Okay, I'm going to bite, because this has been irking me a bit this week... When you see the Mac userbase hit a decent number (and I don't pretend to know what that is) then you'll see spyware and viruses for it. Fact.
The above comment certainly irks me. A prediction cannot be a fact. Let me repeat that for you. A prediction cannot be a fact.
That said, no, macs are not immune to viruses or spyware. Yes, macs and other computers could be made more secure. Your assertions, however, are misleading. Huge numbers of worms and malware are written for motivations other than profit. Mac OS X is designed in such a way that it is much, much harder to write worms that will actually propagate, there are basically no services available to be exploited on a default install, and the vast majority of mac machines are patched regularly because it is set up to automatically prompt you to do so, by default. Macs users operate as a limited user, without full privileges and are prompted for a password to perform administrative tasks. Users are warned when downloads are executable. Market share helps Mac OSX escape unscathed from worms and malware, but that is by no means the only factor and your attempt to portray it as such is incorrect.
Why aren't we passing a constitutional amendment to outlaw Islam in the US? I am not saying this to troll. I honestly think that Islam is a terrible ideology that poisons the mind.
The same can be said of most any religion. Christianity is historically responsible for more pain, suffering, and death than Islam can hope to achieve in another thousand years of bombing at this rate. Have you ever read the Qu'ran? It is not really all that different than the bible. The organized versions of both religions teach their followers to obey the church, don't think for yourself or try to decide what is right or wrong, believe what you're told and do what you're told without question.
For anyone who thinks Christian terrorists aren't as bad or worse for America than Islamic head into the country and see the effects of the KKK or go to any small town and watch some "good" christians beat the crap out of, torture, and murder someone for being gay. (As an aside, although most major Christian sects including the catholics decry homosexuality as an affront to god, there were periods of time where it was accepted by christianity. There are even catholic gay marriage ceremonies in some writings from the middle ages.) The truth is Islamic terrorists have caused very little damage to the U.S. compared to the horrors brought about by the teachings of organized christians (not necessarily Jesus, his philosophies seem to have been much more peaceful and progressive). If we need to ban a cult, Christianity would be a better target.
I think we ought to be able to outlaw certain violent cults and religions in the US.
It might have happened by now if one of those cults was not running the show. Note, I am in no way endorsing the banning of any religion. I think it is a stupid idea.
the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil.
...I have this rock that prevents tiger attacks that I thought you might be interested in, only $50. I've had it for years and never once have I been attacked by tigers.
Bush did not prevent 9/11. He failed. Since then he has done pretty much everything possible to piss off foreign governments and people and make as many new terrorists as possible. He has also done nothing to prevent another attack. Many of those teenagers whose parents and brothers were killed by bombs want to kill you. Many of those destitute people whose country was conquered then sold to foreigners and who now have no jobs and live on land owned by their enemies want to kill you. Many of the people who have to listen to their immoral and corrupt conquerers tell them their religion is wrong and that they will burn in hell, all while partaking in some of the most blatant corruption want you dead.
If my home was invaded and bombed by foreigners, who raided the treasury, sold all the land and resources and businesses to foreigners, took out huge loans on my behalf, put a murderer/foreign spy in charge, disrupted electricity and water for years, burned crops then replaced with patented ones that I had to pay a fee every year to use, and it was now horribly dangerous to just go buy groceries... well you get the picture. I'd be in my basement making bombs and planning a way to retake my country or at least repay the bastards.
Half the world thinks Bush is evil and your arrogance to think that he is not just because he is murdering, lying, and destroying on behalf of your country is sickening.
how can Microsoft be a Monolopy when I can go out an buy an Apple?
Apple sells computers. Sun Sells computers. IBM sells services. Microsoft sells desktop operating systems. Apple would go out of business in 5 years if they dropped their hardware business and tried to survive making and selling just an OS. MS is a monopoly.
how does this fix anything. The data is been stolen already...
1. You can change your password or PIN or cancel the card or other service.
2. You can find accurate lists of which companies have consistently failed to protect consumer data and avoid giving personal information to them. This will provide companies with incentive to protect the data, which they don't currently have.
I tried switching the family over to Linux machines over the summer vacation and the objections from the other family members was more than enough to send all 7 machines right back to Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
No one with any intelligence at all would switch all of 7 machines over to a new, untested OS at once. This is a troll.
I'm sorry but I haven't heard of any graphic artists I know claiming their mouse freezes while they work *all day every day* with Windows.
Heh, and what percentage of professional graphic artists work in Windows? It's about the same as are still using SGI, which is to say very few. Graphic artists generally use macs. There are exceptions, like people who do rendered models, or tight textures, but for the most part those are areas where having perfect mouse or tablet control is unnecessary.
Mouse input is driven by interrupts, which work outside the usual system of task scheduling - they gain access to CPU cycles through hardware
Mice use hardware? Holy shit, I never would have guessed that. Oh wait, doesn't that hardware eventually talk to a driver that talks to the rest of the OS which then prioritizes it's access to cpu and the window manager? Yes, it does.
Oh that's right, you can't have threads belonging to processes in Linux can you? Its implementation of multitasking is so poor that if I start a new thread in Java I get another java.exe running.
Umm, if you are running a java.exe on a Linux box you're probably in a very small percentage of people. You know there are a few security concerns regarding sandboxed applications... oh wait you're a Windows zealot, you don't believe in security, never mind.
I don't know when you last used Windows, but I've never seen my mouse stop working when it shouldn't. It will do it if you mess with the system default priorities for tasks....and yes we can do that in Windows too.
I used Windows about 20 minutes ago and yes the mouse stopped responding for several seconds while a program monopolized the resources. No I did not modify the priorities.
To believe that a poorly written application can't ruin your peformance under Linux is what is absurd. You are free to blame your OS for the shortcomings of your software, just don't expect to ever fix the problem.
