. It is appropriate to say "better" and I explained what "better" meant in the context in which it was used.
This isn't youth soccer where there are no winners, in a scientific comparison, one can use "better," as long as it is clear what "better" is within a particular context.
It is very difficult to do this test. Vinyl has so many telling distortions, hiss and pops for instance, that it would be obvious just by that. Then there is the problem of the "audio data" it is seldom identical between the two formats. You will obviously recognize which comes from which format.
No one is saying that you don't like vinyl, some people like velvita, but that doesn't mean its actually cheese. A CD more faithfully reproduces the audio signal than does vinyl. No matter with what nonsense you try to cloud the issue, the facts are against you.
the human ear can hear things we can't measure yet.
False, obviously false. This is a classic snakeoil response. We can put people on the moon, we can measure sub-atomic particles, but nope, we can't measure sound. Yup, our science is so lacking.
the ear does use phase-angle information to determine the location sounds originate from,
False, we have two ears and that's how we track position. There are some theories that pressure from sounds on our physical bodies may assist that, and that makes sense, but no, we do not use phase angle relationships.
Now, I did do some work on a phased-array ultrasonic range finder in the 1980s, that was fun, but the hammer, anvil, and stirrup in your ear certainly can't reproduce it.
16-bit audio absolutely destroys the waveform, especially in the high end
It largely depends on the sampling frequency.
brightness?
Audiophool nonsense.
isn't all messed up trying to fit a 16-kHz tone into three pieces of a 44kHz sampling rate.
Sigh.
Audiophools are a prime example of a fundamentalist, just like christians or muslims, republicans, democrats, or Ron Paul supporters.
Audiophools must not understand electronics very well, as such any in depth discussion of why they are being foolish is lost because a lot of solid knowledge is needed. They don't seem to have the intellectual curiosity or something. They believe what they believe and that's enough. They learn enough jargon to support their position, and can spread it out thick enough for the average joe to say "that makes sense."
Some know they are lying, but they are doing it to sell equipment. Some are completely clueless people with no engineering or science background that have fallen for the junk science and merely parrot it back. Worse yet are the people who should know better.
In the world of audio electronics aka 20hz ~ 20khz, the parameters of transmission and storage of audio signals is well understood. It isn't rocket science. Digital is better than analog. Now, in the field of transducers, i.e. the devices that pick-up sound and those that re-create it, that's an interesting field that continues to advance, but that's more physics than electronics.
In the audiophool world, "warmer," "richer," "depth," "brightness," etc. are just nonsense describing the kind of distortion the system injects into the audio signal. There is a vocabulary for describing signals, and audiophools don't use it.
You don't even LIKE music do you?
No I don't "LIKE" music, I LOVE music. Blues, classical, pop, yes even country, jazz, swing, all of it. Etta James, Erikah Badu, James Brown, Sam & Dave, the Bangles, Beatles, Mozart, Strauss, Zappa, damn!!! all of it.
What I don't like is LPs. I'm in my 40s now, and I remember LPs in their prime. I had LOTS of LPs. They sound distorted, with hiss and pop, yuck. I bought a CD player when my friend played Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon on it. Pure music, I was floored. It was as best as can be reproduced in my room with my speakers and amp, while considerable at the time, not a sound studio.
No, sorry, CDs were a restoration of music, they we better than LPs. Much like the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, it opened up a lot more color, and a lot of people didn't like it, but that didn't mean the pre-restoration was better.
You may think you are dealing with science, but you have no clue what you are talking about. What the hell is "Electrical coloration" and what the hell does it have to do with audio cables? Hint, there's a patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3891513.html
I understand "passion" but I detest the flawed logic and junk or pseudo science of audiophiles.
The point is that no one can demonstrate with a double blind test that finely stranded cables sufficiently sized by gauge sound any different than any other. Sure, with an oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer, you can show that one cable or another have different behaviors with RF frequencies, but hell you can do hat just by bending it different or putting a ferrous core at each end. With audio frequencies, the dust in the air has more affect on audio waves than any noise you are likely to pick up.
I am playing with vinyl for over 15 years now; got more than 30,000 now and it's one of the only formats I really ENJOY playing with. Not only it can be handled on a much more accurate way with immediate tactical response, it also gives the sounds "smoother" and "deeper" because the frequencies are not cut off at 44.1khz.
