"A keyboard with LCDs on each key seems like it would be needlessly expensive."
So have 4 labels under each key and only illuminate one of them with fiber-optic or LED. The Apple laptops already have lights under each key, so just extend that to make them multiple lights-per-key, and individually controllable.
Choosing which 4 keyboards to support is the interesting one of course. If everyone has a particular preference, then whatever you choose will be 'wrong' to most people.
- Dvorak/Qwerty switching for some people
- PC/Mac switching for others
- Language and regional keyboard options
- Options for specific games
- Shift/alt key options...
- 'Multimedia' keys and function keys So just the task of deciding which things to support seem to make it impossible to market...
You could make it all configurable with 7x5 matrix behind each key though... only 3500 LEDs to control (or 3.6 kilopixels as they call it nowadays)
" There is always the possibility that Apple will extend iWork as a replacement for AppleWorks which is a bit long in the tooth now."
If anyone is considering office-software on the Mac, then iWork is definitely something you want to look at. It [Pages] is a decent word processor, loads and saves Word files well enough that you can use them, exports as PDF, and has fairly nice stylesheet support.
There's a demo version pre-installed on all new Macs, and costs £50 (which is only £20 more than StarOffice, albeit without the spreadsheet)
"Yeah, but has it loaded it accurately? Are all the tables in your word processor docs properly formatted? Do the bar charts in your spreadsheet look the same? How about your PowerPoint slides?"
If it's accuracy you want, then you need a document format which is designed to store documents accurately..DOC isn't it. Your documents will look different on every implementation (both of MS-Offfice, OpenOffice, Abiword, and Pages), different on every computer (assuming they don't have identical fonts and screen resolution to you), and in every country (hey, our printer uses A4 yours uses letter)
Even basic things like styles can't be accurate in.DOC -- I've been editing just simple word documents at work, and when you change a word to bold, it suddenly decides to rename the style you're using, update the new style with the bold information, and modify a load of unrelated text. In a randomly changing environment like that, you can't expect accuracy or consistancy from anything.
Personally, I find word processors to be only slightly more useful than plain-text, and a lot more annoying. You can't even accurately cut and paste one part of a document to another before Word decides that it's going to be clever with the stylesheet, and your Title1 becomes just another ListBullet3 because it was too close to the chaos of a Word-special paste operation.
The only good format I can think of offhand for multi-author collaboration of documents with formatting, images, tables, etc is HTML, or perhaps MediaWiki. I've used.DOC enough to know that having more than one person working on a document tends to leave it in an awful state.
Obviously PDF is the gold standard for anything you want to convert accurately between computers, but it's not an editable format. Are there any other word-processor formats which make an attempt to store font information, screen-resolution, etc.?
If anyone reading this wants to know how to install GIMP on a mac:
- Get your original MacOS CD that came with the computer, run the "optional components" program
- Accept a license agreement that isn't LGPL, then select X11 from the list of optional software.
- Then run the GIMP.
A simple google search indicates that nobody actually knows why the version of X11 distributed on the Apple website doesn't work. I stick by the statement that non-experts cannot be expected to install OpenOffice* and GIMP by themselves.
* For example, how do you dowload NeoOffice on a Mac? It doesn't have a download manager, the browser doesn't support resumable downloads, it doesn't have a proper FTP program, so the first time your modem redials, you're stuck with just the first 30MB of NeoOffice and no way to resume it.
"As for the GIMP, http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/ is your friend along with Apple's X11, which is as easy to install as anything else from Apple."
Download and run GIMP installer: "Failed to start: GIMP.app requires X11"
Download and run X11 installer: "You cannot install X11 on this volume: newer software already exists on your computer"
So, Mr. "GIMP on apple is simple enough for idiots", how come it doesn't fucking work?!?
It's preinstalled on all my linux computers, how hard can it be? This is just the same as "RPM hell", except on a brand-new Mac, trying to install basic image-editing software.
So we get to compare the two NEXT's... MacOS X versus GNUStep...
In the white corner: a fast OS with absolutely no configuration options, that runs games, shareware, and commercial software. Free software (GIMP, OpenOffice) is possible with lots of effort if you're an expert.
In the jaggedy-black-and-white corner: a fast OS with absolutely no configuration options, that runs KDE programs, GNOME programs, X programs, and Rox programs. Games (WINE, Crossover) is possible with lots of effort if you're an expert.
I've got both and I don't think there's a clear winner.
