By the way, how often do you review the html source of webpages you visit?
Occasionally. I have also edited quite a few different ones for one reason or another. I was not meaning to imply that it was not valid. I was just wondering if it was obscure and unused, or just something I have not run across. It still seems an odd inclusion in a page created by a worm.
Relating to this, I wonder, is there any way to get google to search based upon html tags? For example, could I find all pages with address tags.
Umm, did you read my post? Everything you mention was already discussed. A conscious effort is an effort that you are aware of and must choose. Think, "you must be conscious to make." It does not mean that it is hard.
I looked at a defaced page and there were two things I noticed. The first was that the worm does not seem to create a robots.txt file to hide defaced pages from search engines. Second, the majority of the text is contained in an ADDRESS, HTML tag. It is a valid tag, but does anyone actually use it? I have not seen it before as far as I can recall.
how do you tell it that you're dead when you're, well, dead?
I wrote a little program called dead man switch years ago, for just this purpose (and to teach myself Java). I imagine this is someone else's though since I only gave mine to a few friends. Mine just required that you log in to the server once every [variable] days. If you failed to log in it would optionally send a warning e-mail and then it would mail out a predefined message to a predefined address. I planned to expand it to include setting up accounts and storing files encrypted, but never got to it. I figured all those movies where people say, "If I die my computer will automatically send the files to the police" would be more true to life if there was such an app lying around to make it easy. (cron, yes, I know)
My guess is that like my program, and like a real dead man switch, it takes a conscious effort to keep the switch from being tripped.
One question: Why don't the FSF make a legal attack on these EULAs which do so much to infringe customers rights?
My guess would be because either they have no legal standing to sue unless some company tries to enforce the terms of the EULA (which they never do since most of the terms would be shot down as fast as they could be read) or it is because it would serve no strategic purpose. This could be because even if the have an EULA invalidated, there is nothing stopping the company from just changing the terms and shipping another one. But hey, I'm not a lawyer, so maybe there is one reading this that can give you something better than conjecture.
Is it possible that honest politicians still exist? Mr. Wlodzimierz Marcinski, took it upon himself to travel to Brussels to make a speech to the Fisheries council and point out how ludicrous and undemocratic sneaking this unpopular legislation through without revisions was. He had no official standing in the EU itself, and was representing Poland as Minister of Science. The cynic in me is saying, "maybe he was just upset no one bribed him." But there is this strange new feeling I've never felt before (I'll call it optimism) that says maybe he was actually trying to help his countrymen and the EU as a whole. Well done Mr. Marcinski. My American brain will not be able to remember your name, but I'll strive to remember that "Honest Polish Politician" whenever I'm completely overwhelmed with despair after reading the news here in the U.S.
I can see that you have missed my point. What I was saying is that people will pay for a finished project, but unless someone makes a huge effort to organize them, they will not contract someone to write/port one. Most users are just fine with MS Office, and are not looking hard for an alternative. If one was presented, they would consider it, and it would likely gain popularity, but hiring someone is just not going to happen. Open Source extremists do not run OS X. OS X is for people who want power, and ease of use, and don't mind paying money for it, and don't care if all the source is open, so long as it works. MS Office works (but is buggy), OpenOffice does not (it is somewhat functional, but not finished).
Personally, I don't use OpenOffice or MS Office except to test the compatibility of files. The reason I mentioned that I think the OpenOffice team should consider putting effort into it, is because it is a good strategic move to prevent MS from killing them with their proprietary format lock-in. I don't expect Sun to actually care that much about promoting open standards and, realistically, they have done most of the work to date.
I will continue to use OS X, thank you, and Windows, and NetBSD, and Linux. I don't imagine I will be using OpenOffice for much anytime soon, and I don't expect MS's.doc format will stop being the standard for home/office file sharing.
people will figure its not Linux fault that the computer is slow
Not likely. They will probably either assume the computer is crap, but continue to associate Linux with crap. Or convince themselves that Windows really is faster. After all most people have a vested interest in so believing after they have spent a pile of money and time putting Windows on it. People have a tendency to believe that they are always right, and defend any mistake they make. I can see people in the future arguing about how slow and crappy their computer was with Linux on it, and still others arguing that Linux makes computers slow, even after it is replaced with Windows. It is, sadly, the way people work.
Overall, Linux is rapidly pulling ahead and it's because of the fact that, using the right distribution, newbies don't have to program or Read Fine Manuals anymore.
I think you are mistaken. Linux does well right now as a server, but it is not very common as a desktop. Obviously, the numbers are hard/impossible to gather, but from personal experience I can tell you I only know one person who is not a programmer that runs Linux as their workstation OS. I know plenty of programmers and non-programmers that run OS X as their workstation OS. In any case, we were talking about users of office suites, in particular OpenOffice on OS X. Take a look at the number of licenses for mac: MS Office versus the number of downloads of OpenOffice. Guess which number will be higher.
there's no programming or manual reading required to make OpenOffice work on its supported platforms.
Again, the discussion was about OpenOffice on OS X. The X11 version is basically nonfunctional (no copy and paste). The Native OS X version is way behind the Windows/Linux version because only a few people are working on it, and because it is hard-coded for X11 and Windows, with portability not being a consideration during the coding. (The example given by people working on it is only two file types, hardcoded repeatedly.) Neither Mac version is anywhere near usable, so Mac Users usually just buy MS Office.
please don't spread bad rumors about what contributing to OSS projects is like. And remember: more than just the source code is open...If your friend had set up his own site with alternative graphics, they would have eventually been integrated regardless of the wishes of the jerk.
