that's true, but I wasn't actually suggesting that he use system 9 just that people still used it because they were so comfortable with it. OS X would be better, as you suggest it has better support.
"When we (and by we, I mean the linux community) hit a larger portion of user base, say 10% of desktop market (if that will ever happen) linux is going to be well known, and I don't mean that just by the name, but people will actually from time to time use a computer that has linux installed."
No 1) How do you plan to gain a 10% market share in the desktop market? Advertising? If there isn't serious bucks behind it, it isn't going to happen.
And then people will ask the obvious question: norm: So This linux thing, its like windows? advocate: well yeah, kinda, but better. and free! norm: So where do I get it? advocate: well actually there are few different distros you might wanna try. norm: Er... what's a distro. isn't linux, like, the operating system? advocate: yeah, but, er... Well some versions of linux are easier to use than others. Some are made specially for new users to help them switch over. norm: why aren't they all equally easy to use, they're all linux aren't they? advocate: well some versions of linux have been made for people who are very technically knowledgeable and want to get the most out of their system. norm: Oh, you mean "power users". I heard mac os x is for power users and kinda like linux. But I've used it and it seems pretty simple. Why can't linux be simple & powerful?.... sound of advocate smashing window, commando rolling out into the road, commandeering a vehicle and driving off (hitting a few trashcans...
(sorry got a bit carried away there)
"no household will pay $$$ for an operating system if they know one that's usable for free. Not to mention the applications."
I'm sorry that statement couldn't be further from the truth. People pay for products because it gives them a sense of protection. Whether that is true is another matter, but people will always look at the guy standing on the street corner giving out linux CDs suspiciously.
Companies have agendas. Apple makes a great deal of money out of hardware, you expect them to suddenly gain a saints halo and rewrite os x to work on an PC?
I assume that you have had the pleasure of using Apple hardware. You realize that the quality of mac hardware is without comparison. Whether old or new mac hardware the build is beyond excellent and that is important to some people. To me it's important as I suggested my Mum get a Macbook as she is about to start an art degree. Why did I suggest a Macbook over say an Acer laptop, which for the same money would have bells and whistles coming out of it's ass? Customer support, and peace of mind for me and my Mum.
I know that the chances of anything going wrong with either the software or hardware are low. I also know that even though I don't live near her if anything goes wrong with her machine she can take it straight to a mac shop and get proper help.
If you don't have the balls to admit there is plenty of great software out there you can pay for, then you are completely shutdown to any kind of decent conversation. I happen to use two pieces in my daily work, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Adobe have proven again and again that they can produce timeful, feature filled graphics software. That's why Photoshop is the industry standard for print, screen and many other mediums.
Now of course, someone will pipe in and mention The Gimp. I have experience with the Gimp too, it's a great program but I have been using photoshop since version 5. I am too experienced with it to even think of switching. More than anything else though, I have no compelling reason to switch. It doesn't rub me up the wrong having to fork out money for a wonderful program.
All I have to say to that is bootcamp. Considering people have already even got Vista to run on bootcamp, it hardly seems like Apple is forcing you into an OS lock in.
Apple isn't worse in lots of ways, they are better in most ways, specially for the end user who doesn't have to or want to deal with ideological consequences of choosing FOSS or proprietary alternatives.
The cynics will always remain cynical, I'm not going to change anyones mind here. However for anyone who advocates alternative FOSS they need to realize that there are thousands of companies out there who write superb proprietary software out there that still runs great on your machine, and every developer whether writing open source software or otherwise has an agenda, whether it's earning a crumb or promoting their opinions.
Meet the new fiery Linux advocate, same as the old fiery Linux advocate......and just as annoying as apple fanboys!
this isn't necessarily a bad thing. While Linux advocates are a fiery lot they will probably agree that users switching to osx is better than users staying with windows.