"By viewing [and not paying for] the images of exploited children you are creating a demand. Higher demand means more kids life's are ruined to create more pictures."
Yet somehow, downloading commercial music for free doesn't create a demand for the music.
By your argument, anyone who makes illicit copies of Word is forcing Microsoft to continue developing it...
"However, there are many blogs out there written by smart programmers, some with far, far, far more geek cred than PG."
I think this might be an appropriate time to ask for links. I'd be interested if you know a few columns that are better than PGs (as I haven't found many so far)
(And no, Joel Spolsky definitely doesn't count. Although Phil Greenspun might)
"Personally, I find the need to disable more and more RBL's"
Perhaps you could compile a list of the RBLs which are known to list non-spammers. After all, you're only writing a list, so there are no possible consequences of that.
Make it automatic somehow, so that email systems can easily parse your list, dropping support for any RBL listed on your list.
Some RBLs might complain about this, but then (a) you've only got a list, nobody's forcing anyone to use your list, and (b) if they stopped listing non-spammers, then you would remove their list from your list. Possibly. After a few months.
If you wanted, you could block whole groups of RBLs just because one of them put non-spammers on their list. For example, if SPEWS listed non-spammers, you could blacklist all the RBLs operated by people in the same city as SPEWS. Again, there's nothing wrong with that because people are choosing to use your list of lists.
OK. Just because some hackers break into systems, doesn't mean 'hacker' should be used to describe people who break into systems. Just like some footballers have murdered people, but we don't use 'footballer' as a generic term for someone who kills.
You and I might know the 'correct' terms. But the comparaison we're trying to make is with: "people who are, or should be, portrayed in the mass media as untrustworthy unethical online predators that wish to do bad things to your computer which will cause it to stop working, to sell your personal info, and cause your computer to become engaged in international crime."
So, 'malicious hackers', 'blackhat hackers', 'hackers as reported by BBC news'.
"If someone knows of a better CSS editor (and by better I mean easier for newbies; I teach a class on web design to beginners), let me know!"
Try looking for a mozilla extension (to the html editor) -- I think it's 'cascades' but I might be wrong. Anyway, that's got a fairly nice CSS editor (handles multiple internal or external stylesheets, has pages for specifying borders, colours, images, text, etc., and will still allow you to use properties that it doesn't know about.
Obviously I wouldn't recommend my own favourite CSS editor (EMACS on SSH) for the classroom...
"Other [marketers] are already busy experimenting with newer approaches to serve up targeted ads even if a user has deleted his cookies."
With attitudes like that, they wonder why people don't trust them?
These are the same people that discovered Flash could open popup windows even when you've disabled javascript. The same people that think nothing of attacking any security vulnerability they can find to display adverts. The same people that fill-up my "blocked webservers" list with dynamically-generated hostnames. The same people that put ActiveX controls with.exe files in hidden parts of a website, hoping to take control of their customers' computers.
Malicious use of anothers' computer without authorisation. Basically, "hackers" in the let's stop these criminals sense.
"Have you heard that like OS X, KDE gets faster on the same hardware with every new release?"
Well I've heard it (from you) but I don't think it's true. I used an old version of KDE on this computer a few years ago, and it was "vaguely mediochre" in performance terms. Now I've put KUbuntu on the same machine, turned off any performance-related options I can find, and it's so slow that it's virtually unusable. 20-30 seconds to load a Konsole window, how is that even possible?
KDE now is so slow that I thought I'd have to buy a new PC to get it to run. As it turned out, I started using WindowMaker again, which solves the speed problem until you load a KDE application and wait 20 seconds for (example) KPPP to appear.
And it used to run much less slowly (version shipped with Mandrake 7.x for example), so I'm not yet convinced that KDE is getting any faster.
"Who is behind this and what is their motivations?"
I seem to remember a precursor to this type of competition (after the diebold fiasco) where the entrants had to write an vote-counting program which would appear to be correct, but actually modify the result in a non-obvious (from reading the code) way...
"While I disagree with how long copryrights have been extended here, I don't see what's wrong with the concept of consistency in global copyright laws."
What's special about copyright? By your argument, all the laws around the world should be the same, and we could just elect one government to write them.
Of course, that ignores cultural differences and assumes everyone shares exactly the same view of what's right. And it's only a small step between believing that other people "should" follow your laws, and starting a war to enforce that view. Not exactly a democratic view to hold.
"With inconsistent laws, the enforcement of copyrights from country to country would be chaotic at best."