Actually since Linux, like most modern OSs except Windows can actually be used with a variety of levels of user permissions, it is easy to restrict any given userspace application from monopolizing the processor. In fact, it is the default for userland applications in every distro I've tried lately.
Your understanding of threading is weak at best and your assertions can be disproved just by trying a few basic tasks on a variety of OSs. I am not, as you claim, a zealot. I use Windows, OS X, and NetBSD daily for different tasks. They all have their weak spots.
One of Windows weak spots is properly distributing system resources. You just can't run several large applications at a time and expect them to function properly and you can't count on the system to always register input. This is not a weak spot of Linux, NetBSD, or OS X. The latter two have some work to do regarding multithreading, but they still pound Windows into the dust in real world performance. Accept it already.
Native English speakers who can't express themselves without making childish mistakes like that, just appear thick! And it devalues anything of real importance they may have to say.
I strongly disagree with your statement. If you understand what a person is trying to express with the text they have typed, then they have succeeded in effectively communicating. If they used the wrong there/their/they're, but you figured it out then yes, they've made a trivial mistake and you can assume that their English skills are not up to snuff. Maybe that is because they are simple. Maybe it is because they are uninterested in mastering more of the English language than they need to communicate effectively.
When I see trivial spelling and grammatical mistakes it indicates to me that a person is not good at spelling or grammar. That does not mean they are not the most brilliant mathematician or physicist on the planet. That does not mean there is no value in their statements. To discount the meaning of a statement because of errors in the delivery mechanism is foolhardy.
I have, upon occasion, pointed out errors in the postings of others, but only in instances where I was unsure of what that person was trying to express due to ambiguities or errors or because I was quoting them.
You might be interested to know that many English words, especially ones from the germanic side of old English used to be pronounced much more closely to the way they are spelled, but the pronunciation has evolved over time (for whatever reason). "Knight" for example, while now pronounced "nite" used to have a hard "K" sound at the beginning.
OS X has a built in spell checking service... spell checking/correction on all native text, all the time is a life saver.
If Jobs would finally get it through his head that Microsoft continuously kick's Apple's arse for, among other reasons, the fact that Apple refuses to position themselves as a software/OS company and tries to straddle the line, which Microsoft has carefully tried to avoid doing since forever.
Step 1: Apple sells OS X for x86, and calls up all the major PC OEMs to sell it.
Step 2: Dell tentatively agrees to sell it as do a dozen other companies.
Step 3: Microsoft calls OEMs and threatens to remove their special OEM discount on Windows if they sell OS X as well. Or, they enforce existing contracts that require them to pay for Windows licenses for machines shipped without it (note this has happened in the past for mac sales through retailers).
Step 4: Every major OEM capitulates because it is too risky to bet their entire company on people switching to buy Apple software from them and having all of their machines a hundred and fifty bucks more expensive than all their competitors would definitely put them out of the running to sell Windows machines.
Step 5: Smaller OEMs do buy OS X and bundle it on bargain basement PCs devastating sales of macs and 50%+ of Apple's revenue. Since the PC market is dominated by a few large OEMs, this will do nothing to increase Apple's market share.
Step 6: Apple introduces it's new CEO who implements the layoffs and tries to restore Apple to it's previous profitability.
That sounds like a sound business plan to me, I wonder why Jobs is having such a hard time selling it to the investors?
If you're running applications that don't play nice when they are supposed to be idle, you can't blame the OS you're running.
The OS is responsible for scheduling tasks. If an application that is open, but which is not even being displayed wants to use 100% of the CPU you think the proper behavior is for the OS to let it have all the CPU time... to the exclusion of processing input through the keyboard and mouse? Wow you must work at Microsoft.
Linux systems generally use "Nice" to prioritize tasks by hand, but the system should (and does) have reasonable defaults. One of the reasons Graphic artists hate to use Windows is because mouse input is not given enough priority (and even when it is the multitasking does not work correctly) and if you are running other applications occasionally the mouse will stop recording input while you're drawing a line.
Your theoretical method (which does not exist in any OS, they all have methods for prioritizing application's access to resources) would let one poorly written piece of software ruin performance on the whole system. It is absurd. What do you think multitasking is? Is it where all the applications magically know how much resources they should consume on a given system at a given time and tell the OS?
In summary, I can and do blame the OS if it fails to correctly prioritize application's access to resources and I specifically blame MS for its poor implementation of this.
Windows (again, only so because to be a PC gamer, you are forced to use Windows) does not require shutdown of other processes
Actually, the problem the originator of this thread was commenting upon was that it does require shutdown of other programs in order to get a game to work well enough to be usable. I must say, I agree for the most part. On an average machine with an average game, it is unplayable or at least severely detrimental to gameplay to leave a resource hungry application open while trying to play a game (or use another resource intensive application.)
If I try to play a game in Windows while leaving for example Adobe InDesign open in the background with a few hundred page book I'm working on open in it, I have my game stutter and run poorly. The mouse will have problems with responsiveness and I'll likely be beaten to death by orcs while helpless to do anything about it. Using the same game with the same file open in InDesign on a slightly less powerful Mac OS X machine I don't have a problem. Both systems work just fine without InDesign open. Thus the problem is Windows can't allocate the resources well enough.
It's not true just for games, but they are a good illustration of a place where Windows really needs improvement. Mac users have been conditioned by their environment to not like to close down applications and files or for that matter ever reboot. As game developers target the mac market, I think they'll have a very hard time convincing users to reboot in order to play a game. That was the original point. Windows needing work when it comes to multitasking is just an aside.
Please note, I'm not a mac zealot. I use a variety of systems and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Windows has a great catalog of certain types of application available that far surpasses the Mac. Macs have some very big problems with accessing network shares. As several people have pointed out, they also have a smaller selection of games (although still better than anything else other than Windows). Multitasking, however, is one of Windows problems and I don't think many people recognize it because they don't run alternate systems for comparison.