Having had experience of hardware support for both osx and linux I would agree with your friends description. However it goes far beyond hardware support. I think it comes down in the end to an OS that has been designed by people aware of users needs and who are aware of how to meet them. While the KDE and Gnome user interfaces are always being updated (for instance) to be more friendly and useful they are left coughing in the dirt by the side of the road by osx. To get a little bit dirty, osx is sex onna stick, a mecca of user friendliness.
I would recommend this too, my experience has been the same as tverbeek. I have some old friends who are not at all technologically inclined but they feel entirely comfortable on their old imacs (running system 9 actually!) and there is absolutely no reason for them to upgrade. I always find the simplest solution introduces the least possible problematic outcomes.
I'm not American so I do not know much about the American justice system but to me it seems that up until now large companies such as the RIAA have been leveraging their vast financial resources to threaten individuals they are suing into settling out of court etc?
I guess what I am saying is that I don't hear about so many cases when individuals can or do sue large companies because financially it is impossible for private citizens to compete with multinationals. I also personally would feel very uncomfortable for instance trying to to go up against a multinational chemical/weapons/pharmaceutical companies, if you know what I mean. I would have to have a strong belief in what I was doing.
So to summarize, even with powers of discovery, surely individuals unless extremely rich (the majority of individuals the RIAA sue are likely not to be) will not be in a position to expedite a reasonable investigation that leverages those powers. That assumes also that the company that has for instance been dumping aforementioned chemicals into waters has been squeeky clean about recording these things.
this is hardly insightful. facebook is a closed community and as such there are certain requirements to joining it, such as already being part of a given community. There is also an expected certain level of privacy, as is explained in the letter written by Mark Zuckerberg.
If a site advertises a certain level of privacy and fails to provide it, that's bad, but it's something the guys at facebook are trying to fix. However you cannot simply say "boohoo you put your info on the net, suck it down". These people put their information on the web expecting its privacy. that isn't unreasonable.
funny because this uneducated person happens to have a degree in english literature. shazam motherfucker.
This post is the hallmarks of anon coward reading previous post, taking one thing OP said and generalizing based on on it. I mentioned that that Kyd's ur-Hamlet was based on Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, in which Grammaticus writes of Hamlet or Amleth. However his sources were never discovered so it was likely that the tale was past down through story telling. I mentioned this as an example, and happened to refer to the original story of Hamlet as being based on legend, as it may well be.
You seem to have quite misunderstood what I meant. Let me explain in a simpler way.
Literature is constituent of narratives. These narratives can be discovered and explored through the use of literary tools such as psychoanalytics, which is important to what I was saying. It can be suggested that characters tend towards archetypes in narratives, because as Jung suggests there is a collective unconscious which consists of archetypes which describe how we see the world; This is reflected in literary work and means that we can identify character roles and story meanings by applying literary theory.
It all depends on whether you think it possible to deconstruct a text into it's constituent parts and analyse its protagonists. I know that it is possible and I understand how to do it.
To me there is a commonality between different ages of mankind, and even though stories and characters are updated to reflect social changes they still reflect the same basic set of ideas that do not change, and reflect our basic needs and desires as humans.
sorry that was a typo. should read every 6 months. I generally do it because there are plenty of patches to slipstream into the install.
Dude, next time you want to post something as angry as this take a few moments and calm down, maybe breath into a paper bag.
no.1)
I generate a new CD every now and then (6 months give or take) because I enjoy doing so in my spare time. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. I apologize humbly for this.
no.2)
Your snide attitude towards someone you don't know is what drives me nuts mate. I've been using Macs all my life. I have a mac-mini set up as a media machine in my living room, I had a G4 Graphite and a Performa before that. I do the necessary work to maintain it when there is need. Fortunately because of the way macs work I need to do less work, less often. howz about that. Macs take less work to maintain than PCs. I also have a laptop running Ubuntu.
