I wish MS would pull out of the U.S. market too. They are stifling innovation and crushing new companies who bring technological advances. Cuba has nothing to do with it.
There was once a science program which explored the variation in human physiques. They mentioned that on Earth, there was a limit of about 2 metres height for bipedal physiques due to the dangers of severe head injury simple due to tripping over and hitting something.
I'd be highly suspicious of any program that claims to be able to predict the height and organism or a particular shape can reach based upon gravity/probability of head injuries. Life evolves in many strange ways. Bipedal organism could have tentacles on their heads to prevent injury during a fall, a soft layer of tissue, a bubble of a lighter than air gas, a brain located elsewhere, etc., etc.
Minor increases in gravity certainly don't rule out any sort of lifeform.
With Apple moving to x86, what are the chances of a full-speed emulator for linux, similar to WINE (yeah, WINE is not an emulator, blah blah blah)?
I'm sure a number of people will be interested in getting something like Wine working. I know a lot of people are interested in getting guest OS's working in an emulator. I looked at the vxworks forums the other day and there were more requests for a vxworks on OSX for x86 port than for any other feature.
IT seems to me unless you have hardcore certified geeks in your company, linux will cost you a lot in consultants. A lot of people can easily set up a windows or Mac box, but as for linux, it requires a more savvy end user.
I agree with you, but even if you users are all hardcore geeks (as they are here), maintaining linux as a user takes time, and time is money for most companies. As for OS X and Windows, both can cost you time and more besides. There are lots of tasks that are much, much harder and take more time on Windows and there is greater risk of data loss and productivity loss due to worms, viruses, and systems becoming unstable. OS X can cost huge amounts of time as users constantly zoom all their windows with expose and play with useless dashboard widgets while going "ooohhh, ahhhh."
If I own a company, I should be able to set standards HOWEVER I like - and that *includes* being racist, sexist, ageist, whatever... The government may not discriminate, it must be open to all. Somehow moral crusaders managed to get this extended to private business and citizenry.
It is a difficult decision deciding how much behavior should be determined by law for the good of the people. Personally, if I were to run a business I'd like to not have to worry about the race, age, or gender of my employees because I'd rather focus on important skills. If they all happen to be 80 year old hispanic women, so be it.
There is, however, a very, very good reason why laws to prevent discrimination based upon a variety of criteria were implemented. You see life is not fair. Some people start life with millions of dollars, good references, beauty, etc. Some people start life dirt poor, living in poverty with no property and no hope for an education or a good future. The problem is, due to the horrible evil known as slavery, a third of the population of the U.S. was in the latter category and they all happened to be of the same race. Further, huge portions of our society believed that it was right that blacks were treated as inferior, given no rights, and discriminated against in many other ways. Since our laws made slavery legal and enforced terrible things upon an entire race of people in the U.S. our laws needed to redress the problem. The fair thing to do would be to collect one third of all the money and all the land and all the resources and then divide it up amongst the recently freed slaves. That did not happen because the people did not want blacks to be "that equal."
Women were in a very similar situation with similar results. The end result is a half-assed solution that imposes a burden upon you and I to this very day. In order to address the social and financial disparity between races, sexes, and religions. All were discriminated against by law and custom and kept poor and disadvantaged. Now that custom has changed, the law enforces that custom in much the same way it enforced the old. Is it fair, hell no. Is it necessary, probably. Deal with it.
Your story illustrates how fully body mods have shifted in our culture from rebellious to conformist. People now get piercing and tattoos because their peers have them, rather than to stand out from their peers.
Agreed. Take a look at the punk scene in Detroit, for example. It is really amazing how all the old-timers are covered with tattoos, have funky hair, and piercing. They are big into booze, drugs, and almost all are smokers while most of the younger crowd have gone "straight-edge." Some nights it looks like dozens of bloody accountants have showed up and started slam dancing. Strange times.
Typical Slashdot poster - insult the other guy, then flame them on spelling.
No, I insulted the stupidity of your arguments and mentioned that proper spelling might help you be taken seriously. (Or at least as vaguely educated/professional.)
Your original premise was the it would be OK for MS to release a Photoshop competitor as long as it wasn't too cheap.
Really? Is that what I said? Go re-read my post and see if that is what I said. I don't care how cheap it is so long as it is not subsidized by their other illegal activities and monopoly.