I know a lot of people with boxed versions of voice recognition, and no-one who uses it.
Right about 1995, using built-in/shipped with the OS software, I connected my machine to the internet, downloaded my mail, and had my computer read my new messages aloud to me, all without getting out of bed and walking the whole 10 feet to the computer. I did it using the voice recognition system that shipped with an old version of MacOS.
That said, voice recognition is limited by the fact that it is not good enough. I have yet to see a voice recognition system that automatically filters out music and other sounds being emitted by the computer before processing input. I have yet to see voice recognition that is good enough to distinguish multiple users from one another. I have yet to see voice recognition that can filter out recurring background noise.
Without these features voice recognition is next to useless if you are listening to music or audio of another sort, if multiple people are working in the same room, or if the environment is one with a medium amount of background noise. Even with the above features, it is still slower than typing.
The ideal uses for voice recognition are the ones shown in sci-fi films and television; input into a computer, while you are not in front of a keyboard. It is ideal for casual use and for small tasks where you do not want to sit down and do real work.
Who wouldn't want to come home and say, "lights" to turn on the lights in a room. Who wouldn't want to be able to say, "computer: remember these dimensions for the bookshelf, twelve inches by four feet and one inch by seven feet and two point five inches." Who would not want to be able to perform simple queries of stored data. It's not ideal for writing or programming or playing games, but it is great for the tasks I mentioned, if only it would evolve to be a little bit better. It is very doable and I'm sure it will happen eventually.
In summary, for once I agree with gates. I think voice recognition has a place as a daily computer input format. I don't think it will ever be the dominant one, but it does have it's place.
Desktop search is the voice recognition of the new century. It will sort of work, but never well enough to make it worth relying upon.
Hmm, I have relied upon it about a dozen times so far today. So you may want to revise your estimate of "never" to a month or so ago. I keep everything on my machine organized into a pretty intricate directory tree that is great for finding things but it is not perfect. First it is easier to add multiple meta-tags than it is to create multiple shortcuts and directories and secondly because it is just more convenient to hit a quick key sequence to launch apps and documents and network locations than it is to browse a directory. I can launch any application using my traditional directories with a single click, but I rarely do so anymore because I can remember the names of most programs I want to run and it is faster to cmd-space, type a couple letters, down arrow, and enter than it is to even get to applications even when I have their locations memorized.
However as every monthly offer normally throws in a free phone better than the basic models. So just don't use what you don't like on the free phone.
Actually, I agree with the grandparent poster. It is hard to find a simple phone and even if you don't use the functions of a complex phone, it is still harder to use than a basic phone. For example. My last (fairly basic) phone finally died so I bought the simplest and cheapest phone my provider offered. It is a piece of poorly designed crap, and the complexity of unneeded features makes it hard to use. I think this is at least partially intentional.
The one thing I do more than anything else in my phone is open the phonebook, select an entry, and dial it. On my old phone this was 3 key-presses, two of which were the same key. On my new phone it is nine key-presses, most of which are different keys. The easiest thing to do on my new phone is download new ringtones/color schemes/and pictures all of which cost money and none of which I'm interested in. In fact dropping something on my phone could download a random online item. Maybe this is unintentional, but I doubt it.
Not using the added features is not a good option if I still have to navigate through a dozen menus to get to the one or two basic features I do use. And anyone will tell you that pushing 9 keys while navigating through a bunch of menus is harder than pushing 3.
Remember this is the most basic phone still offered by my provider. They don't offer a simple phone not because there is no demand, but because they are hoping to sell you more crap. For the same reason they will not sell itunes phones when released. They already charge a dollar for a crappy midi songs that last 30 seconds. They sure don't want prices for high quality songs to be only a dollar and transferable from your computer because then they would not be able to gouge people who have foolishly become their customers. If only there was a phone provider that was not evil and greedy.
And what, pray tell, does the "OS" in Mac OS stand for? Perhaps the authors of Mac OS disagree with your definitions. Or maybe not, maybe it is all a marketing gimmick.
What about Windows? Well, guess what: THERE ARE WINDOWS BOXES WITH NO BITMAPPED DISPLAYS OR MICE!!!! So, if you can remove the user interface, does that still make the user interface part of the OS?
So? Do you know what CLI stands for? Command Line Interface. Replying to a thread specifically discussing non-graphical interfaces should have tipped you off to the fact that interfaces do not have to be graphics, or even visual at all. Because you can remove a part of an OS you argue that means that part is not part of the OS? So if I can remove all sound support, then sound support is not part of the OS? How about punch card support? If some OS's don't support punch cards at all does that mean punch card support can't be built into an OS? I'm not sure what exactly your argument is here?
The online dictionary of computing defines and operating system as:
(OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running.
The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship.
Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS.
I'd say the default interface is an interface wouldn't you?
Perhaps you should read some more books on software architecture before being so sure of yourself.
I've read a number, thank you. I looked at five dictionaries online and not one of them had a definition that precluded a user interface, while three specifically included it. If someone asks another person what operating system they are running the most common answer (other than I don't know) will probably be a version of windows. Of the dozens of software engineers I know, I bet every one, when asked what OS they run, would say either Windows, Mac OS, some linux distribution, or one of the BSDs. Just because you can remove the graphical components of all of those does not mean anyone does or that the interface components are not part of the OS.
The English language is a living language and a textbook definition from some multics manual from the 70s does not change what an OS is today. "Gay," usually means you sleep with people of the same sex. "OS," means the kernel, userspace, interface, services, window manager, etc. Move on, everyone else has.
Well, is Mac OS an operating system? How about Windows? According to most currently used definitions they are. Or perhaps you are some sort of pedant who wants to call them operating environments or OS+interface. Whatever. The poster was referring to the user interface, which is usually handled by the OS for most applications.