Audiophile nonsense, do you think you can hear 44khz? Are you smoking crack? "Smoother?" "deeper?" Nice nonsense words. What are you trying to say? Use an acceptable descriptive vocabulary please. Do you think your speakers can reproduce 44khz? The best tweeters cut off around 25khz. Now, if you have a gold foil ultrasonic transducer in your speakers, you may be able to get 44khz, but only the bats will hear it.
Now on to the TOTAL nonsense of expensive cables. PLEASE in the AUDIO frequency range, a good finely stranded wire from a hardware store of sufficient gauge to carry the current driving the speakers is indistinguishable from anything more expensive. Unless you can claim that (1) speakers can reproduce RF noise and (2) you can hear it. You can do better just keeping them away from 60hz AC, but even then, it is hard to induce enough power into a single wire to actually hear. Even then, slip you hardware store wire into an electric drill and make twisted pair.
None of the continuing arguments address the premise of my post: "A CD delivers a more faithful reproduction of the source audio." Please keep the audiophile babble to a minimum. You may "prefer" on over the other, but that is YOUR preference, you just happen to like the distortion of vinyl.
"Warmer" an "Nuanced" and other such words that have absolutely NO quantitative value re used regularly by the snakeoil salesmen called Audiophiles.
There is absolutely NO way that vinyl sounds "better" than CDs. What ever argument you want to put forward, to human beings with our method of processing sounds, A CD with the same source of audio data will reproduce that audio data more faithfully than vinyl. Period, end of discussion. It is up to the audiophiles to disprove this statement.
The nonsense words like "nuanced" and "warmer" and so on are merely way audiophiles with seemingly no real background in engineering, or like fundamentalist christians, somehow fail to shine the lite of reason on their beliefs, are merely ways of describing the distortion that vinyl mechanics adds into the audio.
Now, "sound" and "music" are different and I will grant that there are a lot of things that make recordings sound "pleasing" that are not the quantifiable, but somehow I don't think it is the job of the audio delivery system to inject its own crap into the system.
Also, Audiophiles have an impossible and contradictory view on audio. They'll argue that $7000 speaker cables are worth the money (http://www.pearcable.com/) while also arguing that vinyl is better because it is "warmer" i.e. distorted.
Audiophiles are idiots and they are nothing more stupid people with too much money to spend on stuff that is he electrical/audio equivalent of placebos. In psycho-acoustic terms, if you think it sounds better, then it sounds better. If you are gonna pay $7000 for a cable set and $1000 on your turntable, you have a vested interest in the sound of your system sounding better, so it will. (to you)
Maybe I shouldn't argue with Audiophiles, maybe I should sell them "oxygen free" copper cables at $250 a foot.
I sometimes feel that this whole thing has got to have nothing to do with actual pirating. Every study has shown has indicated that people who share and download music are more likely to buy the music they like.
I don't believe the motivation, and I have a real tin foil worry in that it *isn't* about money, it is about control. If the public are unable to archive media, then only the official owners of the media may keep it. History is a LOT easier to re-write when no one can produce conflicting details because it can't be used anymore because the DRM scheme is obsolete and unsupported, or that "sharing" any such information is a violation of law that will cost you everything you own.
We need to ensure that citizens NOT F*&&KING "Consumers" are protected and REAL history and news is preserved.
How is giving away vaccinations profitable or anti-competitive?
Look very carefully in to the business dealings Microsoft has with the governments or local industries. We all know that charitable contributions to 3rd world nations are just concealed bribes. Yea, maybe a third gets there to prove the charity was legitimate, but most of the money always lines the pockets of the officials.
You were okay until you dragged the Gates foundations into it.
What do you think the Gates foundation is? Nothing more than a "charity" to provide altruistic seeming bribes to governments when Microsoft is being challenged. Trust me, the foundation is nothing more than a tool of the "robber baron" Gates. A separate and "independent" institution that can funnel funds which would be illegal or damaging for Microsoft to do publicly.
The foundation may, occasionally, do something that seems altruistic, but every "front" for illegal activity still has to conduct legal commerce to establish legitimacy, the gates foundation is no different, it has to do some actual charity work to hide its true purpose.
Look carefully at the business dealings in the nations in which the Gates foundation contributes and look at the nature of the contributions and the overall results of Microsoft's business dealings.
