I'll bet Apple would like to experiment with video iPods, and they could probably design a revolutionary device if they thought they could take it to market. However, the current copyright regime in the US makes it nearly impossible, and it's only going to get worse.
Imagine being able to have one-click DVD ripping to your video pod and unrestricted TV show archiving (with commercials edited out) via your EyeTV or Tivo. There's no technological reason this can't happen, but the media companies will fight it tooth and nail. They'll fight it with legislation, bullying, and threats; not by competing in the marketplace.
The fact that there are so many video codecs to support, and most of them are patent-encumbered, makes the situation even worse.
Yahoo's engineers and marketers have already had their first stab at ruining Flickr, the wonderful photo-sharing website. The simple, friendly, three-question signup that worked so well before has been turned into a ghastly Yahoo ID signup process that includes the usual corporate interrogation and other goofiness spread across multiple pages and redirects.
Just wait till the rest of Flickr gets the Yahoo treatment.
I live in Japan, and I've seen no bans on camera phones in magazine stores or elsewhere. Every single Japanese person owns one and takes it everywhere.
What's more, it's common practice for people here to go to the book store or magazine rack and just stand there reading the magazines without buying them.:)
I too had this problem with my parents' Dell machine. It could read files off my Linux box, my old Win98 machine, and my Mac; but it locked up during any file transfer and had to be rebooted.
Well, for one thing, the Gimp has lousy colour support. No CMYK, no spot channels, and does it even yet colour profiles yet?
The tools don't work as well as they should. I tried once to do some simple selections, fill them, and add some blur. Gaussian blur didn't work with partial alpha transparency correctly at all. I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted to do.
The Gimp does not have a usable workflow. It's hard to explain unless you're a designer, but you need to have certain tools work in a certain way to connect all the steps in making a design.
Apple isn't just going to Intel for CPUs. Intel has all kinds of other chips and technologies, and at last they have a PC-making partner that will actually use cutting-edge stuff.
And don't forget EFI. I doubt Apple's going to want a crufty old BIOS designed for 8086 machines. Intel has been working on superior alternatives to BIOS (although perhaps not as good as OpenFirmware, but still...).
Speaking of Pages, I really like the simple interface. The floating palette lets you find everything quickly, and the fact that a window is a document (thanks to OS X's document-oriented interface) helps make it clean and easy to use. There's very little clutter.
If I were to design any complex Cocoa application, I'd do it like Pages.
"Just how does a measure like this restrict free speech? Kids are no longer allowed to purchase violent video games, yet this does not make the sale or manufacture of such games illegal."
People who say this law restricts free speech are on the right track, but citing the wrong reason.
The law is wrong because it is yet another restriction on free enterprise - the right of free human beings to buy and sell their own property. The sale of a videogame is a contract between the seller, the buyer, and the buyer's guardians if the buyer is a child. The transaction doesn't involve the state at all, so the state shouldn't interfere. Moreover, once the state gets its foot in the door, it has an excuse to begin monitoring and auditing sales, assess "fines" if it needs more money, and even add political or religious censorship down the line.
It's up to parents to monitor their children's purchases, and competent parents can do it already just fine without extra laws.
"Sure kids might still be able to get such games, but it's better than no law at all."
No, a stupid law is *always* worse than no law at all. It's simply another way of using force to make regular folks' lives more difficult. The politicians instituting the law aren't doing it out of benevolence; they're doing it to further their own careers, to get some photos of themselves in the paper, to provide more work for their pals in the bureaucracy, and to further the general growth and intrusion of the California government.
True. You could consider the Arabs, Turkomans and Kurds to all be separate currently-not-sovereign nations. You could break down the Arab regions even more.
Well, next time I'm discussing Yahoo with a fellow bushman in the Khoi language, I'll be sure to included my exclamation letters and make the appropriate clicking sounds.:)
I agree completely. Exclamation points are typographical symbols, not letters you can use in an English word. Punctuation symbols are governed by linguistic convention, not by trademark registrations. The exclamation point may be part of Yahoo's logo, but it's not part of their name any more than red capitalized letters are. I certainly make no attempt to pronounce it when I speak.