That is also, I might mention, the best place to deal with a specialized user interface so that you need not depend upon every application developer to try to put in special support for the disabled.
So maybe it doesn't work well with your system, but I sure don't know why. Maybe you don't know how to properly take care of a Windows system or something.
Just because YOUR Windows computer doesn't work well, doesn't mean that everyone else is having the same trouble.
Well, I've had the same problem with both my Win2K box and XP box. I've also had problems with borrowed systems and at LAN parties it's easy to see everyone shutting everything down on Windows machines before starting a game.
I also noticed something interesting. When I mentioned how slow things were to various people I got two responses. One was, "Oh always shut down all your other programs" and the other was "That's not slow, Windows always does that." The first group was working around the problem and the second were so used to it they did not realize it was a problem. How many of the people who responded saying they never have problems regularly use other OSs on modern hardware so that they can compare and contrast? My bet is few or none of them.
Re:Already tried & failed
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Stephen King tried it. He started a new book and gave the first chapter away for free, putting subsequent chapters up for sale; when enough people bought a chapter he would write & publish the next one (all on-line).
Who wants to read a book online? I mean I watch all my TV and movies through a computer that then outputs to a TV, but I'd never read an entire book on a screen. I like having reference books available, but reading, for fun, on a glowing screen? That's just crazy. Until good digital books, that don't glow, flicker, or otherwise cause eyestrain and which have long battery lives and a reasonable cost exist, digital novels will be a tiny, tiny market.
Your are[sic] obviously totally oblivious of how multitasking actually works. Then you can talk about CPU performance hits due to cache misses and context switches.[sic]
I wasn't talking about cache misses or context switches. I was talking about the reported CPU usage for an application that is sitting idle in the background. Believe it or not I can both read and run the included applications to display this information on several OSs. In any case, I don't need to be able to read to notice a 10 second delay after I click a mouse button, but before the system registers that click.
You are completely correct RE memory usage however for CPU, there is a point to shutting down running tasks before starting a game.
And that is the problem. You should not have to shut down tasks before running a game because the OS should be able to tell that you are running a full-screen application and allocate enough resources to it (to the exclusion of other applications if necessary) so that it runs smoothly. The OS should also be able to always allocate enough resources so that the mouse and keyboard are responsive. It works on pretty much every OS except Windows the vast majority of the time and I sure don't need a benchmark to tell me that. It is bloody obvious to anyone who has tried using multiple OSs to actually do something more intensive than check their e-mail.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.
Actually, the cost of just producing the shows is much, much, much lower than what people pay to get cable, in general. I saw an article quite a while back that broke down the production costs of every television show by the number of people who pay for cable. I don't remember the exact numbers, but for something like $25 a month every person that currently subscribes to cable could instead get a set of DVDs in the mail that included every television program currently on the air, without a single ad. I dunno about you, but I only get the most basic cable package available to me (no Comedy Central, no Sci-Fi Network, No Digital cable or PVR) and my bill is about $50 a month.
The current television distribution system is a monster and is very inefficient. By switching to DVD by mail system or (if pipes get a little fatter) a video over the internet system, the cost of television shows could be slashed and direct competition could again help improve the quality of shows.
The downside would be that some good, but unpopular shows would go away and some poor industry executives would lose their meal tickets. Aside from that though, I think it would be good for everyone all around. The only things holding it back are the current industry bigwigs and their status quo, and a good mechanism for people to learn about new titles. The internet may very well solve the latter and the former is already eroding as TV show producers are starting to make big bucks selling seasons on DVD, sometimes a lot more than they make putting a show on the air.
Plenty of people are willing to pay for alternative video distribution and if it is less than half the cost you better believe it can overtake TV, or at least start a price war the consumer is destined to win. Just a thought.
If you do not do so without good reason, you must only be a casual gamer. Good for you. Just don't delude yourself otherwise.
I never claimed otherwise, but it's not like gaming is some sort of technical field that requires a lot of training to understand. I play games occasionally when I'm not busy working or doing something in the real world. It is a diversion, not a lifestyle.
Claiming that because I use a mac means I should shut up about how badly Windows handles multitasking and allocating resources to the GUI is ridiculous and condescending.
Because it is the Game that matters, not so-called "productivity" apps or the inconvenience of closing/restoring. To every extent possible, all resources are freed whether needed or not.
If you bothered to read the root of this thread you'd see it was proposed that rebooting to play games is fine and normal, which I happen to disagree with. I also mentioned that having to close my other applications and open files is a huge pain in the ass on Windows, which I'm glad I don't have to deal with on the mac. You see apparently unlike you, I use my computer to do work primarily, and gaming is very secondary. If I want a dedicated gaming machine that I can only run one thing on at a time and that I normally leave shut down I'll buy a console already. Computers, however, are supposed to be general purpose devices and having crappy multitasking is not excused by saying that you're so obsessed with games you'll do anything to play them.
Your[sic] kidding right? Theres[sic] no way in hell osx can compete against xp/2003 in multitasking.
From a kernel architecture standpoint, you may be correct, but from a real-world usage case, you're dead wrong. I run the same task on two comparable systems with similar amounts of RAM and comparable processors and the results are obvious. The Windows machine takes up to 10 seconds to register mouse clicks while a background task is executing and doing anything like just typing text in a text editor shows significant lag. The OS X machine allows me to work normally, with no noticeable lag using the mouse or the keyboard.
As to the games example discussed earlier, I can play the same game on both systems, but on the Windows machine if I don't close the open file and quit InDesign I experience significant dropped frames and other performance problems. On OS X, I don't have any problem leaving InDesign open in the background.
Regardless of theoretical design differences or kernel architecture the difference is night and day in the real world, and it does not favor Windows.
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Okay, I'm going to bite, because this has been irking me a bit this week... When you see the Mac userbase hit a decent number (and I don't pretend to know what that is) then you'll see spyware and viruses for it. Fact.