I brought up other potential competitors that were also cheap (free, actually,)
You brought up non-profit projects that are the only ones left in a different market that MS has already decimated using the aforementioned illegal tactics and one non-profit project that exists in the space we were discussing. You know there is a difference between a commercial product and a community project right? That was covered by your MIS / BSBA double major right?
you responded with insults and some lame "Microsoft bribes governments" line.
MS donated huge amounts of money to both opposing parties. You don't think that is a bribe?
I tried to be rational and open to your viewpoint.
I'm sorry you can't do better at the former.
Yet, somehow I get branded unintelligent when all that you know about me comes from about four paragraphs that I wrote on some internet forum.
Demonstrate some intelligence and I'll treat you accordingly.
Let me guess you were a Dean, then Kerry supporter?
You don't see any hypocrisy in claiming I prejudged you based upon a few lines in a forum and then you making a prejudiced statement about my supposed political affiliations (when that topic has not even been raised). Rich. (And completely wrong by the way.)
It's ammusing to me that people seem to belive that using the gov to punish MS by forcing them to sell products a certain way is somehow OK, but when the shoe was on the other foot people scream "Microsoft is bribing the gov."
Maybe some of your fancy college courses covered the fact that governments and corporations are very different types of entities, empowered by different mechanisms, and with completely different goals?
I also don't have a problem with the police shooting at murderers, while I do have a problem with murderers shooting at the police. What a hypocrite I am.
Try keeping cheap insults out of your arguments.
Try making a rational argument or at least presenting a basic understanding about the subject matter being discussed. If you make an argument equating abusive monopolies and non-profit projects and then make a statement that contradicts pretty much every economic theory for the last forty years, you should learn to expect people to doubt both your credentials and intelligence.
So fair competition == ignoring your own market advantage?
If that market advantage is a monopoly yes, as per the law. The alternative is that all capital moves to a single person, group, or organization and with it power. Capitalism fails. Try reading a basic macroeconomics book some time. MS knows the rules just like everyone else, they're just bribing governments to let them get away with it.
Should the govt also force a price on Gimp, OpenOffice, etc, so as not to allow "unfair" competition to MS?
If they are subsidizing their development with another monopoly and undercutting the fair market price then hell yes. That, however, is not the case.
If MS releases a new product that does most of what both Photoshop and Illustrator can do, and prices it at $550, is that realy unreasonable?
If MS releases it as a standalone product, if they don't give it away, price it at $50, bundle it with Office, or basically give it away by bundling with OEM contracts then I'd agree. Of course there are still other ways MS can use it to further their monopoly, like having it output only to proprietary formats they control and being the only way of editing graphics in MS's new PDF-killer that they are bundling into Windows. Basically at this point I'm not giving MS any benefit of the doubt. They screw consumers again and again and with very few exceptions always play dirty and leverage their existing monopolies. I'd like to be wrong and I'd like to see competition to Adobe, but at the same time I don't see fair competition coming from MS. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 147 times, well I guess I should be expecting it by now.
I thought the general concensus on this board is that competition of software products is a good thing which makes *all* the products better, or am I mistaken?
Microsoft does not generally compete. They have a monopoly so they make products that "compete" with people in other markets, except MS bundles theirs into Windows. That way they just raise the price of Windows and everyone that buys Windows is forced to buy it. In this way the bypass normal market pressures that drive competition. They don't have to strive to be better than the competition, just "good enough" so that people won't pay twice just to get their competitor's version.
What about Photoshop Elements? What about Corel Painter? Maybe it'll help make ALL those products better by introducing a new interface idea or unique type of filter. Who knows?
Or maybe it will drive everyone except open source out of business, or push them into very small niche markets. Then the market will freeze where it is an all innovation will basically stop. Personally, I'd rather see the government force them sell it as a stand alone product and not price it below cost and subsidize it. I'd also like to see the government prevent technological tie ins that are not open to the competition. Unfortunately MS has already bought the U.S. govt. so we're probably about to see another software industry grind to a halt.
And don't forget every application in OSX that can print. PDF is an open standard scheduled for replacement by an MS standard in longhorn when they introduce a built in competitor and PDF is marginalized.
This can export to PDF? I'd have thought it more useful for them to add this feature to MS Office. Hopefully that feature will follow.