I'm not spreading rumors, I'm providing anecdotal information about what happened. Picture this, you are a professional artist, and have never programed and have no idea how to program. You have done some work on games in the past, and want to help out with some open source game you see being developed, after you see it's web page. What do you do? Well, downloading the code is useless to you. You can read the documentation, if any exists. But if you want to help, a good start is sending mail or posting on a related discussion board. So that is what you do. You make some cool images and models, post them to the main board and say, hey guys, how about these? If your response is no one offering to incorporate them, no suggestions for improving them, no one apparently looking at them, and a bunch of jerks insulting you and telling you to go away, what do you do? Well you can flame them back, and get in an argument, you can grab the code and learn how to program or try to get someone else interested in working on it with you, or you can move on and do something else. This is not, by any means, an isolated incident. I know several professional writers, who have worked on several large commercial UNIX applications that you rely on every day (even though you may not know it) who have expressed interest in helping out on an open source project. All of them gave up, when they could not get anyone to talk to them, or answer questions not contained in the existing docs.
This is a serious tangent from the ongoing discussion, but I thought it was an important point to make about how the attitudes of some people can hold back open source. The number one complaint I've heard about open source games is that while the engines are often cool, the graphics are always crap. I'm just trying to let you know why. I understand that help is not always wanted in every project, and most OS programmers couldn't care less about having good docs. But it is not like this is an isolated incident. I know 4 professionals (including as I said the best graphic artist I know) who all tried to work with multiple OS projects and all gave up in frustration because no one would even talk to them. This is symptom of a problem. Take heed.
I'm sorry to hear that. I was staring at a BSOD that came from Word on one of the work machines about ten minutes ago.
It is certainly not ideal and has lots of quirks and bugs that need to be worked around. It has never crashed my OS X box, but I do not use it very often, usually just to test for compatibility. In fact, the only program that has crashed my OS X box was "Giants: Citizen Kabuto" which is a rather fun video game. Later releases were still buggy, but did not result in a kernel panic. As far as MS Office is concerned, it is better (slightly) than the windows version, but still cannot handle large documents, and still has many of the same bugs. You can rely upon OS X for stability. I have had 4 crashes in as many years, two of which were my fault for hacking up some necessary system resources of the OS.
Lack of serious action toward reaching the goal tells others where their priorities are.
People are working towards making a good open office port, they are just too few in number. In some ways you are right that the lack of support is indicative of the user's priorities. For most of them the priority is to have a functional word processor. There is only one option right now, MS Office, so they buy it. I'm sure many users would be happy to pay for open office instead, but that is not an option. If your pipes get clogged, you can get someone to come out the next day, and find them in yellow pages. When someone wants a word processor, they look on the internet and buy one that is available. The open source movement is not even a consideration. Not many users want to pay now for something they may or may not get sometime in the future. Also, it would cost a great deal of money to hire enough engineers to make it work any time soon. Reference early comments about the poor programming practices and lack of portability introduced by Sun's engineers. For this to work a large company, probably Apple, would have to step in and hire coders to do the work, with an expectation of a future return (like Sun has done for Linux/Solaris/Windows.
You talk about people coming together to code or hire coders, but that is not what happened to get this to work on Windows and Linux. What happened was Sun made a strategic move.
I fully expect their to be a working OpenOffice for OSX, but I doubt it will ever compete well with MS Office. Unless the project forks drastically, or Sun changes their attitude and coding, I doubt it will ever be as polished as it is on Linux/Windows. Feel free to blame Mac programmers, but the reality is, there are not that many Mac coders who can also handle X11, and are willing to deal with such a complex mess.
Your attitude seems to indicate that you do not care, and that is fine. But open standards will lose out to MS's proprietary standards when that 5% market share goes with.doc instead of.svw. Maybe it will make no difference in the long run. But maybe it will mean another few years you have to put up with.doc files.
whenever OO is mentioned on Slashdot all I see are comments bitching at the developer team and stupid (wrong) statistics being thrown around in an attempt to convince Sun to do the work even though they have no interest or need for it. Because, you know, Mac users are special so they shouldn't need to do the work themselves.
Sun has done most of the work on Open Office to date. They have a vested interest in making it work on Windows and Linux because they need a windows version for migrations and cross-platform deployments and they need Linux because they are trying to sell it. They have ignored OSX, because they don't think they need it (and they may be right). It would be great if Apple threw some people at this and came out with their own version, but it is not too likely. As for the rest of us, the open source community, well a lot of people here would like to see it because they would like to use the same word processor all the time. Many of us run both Linux and OS X. When you say Mac users are special and have no need to do the work themselves, you are a bit off. Most of them are happy to use MS Office, and won't change because it would be a huge amount of work to port OpenOffice properly. Those that would like to do the port are stymied by too few developers that know both UNIX/X11 and OS X interface design. Also they are hindered by Sun's coding practices that fail to account for portability. Sun makes it very hard because they are not interested in the advantages of portable code, they just want it to work in X11 and windows. This is short-sighted, but a fact nonetheless. And just so you know, there are people working on it, and working hard. But without more help from developers and unless Sun starts to follow better coding practices, the work will be very slow. And MS will benefit from it. If you think the Mac market is insignificant, well that is 5% of the market you have just lost, who would be very likely to support an alternate/open format. It is more than all the Linux desktops combined. It is 5% more market MS can use to keep OpenOffice from gaining ground.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If MS provides the only functional word processor, Mac users will use it. Open Office will have less leverage. Sun will not write it, but they also make it hard for anyone else to do so and that is a problem.