The above comment certainly irks me. A prediction cannot be a fact. Let me repeat that for you. A prediction cannot be a fact.
That said, no, macs are not immune to viruses or spyware. Yes, macs and other computers could be made more secure. Your assertions, however, are misleading. Huge numbers of worms and malware are written for motivations other than profit. Mac OS X is designed in such a way that it is much, much harder to write worms that will actually propagate, there are basically no services available to be exploited on a default install, and the vast majority of mac machines are patched regularly because it is set up to automatically prompt you to do so, by default. Macs users operate as a limited user, without full privileges and are prompted for a password to perform administrative tasks. Users are warned when downloads are executable. Market share helps Mac OSX escape unscathed from worms and malware, but that is by no means the only factor and your attempt to portray it as such is incorrect.
"misunderestimating" is a perfectly cromulent word.
Why aren't we passing a constitutional amendment to outlaw Islam in the US? I am not saying this to troll. I honestly think that Islam is a terrible ideology that poisons the mind.
The same can be said of most any religion. Christianity is historically responsible for more pain, suffering, and death than Islam can hope to achieve in another thousand years of bombing at this rate. Have you ever read the Qu'ran? It is not really all that different than the bible. The organized versions of both religions teach their followers to obey the church, don't think for yourself or try to decide what is right or wrong, believe what you're told and do what you're told without question.
For anyone who thinks Christian terrorists aren't as bad or worse for America than Islamic head into the country and see the effects of the KKK or go to any small town and watch some "good" christians beat the crap out of, torture, and murder someone for being gay. (As an aside, although most major Christian sects including the catholics decry homosexuality as an affront to god, there were periods of time where it was accepted by christianity. There are even catholic gay marriage ceremonies in some writings from the middle ages.) The truth is Islamic terrorists have caused very little damage to the U.S. compared to the horrors brought about by the teachings of organized christians (not necessarily Jesus, his philosophies seem to have been much more peaceful and progressive). If we need to ban a cult, Christianity would be a better target.
I think we ought to be able to outlaw certain violent cults and religions in the US.
It might have happened by now if one of those cults was not running the show. Note, I am in no way endorsing the banning of any religion. I think it is a stupid idea.
the guy who kept the attacks from happening for 4 years evil.
...I have this rock that prevents tiger attacks that I thought you might be interested in, only $50. I've had it for years and never once have I been attacked by tigers.
Bush did not prevent 9/11. He failed. Since then he has done pretty much everything possible to piss off foreign governments and people and make as many new terrorists as possible. He has also done nothing to prevent another attack. Many of those teenagers whose parents and brothers were killed by bombs want to kill you. Many of those destitute people whose country was conquered then sold to foreigners and who now have no jobs and live on land owned by their enemies want to kill you. Many of the people who have to listen to their immoral and corrupt conquerers tell them their religion is wrong and that they will burn in hell, all while partaking in some of the most blatant corruption want you dead.
If my home was invaded and bombed by foreigners, who raided the treasury, sold all the land and resources and businesses to foreigners, took out huge loans on my behalf, put a murderer/foreign spy in charge, disrupted electricity and water for years, burned crops then replaced with patented ones that I had to pay a fee every year to use, and it was now horribly dangerous to just go buy groceries... well you get the picture. I'd be in my basement making bombs and planning a way to retake my country or at least repay the bastards.
Half the world thinks Bush is evil and your arrogance to think that he is not just because he is murdering, lying, and destroying on behalf of your country is sickening.
how can Microsoft be a Monolopy when I can go out an buy an Apple?
Apple sells computers. Sun Sells computers. IBM sells services. Microsoft sells desktop operating systems. Apple would go out of business in 5 years if they dropped their hardware business and tried to survive making and selling just an OS. MS is a monopoly.
how does this fix anything. The data is been stolen already...
1. You can change your password or PIN or cancel the card or other service.
2. You can find accurate lists of which companies have consistently failed to protect consumer data and avoid giving personal information to them. This will provide companies with incentive to protect the data, which they don't currently have.
MOD THIS TROLL DOWN!
I tried switching the family over to Linux machines over the summer vacation and the objections from the other family members was more than enough to send all 7 machines right back to Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
No one with any intelligence at all would switch all of 7 machines over to a new, untested OS at once. This is a troll.
I'm sorry but I haven't heard of any graphic artists I know claiming their mouse freezes while they work *all day every day* with Windows.
Heh, and what percentage of professional graphic artists work in Windows? It's about the same as are still using SGI, which is to say very few. Graphic artists generally use macs. There are exceptions, like people who do rendered models, or tight textures, but for the most part those are areas where having perfect mouse or tablet control is unnecessary.
Mouse input is driven by interrupts, which work outside the usual system of task scheduling - they gain access to CPU cycles through hardware
Mice use hardware? Holy shit, I never would have guessed that. Oh wait, doesn't that hardware eventually talk to a driver that talks to the rest of the OS which then prioritizes it's access to cpu and the window manager? Yes, it does.
Oh that's right, you can't have threads belonging to processes in Linux can you? Its implementation of multitasking is so poor that if I start a new thread in Java I get another java.exe running.
Umm, if you are running a java.exe on a Linux box you're probably in a very small percentage of people. You know there are a few security concerns regarding sandboxed applications... oh wait you're a Windows zealot, you don't believe in security, never mind.
I don't know when you last used Windows, but I've never seen my mouse stop working when it shouldn't. It will do it if you mess with the system default priorities for tasks. ...and yes we can do that in Windows too.
I used Windows about 20 minutes ago and yes the mouse stopped responding for several seconds while a program monopolized the resources. No I did not modify the priorities.
To believe that a poorly written application can't ruin your peformance under Linux is what is absurd. You are free to blame your OS for the shortcomings of your software, just don't expect to ever fix the problem.