Don't hold your breath. With Longhorn MS announced they are introducing a new, competing format to PDF that will "open." Which i believe is MS speak for completely closed and a way to lock everyone in to our formats even more. I bet Word will export to the new MS-PDF instead. The sad thing is, PDF won't stand a chance and will be destroyed in all but the high-end market all because of a little monopoly MS will illegally leverage.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I don't think anyone I know who is not a software engineer will either install or have someone install windows on their mac for them. Maybe we just move in very different circles, but I just think you are plain wrong. I'm sure it will be possible to run windows, but unless Apple makes it so, it just won't be easy just as it is not easy to install Windows on a box running linux now, and certainly not easy without destroying the Linux install. And by easy I mean easy for the average user. Your arguments about external hard drives are a good example of how strained your arguments are. Do you know how many people buy external hard drives for their computers? Do you think it is even.001% of people who own computers? Most people including most gamers don't upgrade their hardware or their software ever, aside from installing new software. And most users fail to install a percentage of mainstream software they purchase from Walmart. Sorry, you're just wrong.
You obviously missed Steve Jobs telling us Apple have 82% of the digital download market, I'd say we definitely need more players.
We need MS to be that player like we need Enron to open a accounting firm. Having more, cross-compatible device manufacturers and music services would be nice, but there is a down side and there is a huge down side to MS being one of them.
The music industry in the U.S. and much of the world is a cartel, convicted of manipulating the market and artificially inflating prices. If they get to deal with a diverse market, they will behave in their usual antisocial fashion and customer will take it right in the ass. Apple is pretty close to a beneficent dictator right now. They own the market for the most part haven't done anything to lock customers into their solution or screw them on prices partly because they are running their service as a way to sell more hardware.
Enter MS. They are a monopoly convicted of price fixing, destroying competition, and violating laws all over the world. They are masters of locking customers in and trapping individuals and organizations using marketing, bribes, and technological shenanigans to suck more money out of those trapped users.
Maybe these two evil, companies will cancel out and somehow the public will get a fair deal. Maybe pigs will fly. You'll notice the other big player looking to move into this market is Walmart. Enough said.
This whole situation looks like it will just get worse and worse for customers and better and better for industry. The government is certainly not likely to step in and ensure a fair deal. We all know how easy it is to buy them. All that leaves is a grass-roots movement. I'm buying DRM-free music (or music that can have the DRM legally removed) and indy music from non RIAA members. I don't expect it will make a difference but at least I will do my part. What will you do?
Almost every Unix security exploit involves executing a shell in someway or another, but I've never heard anyone be so stupid to suggest that that it be ripped out of the system.
Every new feature introduces possible security problems. As time goes on a large number of these features become hardened as bugs are fixed and security problems ameliorated.
In my previous post I mentioned launchd. I suspected on its introduction there would be security issues because it touches a lot of places and because Apple does not have the greatest record for designing things securely the first time. They do an OK job, but there always seem to be a few vulnerabilities in any implementation.
Microsoft has a terrible record and a new CLI environment is incredibly prone to exploits. Every year for the last four years MS has said security is top priority, but I have yet to see it. Maybe this time they have really changed their culture and it will be impeccably secure from the start. I seriously doubt it though.
I never suggested that MS not add this feature. I do think that it is likely to be full of holes and make the Windows environment less secure for years to come. This is the kind of feature that needs to be torture tested by some hackers and crackers before release. Do you expect it to be secure?
I have not experienced any problems with Finder lockups or even slowdowns while using Spotlight. I do, however, regularly have problems with the finder when accessing network volumes that are mounted by it. Do you perchance have a network volume mounted regularly? I imagine that could easily cause the problem you describe.
As for points 'a' and 'c' in the first case I have a lot of files and have not had any trouble with Tiger missing files with the text I am searching for contained in the title or content for supported file types. As for the last case, Spotlight uses significant disk and CPU to index the entire drive the first time, and may again have problems if you are mounting network drives. The former has given it a reputation for causing disk problems and slowdowns.
For me, it has replaced Quicksilver, helped me out numerous times, and never caused me a problem.
Sigh. OK, lets see what percentage of mac users have the know-how to, and will be motivated to install Windows on a partition of their mac? I'd say maybe 10%, if that. What percentage of mac users buy games? I'd say maybe 70%. Thus, the vast majority of mac users won't have Windows but will want to run games. Do you see where I'm going with this?
As to the issue of whether or not there will be other hurdles to installing Windows on a mac, who knows, but the Apple VP said that apple would not actively try to stop users from running Windows, but will stop users from running OS X on another machine, that means a custom BIOS, chipset, a new kind of management system, or activating the DRM on the pentiums. The first two of those will require either user hacking or support from MS, which is unlikely.