Blu-Ray recorders are little more than expensive novelty items until the format is completely standardized, playback devices are on the market, and people can buy Blu-Ray movies. That'll be a while yet.
" If they're smart enough to know about high definition TVs and DVDs, 'HD DVD' is not a tough concept to grasp."
You just proved my point. The majority of consumers who've bought TVs in the last 5 years, including my Dad who just dropped big bucks on a huge Sony, had no idea that their new TVs weren't high-definition. They don't even get the difference yet.
Have you noticed how when a movie comes out on DVD, the commercials still say "available now on DVD and Video"? They say Video because the average person never got the hang of the acronym "VHS" and found it easier to refer to those black tapes as videos.
Exactly what is the average clueless appliance buyer's threshold for meaningless acronyms? 5 random letters? 6? Do you, a technology geek, even remember what PCMCIA stands for, or do you just call it a "PC Card"? Exactly.
"...force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs)"
"Force onto their customer? They held me up at gunpoint so I had no choice but to buy from the iTMS?"
Almost. They trick you into buying music, thinking the DRM is just a technical restriction. And then they make decrypting your own data illegal with laws like DMCA. That's where the gunpoint comes in. Does it really matter if they force you to cede control of your own computer by law before or after you purchased the music?
Blu-Ray: has a real name that North American consumers will be able to remember when they go to Blockbuster or Wal-mart.
HD-DVD: has a name consisting of five random letters that no non-geeks will remember. Most people will just call it "DVD" and get it confused with the older format.
Mac users are picky, and that's good; but I think your assessment is inaccurate.
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Are you actually counting out 8 seconds? That seems awfully long. I have two 80 GB drives, and I usually get complete results in 2-3 seconds. I'm using it more and more to find invoices, contact information, and email.
Oh, and the Spotlight search box in "open" dialog boxes is just the greatest thing ever. It saves me so much time just to search for the file I want and have it appear instantly!
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently.
It's finding its uses. It's very good as a data aggregator, sort of an analog for raw information to what RSS is for news. Using the stupidest examples of user-made widgets to represent the essence of the technology is silly.
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
Sure, among the fools-who-make-crap-up demographic. Spotlight indexing is a kernel call that takes virtually no resources and doesn't slow the machine at all.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else.
Sure, uncreative people won't think of using it when they should, and they'll say it has no use.
I find I use it quite frequently. It can take care of almost any repetitive task. Today, I set up an Automator applet that grabs photos from iPhoto, renames them sequentially, resizes them, and puts them in another photo for uploading to eBay. A tedious process that would take 10 minutes on Windows takes about 10 seconds with OS X and Automator. In my humble opinion, it's one of the most remarkable technologies ever added to an OS, and it's almost infinitely extendible with Applescript and custom actions.
Honestly, Vista isn't going to come close to any of this; but I expect Leopard to bring wonderful improvements.
Actually, Safari already has opacity as well, so you can't count that as Gecko-only.
What's more, Safari has implemented multiple background images for single elements. That means divs with custom corners and drop shadows no longer require messy code with extra divs.
It's funny how IE never comes up in a discussion of advanced web technologies.:)
"go threw tens of choices"... "Individuals has invested time in MS Office"... "everyone who enters the Work field know Office"... "Forth Interface"... "Open Offices goal"
A Sixth Problem: Spell-checking and grammar checking don't seem to work properly.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bet Apple would like to experiment with video iPods, and they could probably design a revolutionary device if they thought they could take it to market. However, the current copyright regime in the US makes it nearly impossible, and it's only going to get worse.
Imagine being able to have one-click DVD ripping to your video pod and unrestricted TV show archiving (with commercials edited out) via your EyeTV or Tivo. There's no technological reason this can't happen, but the media companies will fight it tooth and nail. They'll fight it with legislation, bullying, and threats; not by competing in the marketplace.
The fact that there are so many video codecs to support, and most of them are patent-encumbered, makes the situation even worse.
Everyone loses, nobody wins.