A Sword is a weapon. These other things (including the kitchen knife) are primarily used for purposes other than killing things.
A sword can be a sporting good, as in fencing. How about a club? I'd say it's primary use is as a weapon. The point is guns are no more or less tools or weapons than anything else around you. If you think so, then you are letting your emotions get in the way of your scientific thought processes. The original intent of the creator of something, does not define it's characteristics. A knife can be more deadly than a gun, in the right hands. Laws banning guns, or placing strong restrictions on their ownership under the assumption that an otherwise law abiding citizen is going to use it in crime is foolish and short-sighted. Laws do not bind the actions of criminal, by definition. They only stop non-criminals, and in fact, make more criminals. If a person feels frightened enough to need to carry a gun to defend themselves, they will do so. If it is illegal, then they will not report it when they shoot someone, and may kill a policeman or someone else, because the law has put them in a position where they have been forced into criminal action in the name of self-preservation.
there most certainly is a correlation between crimes involving guns and fatal injuries during crimes.
Really, would you care to prove that? Deaths from violent crimes have also gone up in Britain since they banned handguns. Your correlation is not demonstrated there.
You said, "A Sword is a weapon." Well so is a crowbar or a phonecord if I employ them as one. You have failed to make any definitive distinction between the items on the list.
If you can't figure out the "which one of these things doesn't belong" quality guns have in relation to your laundry list, then I really think the world would be better off without you owning a gun.
Perhaps you would care to enlighten me. How is a sword qualitatively different from a gun? How is a knife qualitatively different from a gun? Lets look at the knife as an example OK? It can be used to kill people or any number of other things. It can be designed to kill people or for other purposes. Guns can be used for hunting and target shooting. Knives can be used for making dinner or competition throwing. Both can kill at a distance, both can kill multiple people, both have laws restricting carry, concealment, etc. Maybe knives and guns are pretty close after all.
Other things in the above list may be more or less similar but the poster is completely correct in stating that all can be used to kill, or do other things. Responsible gun or knife owners are very careful with their items, and follow rituals and habits intended to promote safe use, even in conditions where something goes wrong. Responsible people are careful with all dangerous substances and devices.
Your assertion that the argument is old is very true, but you have yet to prove it wrong. Most of the items regarded as "martial arts weapons" are the result of laws banning spears and swords from being owned by common people. As a result farm implements were adapted. Banning weapons did not work then, and banning guns does not work now. In the UK, violent crimes have gone up since guns were banned, despite still being lower that the U.S.
In conclusion, your argument is fundamentally flawed. There is no qualitative difference between guns and knives, only a difference in construction and use.
You mean an Apple designed PPC nintendo portable gameing console
I've often though Apple would be smart to partner with Nintendo or Sony to release an emulator that would be built into OS X and allow the playing of their titles. Games could be either on the original media for Sony, or downloads for Nintendo. This would go a long ways to counter the lack of games available for OS X and make money for the Gaming company with increased game sales. Cutting into the actual sale of the systems is not a large concern, since they are often loss-leaders in the first place. They could make money selling USB game pads and accessories, and it would broaden their audience for little cost. I can't think of a good reason why this has not happened. Oh, and it would piss off MS.
believe that TextEdit will open.doc files as it is now.
Yeah, it is built in the OS, and can be enabled for text anywhere. It is still pretty basic (last time I looked). The problem is that there are just too many problems with all the different.doc versions. Apple can certainly make a good run at it, perhaps as good or better than MS, but unlike Windows users, Apple users will have a problem with the bugs in the reader. They are used to things just working and Apple really wants to make products that do that. I fear they will can it before they release something that is not close to perfect. I'm keeping fingers crossed though.
A train system is cheaper than installing and maintaining roads.
I think you are wrong. Care to provide any support for your assertion? Trains normally run on a loop, and are fine for people on/near that loop, but as far picking up people from thousands of homes scattered across a 150 mile radius, you'd have to build crazy system of tracks to pick up those people. It's simple logistics, individual vehicles can go to each home and back, and can do so simultaneously. Trains must pick people up in sequence, each additional stop is another chunk of time a car does not have to take. After stopping a hundred times, you're already done for the day, and no one has made it to work yet.
I fail to understand how any part of that response lies "on the other hand"--if anyone doesn't like what they get with free software, they have options. Two of those options are to learn to program and do the work themselves, or purchase the time and expertise of a programmer.