Your ad hominem attack on me is weak, by the way. I really don't care if I have to run PC versions of games (which I rarely play) and I'll almost certainly be installing VMware on a new mac as soon as possible for testing reasons anyway.
Your view on this situation is suffering from too much Slashdot. Please try to understand that 99.9% of computer users are not Slashdot geeks and wouldn't even attempt to re-install windows as the only operating system on their existing machine today. The vast majority of people who buy video games are included in that.
It's probably going to take a Pearl Harbor style disaster for them to do something...
They are doing something. They're taking a pile of your tax dollars and using it to collect information on you while simultaneously giving huge amounts of money to all sorts of ex-cons and ex-govt officials in a variety of security industries. Or did you mean you wish they would do something about improving their computer security or inconveniencing terrorists. Fat chance of that.
alphablending on something where EVERYTHING is software is a pain, it requires read-modify-write for every pixel you write... where HW accel is non-existent it's a pain.
It also really eats up the cycles on my commadore-64. Get with the times, my three year old laptop has hardware acceleration for alpha blending. I managed to get the terminal application to use a whole 5% of my cpu by layering four partially transparent windows on top of one another with a moving video behind it while dragging the topmost window in small circles on the very top. For reasonably modern hardware and software it just is not a performance problem.
Agreed. It is very easy to get sidetracked talking about the faults of others and somehow forget that that does not make your own situation any better.
Interesting you should mention launchd, considering Apple patched a vulnerability in it yesterday. I'm sure this new CLI will open of Windows machines to a whole new class of security problems. That said, I do think there is room for improvement in command lines, especially with regard to integration into the rest of the environment. Apple has done a pretty good job with that so far (like moving a folder in the GUI that you are viewing in a shell automatically updates the paths in the shell). I think there is a lot more that could be done in that area for users who want to manage files in both the GUI and the CLI. I'd like to be able to type "ls" highlight a file and open it in my window manager by right-clicking. Bring me that level of interoperability and I'll take a long look at Windows again.
You are misinformed. The intel based macs will most likely be running a custom BIOS, not on compatible with Windows by default. In any case, I think you are still thinking of the Linux market. Most mac users (like most Windows users) do not dual boot their systems, or even have any idea how to partition and install a second OS. They certainly don't know how to, or don't care to hack their BIOS, which may be necessary. A wine style port will have a very large footprint, but will probably be used by some game developers once the project is up and running well on OS X. Wine ports of some games may be fine, while others will suck very badly (depending on the type of game and controls).
If you really think most users are going to install a second OS and reboot every time they want to play a game, well you're an idiot. A very small percentage of users certainly will, but most will not. We'll have to see if that means WINE style non-emulation or native ports. I can tell you 90% of the mac market will not be installing Windows or an emulator and will not run Windows apps unless Apple ships a way to to do it.
Having people pledge alliegence to the Country they belong to is a bad thing? That's brainwashing?
Thank you for demonstrating what a huge failure the U.S. educational system is. You have demonstrated that you can't even critically regard a topic you have lived with all your life as well as a failure to understand the history behind the pledge of allegiance. It was written by a socialist who wanted to celebrate columbus arriving in the Americas. It originally had different text and did not include "under god" even though the author was a minister, and originally everyone did the whole right-arm salute thing at the end, but then we decided we looked too similar to the nazis and changed that too. Kinda interesting the parallels with the last part huh? The Nazis used patriotism as a tool to control Germany, as a result a lot of people surrendered their will and critical thinking to the government and did horrible things, all the while thinking it was "for the greater good" of the German nation.
Pledging to uphold and ethical or moral principal is one thing, pledging allegiance to a country or document, either of which can be remade to do horrible things is foolish and dishonorable. Indoctrinating children into believing that they have to align their beliefs and actions with those of the country in which they happen to be born, or for that matter eliciting an oath from someone who is too young to understand and be bound by such a thing is wretchedly unethical. It's like a parent making their four-year-old swear to always do exactly what uncle Tom says, no matter what, without considering whether what he says to do is ethical or not. Blind obedience is not a virtue.
My very basic motorola v180 series phone is very poorly designed. It has two volume buttons on the side that always get pushed in my pocket and there is no key lock (flip phone). I have to keep it on silent just so I don't beep randomly all the time. It synchs just fine with iSynch over a mini usb cable, but is has a really, really poorly designed interface. Avoid it.