Like I said, take a few moments to think about what you post before you post it. I run three different OS on three different computers. I am intimately aware of the necessary maintenance and care that each OS with its different foibles needs.
no.3)
Just because an OS is sturdy doesn't mean you should test it to its limit. Backup and maintenance are common sense whichever platform you are on. Each OS as I have said requires a different approach to maintenance. Windows is the most intensive to maintain, but you know what I am still happy to do so. Why? Because at the end of the day I have a stable, functional OS which I can work in, and which suits my taste.
you assume I am putting up with these things, however I can say there is no bloat, there is no poor paging and my computer boots just fine!
Also windows is hardly a pain in the ass to reinstall for me if it came down to it. I generally create a new install CD every month that integrates patches, driver updates and the programs that are a necessity to me. I also keep an image of my machine on a second hard drive. If everything were to go tits up then I would re-image my machine or install from the DVD with integrated patches, driver support and the programs I wanted up and running.
If you don't know anything about slipstreaming windows installs then that's because you haven't been paying attention. Drive imaging on the other hand is an easy process that can be done in either windows or linux, so if you aren't aware of that you really *are* missing out.
I frequently install/uninstall stuff, but I do the necessary system upkeep which most people don't perform. The more you look after your system, the more it looks after you.
Its nice knowing your system will do what you want it to, when you want it to; and more importantly not do what you don't want it to, when it wants to! I can say that in my experience my system does very little that I don't specify and don't want. Do I have a unique experience in this? No. However the most vocal of users are generally those who have a problem or are annoyed because things aren't working when they should be.
I never suggested that this happened a lot in my experience, but that it does happen. It also happens when I work on my laptop running Ubuntu, should I start making sarcastic comments about linux? It's very rare that programs do crash, and the ones that do are usually ports from linux or in beta. beta software being buggy, who wudda thunk it.
Also I very rarely have to reboot because of 3rd party app problems, I generally just ctrl+alt+del to sysinternals excellent free process explorer and kill the offending program.
Before replying, read what someone says before putting words in their mouth.
OK, I've been running windows XP without reinstalling it for over 3 years. In that time the only reason I've seen it crash is problems with 3rd party apps going haywire.
If you're going to bash Vista, bash it on something more interesting and true like for instance DRM issues. Windows bashing might be a past time on slashdot, but you would think by now people would have refined their techniques beyond "Windoze is teh crashering thing, shnarf!".
I would be wary of classifying a game based on graphics. A puzzle game whether it's 2D, 2.5D or 3D is still a puzzle game. From my perspective the content of the game, not it's presentation is the important factor.
The essential question is whether people want definitive genres or want less accurate, more ambiguous ones.
it's said in literature there are really only a few stories and that they are retold over and over, take for instance Shakespeares Hamlet which actually wasn't his Hamlet but based on an earlier story ur-hamlet which itself was based on legends etc etc. It's also said that they are actually only a few types of identifiable characters in fiction, e.g. The Fool or The Knight &so on, I can't remember more. The idea is that when you get down to it all characters can be boiled down into this set.
If you can disambiguate literature into its components there is no reason this cannot be applied to games. Games are another kind of story telling and so the same rule apply.
of substance abuse, or rather the use of dangerous substances for purposes of medicine, cosmetics and even polishing hats, should I trust nanotechnology based on the evidence that we will stick the stupidest things on and in our bodies?
the sony ps3 stopped being funny a while ago and is now in the hideous car wreck category you just can't help watching as it slowly wraps itself round a lamp-post.
People will talk with their wallets though, i hope to see the ps3 stillborn.
I remember the Wired articles, they were 100% pumped. They were so excited their brains were melting out of their ears. They wrote massive articles about IT even though they didn't know what *IT* was. Famous tech figures were crawling out of the cracks to say IT was the most amazing thing ever created, and that our lives would be changed. Needless to say the infection caught me, and I ended up being thoroughly disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
that's true, but I wasn't actually suggesting that he use system 9 just that people still used it because they were so comfortable with it. OS X would be better, as you suggest it has better support.
"When we (and by we, I mean the linux community) hit a larger portion of user base, say 10% of desktop market (if that will ever happen) linux is going to be well known, and I don't mean that just by the name, but people will actually from time to time use a computer that has linux installed."