Actually since Linux, like most modern OSs except Windows can actually be used with a variety of levels of user permissions, it is easy to restrict any given userspace application from monopolizing the processor. In fact, it is the default for userland applications in every distro I've tried lately.
Your understanding of threading is weak at best and your assertions can be disproved just by trying a few basic tasks on a variety of OSs. I am not, as you claim, a zealot. I use Windows, OS X, and NetBSD daily for different tasks. They all have their weak spots.
One of Windows weak spots is properly distributing system resources. You just can't run several large applications at a time and expect them to function properly and you can't count on the system to always register input. This is not a weak spot of Linux, NetBSD, or OS X. The latter two have some work to do regarding multithreading, but they still pound Windows into the dust in real world performance. Accept it already.
Native English speakers who can't express themselves without making childish mistakes like that, just appear thick! And it devalues anything of real importance they may have to say.
I strongly disagree with your statement. If you understand what a person is trying to express with the text they have typed, then they have succeeded in effectively communicating. If they used the wrong there/their/they're, but you figured it out then yes, they've made a trivial mistake and you can assume that their English skills are not up to snuff. Maybe that is because they are simple. Maybe it is because they are uninterested in mastering more of the English language than they need to communicate effectively.
When I see trivial spelling and grammatical mistakes it indicates to me that a person is not good at spelling or grammar. That does not mean they are not the most brilliant mathematician or physicist on the planet. That does not mean there is no value in their statements. To discount the meaning of a statement because of errors in the delivery mechanism is foolhardy.
I have, upon occasion, pointed out errors in the postings of others, but only in instances where I was unsure of what that person was trying to express due to ambiguities or errors or because I was quoting them.
You might be interested to know that many English words, especially ones from the germanic side of old English used to be pronounced much more closely to the way they are spelled, but the pronunciation has evolved over time (for whatever reason). "Knight" for example, while now pronounced "nite" used to have a hard "K" sound at the beginning.
OS X has a built in spell checking service... spell checking/correction on all native text, all the time is a life saver.
If Jobs would finally get it through his head that Microsoft continuously kick's Apple's arse for, among other reasons, the fact that Apple refuses to position themselves as a software/OS company and tries to straddle the line, which Microsoft has carefully tried to avoid doing since forever.
Step 1: Apple sells OS X for x86, and calls up all the major PC OEMs to sell it.
Step 2: Dell tentatively agrees to sell it as do a dozen other companies.
Step 3: Microsoft calls OEMs and threatens to remove their special OEM discount on Windows if they sell OS X as well. Or, they enforce existing contracts that require them to pay for Windows licenses for machines shipped without it (note this has happened in the past for mac sales through retailers).
Step 4: Every major OEM capitulates because it is too risky to bet their entire company on people switching to buy Apple software from them and having all of their machines a hundred and fifty bucks more expensive than all their competitors would definitely put them out of the running to sell Windows machines.
Step 5: Smaller OEMs do buy OS X and bundle it on bargain basement PCs devastating sales of macs and 50%+ of Apple's revenue. Since the PC market is dominated by a few large OEMs, this will do nothing to increase Apple's market share.
Step 6: Apple introduces it's new CEO who implements the layoffs and tries to restore Apple to it's previous profitability.
That sounds like a sound business plan to me, I wonder why Jobs is having such a hard time selling it to the investors?
If you're running applications that don't play nice when they are supposed to be idle, you can't blame the OS you're running.
The OS is responsible for scheduling tasks. If an application that is open, but which is not even being displayed wants to use 100% of the CPU you think the proper behavior is for the OS to let it have all the CPU time... to the exclusion of processing input through the keyboard and mouse? Wow you must work at Microsoft.
Linux systems generally use "Nice" to prioritize tasks by hand, but the system should (and does) have reasonable defaults. One of the reasons Graphic artists hate to use Windows is because mouse input is not given enough priority (and even when it is the multitasking does not work correctly) and if you are running other applications occasionally the mouse will stop recording input while you're drawing a line.
Your theoretical method (which does not exist in any OS, they all have methods for prioritizing application's access to resources) would let one poorly written piece of software ruin performance on the whole system. It is absurd. What do you think multitasking is? Is it where all the applications magically know how much resources they should consume on a given system at a given time and tell the OS?
In summary, I can and do blame the OS if it fails to correctly prioritize application's access to resources and I specifically blame MS for its poor implementation of this.
Windows (again, only so because to be a PC gamer, you are forced to use Windows) does not require shutdown of other processes
Actually, the problem the originator of this thread was commenting upon was that it does require shutdown of other programs in order to get a game to work well enough to be usable. I must say, I agree for the most part. On an average machine with an average game, it is unplayable or at least severely detrimental to gameplay to leave a resource hungry application open while trying to play a game (or use another resource intensive application.)
If I try to play a game in Windows while leaving for example Adobe InDesign open in the background with a few hundred page book I'm working on open in it, I have my game stutter and run poorly. The mouse will have problems with responsiveness and I'll likely be beaten to death by orcs while helpless to do anything about it. Using the same game with the same file open in InDesign on a slightly less powerful Mac OS X machine I don't have a problem. Both systems work just fine without InDesign open. Thus the problem is Windows can't allocate the resources well enough.
It's not true just for games, but they are a good illustration of a place where Windows really needs improvement. Mac users have been conditioned by their environment to not like to close down applications and files or for that matter ever reboot. As game developers target the mac market, I think they'll have a very hard time convincing users to reboot in order to play a game. That was the original point. Windows needing work when it comes to multitasking is just an aside.
Please note, I'm not a mac zealot. I use a variety of systems and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Windows has a great catalog of certain types of application available that far surpasses the Mac. Macs have some very big problems with accessing network shares. As several people have pointed out, they also have a smaller selection of games (although still better than anything else other than Windows). Multitasking, however, is one of Windows problems and I don't think many people recognize it because they don't run alternate systems for comparison.