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I wish MS would pull out of the U.S. market too. They are stifling innovation and crushing new companies who bring technological advances. Cuba has nothing to do with it.
There was once a science program which explored the variation in human physiques. They mentioned that on Earth, there was a limit of about 2 metres height for bipedal physiques due to the dangers of severe head injury simple due to tripping over and hitting something.
I'd be highly suspicious of any program that claims to be able to predict the height and organism or a particular shape can reach based upon gravity/probability of head injuries. Life evolves in many strange ways. Bipedal organism could have tentacles on their heads to prevent injury during a fall, a soft layer of tissue, a bubble of a lighter than air gas, a brain located elsewhere, etc., etc.
Minor increases in gravity certainly don't rule out any sort of lifeform.
With Apple moving to x86, what are the chances of a full-speed emulator for linux, similar to WINE (yeah, WINE is not an emulator, blah blah blah)?
I'm sure a number of people will be interested in getting something like Wine working. I know a lot of people are interested in getting guest OS's working in an emulator. I looked at the vxworks forums the other day and there were more requests for a vxworks on OSX for x86 port than for any other feature.
IT seems to me unless you have hardcore certified geeks in your company, linux will cost you a lot in consultants. A lot of people can easily set up a windows or Mac box, but as for linux, it requires a more savvy end user.
I agree with you, but even if you users are all hardcore geeks (as they are here), maintaining linux as a user takes time, and time is money for most companies. As for OS X and Windows, both can cost you time and more besides. There are lots of tasks that are much, much harder and take more time on Windows and there is greater risk of data loss and productivity loss due to worms, viruses, and systems becoming unstable. OS X can cost huge amounts of time as users constantly zoom all their windows with expose and play with useless dashboard widgets while going "ooohhh, ahhhh."
If I own a company, I should be able to set standards HOWEVER I like - and that *includes* being racist, sexist, ageist, whatever... The government may not discriminate, it must be open to all. Somehow moral crusaders managed to get this extended to private business and citizenry.
It is a difficult decision deciding how much behavior should be determined by law for the good of the people. Personally, if I were to run a business I'd like to not have to worry about the race, age, or gender of my employees because I'd rather focus on important skills. If they all happen to be 80 year old hispanic women, so be it.
There is, however, a very, very good reason why laws to prevent discrimination based upon a variety of criteria were implemented. You see life is not fair. Some people start life with millions of dollars, good references, beauty, etc. Some people start life dirt poor, living in poverty with no property and no hope for an education or a good future. The problem is, due to the horrible evil known as slavery, a third of the population of the U.S. was in the latter category and they all happened to be of the same race. Further, huge portions of our society believed that it was right that blacks were treated as inferior, given no rights, and discriminated against in many other ways. Since our laws made slavery legal and enforced terrible things upon an entire race of people in the U.S. our laws needed to redress the problem. The fair thing to do would be to collect one third of all the money and all the land and all the resources and then divide it up amongst the recently freed slaves. That did not happen because the people did not want blacks to be "that equal."
Women were in a very similar situation with similar results. The end result is a half-assed solution that imposes a burden upon you and I to this very day. In order to address the social and financial disparity between races, sexes, and religions. All were discriminated against by law and custom and kept poor and disadvantaged. Now that custom has changed, the law enforces that custom in much the same way it enforced the old. Is it fair, hell no. Is it necessary, probably. Deal with it.
Your story illustrates how fully body mods have shifted in our culture from rebellious to conformist. People now get piercing and tattoos because their peers have them, rather than to stand out from their peers.
Agreed. Take a look at the punk scene in Detroit, for example. It is really amazing how all the old-timers are covered with tattoos, have funky hair, and piercing. They are big into booze, drugs, and almost all are smokers while most of the younger crowd have gone "straight-edge." Some nights it looks like dozens of bloody accountants have showed up and started slam dancing. Strange times.
Typical Slashdot poster - insult the other guy, then flame them on spelling.
No, I insulted the stupidity of your arguments and mentioned that proper spelling might help you be taken seriously. (Or at least as vaguely educated/professional.)
Your original premise was the it would be OK for MS to release a Photoshop competitor as long as it wasn't too cheap.
Really? Is that what I said? Go re-read my post and see if that is what I said. I don't care how cheap it is so long as it is not subsidized by their other illegal activities and monopoly.