.... sound of advocate smashing window, commando rolling out into the road, commandeering a vehicle and driving off (hitting a few trashcans...
No 1) How do you plan to gain a 10% market share in the desktop market? Advertising? If there isn't serious bucks behind it, it isn't going to happen.
And then people will ask the obvious question:
norm: So This linux thing, its like windows?
advocate: well yeah, kinda, but better. and free!
norm: So where do I get it?
advocate: well actually there are few different distros you might wanna try.
norm: Er... what's a distro. isn't linux, like, the operating system?
advocate: yeah, but, er... Well some versions of linux are easier to use than others. Some are made specially for new users to help them switch over.
norm: why aren't they all equally easy to use, they're all linux aren't they?
advocate: well some versions of linux have been made for people who are very technically knowledgeable and want to get the most out of their system.
norm: Oh, you mean "power users". I heard mac os x is for power users and kinda like linux. But I've used it and it seems pretty simple. Why can't linux be simple & powerful?
(sorry got a bit carried away there)
"no household will pay $$$ for an operating system if they know one that's usable for free. Not to mention the applications."
I'm sorry that statement couldn't be further from the truth. People pay for products because it gives them a sense of protection. Whether that is true is another matter, but people will always look at the guy standing on the street corner giving out linux CDs suspiciously.
Companies have agendas. Apple makes a great deal of money out of hardware, you expect them to suddenly gain a saints halo and rewrite os x to work on an PC?
I assume that you have had the pleasure of using Apple hardware. You realize that the quality of mac hardware is without comparison. Whether old or new mac hardware the build is beyond excellent and that is important to some people. To me it's important as I suggested my Mum get a Macbook as she is about to start an art degree. Why did I suggest a Macbook over say an Acer laptop, which for the same money would have bells and whistles coming out of it's ass? Customer support, and peace of mind for me and my Mum.
I know that the chances of anything going wrong with either the software or hardware are low. I also know that even though I don't live near her if anything goes wrong with her machine she can take it straight to a mac shop and get proper help.
If you don't have the balls to admit there is plenty of great software out there you can pay for, then you are completely shutdown to any kind of decent conversation. I happen to use two pieces in my daily work, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Adobe have proven again and again that they can produce timeful, feature filled graphics software. That's why Photoshop is the industry standard for print, screen and many other mediums.
Now of course, someone will pipe in and mention The Gimp. I have experience with the Gimp too, it's a great program but I have been using photoshop since version 5. I am too experienced with it to even think of switching. More than anything else though, I have no compelling reason to switch. It doesn't rub me up the wrong having to fork out money for a wonderful program.
All I have to say to that is bootcamp. Considering people have already even got Vista to run on bootcamp, it hardly seems like Apple is forcing you into an OS lock in.
...and just as annoying as apple fanboys!
Apple isn't worse in lots of ways, they are better in most ways, specially for the end user who doesn't have to or want to deal with ideological consequences of choosing FOSS or proprietary alternatives.
The cynics will always remain cynical, I'm not going to change anyones mind here. However for anyone who advocates alternative FOSS they need to realize that there are thousands of companies out there who write superb proprietary software out there that still runs great on your machine, and every developer whether writing open source software or otherwise has an agenda, whether it's earning a crumb or promoting their opinions.
Meet the new fiery Linux advocate, same as the old fiery Linux advocate...
this isn't necessarily a bad thing. While Linux advocates are a fiery lot they will probably agree that users switching to osx is better than users staying with windows.
Having had experience of hardware support for both osx and linux I would agree with your friends description. However it goes far beyond hardware support. I think it comes down in the end to an OS that has been designed by people aware of users needs and who are aware of how to meet them. While the KDE and Gnome user interfaces are always being updated (for instance) to be more friendly and useful they are left coughing in the dirt by the side of the road by osx. To get a little bit dirty, osx is sex onna stick, a mecca of user friendliness.