And that's bad how? Too confusing for policemen? Many people already deal with different laws, taxes, etc. in every state, and even laws that apply to particular places within a state.
If courts can already deal with complex financial crimes across many locations (which they can) where the laws are different in virtually every state, country, and region, then what's so difficult about copyright that requires the imposition of a "world government"?
"The roof would cave in when more than 30 people knocked on the front door."
Like the WindowsXP Pro house, where you can only invite 10 friends at once (and have to get planning permission again every time you get new furniture...)
"I find that every August it feels several degrees hotter than in January. I think this merits further data analysis to find the exact cycle of this global warming thing..."
Scientists in Australia and New Zealand were unable to reproduce your findings -- it must have been an experimental error.
"Patents are here to stay. They are required to protect the IP of startups"
Tell me again how this startup gets the money to file patents? Most startups I know aren't exactly rolling in cash.
Or what they do while they're waiting for the patent to be processed? Just delay their idea for a few months/years while their competitors build proper businesses and get all the customers?
And if they patent something, rather than (say) keeping it a secret, where will they get the money to ligitate patent-infringers once their idea has been published by the patent office?
"Most, if not all, ISPs need to lock down the end user's access to ports. Give them the basics ( outgoing 80, 110 and 143 ), but lock everything else down. In this case, I'd say everyone is guilty until proven innocent"
Well, nearly right. Lock down peoples' connections and give them the basics (ports 1500, 1504 and 1560) -- guilty until proven innocent...
Oh, by "the basics", you meant the ports that you personally use?
"True, however nobody can deny that there is a market for non-DRM chips, so some vendor is going to fill that market."
Or non-DRM operating systems and media players, which will run on a DRM chip and not use the facilities offered...
Somehow, I think this hurts Microsoft as much as it does Intel. Unfortunately we all know what masochists computer-users are, and how they'll choose Microsoft no matter what.
Slashdot Mirror
"A keyboard with LCDs on each key seems like it would be needlessly expensive."
So have 4 labels under each key and only illuminate one of them with fiber-optic or LED. The Apple laptops already have lights under each key, so just extend that to make them multiple lights-per-key, and individually controllable.
Choosing which 4 keyboards to support is the interesting one of course. If everyone has a particular preference, then whatever you choose will be 'wrong' to most people.
- Dvorak/Qwerty switching for some people
- PC/Mac switching for others
- Language and regional keyboard options
- Options for specific games
- Shift/alt key options...
- 'Multimedia' keys and function keys
So just the task of deciding which things to support seem to make it impossible to market...
You could make it all configurable with 7x5 matrix behind each key though... only 3500 LEDs to control (or 3.6 kilopixels as they call it nowadays)
Talking of Blackadder...
" There is always the possibility that Apple will extend iWork as a replacement for AppleWorks which is a bit long in the tooth now."
If anyone is considering office-software on the Mac, then iWork is definitely something you want to look at. It [Pages] is a decent word processor, loads and saves Word files well enough that you can use them, exports as PDF, and has fairly nice stylesheet support.
There's a demo version pre-installed on all new Macs, and costs £50 (which is only £20 more than StarOffice, albeit without the spreadsheet)
"Yeah, but has it loaded it accurately? Are all the tables in your word processor docs properly formatted? Do the bar charts in your spreadsheet look the same? How about your PowerPoint slides?"
.DOC isn't it. Your documents will look different on every implementation (both of MS-Offfice, OpenOffice, Abiword, and Pages), different on every computer (assuming they don't have identical fonts and screen resolution to you), and in every country (hey, our printer uses A4 yours uses letter)
.DOC -- I've been editing just simple word documents at work, and when you change a word to bold, it suddenly decides to rename the style you're using, update the new style with the bold information, and modify a load of unrelated text. In a randomly changing environment like that, you can't expect accuracy or consistancy from anything.
.DOC enough to know that having more than one person working on a document tends to leave it in an awful state.
If it's accuracy you want, then you need a document format which is designed to store documents accurately.
Even basic things like styles can't be accurate in
Personally, I find word processors to be only slightly more useful than plain-text, and a lot more annoying. You can't even accurately cut and paste one part of a document to another before Word decides that it's going to be clever with the stylesheet, and your Title1 becomes just another ListBullet3 because it was too close to the chaos of a Word-special paste operation.