I know a lot of people with boxed versions of voice recognition, and no-one who uses it.
Right about 1995, using built-in/shipped with the OS software, I connected my machine to the internet, downloaded my mail, and had my computer read my new messages aloud to me, all without getting out of bed and walking the whole 10 feet to the computer. I did it using the voice recognition system that shipped with an old version of MacOS.
That said, voice recognition is limited by the fact that it is not good enough. I have yet to see a voice recognition system that automatically filters out music and other sounds being emitted by the computer before processing input. I have yet to see voice recognition that is good enough to distinguish multiple users from one another. I have yet to see voice recognition that can filter out recurring background noise.
Without these features voice recognition is next to useless if you are listening to music or audio of another sort, if multiple people are working in the same room, or if the environment is one with a medium amount of background noise. Even with the above features, it is still slower than typing.
The ideal uses for voice recognition are the ones shown in sci-fi films and television; input into a computer, while you are not in front of a keyboard. It is ideal for casual use and for small tasks where you do not want to sit down and do real work.
Who wouldn't want to come home and say, "lights" to turn on the lights in a room. Who wouldn't want to be able to say, "computer: remember these dimensions for the bookshelf, twelve inches by four feet and one inch by seven feet and two point five inches." Who would not want to be able to perform simple queries of stored data. It's not ideal for writing or programming or playing games, but it is great for the tasks I mentioned, if only it would evolve to be a little bit better. It is very doable and I'm sure it will happen eventually.
In summary, for once I agree with gates. I think voice recognition has a place as a daily computer input format. I don't think it will ever be the dominant one, but it does have it's place.
Why were you reading a response to a posting about google and apple searching if you didn't want to read about apple searching? Go home troll.
Desktop search is the voice recognition of the new century. It will sort of work, but never well enough to make it worth relying upon.
Hmm, I have relied upon it about a dozen times so far today. So you may want to revise your estimate of "never" to a month or so ago. I keep everything on my machine organized into a pretty intricate directory tree that is great for finding things but it is not perfect. First it is easier to add multiple meta-tags than it is to create multiple shortcuts and directories and secondly because it is just more convenient to hit a quick key sequence to launch apps and documents and network locations than it is to browse a directory. I can launch any application using my traditional directories with a single click, but I rarely do so anymore because I can remember the names of most programs I want to run and it is faster to cmd-space, type a couple letters, down arrow, and enter than it is to even get to applications even when I have their locations memorized.
However as every monthly offer normally throws in a free phone better than the basic models. So just don't use what you don't like on the free phone.
Actually, I agree with the grandparent poster. It is hard to find a simple phone and even if you don't use the functions of a complex phone, it is still harder to use than a basic phone. For example. My last (fairly basic) phone finally died so I bought the simplest and cheapest phone my provider offered. It is a piece of poorly designed crap, and the complexity of unneeded features makes it hard to use. I think this is at least partially intentional.
The one thing I do more than anything else in my phone is open the phonebook, select an entry, and dial it. On my old phone this was 3 key-presses, two of which were the same key. On my new phone it is nine key-presses, most of which are different keys. The easiest thing to do on my new phone is download new ringtones/color schemes/and pictures all of which cost money and none of which I'm interested in. In fact dropping something on my phone could download a random online item. Maybe this is unintentional, but I doubt it.
Not using the added features is not a good option if I still have to navigate through a dozen menus to get to the one or two basic features I do use. And anyone will tell you that pushing 9 keys while navigating through a bunch of menus is harder than pushing 3.
Remember this is the most basic phone still offered by my provider. They don't offer a simple phone not because there is no demand, but because they are hoping to sell you more crap. For the same reason they will not sell itunes phones when released. They already charge a dollar for a crappy midi songs that last 30 seconds. They sure don't want prices for high quality songs to be only a dollar and transferable from your computer because then they would not be able to gouge people who have foolishly become their customers. If only there was a phone provider that was not evil and greedy.
Is Mac OS an OS? Well, Darwin is.
And what, pray tell, does the "OS" in Mac OS stand for? Perhaps the authors of Mac OS disagree with your definitions. Or maybe not, maybe it is all a marketing gimmick.
What about Windows? Well, guess what: THERE ARE WINDOWS BOXES WITH NO BITMAPPED DISPLAYS OR MICE!!!! So, if you can remove the user interface, does that still make the user interface part of the OS?
So? Do you know what CLI stands for? Command Line Interface. Replying to a thread specifically discussing non-graphical interfaces should have tipped you off to the fact that interfaces do not have to be graphics, or even visual at all. Because you can remove a part of an OS you argue that means that part is not part of the OS? So if I can remove all sound support, then sound support is not part of the OS? How about punch card support? If some OS's don't support punch cards at all does that mean punch card support can't be built into an OS? I'm not sure what exactly your argument is here?
The online dictionary of computing defines and operating system as:
(OS) The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user when no application program is running.
The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship.
Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS.
I'd say the default interface is an interface wouldn't you?
Perhaps you should read some more books on software architecture before being so sure of yourself.
I've read a number, thank you. I looked at five dictionaries online and not one of them had a definition that precluded a user interface, while three specifically included it. If someone asks another person what operating system they are running the most common answer (other than I don't know) will probably be a version of windows. Of the dozens of software engineers I know, I bet every one, when asked what OS they run, would say either Windows, Mac OS, some linux distribution, or one of the BSDs. Just because you can remove the graphical components of all of those does not mean anyone does or that the interface components are not part of the OS.
The English language is a living language and a textbook definition from some multics manual from the 70s does not change what an OS is today. "Gay," usually means you sleep with people of the same sex. "OS," means the kernel, userspace, interface, services, window manager, etc. Move on, everyone else has.