The "on the other hand" part is that they have valid issues to complain about, even if it is a free program. One of the reasons OS X is more popular on the desktop than Linux is that no one in Mac OS X forums ever tells you to learn how to program or RTFM. Learning to program for a non-programmer, or hiring a programmer are both pretty unreasonable solutions for most people. It is much cheaper and easier to just buy MS office (which is what most people do). There is nothing wrong with making polite feature requests. In fact it is very useful as it help the creators understand what people would like their software to do. On a very related topic, I'd just like to mention that I know a number of writers and artists who have expressed interest in helping out on open source projects. (Have you ever noticed how crappy the docs, help systems, and graphics are for many projects?) The response from the open source community has been profoundly negative. Polite offers of help and requests for information on what needs to be done have mostly been ignored and occasionally been flamed. The hostile and elitist attitudes of many open source zealots are really hurting the community. Perhaps you should be a little more understanding of non-programmers and you will find that they do have useful things to contribute, if you will let them. I know one open source game that lost the potential free services of one of the most talented graphic artists I know, simply because when he offered up a few sample textures and models for the game, he was flamed off the boards for offering them in the wrong format (something that could have been converted in about a minute if someone would have politely told him what format was used.) Comment like, "thats a windows only format MS-bitch" are not exactly going to win any friends. Now I'm not saying that you have been impolite, or that you are specifically causing a problem, but your attitude that non-programers have no right to make comments is just the sort of attitude that pushes talent away.
is it any worse than the OS9 versions of word processing and spreadsheets that came bundled with the original iMac?
In my opinion, yeah I'm afraid it is worse. There is an OS X native version that is implemented with Java for the interface. It is passable but the X-windows version is pretty much unusable.
This is something I would love to see. There is real room for improvements in both word processing and publishing and I think an Apple easy to use package could turn a lot of heads. Imagine a word processor that was easy and compatible and provided spelling and grammar checking services for the whole OS. Both of these are available now, but both could be a whole lot better if Apple would run with them. A sticking point is that Apple probably can't get a perfect.doc file importer (nor can MS) and Apple really really likes to have everything work flawlessly or not at all. I still think a $150 Apple word processor with some real support for layout and long-documents could give both Word and Framemaker a run for their money. Please please please can we have some competition here.
Has any software project (open source or commercial) ever decided to drop Mac support simply because they were so fucking sick of hearing OS X users whine about the look of the app clashing with their beautiful desktop?
It is true that Mac users often seem ungrateful in open source circles. I have heard them complain about lack of support for freeware open source programs many times, and it seems like beggars should not be so choosy. On the other hand, Open Office really is pretty awful on OS X. It does not integrate well with other programs, and does not support the majority of the features that make using OS X so much nicer than other systems. I do think OS X support should be a priority for the Open Office team since it is important to their cross-platform message for environments with a variety of systems deployed. It makes them a non-starter for any place with a few macs, that want to be consistent, and puts them at a disadvantage in comparisons with MS Office (Which runs as well on OS X as it does on Windows.) Since I can't really help out right now though, I can just make polite requests for improvements and hope for the best.
An assault rifle is a tool that has a bad stigma attached to it (they are designed to kill people!) so they have legislation to prohibit sales.
My father was all in favor of assault weapons bans, until he found out the bans included his Remington model 12 pump shotgun, which he inherited from my grandfather and he has used to hunt ducks since he was 18. It was included because it has a six round magazine which everyone plugs to be 3 rounds with a piece of broomstick. The sad thing about these bans is if anything they push people to more dangerous weapons. I'd much rather have someone shooting at me with an Uzi than a good 30-06 deer rifle. Chalk another one up to politicians wanting to get good press, rather than actually solve problems.
I would argue this point. I have seen it referenced several times, and I believe it is a myth. It may be that assault rifles were adopted because of their tendency to wound rather than kill (but there is no way to prove that). Both the.223 AR rifles and the 7.62 Kalishnikovs were DESIGNED to fire a bullet very straight and accurately until it hit something, at which point the bullets are supposed to to spin and make a large exit wound. In reality neither of them is very good at this. Kalishnikovs are generally constructed with poor quality control, and the bullets tumble almost immediately after leaving the barrel. AR bullet's usually don't tumble until they have already passed through their target. The result of this is that ARs tend to wound rather than kill. Kalishnikovs do a good job of killing, but are generally not very accurate at a distance. I can't find a link right now, but NATO ballistic reports and collected figures demonstrate this remarkably well.
would argue that most guns which are used at all are used for crime.
Please note an earlier post of mine to see a quick and dirty breakdown of gun use. You are way way way off with an average number for guns reported used in crimes to be.25%.
Well, if I sell a single gun and know there's a 90% chance someone's going to get shot I'm doing wrong.
This is certainly a very personal point for ethics, and I can certainly understand your point of view here. For myself, if 10% of my guns are going to people who might need them to defend themselves, and 90% are being used to shoot people, well, as I said earlier, there is a much more serious problem than my guns. (Not that I actually sell guns.) I'm unconvinced that gun sales increase the amount of violent crime in an area. Rather, I think they are a powerful tool for attack or defense. Guns shift power from big, fast, long armed, aggressive people to people with cool heads, money to acquire a gun, and willingness to carry one. In places where it is illegal to carry a gun, and where those laws are enforced, they probably put more power in the hands of criminals (since criminals will carry them anyway.) In places where anyone with a clean record can carry a gun, I think they shift power more to the hands of the average person. In both cases, they put power in the hands of the home owner rather than the home invader.
I'm a firm believer in taking responsibility for ones actions. If I were to sell a gun that someone used to murder someone else, I would certainly be questioning myself, and wondering if I made a mistake. Was there anything to indicate that that person was going to kill someone? In the general case, however, it is just not possible to foresee who will do what with a gun, and selling or buying guns themselves in not unethical.
Don't forget, all those revolutionaries who separated themselves from England were using guns to commit a violent crime. In some cases violent crime is very much justified. If the majority of people are using guns unlawfully, then there is probably something wrong with the laws, or with what has happened to society.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, how often do you review the html source of webpages you visit?