I brought up other potential competitors that were also cheap (free, actually,)
You brought up non-profit projects that are the only ones left in a different market that MS has already decimated using the aforementioned illegal tactics and one non-profit project that exists in the space we were discussing. You know there is a difference between a commercial product and a community project right? That was covered by your MIS / BSBA double major right?
you responded with insults and some lame "Microsoft bribes governments" line.
MS donated huge amounts of money to both opposing parties. You don't think that is a bribe?
I tried to be rational and open to your viewpoint.
I'm sorry you can't do better at the former.
Yet, somehow I get branded unintelligent when all that you know about me comes from about four paragraphs that I wrote on some internet forum.
Demonstrate some intelligence and I'll treat you accordingly.
Let me guess you were a Dean, then Kerry supporter?
You don't see any hypocrisy in claiming I prejudged you based upon a few lines in a forum and then you making a prejudiced statement about my supposed political affiliations (when that topic has not even been raised). Rich. (And completely wrong by the way.)
It's ammusing to me that people seem to belive that using the gov to punish MS by forcing them to sell products a certain way is somehow OK, but when the shoe was on the other foot people scream "Microsoft is bribing the gov."
Maybe some of your fancy college courses covered the fact that governments and corporations are very different types of entities, empowered by different mechanisms, and with completely different goals?
I also don't have a problem with the police shooting at murderers, while I do have a problem with murderers shooting at the police. What a hypocrite I am.
Try keeping cheap insults out of your arguments.
Try making a rational argument or at least presenting a basic understanding about the subject matter being discussed. If you make an argument equating abusive monopolies and non-profit projects and then make a statement that contradicts pretty much every economic theory for the last forty years, you should learn to expect people to doubt both your credentials and intelligence.
P.S. the atrocious spelling does not help either.
So fair competition == ignoring your own market advantage?
If that market advantage is a monopoly yes, as per the law. The alternative is that all capital moves to a single person, group, or organization and with it power. Capitalism fails. Try reading a basic macroeconomics book some time. MS knows the rules just like everyone else, they're just bribing governments to let them get away with it.
Should the govt also force a price on Gimp, OpenOffice, etc, so as not to allow "unfair" competition to MS?
If they are subsidizing their development with another monopoly and undercutting the fair market price then hell yes. That, however, is not the case.
If MS releases a new product that does most of what both Photoshop and Illustrator can do, and prices it at $550, is that realy unreasonable?
If MS releases it as a standalone product, if they don't give it away, price it at $50, bundle it with Office, or basically give it away by bundling with OEM contracts then I'd agree. Of course there are still other ways MS can use it to further their monopoly, like having it output only to proprietary formats they control and being the only way of editing graphics in MS's new PDF-killer that they are bundling into Windows. Basically at this point I'm not giving MS any benefit of the doubt. They screw consumers again and again and with very few exceptions always play dirty and leverage their existing monopolies. I'd like to be wrong and I'd like to see competition to Adobe, but at the same time I don't see fair competition coming from MS. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 147 times, well I guess I should be expecting it by now.
I thought the general concensus on this board is that competition of software products is a good thing which makes *all* the products better, or am I mistaken?
Microsoft does not generally compete. They have a monopoly so they make products that "compete" with people in other markets, except MS bundles theirs into Windows. That way they just raise the price of Windows and everyone that buys Windows is forced to buy it. In this way the bypass normal market pressures that drive competition. They don't have to strive to be better than the competition, just "good enough" so that people won't pay twice just to get their competitor's version.
What about Photoshop Elements? What about Corel Painter? Maybe it'll help make ALL those products better by introducing a new interface idea or unique type of filter. Who knows?
Or maybe it will drive everyone except open source out of business, or push them into very small niche markets. Then the market will freeze where it is an all innovation will basically stop. Personally, I'd rather see the government force them sell it as a stand alone product and not price it below cost and subsidize it. I'd also like to see the government prevent technological tie ins that are not open to the competition. Unfortunately MS has already bought the U.S. govt. so we're probably about to see another software industry grind to a halt.
And don't forget every application in OSX that can print. PDF is an open standard scheduled for replacement by an MS standard in longhorn when they introduce a built in competitor and PDF is marginalized.
This can export to PDF? I'd have thought it more useful for them to add this feature to MS Office. Hopefully that feature will follow.