Well, is Mac OS an operating system? How about Windows? According to most currently used definitions they are. Or perhaps you are some sort of pedant who wants to call them operating environments or OS+interface. Whatever. The poster was referring to the user interface, which is usually handled by the OS for most applications.
That is also, I might mention, the best place to deal with a specialized user interface so that you need not depend upon every application developer to try to put in special support for the disabled.
So maybe it doesn't work well with your system, but I sure don't know why. Maybe you don't know how to properly take care of a Windows system or something. Just because YOUR Windows computer doesn't work well, doesn't mean that everyone else is having the same trouble.
Well, I've had the same problem with both my Win2K box and XP box. I've also had problems with borrowed systems and at LAN parties it's easy to see everyone shutting everything down on Windows machines before starting a game.
I also noticed something interesting. When I mentioned how slow things were to various people I got two responses. One was, "Oh always shut down all your other programs" and the other was "That's not slow, Windows always does that." The first group was working around the problem and the second were so used to it they did not realize it was a problem. How many of the people who responded saying they never have problems regularly use other OSs on modern hardware so that they can compare and contrast? My bet is few or none of them.
Stephen King tried it. He started a new book and gave the first chapter away for free, putting subsequent chapters up for sale; when enough people bought a chapter he would write & publish the next one (all on-line).
Who wants to read a book online? I mean I watch all my TV and movies through a computer that then outputs to a TV, but I'd never read an entire book on a screen. I like having reference books available, but reading, for fun, on a glowing screen? That's just crazy. Until good digital books, that don't glow, flicker, or otherwise cause eyestrain and which have long battery lives and a reasonable cost exist, digital novels will be a tiny, tiny market.
Your are[sic] obviously totally oblivious of how multitasking actually works. Then you can talk about CPU performance hits due to cache misses and context switches.[sic]
I wasn't talking about cache misses or context switches. I was talking about the reported CPU usage for an application that is sitting idle in the background. Believe it or not I can both read and run the included applications to display this information on several OSs. In any case, I don't need to be able to read to notice a 10 second delay after I click a mouse button, but before the system registers that click.
You are completely correct RE memory usage however for CPU, there is a point to shutting down running tasks before starting a game.
And that is the problem. You should not have to shut down tasks before running a game because the OS should be able to tell that you are running a full-screen application and allocate enough resources to it (to the exclusion of other applications if necessary) so that it runs smoothly. The OS should also be able to always allocate enough resources so that the mouse and keyboard are responsive. It works on pretty much every OS except Windows the vast majority of the time and I sure don't need a benchmark to tell me that. It is bloody obvious to anyone who has tried using multiple OSs to actually do something more intensive than check their e-mail.
You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.
Actually, the cost of just producing the shows is much, much, much lower than what people pay to get cable, in general. I saw an article quite a while back that broke down the production costs of every television show by the number of people who pay for cable. I don't remember the exact numbers, but for something like $25 a month every person that currently subscribes to cable could instead get a set of DVDs in the mail that included every television program currently on the air, without a single ad. I dunno about you, but I only get the most basic cable package available to me (no Comedy Central, no Sci-Fi Network, No Digital cable or PVR) and my bill is about $50 a month.
The current television distribution system is a monster and is very inefficient. By switching to DVD by mail system or (if pipes get a little fatter) a video over the internet system, the cost of television shows could be slashed and direct competition could again help improve the quality of shows.
The downside would be that some good, but unpopular shows would go away and some poor industry executives would lose their meal tickets. Aside from that though, I think it would be good for everyone all around. The only things holding it back are the current industry bigwigs and their status quo, and a good mechanism for people to learn about new titles. The internet may very well solve the latter and the former is already eroding as TV show producers are starting to make big bucks selling seasons on DVD, sometimes a lot more than they make putting a show on the air.
Plenty of people are willing to pay for alternative video distribution and if it is less than half the cost you better believe it can overtake TV, or at least start a price war the consumer is destined to win. Just a thought.
If you do not do so without good reason, you must only be a casual gamer. Good for you. Just don't delude yourself otherwise.
I never claimed otherwise, but it's not like gaming is some sort of technical field that requires a lot of training to understand. I play games occasionally when I'm not busy working or doing something in the real world. It is a diversion, not a lifestyle.
Claiming that because I use a mac means I should shut up about how badly Windows handles multitasking and allocating resources to the GUI is ridiculous and condescending.
Because it is the Game that matters, not so-called "productivity" apps or the inconvenience of closing/restoring. To every extent possible, all resources are freed whether needed or not.
If you bothered to read the root of this thread you'd see it was proposed that rebooting to play games is fine and normal, which I happen to disagree with. I also mentioned that having to close my other applications and open files is a huge pain in the ass on Windows, which I'm glad I don't have to deal with on the mac. You see apparently unlike you, I use my computer to do work primarily, and gaming is very secondary. If I want a dedicated gaming machine that I can only run one thing on at a time and that I normally leave shut down I'll buy a console already. Computers, however, are supposed to be general purpose devices and having crappy multitasking is not excused by saying that you're so obsessed with games you'll do anything to play them.
Your[sic] kidding right? Theres[sic] no way in hell osx can compete against xp/2003 in multitasking.
From a kernel architecture standpoint, you may be correct, but from a real-world usage case, you're dead wrong. I run the same task on two comparable systems with similar amounts of RAM and comparable processors and the results are obvious. The Windows machine takes up to 10 seconds to register mouse clicks while a background task is executing and doing anything like just typing text in a text editor shows significant lag. The OS X machine allows me to work normally, with no noticeable lag using the mouse or the keyboard.
As to the games example discussed earlier, I can play the same game on both systems, but on the Windows machine if I don't close the open file and quit InDesign I experience significant dropped frames and other performance problems. On OS X, I don't have any problem leaving InDesign open in the background.
Regardless of theoretical design differences or kernel architecture the difference is night and day in the real world, and it does not favor Windows.