I would recommend this too, my experience has been the same as tverbeek. I have some old friends who are not at all technologically inclined but they feel entirely comfortable on their old imacs (running system 9 actually!) and there is absolutely no reason for them to upgrade. I always find the simplest solution introduces the least possible problematic outcomes.
I'm not American so I do not know much about the American justice system but to me it seems that up until now large companies such as the RIAA have been leveraging their vast financial resources to threaten individuals they are suing into settling out of court etc?
I guess what I am saying is that I don't hear about so many cases when individuals can or do sue large companies because financially it is impossible for private citizens to compete with multinationals. I also personally would feel very uncomfortable for instance trying to to go up against a multinational chemical/weapons/pharmaceutical companies, if you know what I mean. I would have to have a strong belief in what I was doing.
So to summarize, even with powers of discovery, surely individuals unless extremely rich (the majority of individuals the RIAA sue are likely not to be) will not be in a position to expedite a reasonable investigation that leverages those powers. That assumes also that the company that has for instance been dumping aforementioned chemicals into waters has been squeeky clean about recording these things.
It's.... Not... Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa an's show!
this is hardly insightful. facebook is a closed community and as such there are certain requirements to joining it, such as already being part of a given community. There is also an expected certain level of privacy, as is explained in the letter written by Mark Zuckerberg.
If a site advertises a certain level of privacy and fails to provide it, that's bad, but it's something the guys at facebook are trying to fix. However you cannot simply say "boohoo you put your info on the net, suck it down". These people put their information on the web expecting its privacy. that isn't unreasonable.
second Tuesday of each month.
coincidently Next time an MS security patch is late, expect 'dog-ate-my-homework' related explanations in the patch notes.
funny because this uneducated person happens to have a degree in english literature. shazam motherfucker.
This post is the hallmarks of anon coward reading previous post, taking one thing OP said and generalizing based on on it. I mentioned that that Kyd's ur-Hamlet was based on Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, in which Grammaticus writes of Hamlet or Amleth. However his sources were never discovered so it was likely that the tale was past down through story telling. I mentioned this as an example, and happened to refer to the original story of Hamlet as being based on legend, as it may well be.
You seem to have quite misunderstood what I meant. Let me explain in a simpler way.
Literature is constituent of narratives. These narratives can be discovered and explored through the use of literary tools such as psychoanalytics, which is important to what I was saying. It can be suggested that characters tend towards archetypes in narratives, because as Jung suggests there is a collective unconscious which consists of archetypes which describe how we see the world; This is reflected in literary work and means that we can identify character roles and story meanings by applying literary theory.
It all depends on whether you think it possible to deconstruct a text into it's constituent parts and analyse its protagonists. I know that it is possible and I understand how to do it.
To me there is a commonality between different ages of mankind, and even though stories and characters are updated to reflect social changes they still reflect the same basic set of ideas that do not change, and reflect our basic needs and desires as humans.
sorry that was a typo. should read every 6 months. I generally do it because there are plenty of patches to slipstream into the install.
Dude, next time you want to post something as angry as this take a few moments and calm down, maybe breath into a paper bag.
no.1)
I generate a new CD every now and then (6 months give or take) because I enjoy doing so in my spare time. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. I apologize humbly for this.
no.2)
Your snide attitude towards someone you don't know is what drives me nuts mate. I've been using Macs all my life. I have a mac-mini set up as a media machine in my living room, I had a G4 Graphite and a Performa before that. I do the necessary work to maintain it when there is need. Fortunately because of the way macs work I need to do less work, less often. howz about that. Macs take less work to maintain than PCs. I also have a laptop running Ubuntu.
Like I said, take a few moments to think about what you post before you post it. I run three different OS on three different computers. I am intimately aware of the necessary maintenance and care that each OS with its different foibles needs.
no.3)
Just because an OS is sturdy doesn't mean you should test it to its limit. Backup and maintenance are common sense whichever platform you are on. Each OS as I have said requires a different approach to maintenance. Windows is the most intensive to maintain, but you know what I am still happy to do so. Why? Because at the end of the day I have a stable, functional OS which I can work in, and which suits my taste.