I have to add him to my foe list. :)
Yahoo's engineers and marketers have already had their first stab at ruining Flickr, the wonderful photo-sharing website. The simple, friendly, three-question signup that worked so well before has been turned into a ghastly Yahoo ID signup process that includes the usual corporate interrogation and other goofiness spread across multiple pages and redirects.
f rom_human_to_droid_in_a_yahoo_moment.php
Just wait till the rest of Flickr gets the Yahoo treatment.
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/flickr_signup_
I live in Japan, and I've seen no bans on camera phones in magazine stores or elsewhere. Every single Japanese person owns one and takes it everywhere.
:)
What's more, it's common practice for people here to go to the book store or magazine rack and just stand there reading the magazines without buying them.
Mandrake 10 on my computers refused to work with their HP printer-scanner. There was a driver, it just didn't work.
I too had this problem with my parents' Dell machine. It could read files off my Linux box, my old Win98 machine, and my Mac; but it locked up during any file transfer and had to be rebooted.
Well, for one thing, the Gimp has lousy colour support. No CMYK, no spot channels, and does it even yet colour profiles yet?
The tools don't work as well as they should. I tried once to do some simple selections, fill them, and add some blur. Gaussian blur didn't work with partial alpha transparency correctly at all. I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted to do.
The Gimp does not have a usable workflow. It's hard to explain unless you're a designer, but you need to have certain tools work in a certain way to connect all the steps in making a design.
Those are just a few complaints.
Apple isn't just going to Intel for CPUs. Intel has all kinds of other chips and technologies, and at last they have a PC-making partner that will actually use cutting-edge stuff.
... CPUs.
And don't forget EFI. I doubt Apple's going to want a crufty old BIOS designed for 8086 machines. Intel has been working on superior alternatives to BIOS (although perhaps not as good as OpenFirmware, but still...).
AMD makes
"90% of 5-character random passwords using only letters can be generated in fewer than 20 attempts by an adversary"
Presumably, if you tried 5 attempts on 4 different accounts each, you'd still have a 90% chance of getting access to one.
Speaking of Pages, I really like the simple interface. The floating palette lets you find everything quickly, and the fact that a window is a document (thanks to OS X's document-oriented interface) helps make it clean and easy to use. There's very little clutter.
If I were to design any complex Cocoa application, I'd do it like Pages.
"Just how does a measure like this restrict free speech? Kids are no longer allowed to purchase violent video games, yet this does not make the sale or manufacture of such games illegal."
People who say this law restricts free speech are on the right track, but citing the wrong reason.
The law is wrong because it is yet another restriction on free enterprise - the right of free human beings to buy and sell their own property. The sale of a videogame is a contract between the seller, the buyer, and the buyer's guardians if the buyer is a child. The transaction doesn't involve the state at all, so the state shouldn't interfere. Moreover, once the state gets its foot in the door, it has an excuse to begin monitoring and auditing sales, assess "fines" if it needs more money, and even add political or religious censorship down the line.
It's up to parents to monitor their children's purchases, and competent parents can do it already just fine without extra laws.
"Sure kids might still be able to get such games, but it's better than no law at all."
No, a stupid law is *always* worse than no law at all. It's simply another way of using force to make regular folks' lives more difficult. The politicians instituting the law aren't doing it out of benevolence; they're doing it to further their own careers, to get some photos of themselves in the paper, to provide more work for their pals in the bureaucracy, and to further the general growth and intrusion of the California government.
True. You could consider the Arabs, Turkomans and Kurds to all be separate currently-not-sovereign nations. You could break down the Arab regions even more.
More accurately, they were a sovereign nation up until a few years ago, and they are now an occupied nation.
I can't imagine waiting for Gentoo to compile on 30,000 PCs. ;)
Well, next time I'm discussing Yahoo with a fellow bushman in the Khoi language, I'll be sure to included my exclamation letters and make the appropriate clicking sounds. :)
I agree completely. Exclamation points are typographical symbols, not letters you can use in an English word. Punctuation symbols are governed by linguistic convention, not by trademark registrations. The exclamation point may be part of Yahoo's logo, but it's not part of their name any more than red capitalized letters are. I certainly make no attempt to pronounce it when I speak.