Lastly, the Gates foundation is taking money essentially stolen from end-user's by Microsoft's illegal maintenance of their monopoly. Most everyone who uses a personal computer contributes in some way to Microsoft's bottom line BECAUSE of their illegal activity. Now, to turn that stolen money over to a charity to absolve guilt and improve public opinion is disgusting.
I was looking at developing software for an innovative pen-based computer system named go!. It was cool, it was radically different, and when they started lining up real interest, suddenly Microsoft had "Pen Windows!" Support dropped away like autumn leaves. How could someone competing with Microsoft succeed? My bet is that Microsoft is making lots of noise saying that XP will be on the XO, and use that as a stalling method. Governments and institutions will wait for Windows XO, before buying the XO, thus depriving the OLPC non-profit for income to "break even" and continue operation. They have to make some money, right? Otherwise they'd give it away for free. Nothing Microsoft or the Gates Foundation does is for the common good. It is alway for profitable or anti-competitive. Always. Never forget that. I have been in this industry too long and I have seen too many things for anyone to convince me otherwise.
Intel is no different than Microsoft, does anyone remember Zylog? Intel will do to chip makers what Microsoft will do to software makers.
I can't say AMD is more ethical, but it is at least a counterpoint to the Intel near monopoly of P.C. CPUs.
And more usable for the majority of other users.
Prove it. I don't believe the premise. You have to show that the Mac can't be what it is on X11, and you can't do that because X11 can support the Mac desktop. How is a Mac *more* usable with the removal of X11 features?
Make no mistake, apple is pulling a Microsoft here, obscuring the API so that programs written for the mac are difficult to port to other platforms.
Remember that whenever we're talking about this kind of stuff, the statement is what makes it more or less usable for you.
I appreciate your zeal in defending the Mac, it is fully expected. Regardless, a valuable and useful functionality was eliminated from the UNIX platform and despite what you wish to argue, it makes the Mac unusable for a number of users.
I believe I read that when it was posted. I don't know if you are a software engineer or not, but the list sounds like a "why I don't want to do it" list rather than "Why it can't be done" list.
If you look at beryl (sp?) ask yourself, could they not implement any of the Mac interface on it These all sound like, well I wouldn't say trivial, but manageable extensions to X11.
Hey, it was Apples decision not to use X11, and it is my opinion that, for the reasons previously stated, it makes the whole system less usable.
It is not as flexible because X11 didn't have the capabilities Apple wanted,
X11 is fully extensible, so this is a flawed premise.
tacking them on would have removed the flexibility of X11
Have you seen the stuff GNOME and KDE are doing with X11? I can't imagine Apple having a problem implementing Tiger on it.
Sometimes you just have to leave the old tech behind in order to move forward
This is sometime true, but less often true than claimed. Those darned transistors. That damned wheel thing. Mac's UI has no features that exclude X11. It is a vendor lock-in strategy. Vendor lock-in is often sold as an innovation.
If I want to run iTunes on my laptop and display it on my desktop, why can't I?
Because the Mac UI is not made for networking. It is made for GPU accelerated, multi-layer composited local display. Apple decided not to go the X11 route because it wouldn't look much like X11 once all the extra features they planned were in it, making it not compatible with any other X11 system, thus blowing the point of having X11 in the first place.
Exactly. It isn't as usable as X11. It doesn't have the flexibility or the capability. It forces user's to do things the way Apple decides, not they way they decide.
That's true. You have to use Apple's remoting software for remote graphical administration. But most of Apple's configuration can actually be done through the shell. For example, you have to use the shell if you want access to the more advanced power management settings. Thus, a terminal session should give you what you need.
You Mac people seem so obtuse it is frustrating having a conversation. You're worse than Windows zealots, you simply have a better platform.
What part of "Mac UI is not X and thus limited to the local machine" don't you get? I don't want to have to kobble together some solution. If I want to run iTunes on my laptop and display it on my desktop, why can't I? If I want to run Safari the same way, why can't I? Why can't I copy and paste between the two systems?
With Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, NetBSD, and etc. using X11 I can run a program on any system and display it on any other system. I can use X2X and make a virtual desktop across the systems.
Mac is just too limited.
I don't have a Mac hatred. Like I said, my wife and son, as well as my mom has all Macs. I bought them for them. The issues I have with Mac is that I'm spoiled with Linux. Both Mac and Windows come from a proprietary "lock-in" environment and to do anything will nickel and dime you to death, or force you to search for open source apps that build on Windows or Mac.