The only good format I can think of offhand for multi-author collaboration of documents with formatting, images, tables, etc is HTML, or perhaps MediaWiki. I've used
Obviously PDF is the gold standard for anything you want to convert accurately between computers, but it's not an editable format. Are there any other word-processor formats which make an attempt to store font information, screen-resolution, etc.?
If anyone reading this wants to know how to install GIMP on a mac:
- Get your original MacOS CD that came with the computer, run the "optional components" program
- Accept a license agreement that isn't LGPL, then select X11 from the list of optional software.
- Then run the GIMP.
A simple google search indicates that nobody actually knows why the version of X11 distributed on the Apple website doesn't work. I stick by the statement that non-experts cannot be expected to install OpenOffice* and GIMP by themselves.
* For example, how do you dowload NeoOffice on a Mac? It doesn't have a download manager, the browser doesn't support resumable downloads, it doesn't have a proper FTP program, so the first time your modem redials, you're stuck with just the first 30MB of NeoOffice and no way to resume it.
"As for the GIMP, http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/ is your friend along with Apple's X11, which is as easy to install as anything else from Apple."
Download and run GIMP installer: "Failed to start: GIMP.app requires X11"
Download and run X11 installer: "You cannot install X11 on this volume: newer software already exists on your computer"
So, Mr. "GIMP on apple is simple enough for idiots", how come it doesn't fucking work?!?
It's preinstalled on all my linux computers, how hard can it be? This is just the same as "RPM hell", except on a brand-new Mac, trying to install basic image-editing software.
So we get to compare the two NEXT's... MacOS X versus GNUStep...
In the white corner: a fast OS with absolutely no configuration options, that runs games, shareware, and commercial software. Free software (GIMP, OpenOffice) is possible with lots of effort if you're an expert.
In the jaggedy-black-and-white corner: a fast OS with absolutely no configuration options, that runs KDE programs, GNOME programs, X programs, and Rox programs. Games (WINE, Crossover) is possible with lots of effort if you're an expert.
I've got both and I don't think there's a clear winner.
"By viewing [and not paying for] the images of exploited children you are creating a demand. Higher demand means more kids life's are ruined to create more pictures."
Yet somehow, downloading commercial music for free doesn't create a demand for the music.
By your argument, anyone who makes illicit copies of Word is forcing Microsoft to continue developing it...
"Terrorism: the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence..."
So by that definition, why do we need "anti-terrorist" laws? Wouldn't they be circular reasoning or something?
"However, there are many blogs out there written by smart programmers, some with far, far, far more geek cred than PG."
I think this might be an appropriate time to ask for links. I'd be interested if you know a few columns that are better than PGs (as I haven't found many so far)
(And no, Joel Spolsky definitely doesn't count. Although Phil Greenspun might)
"Personally, I find the need to disable more and more RBL's"
Perhaps you could compile a list of the RBLs which are known to list non-spammers. After all, you're only writing a list, so there are no possible consequences of that.
Make it automatic somehow, so that email systems can easily parse your list, dropping support for any RBL listed on your list.
Some RBLs might complain about this, but then (a) you've only got a list, nobody's forcing anyone to use your list, and (b) if they stopped listing non-spammers, then you would remove their list from your list. Possibly. After a few months.
If you wanted, you could block whole groups of RBLs just because one of them put non-spammers on their list. For example, if SPEWS listed non-spammers, you could blacklist all the RBLs operated by people in the same city as SPEWS. Again, there's nothing wrong with that because people are choosing to use your list of lists.
www.gwallet.com is currently owned by a domain squatter
wallet.google.com would allow them to re-use the cookie set by the google.com domain
That would be "hackers" in the crackers sense.
OK. Just because some hackers break into systems, doesn't mean 'hacker' should be used to describe people who break into systems. Just like some footballers have murdered people, but we don't use 'footballer' as a generic term for someone who kills.
You and I might know the 'correct' terms. But the comparaison we're trying to make is with: "people who are, or should be, portrayed in the mass media as untrustworthy unethical online predators that wish to do bad things to your computer which will cause it to stop working, to sell your personal info, and cause your computer to become engaged in international crime."
So, 'malicious hackers', 'blackhat hackers', 'hackers as reported by BBC news'.
"If someone knows of a better CSS editor (and by better I mean easier for newbies; I teach a class on web design to beginners), let me know!"
Try looking for a mozilla extension (to the html editor) -- I think it's 'cascades' but I might be wrong. Anyway, that's got a fairly nice CSS editor (handles multiple internal or external stylesheets, has pages for specifying borders, colours, images, text, etc., and will still allow you to use properties that it doesn't know about.