Don't hold your breath. With Longhorn MS announced they are introducing a new, competing format to PDF that will "open." Which i believe is MS speak for completely closed and a way to lock everyone in to our formats even more. I bet Word will export to the new MS-PDF instead. The sad thing is, PDF won't stand a chance and will be destroyed in all but the high-end market all because of a little monopoly MS will illegally leverage.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I don't think anyone I know who is not a software engineer will either install or have someone install windows on their mac for them. Maybe we just move in very different circles, but I just think you are plain wrong. I'm sure it will be possible to run windows, but unless Apple makes it so, it just won't be easy just as it is not easy to install Windows on a box running linux now, and certainly not easy without destroying the Linux install. And by easy I mean easy for the average user. Your arguments about external hard drives are a good example of how strained your arguments are. Do you know how many people buy external hard drives for their computers? Do you think it is even .001% of people who own computers? Most people including most gamers don't upgrade their hardware or their software ever, aside from installing new software. And most users fail to install a percentage of mainstream software they purchase from Walmart. Sorry, you're just wrong.
You obviously missed Steve Jobs telling us Apple have 82% of the digital download market, I'd say we definitely need more players.
We need MS to be that player like we need Enron to open a accounting firm. Having more, cross-compatible device manufacturers and music services would be nice, but there is a down side and there is a huge down side to MS being one of them.
The music industry in the U.S. and much of the world is a cartel, convicted of manipulating the market and artificially inflating prices. If they get to deal with a diverse market, they will behave in their usual antisocial fashion and customer will take it right in the ass. Apple is pretty close to a beneficent dictator right now. They own the market for the most part haven't done anything to lock customers into their solution or screw them on prices partly because they are running their service as a way to sell more hardware.
Enter MS. They are a monopoly convicted of price fixing, destroying competition, and violating laws all over the world. They are masters of locking customers in and trapping individuals and organizations using marketing, bribes, and technological shenanigans to suck more money out of those trapped users.
Maybe these two evil, companies will cancel out and somehow the public will get a fair deal. Maybe pigs will fly. You'll notice the other big player looking to move into this market is Walmart. Enough said.
This whole situation looks like it will just get worse and worse for customers and better and better for industry. The government is certainly not likely to step in and ensure a fair deal. We all know how easy it is to buy them. All that leaves is a grass-roots movement. I'm buying DRM-free music (or music that can have the DRM legally removed) and indy music from non RIAA members. I don't expect it will make a difference but at least I will do my part. What will you do?
Almost every Unix security exploit involves executing a shell in someway or another, but I've never heard anyone be so stupid to suggest that that it be ripped out of the system.
Every new feature introduces possible security problems. As time goes on a large number of these features become hardened as bugs are fixed and security problems ameliorated.
In my previous post I mentioned launchd. I suspected on its introduction there would be security issues because it touches a lot of places and because Apple does not have the greatest record for designing things securely the first time. They do an OK job, but there always seem to be a few vulnerabilities in any implementation.
Microsoft has a terrible record and a new CLI environment is incredibly prone to exploits. Every year for the last four years MS has said security is top priority, but I have yet to see it. Maybe this time they have really changed their culture and it will be impeccably secure from the start. I seriously doubt it though.
I never suggested that MS not add this feature. I do think that it is likely to be full of holes and make the Windows environment less secure for years to come. This is the kind of feature that needs to be torture tested by some hackers and crackers before release. Do you expect it to be secure?
Allow me to say, "works for me."
I have not experienced any problems with Finder lockups or even slowdowns while using Spotlight. I do, however, regularly have problems with the finder when accessing network volumes that are mounted by it. Do you perchance have a network volume mounted regularly? I imagine that could easily cause the problem you describe.
As for points 'a' and 'c' in the first case I have a lot of files and have not had any trouble with Tiger missing files with the text I am searching for contained in the title or content for supported file types. As for the last case, Spotlight uses significant disk and CPU to index the entire drive the first time, and may again have problems if you are mounting network drives. The former has given it a reputation for causing disk problems and slowdowns.
For me, it has replaced Quicksilver, helped me out numerous times, and never caused me a problem.
Sigh. OK, lets see what percentage of mac users have the know-how to, and will be motivated to install Windows on a partition of their mac? I'd say maybe 10%, if that. What percentage of mac users buy games? I'd say maybe 70%. Thus, the vast majority of mac users won't have Windows but will want to run games. Do you see where I'm going with this?
As to the issue of whether or not there will be other hurdles to installing Windows on a mac, who knows, but the Apple VP said that apple would not actively try to stop users from running Windows, but will stop users from running OS X on another machine, that means a custom BIOS, chipset, a new kind of management system, or activating the DRM on the pentiums. The first two of those will require either user hacking or support from MS, which is unlikely.