Occasionally. I have also edited quite a few different ones for one reason or another. I was not meaning to imply that it was not valid. I was just wondering if it was obscure and unused, or just something I have not run across. It still seems an odd inclusion in a page created by a worm.
Relating to this, I wonder, is there any way to get google to search based upon html tags? For example, could I find all pages with address tags.
Umm, did you read my post? Everything you mention was already discussed. A conscious effort is an effort that you are aware of and must choose. Think, "you must be conscious to make." It does not mean that it is hard.
I looked at a defaced page and there were two things I noticed. The first was that the worm does not seem to create a robots.txt file to hide defaced pages from search engines. Second, the majority of the text is contained in an ADDRESS, HTML tag. It is a valid tag, but does anyone actually use it? I have not seen it before as far as I can recall.
how do you tell it that you're dead when you're, well, dead?
I wrote a little program called dead man switch years ago, for just this purpose (and to teach myself Java). I imagine this is someone else's though since I only gave mine to a few friends. Mine just required that you log in to the server once every [variable] days. If you failed to log in it would optionally send a warning e-mail and then it would mail out a predefined message to a predefined address. I planned to expand it to include setting up accounts and storing files encrypted, but never got to it. I figured all those movies where people say, "If I die my computer will automatically send the files to the police" would be more true to life if there was such an app lying around to make it easy. (cron, yes, I know)
My guess is that like my program, and like a real dead man switch, it takes a conscious effort to keep the switch from being tripped.
One question: Why don't the FSF make a legal attack on these EULAs which do so much to infringe customers rights?
My guess would be because either they have no legal standing to sue unless some company tries to enforce the terms of the EULA (which they never do since most of the terms would be shot down as fast as they could be read) or it is because it would serve no strategic purpose. This could be because even if the have an EULA invalidated, there is nothing stopping the company from just changing the terms and shipping another one. But hey, I'm not a lawyer, so maybe there is one reading this that can give you something better than conjecture.
Is it possible that honest politicians still exist? Mr. Wlodzimierz Marcinski, took it upon himself to travel to Brussels to make a speech to the Fisheries council and point out how ludicrous and undemocratic sneaking this unpopular legislation through without revisions was. He had no official standing in the EU itself, and was representing Poland as Minister of Science. The cynic in me is saying, "maybe he was just upset no one bribed him." But there is this strange new feeling I've never felt before (I'll call it optimism) that says maybe he was actually trying to help his countrymen and the EU as a whole. Well done Mr. Marcinski. My American brain will not be able to remember your name, but I'll strive to remember that "Honest Polish Politician" whenever I'm completely overwhelmed with despair after reading the news here in the U.S.
I can see that you have missed my point. What I was saying is that people will pay for a finished project, but unless someone makes a huge effort to organize them, they will not contract someone to write/port one. Most users are just fine with MS Office, and are not looking hard for an alternative. If one was presented, they would consider it, and it would likely gain popularity, but hiring someone is just not going to happen. Open Source extremists do not run OS X. OS X is for people who want power, and ease of use, and don't mind paying money for it, and don't care if all the source is open, so long as it works. MS Office works (but is buggy), OpenOffice does not (it is somewhat functional, but not finished).
Personally, I don't use OpenOffice or MS Office except to test the compatibility of files. The reason I mentioned that I think the OpenOffice team should consider putting effort into it, is because it is a good strategic move to prevent MS from killing them with their proprietary format lock-in. I don't expect Sun to actually care that much about promoting open standards and, realistically, they have done most of the work to date.
I will continue to use OS X, thank you, and Windows, and NetBSD, and Linux. I don't imagine I will be using OpenOffice for much anytime soon, and I don't expect MS's .doc format will stop being the standard for home/office file sharing.
people will figure its not Linux fault that the computer is slow
Not likely. They will probably either assume the computer is crap, but continue to associate Linux with crap. Or convince themselves that Windows really is faster. After all most people have a vested interest in so believing after they have spent a pile of money and time putting Windows on it. People have a tendency to believe that they are always right, and defend any mistake they make. I can see people in the future arguing about how slow and crappy their computer was with Linux on it, and still others arguing that Linux makes computers slow, even after it is replaced with Windows. It is, sadly, the way people work.
Overall, Linux is rapidly pulling ahead and it's because of the fact that, using the right distribution, newbies don't have to program or Read Fine Manuals anymore.
I think you are mistaken. Linux does well right now as a server, but it is not very common as a desktop. Obviously, the numbers are hard/impossible to gather, but from personal experience I can tell you I only know one person who is not a programmer that runs Linux as their workstation OS. I know plenty of programmers and non-programmers that run OS X as their workstation OS. In any case, we were talking about users of office suites, in particular OpenOffice on OS X. Take a look at the number of licenses for mac: MS Office versus the number of downloads of OpenOffice. Guess which number will be higher.
there's no programming or manual reading required to make OpenOffice work on its supported platforms.
Again, the discussion was about OpenOffice on OS X. The X11 version is basically nonfunctional (no copy and paste). The Native OS X version is way behind the Windows/Linux version because only a few people are working on it, and because it is hard-coded for X11 and Windows, with portability not being a consideration during the coding. (The example given by people working on it is only two file types, hardcoded repeatedly.) Neither Mac version is anywhere near usable, so Mac Users usually just buy MS Office.
please don't spread bad rumors about what contributing to OSS projects is like. And remember: more than just the source code is open ...If your friend had set up his own site with alternative graphics, they would have eventually been integrated regardless of the wishes of the jerk.