Blu-Ray recorders are little more than expensive novelty items until the format is completely standardized, playback devices are on the market, and people can buy Blu-Ray movies. That'll be a while yet.
" If they're smart enough to know about high definition TVs and DVDs, 'HD DVD' is not a tough concept to grasp."
You just proved my point. The majority of consumers who've bought TVs in the last 5 years, including my Dad who just dropped big bucks on a huge Sony, had no idea that their new TVs weren't high-definition. They don't even get the difference yet.
Have you noticed how when a movie comes out on DVD, the commercials still say "available now on DVD and Video"? They say Video because the average person never got the hang of the acronym "VHS" and found it easier to refer to those black tapes as videos.
Exactly what is the average clueless appliance buyer's threshold for meaningless acronyms? 5 random letters? 6? Do you, a technology geek, even remember what PCMCIA stands for, or do you just call it a "PC Card"? Exactly.
"...force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs)"
"Force onto their customer? They held me up at gunpoint so I had no choice but to buy from the iTMS?"
Almost. They trick you into buying music, thinking the DRM is just a technical restriction. And then they make decrypting your own data illegal with laws like DMCA. That's where the gunpoint comes in. Does it really matter if they force you to cede control of your own computer by law before or after you purchased the music?
Perhaps this comparison is just as relevant:
Blu-Ray: has a real name that North American consumers will be able to remember when they go to Blockbuster or Wal-mart.
HD-DVD: has a name consisting of five random letters that no non-geeks will remember. Most people will just call it "DVD" and get it confused with the older format.
Slashdot editors managed to spell "millennium" wrong twice in the same post!
Oh wait, that's not so amazing after all.
Spotlight is really slow on my G4 Powerbook (1GB RAM), it can take 8 seconds to find what I am looking for. I don't see why it should take so long if everything is pre-indexed.
Are you actually counting out 8 seconds? That seems awfully long. I have two 80 GB drives, and I usually get complete results in 2-3 seconds. I'm using it more and more to find invoices, contact information, and email.
Oh, and the Spotlight search box in "open" dialog boxes is just the greatest thing ever. It saves me so much time just to search for the file I want and have it appear instantly!
Dashboard isn't terribly useful either, its a nice gimmick, but I find myself using it very infrequently.
It's finding its uses. It's very good as a data aggregator, sort of an analog for raw information to what RSS is for news. Using the stupidest examples of user-made widgets to represent the essence of the technology is silly.
Both Spotlight and Dashboard have gained reputations for slowing overall machine performance too.
Sure, among the fools-who-make-crap-up demographic. Spotlight indexing is a kernel call that takes virtually no resources and doesn't slow the machine at all.
I have yet to find a use for Automator, and from what I can see from the rather uninspiring selection of Automator Actions people have created, neither has anyone else.
Sure, uncreative people won't think of using it when they should, and they'll say it has no use.
I find I use it quite frequently. It can take care of almost any repetitive task. Today, I set up an Automator applet that grabs photos from iPhoto, renames them sequentially, resizes them, and puts them in another photo for uploading to eBay. A tedious process that would take 10 minutes on Windows takes about 10 seconds with OS X and Automator. In my humble opinion, it's one of the most remarkable technologies ever added to an OS, and it's almost infinitely extendible with Applescript and custom actions.
Honestly, Vista isn't going to come close to any of this; but I expect Leopard to bring wonderful improvements.
My favourite: "Gabber"
More boring possibilities:
Google Chat
Google Messenger
Gtalk
Actually, Safari already has opacity as well, so you can't count that as Gecko-only.
:)
What's more, Safari has implemented multiple background images for single elements. That means divs with custom corners and drop shadows no longer require messy code with extra divs.
It's funny how IE never comes up in a discussion of advanced web technologies.
"go threw tens of choices" ... "Individuals has invested time in MS Office" ... "everyone who enters the Work field know Office" ... "Forth Interface" ... "Open Offices goal"
:)
A Sixth Problem: Spell-checking and grammar checking don't seem to work properly.