Your ad hominem attack on me is weak, by the way. I really don't care if I have to run PC versions of games (which I rarely play) and I'll almost certainly be installing VMware on a new mac as soon as possible for testing reasons anyway.
Your view on this situation is suffering from too much Slashdot. Please try to understand that 99.9% of computer users are not Slashdot geeks and wouldn't even attempt to re-install windows as the only operating system on their existing machine today. The vast majority of people who buy video games are included in that.
It's probably going to take a Pearl Harbor style disaster for them to do something...
They are doing something. They're taking a pile of your tax dollars and using it to collect information on you while simultaneously giving huge amounts of money to all sorts of ex-cons and ex-govt officials in a variety of security industries. Or did you mean you wish they would do something about improving their computer security or inconveniencing terrorists. Fat chance of that.
alphablending on something where EVERYTHING is software is a pain, it requires read-modify-write for every pixel you write... where HW accel is non-existent it's a pain.
It also really eats up the cycles on my commadore-64. Get with the times, my three year old laptop has hardware acceleration for alpha blending. I managed to get the terminal application to use a whole 5% of my cpu by layering four partially transparent windows on top of one another with a moving video behind it while dragging the topmost window in small circles on the very top. For reasonably modern hardware and software it just is not a performance problem.
Agreed. It is very easy to get sidetracked talking about the faults of others and somehow forget that that does not make your own situation any better.
Interesting you should mention launchd, considering Apple patched a vulnerability in it yesterday. I'm sure this new CLI will open of Windows machines to a whole new class of security problems. That said, I do think there is room for improvement in command lines, especially with regard to integration into the rest of the environment. Apple has done a pretty good job with that so far (like moving a folder in the GUI that you are viewing in a shell automatically updates the paths in the shell). I think there is a lot more that could be done in that area for users who want to manage files in both the GUI and the CLI. I'd like to be able to type "ls" highlight a file and open it in my window manager by right-clicking. Bring me that level of interoperability and I'll take a long look at Windows again.
You are misinformed. The intel based macs will most likely be running a custom BIOS, not on compatible with Windows by default. In any case, I think you are still thinking of the Linux market. Most mac users (like most Windows users) do not dual boot their systems, or even have any idea how to partition and install a second OS. They certainly don't know how to, or don't care to hack their BIOS, which may be necessary. A wine style port will have a very large footprint, but will probably be used by some game developers once the project is up and running well on OS X. Wine ports of some games may be fine, while others will suck very badly (depending on the type of game and controls).
If you really think most users are going to install a second OS and reboot every time they want to play a game, well you're an idiot. A very small percentage of users certainly will, but most will not. We'll have to see if that means WINE style non-emulation or native ports. I can tell you 90% of the mac market will not be installing Windows or an emulator and will not run Windows apps unless Apple ships a way to to do it.
Having people pledge alliegence to the Country they belong to is a bad thing? That's brainwashing?
Thank you for demonstrating what a huge failure the U.S. educational system is. You have demonstrated that you can't even critically regard a topic you have lived with all your life as well as a failure to understand the history behind the pledge of allegiance. It was written by a socialist who wanted to celebrate columbus arriving in the Americas. It originally had different text and did not include "under god" even though the author was a minister, and originally everyone did the whole right-arm salute thing at the end, but then we decided we looked too similar to the nazis and changed that too. Kinda interesting the parallels with the last part huh? The Nazis used patriotism as a tool to control Germany, as a result a lot of people surrendered their will and critical thinking to the government and did horrible things, all the while thinking it was "for the greater good" of the German nation.
Pledging to uphold and ethical or moral principal is one thing, pledging allegiance to a country or document, either of which can be remade to do horrible things is foolish and dishonorable. Indoctrinating children into believing that they have to align their beliefs and actions with those of the country in which they happen to be born, or for that matter eliciting an oath from someone who is too young to understand and be bound by such a thing is wretchedly unethical. It's like a parent making their four-year-old swear to always do exactly what uncle Tom says, no matter what, without considering whether what he says to do is ethical or not. Blind obedience is not a virtue.
My very basic motorola v180 series phone is very poorly designed. It has two volume buttons on the side that always get pushed in my pocket and there is no key lock (flip phone). I have to keep it on silent just so I don't beep randomly all the time. It synchs just fine with iSynch over a mini usb cable, but is has a really, really poorly designed interface. Avoid it.