I'm not spreading rumors, I'm providing anecdotal information about what happened. Picture this, you are a professional artist, and have never programed and have no idea how to program. You have done some work on games in the past, and want to help out with some open source game you see being developed, after you see it's web page. What do you do? Well, downloading the code is useless to you. You can read the documentation, if any exists. But if you want to help, a good start is sending mail or posting on a related discussion board. So that is what you do. You make some cool images and models, post them to the main board and say, hey guys, how about these? If your response is no one offering to incorporate them, no suggestions for improving them, no one apparently looking at them, and a bunch of jerks insulting you and telling you to go away, what do you do? Well you can flame them back, and get in an argument, you can grab the code and learn how to program or try to get someone else interested in working on it with you, or you can move on and do something else. This is not, by any means, an isolated incident. I know several professional writers, who have worked on several large commercial UNIX applications that you rely on every day (even though you may not know it) who have expressed interest in helping out on an open source project. All of them gave up, when they could not get anyone to talk to them, or answer questions not contained in the existing docs.
This is a serious tangent from the ongoing discussion, but I thought it was an important point to make about how the attitudes of some people can hold back open source. The number one complaint I've heard about open source games is that while the engines are often cool, the graphics are always crap. I'm just trying to let you know why. I understand that help is not always wanted in every project, and most OS programmers couldn't care less about having good docs. But it is not like this is an isolated incident. I know 4 professionals (including as I said the best graphic artist I know) who all tried to work with multiple OS projects and all gave up in frustration because no one would even talk to them. This is symptom of a problem. Take heed.
I'm sorry to hear that. I was staring at a BSOD that came from Word on one of the work machines about ten minutes ago.
It is certainly not ideal and has lots of quirks and bugs that need to be worked around. It has never crashed my OS X box, but I do not use it very often, usually just to test for compatibility. In fact, the only program that has crashed my OS X box was "Giants: Citizen Kabuto" which is a rather fun video game. Later releases were still buggy, but did not result in a kernel panic. As far as MS Office is concerned, it is better (slightly) than the windows version, but still cannot handle large documents, and still has many of the same bugs. You can rely upon OS X for stability. I have had 4 crashes in as many years, two of which were my fault for hacking up some necessary system resources of the OS.
Lack of serious action toward reaching the goal tells others where their priorities are.
People are working towards making a good open office port, they are just too few in number. In some ways you are right that the lack of support is indicative of the user's priorities. For most of them the priority is to have a functional word processor. There is only one option right now, MS Office, so they buy it. I'm sure many users would be happy to pay for open office instead, but that is not an option. If your pipes get clogged, you can get someone to come out the next day, and find them in yellow pages. When someone wants a word processor, they look on the internet and buy one that is available. The open source movement is not even a consideration. Not many users want to pay now for something they may or may not get sometime in the future. Also, it would cost a great deal of money to hire enough engineers to make it work any time soon. Reference early comments about the poor programming practices and lack of portability introduced by Sun's engineers. For this to work a large company, probably Apple, would have to step in and hire coders to do the work, with an expectation of a future return (like Sun has done for Linux/Solaris/Windows.
You talk about people coming together to code or hire coders, but that is not what happened to get this to work on Windows and Linux. What happened was Sun made a strategic move.
I fully expect their to be a working OpenOffice for OSX, but I doubt it will ever compete well with MS Office. Unless the project forks drastically, or Sun changes their attitude and coding, I doubt it will ever be as polished as it is on Linux/Windows. Feel free to blame Mac programmers, but the reality is, there are not that many Mac coders who can also handle X11, and are willing to deal with such a complex mess.
Your attitude seems to indicate that you do not care, and that is fine. But open standards will lose out to MS's proprietary standards when that 5% market share goes with .doc instead of .svw. Maybe it will make no difference in the long run. But maybe it will mean another few years you have to put up with .doc files.
whenever OO is mentioned on Slashdot all I see are comments bitching at the developer team and stupid (wrong) statistics being thrown around in an attempt to convince Sun to do the work even though they have no interest or need for it. Because, you know, Mac users are special so they shouldn't need to do the work themselves.
Sun has done most of the work on Open Office to date. They have a vested interest in making it work on Windows and Linux because they need a windows version for migrations and cross-platform deployments and they need Linux because they are trying to sell it. They have ignored OSX, because they don't think they need it (and they may be right). It would be great if Apple threw some people at this and came out with their own version, but it is not too likely. As for the rest of us, the open source community, well a lot of people here would like to see it because they would like to use the same word processor all the time. Many of us run both Linux and OS X. When you say Mac users are special and have no need to do the work themselves, you are a bit off. Most of them are happy to use MS Office, and won't change because it would be a huge amount of work to port OpenOffice properly. Those that would like to do the port are stymied by too few developers that know both UNIX/X11 and OS X interface design. Also they are hindered by Sun's coding practices that fail to account for portability. Sun makes it very hard because they are not interested in the advantages of portable code, they just want it to work in X11 and windows. This is short-sighted, but a fact nonetheless. And just so you know, there are people working on it, and working hard. But without more help from developers and unless Sun starts to follow better coding practices, the work will be very slow. And MS will benefit from it. If you think the Mac market is insignificant, well that is 5% of the market you have just lost, who would be very likely to support an alternate/open format. It is more than all the Linux desktops combined. It is 5% more market MS can use to keep OpenOffice from gaining ground.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If MS provides the only functional word processor, Mac users will use it. Open Office will have less leverage. Sun will not write it, but they also make it hard for anyone else to do so and that is a problem.