With Kubuntu, I just open adept, find the app that I want, select it, and press apply. Violla! it works.
Secondly, to me, Mac isn't usable. Its GUI is not based on X11. This means that while I may be able to display external application in a crippled X11 window, I simply can not run Mac applications remotely on other machines. I actually do this a lot.
The Mac is fine for people who's work habits fit into what Apple's usability gurus this is good, but if you want to do something different, it gets in your way. If I can say one thing about Linux, is that it tries to get out of your way. Neither Windows nor Mac make it easy for you to be different.
Yes, yes, I know that *have* X11 that runs on the Mac, but the Mac does not run on X11, so the example of running the Mac control panel applet on a separate machine still is an issue.
My wife and son have Macs. I use Linux, I tell you, there is so much more you can do with Linux than you can with Windows or Macintosh. I've tried to use their computers but there aren't enough applications available, every time I want to do something I can't find an easy application to do it. Obviously I'm not talking about office applications and stuff like that, but playing media on a mac is painful unless it is directly supported. There is no real choice to play music but on iTunes.
And yes, I know Mac is based on Darwin which is based on FreeBSD, but the UI is not X11 and is thus crap for anything but local display. Try running a Mac's control panel applet on a different system. Oh, sure, maybe you can find a VNC server for it, but good luck.
I will agree that Linux suffers from chaos in the light of so many distros, but freedom and creativity are chaotic.
Lastly, I doubt that Linux on the desktop is less than 1%, from my own experience, I'd bet at least 2%-4% for a number of reasons: computers run longer with Linux so a computer off "their" radar as unusably old may still be in use with Linux. Many Windows P.C.s become Linux boxes right away or over time, this creates a double error: a missed count for Linux and false count for Windows. Lastly, you download Linux, there is no financial transaction to track installations.
Oh the stories I could tell about various open source projects I've worked with. This isn't a good or bad thing, just "Open Source."
The difference between open source and proprietary code is that "open source" (at least of yore) is built by passionate and driven people while closed source gets built by who get paid. It takes a lot of drive and passion to work on things that don't pay. You do it for ego, you do it for creative release, you do it for personal reasons, thus the work you do is personal.
This Zed guy is just caught in the middle of some ego battles and bad personalities, and he has is own issues as well to boot. Any slashdotters free of this may cast the first stone.
My advice to the Zed guy, take a chill pill, Zen out a bit, and clean up the rant but keep the criticism, its important.
Well, unless it was an operating system problem and not bad data or bad programming, what's the point in mentioning that other than childish bashing?
In an isolated discussion, your comment makes complete sense, but in reality Windows is really at fault here, and if it isn't, we are merely applying blame based on probability. You can say it is a problem with "this" or "that," but in the end, these sorts of things are very common on Windows and that leaves me frequently wondering why these sorts of things are always happening on Windows.
Similarly, it is like MySQL. Sure, a *bad* programmer may do something wrong, and get a "cannot access database" message, but in my surfing experience, it is typically MySQL.
So, be it programmer error, OS error, there MUST be something inherent in Windows that makes this stuff common. Its too easy to dismiss it as something else, sooner or later you have to look at the lowest common denominator, and that is the Windows platform.
The sad part about your post is that you are missing the point completely. You may not feel the need nor want to accept that we are all public figures in this day and age, but facts do not very much care for what people feel or want.
In the days of internet, cell phone cameras, virtually every public action or reference being searchable, everyone has an internet presence whether they want it or not. It just *is*. We may not want locks on our doors, but it is ridiculous to assume that we don't need them.
The facts of life, as we live today is that we need to manage our public image. In a sense, we've always had to do it in a small way with our neighbors, friends, and family, but today, our public image is viewable world wide via the internet.
While I think there should be complete separation between what you do for a living and what you do privately for fun, that separation is an ideal that has never really existed. There are valid arguments on both sides of the discussion, societal trends will change over time as well. Discretion has always been a valuable quality.
That being said, everyone of us is a famous public figure on the internet. Our "public" image needs to be "crafted" and managed. Your "public" statements need to be well considered and support the positions you wish to define yourself. The stuff you would be embarrassed to have as public knowledge or considered by your employer or customer should be done fairly anonymously.
Here's the most important part: make sure you have a "good" public searchable persona and use multiple various hotmail accounts when you are going to say something that is going to cause trouble.
Remember, the technology that allows "them" to find you, also allows you to hide from them. Just make sure you do.