I love mac os x. However I hate mac zealots.
Bye
you assume I am putting up with these things, however I can say there is no bloat, there is no poor paging and my computer boots just fine!
Also windows is hardly a pain in the ass to reinstall for me if it came down to it. I generally create a new install CD every month that integrates patches, driver updates and the programs that are a necessity to me. I also keep an image of my machine on a second hard drive. If everything were to go tits up then I would re-image my machine or install from the DVD with integrated patches, driver support and the programs I wanted up and running.
If you don't know anything about slipstreaming windows installs then that's because you haven't been paying attention. Drive imaging on the other hand is an easy process that can be done in either windows or linux, so if you aren't aware of that you really *are* missing out.
I frequently install/uninstall stuff, but I do the necessary system upkeep which most people don't perform. The more you look after your system, the more it looks after you.
Its nice knowing your system will do what you want it to, when you want it to; and more importantly not do what you don't want it to, when it wants to! I can say that in my experience my system does very little that I don't specify and don't want. Do I have a unique experience in this? No. However the most vocal of users are generally those who have a problem or are annoyed because things aren't working when they should be.
I never suggested that this happened a lot in my experience, but that it does happen. It also happens when I work on my laptop running Ubuntu, should I start making sarcastic comments about linux? It's very rare that programs do crash, and the ones that do are usually ports from linux or in beta. beta software being buggy, who wudda thunk it.
Also I very rarely have to reboot because of 3rd party app problems, I generally just ctrl+alt+del to sysinternals excellent free process explorer and kill the offending program.
Before replying, read what someone says before putting words in their mouth.
OK, I've been running windows XP without reinstalling it for over 3 years. In that time the only reason I've seen it crash is problems with 3rd party apps going haywire.
If you're going to bash Vista, bash it on something more interesting and true like for instance DRM issues. Windows bashing might be a past time on slashdot, but you would think by now people would have refined their techniques beyond "Windoze is teh crashering thing, shnarf!".
I would be wary of classifying a game based on graphics. A puzzle game whether it's 2D, 2.5D or 3D is still a puzzle game. From my perspective the content of the game, not it's presentation is the important factor.
The essential question is whether people want definitive genres or want less accurate, more ambiguous ones.
it's said in literature there are really only a few stories and that they are retold over and over, take for instance Shakespeares Hamlet which actually wasn't his Hamlet but based on an earlier story ur-hamlet which itself was based on legends etc etc. It's also said that they are actually only a few types of identifiable characters in fiction, e.g. The Fool or The Knight &so on, I can't remember more. The idea is that when you get down to it all characters can be boiled down into this set.
If you can disambiguate literature into its components there is no reason this cannot be applied to games. Games are another kind of story telling and so the same rule apply.
of substance abuse, or rather the use of dangerous substances for purposes of medicine, cosmetics and even polishing hats, should I trust nanotechnology based on the evidence that we will stick the stupidest things on and in our bodies?
ooooh splintery
the sony ps3 stopped being funny a while ago and is now in the hideous car wreck category you just can't help watching as it slowly wraps itself round a lamp-post.
People will talk with their wallets though, i hope to see the ps3 stillborn.
I remember the Wired articles, they were 100% pumped. They were so excited their brains were melting out of their ears. They wrote massive articles about IT even though they didn't know what *IT* was. Famous tech figures were crawling out of the cracks to say IT was the most amazing thing ever created, and that our lives would be changed. Needless to say the infection caught me, and I ended up being thoroughly disappointed.
the mighty boosh is a marmite of comedies, people either hate it or love it. glad to hear you enjoy black books, a fine fine programme!
same goes for third party web apps, but are you telling everyone who uses slashcode to drop it and roll their own?
if its quack echoes then it *is* a duck, otherwise it's time to make like a tree and go.