A Sword is a weapon. These other things (including the kitchen knife) are primarily used for purposes other than killing things.
A sword can be a sporting good, as in fencing. How about a club? I'd say it's primary use is as a weapon. The point is guns are no more or less tools or weapons than anything else around you. If you think so, then you are letting your emotions get in the way of your scientific thought processes. The original intent of the creator of something, does not define it's characteristics. A knife can be more deadly than a gun, in the right hands. Laws banning guns, or placing strong restrictions on their ownership under the assumption that an otherwise law abiding citizen is going to use it in crime is foolish and short-sighted. Laws do not bind the actions of criminal, by definition. They only stop non-criminals, and in fact, make more criminals. If a person feels frightened enough to need to carry a gun to defend themselves, they will do so. If it is illegal, then they will not report it when they shoot someone, and may kill a policeman or someone else, because the law has put them in a position where they have been forced into criminal action in the name of self-preservation.
there most certainly is a correlation between crimes involving guns and fatal injuries during crimes.
Really, would you care to prove that? Deaths from violent crimes have also gone up in Britain since they banned handguns. Your correlation is not demonstrated there.
You said, "A Sword is a weapon." Well so is a crowbar or a phonecord if I employ them as one. You have failed to make any definitive distinction between the items on the list.
If you can't figure out the "which one of these things doesn't belong" quality guns have in relation to your laundry list, then I really think the world would be better off without you owning a gun.
Perhaps you would care to enlighten me. How is a sword qualitatively different from a gun? How is a knife qualitatively different from a gun? Lets look at the knife as an example OK? It can be used to kill people or any number of other things. It can be designed to kill people or for other purposes. Guns can be used for hunting and target shooting. Knives can be used for making dinner or competition throwing. Both can kill at a distance, both can kill multiple people, both have laws restricting carry, concealment, etc. Maybe knives and guns are pretty close after all.
Other things in the above list may be more or less similar but the poster is completely correct in stating that all can be used to kill, or do other things. Responsible gun or knife owners are very careful with their items, and follow rituals and habits intended to promote safe use, even in conditions where something goes wrong. Responsible people are careful with all dangerous substances and devices.
Your assertion that the argument is old is very true, but you have yet to prove it wrong. Most of the items regarded as "martial arts weapons" are the result of laws banning spears and swords from being owned by common people. As a result farm implements were adapted. Banning weapons did not work then, and banning guns does not work now. In the UK, violent crimes have gone up since guns were banned, despite still being lower that the U.S.
In conclusion, your argument is fundamentally flawed. There is no qualitative difference between guns and knives, only a difference in construction and use.
You mean an Apple designed PPC nintendo portable gameing console
I've often though Apple would be smart to partner with Nintendo or Sony to release an emulator that would be built into OS X and allow the playing of their titles. Games could be either on the original media for Sony, or downloads for Nintendo. This would go a long ways to counter the lack of games available for OS X and make money for the Gaming company with increased game sales. Cutting into the actual sale of the systems is not a large concern, since they are often loss-leaders in the first place. They could make money selling USB game pads and accessories, and it would broaden their audience for little cost. I can't think of a good reason why this has not happened. Oh, and it would piss off MS.
believe that TextEdit will open .doc files as it is now.
Yeah, it is built in the OS, and can be enabled for text anywhere. It is still pretty basic (last time I looked). The problem is that there are just too many problems with all the different .doc versions. Apple can certainly make a good run at it, perhaps as good or better than MS, but unlike Windows users, Apple users will have a problem with the bugs in the reader. They are used to things just working and Apple really wants to make products that do that. I fear they will can it before they release something that is not close to perfect. I'm keeping fingers crossed though.
A train system is cheaper than installing and maintaining roads.
I think you are wrong. Care to provide any support for your assertion? Trains normally run on a loop, and are fine for people on/near that loop, but as far picking up people from thousands of homes scattered across a 150 mile radius, you'd have to build crazy system of tracks to pick up those people. It's simple logistics, individual vehicles can go to each home and back, and can do so simultaneously. Trains must pick people up in sequence, each additional stop is another chunk of time a car does not have to take. After stopping a hundred times, you're already done for the day, and no one has made it to work yet.
I fail to understand how any part of that response lies "on the other hand"--if anyone doesn't like what they get with free software, they have options. Two of those options are to learn to program and do the work themselves, or purchase the time and expertise of a programmer.