Obviously I wouldn't recommend my own favourite CSS editor (EMACS on SSH) for the classroom...
"Other [marketers] are already busy experimenting with newer approaches to serve up targeted ads even if a user has deleted his cookies."
.exe files in hidden parts of a website, hoping to take control of their customers' computers.
With attitudes like that, they wonder why people don't trust them?
These are the same people that discovered Flash could open popup windows even when you've disabled javascript. The same people that think nothing of attacking any security vulnerability they can find to display adverts. The same people that fill-up my "blocked webservers" list with dynamically-generated hostnames. The same people that put ActiveX controls with
Malicious use of anothers' computer without authorisation. Basically, "hackers" in the let's stop these criminals sense.
"Have you heard that like OS X, KDE gets faster on the same hardware with every new release?"
Well I've heard it (from you) but I don't think it's true. I used an old version of KDE on this computer a few years ago, and it was "vaguely mediochre" in performance terms. Now I've put KUbuntu on the same machine, turned off any performance-related options I can find, and it's so slow that it's virtually unusable. 20-30 seconds to load a Konsole window, how is that even possible?
KDE now is so slow that I thought I'd have to buy a new PC to get it to run. As it turned out, I started using WindowMaker again, which solves the speed problem until you load a KDE application and wait 20 seconds for (example) KPPP to appear.
And it used to run much less slowly (version shipped with Mandrake 7.x for example), so I'm not yet convinced that KDE is getting any faster.
"Who is behind this and what is their motivations?"
I seem to remember a precursor to this type of competition (after the diebold fiasco) where the entrants had to write an vote-counting program which would appear to be correct, but actually modify the result in a non-obvious (from reading the code) way...
"While I disagree with how long copryrights have been extended here, I don't see what's wrong with the concept of consistency in global copyright laws."
What's special about copyright? By your argument, all the laws around the world should be the same, and we could just elect one government to write them.
Of course, that ignores cultural differences and assumes everyone shares exactly the same view of what's right. And it's only a small step between believing that other people "should" follow your laws, and starting a war to enforce that view. Not exactly a democratic view to hold.
"With inconsistent laws, the enforcement of copyrights from country to country would be chaotic at best."
And that's bad how? Too confusing for policemen? Many people already deal with different laws, taxes, etc. in every state, and even laws that apply to particular places within a state.
If courts can already deal with complex financial crimes across many locations (which they can) where the laws are different in virtually every state, country, and region, then what's so difficult about copyright that requires the imposition of a "world government"?
"The roof would cave in when more than 30 people knocked on the front door."
Like the WindowsXP Pro house, where you can only invite 10 friends at once (and have to get planning permission again every time you get new furniture...)
"I find that every August it feels several degrees hotter than in January. I think this merits further data analysis to find the exact cycle of this global warming thing..."
Scientists in Australia and New Zealand were unable to reproduce your findings -- it must have been an experimental error.
"Patents are here to stay. They are required to protect the IP of startups"
Tell me again how this startup gets the money to file patents? Most startups I know aren't exactly rolling in cash.
Or what they do while they're waiting for the patent to be processed? Just delay their idea for a few months/years while their competitors build proper businesses and get all the customers?
And if they patent something, rather than (say) keeping it a secret, where will they get the money to ligitate patent-infringers once their idea has been published by the patent office?
"Most, if not all, ISPs need to lock down the end user's access to ports. Give them the basics ( outgoing 80, 110 and 143 ), but lock everything else down. In this case, I'd say everyone is guilty until proven innocent"
Well, nearly right. Lock down peoples' connections and give them the basics (ports 1500, 1504 and 1560) -- guilty until proven innocent...
Oh, by "the basics", you meant the ports that you personally use?
"All the **AA has to do is set up a bunch of "C" machines, and keep logs."
Maybe someone trustworthy will set up a load of "C" machines...
"True, however nobody can deny that there is a market for non-DRM chips, so some vendor is going to fill that market."
Or non-DRM operating systems and media players, which will run on a DRM chip and not use the facilities offered...
Somehow, I think this hurts Microsoft as much as it does Intel. Unfortunately we all know what masochists computer-users are, and how they'll choose Microsoft no matter what.
"Since when do average users install operating systems?"
Since their default operating system got trashed by viruses/adware/malware every 3 months...
Pretty much every Windows user I know has had to reinstall the OS, multiple times.