The "on the other hand" part is that they have valid issues to complain about, even if it is a free program. One of the reasons OS X is more popular on the desktop than Linux is that no one in Mac OS X forums ever tells you to learn how to program or RTFM. Learning to program for a non-programmer, or hiring a programmer are both pretty unreasonable solutions for most people. It is much cheaper and easier to just buy MS office (which is what most people do). There is nothing wrong with making polite feature requests. In fact it is very useful as it help the creators understand what people would like their software to do. On a very related topic, I'd just like to mention that I know a number of writers and artists who have expressed interest in helping out on open source projects. (Have you ever noticed how crappy the docs, help systems, and graphics are for many projects?) The response from the open source community has been profoundly negative. Polite offers of help and requests for information on what needs to be done have mostly been ignored and occasionally been flamed. The hostile and elitist attitudes of many open source zealots are really hurting the community. Perhaps you should be a little more understanding of non-programmers and you will find that they do have useful things to contribute, if you will let them. I know one open source game that lost the potential free services of one of the most talented graphic artists I know, simply because when he offered up a few sample textures and models for the game, he was flamed off the boards for offering them in the wrong format (something that could have been converted in about a minute if someone would have politely told him what format was used.) Comment like, "thats a windows only format MS-bitch" are not exactly going to win any friends. Now I'm not saying that you have been impolite, or that you are specifically causing a problem, but your attitude that non-programers have no right to make comments is just the sort of attitude that pushes talent away.
is it any worse than the OS9 versions of word processing and spreadsheets that came bundled with the original iMac?
In my opinion, yeah I'm afraid it is worse. There is an OS X native version that is implemented with Java for the interface. It is passable but the X-windows version is pretty much unusable.
Hopefully Apple will adopt this lost child
This is something I would love to see. There is real room for improvements in both word processing and publishing and I think an Apple easy to use package could turn a lot of heads. Imagine a word processor that was easy and compatible and provided spelling and grammar checking services for the whole OS. Both of these are available now, but both could be a whole lot better if Apple would run with them. A sticking point is that Apple probably can't get a perfect .doc file importer (nor can MS) and Apple really really likes to have everything work flawlessly or not at all. I still think a $150 Apple word processor with some real support for layout and long-documents could give both Word and Framemaker a run for their money. Please please please can we have some competition here.
Has any software project (open source or commercial) ever decided to drop Mac support simply because they were so fucking sick of hearing OS X users whine about the look of the app clashing with their beautiful desktop?
It is true that Mac users often seem ungrateful in open source circles. I have heard them complain about lack of support for freeware open source programs many times, and it seems like beggars should not be so choosy. On the other hand, Open Office really is pretty awful on OS X. It does not integrate well with other programs, and does not support the majority of the features that make using OS X so much nicer than other systems. I do think OS X support should be a priority for the Open Office team since it is important to their cross-platform message for environments with a variety of systems deployed. It makes them a non-starter for any place with a few macs, that want to be consistent, and puts them at a disadvantage in comparisons with MS Office (Which runs as well on OS X as it does on Windows.) Since I can't really help out right now though, I can just make polite requests for improvements and hope for the best.
An assault rifle is a tool that has a bad stigma attached to it (they are designed to kill people!) so they have legislation to prohibit sales.
My father was all in favor of assault weapons bans, until he found out the bans included his Remington model 12 pump shotgun, which he inherited from my grandfather and he has used to hunt ducks since he was 18. It was included because it has a six round magazine which everyone plugs to be 3 rounds with a piece of broomstick. The sad thing about these bans is if anything they push people to more dangerous weapons. I'd much rather have someone shooting at me with an Uzi than a good 30-06 deer rifle. Chalk another one up to politicians wanting to get good press, rather than actually solve problems.
Assault rifles were built to WOUND people.
I would argue this point. I have seen it referenced several times, and I believe it is a myth. It may be that assault rifles were adopted because of their tendency to wound rather than kill (but there is no way to prove that). Both the .223 AR rifles and the 7.62 Kalishnikovs were DESIGNED to fire a bullet very straight and accurately until it hit something, at which point the bullets are supposed to to spin and make a large exit wound. In reality neither of them is very good at this. Kalishnikovs are generally constructed with poor quality control, and the bullets tumble almost immediately after leaving the barrel. AR bullet's usually don't tumble until they have already passed through their target. The result of this is that ARs tend to wound rather than kill. Kalishnikovs do a good job of killing, but are generally not very accurate at a distance. I can't find a link right now, but NATO ballistic reports and collected figures demonstrate this remarkably well.
would argue that most guns which are used at all are used for crime.
Please note an earlier post of mine to see a quick and dirty breakdown of gun use. You are way way way off with an average number for guns reported used in crimes to be .25%.
Well, if I sell a single gun and know there's a 90% chance someone's going to get shot I'm doing wrong.
This is certainly a very personal point for ethics, and I can certainly understand your point of view here. For myself, if 10% of my guns are going to people who might need them to defend themselves, and 90% are being used to shoot people, well, as I said earlier, there is a much more serious problem than my guns. (Not that I actually sell guns.) I'm unconvinced that gun sales increase the amount of violent crime in an area. Rather, I think they are a powerful tool for attack or defense. Guns shift power from big, fast, long armed, aggressive people to people with cool heads, money to acquire a gun, and willingness to carry one. In places where it is illegal to carry a gun, and where those laws are enforced, they probably put more power in the hands of criminals (since criminals will carry them anyway.) In places where anyone with a clean record can carry a gun, I think they shift power more to the hands of the average person. In both cases, they put power in the hands of the home owner rather than the home invader.
I'm a firm believer in taking responsibility for ones actions. If I were to sell a gun that someone used to murder someone else, I would certainly be questioning myself, and wondering if I made a mistake. Was there anything to indicate that that person was going to kill someone? In the general case, however, it is just not possible to foresee who will do what with a gun, and selling or buying guns themselves in not unethical.
Don't forget, all those revolutionaries who separated themselves from England were using guns to commit a violent crime. In some cases violent crime is very much justified. If the majority of people are using guns unlawfully, then there is probably something wrong with the laws, or with what has happened to society.