Well, that's a nice hypothesis, and it very well may be right. But I want empirical evidence. For instance with the case of the eye, we see examples of all of the evolutionary intermediate stages and we have computer programs that very nicely simulate eye evolution.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You want a study of intermediate evolutionary steps in the development of homosexual tendencies in animals with two sexes? That sounds, well, both difficult and pointless. Unlike the eye, we're talking about behavioral traits influenced by genetics here. So do you really want a slideshow with a hundred different animals with various medians of homosexual behavior, maybe some male camels standing next to each other, then some male chimps leaning against one another, then some male sheep making out, then some human men getting naked, and finally some male ducks doing it?
Look kin selection is a very common, very well understood, fundamental concept in genetics. It's as close to proven as you're ever going to get. Homosexuality has been well demonstrated in numerous studies to have a genetic component in numerous species. Evolution is a core principal of modern genetics and an accepted fact among people educated enough to understand it. So what I'm asking is, do you think homosexuality was magically created by a process other than evolution? Since homosexuality is a kin selecting trait, do you think there is some other evolutionary mechanism we don't know about that is likely to have caused it, because if you have a hypothesis that might be worth researching.
But I am strongly scientifically skeptical too, and I want hard evidence first.
I'm not sure what there is to be skeptical about. I mean, my example in my previous comment was tongue-in-cheek story telling, but I don't see that there is any scientific gap needing to be filled by more research in our understanding of homosexuality as a genetic trait. Science is more than two minute YouTube blurbs designed to persuade and educate people who have no understanding of an issue. A lot of research went into the evolution of the eye because people claimed such a thing could not evolve. Are you thinking that there is something about homosexuality that differentiates it from other kin selection traits that would make it impossible to evolve or is it that you just don't believe in kin selection and haven't bothered to look at the hundreds of studies that verify it?
And its consistent on every platform, and always has been *the browser* to push new things on browsers. Mouse gestures, speed dial, advanced browsers on Wii/Mobile phones etc.
That's exactly why I don't use it and why after testing Opera 10, it will now sit around until I need to use it for compatibility testing. It is too consistent among different platforms. The problem is, it limits itself to the features supported by the least common denominator of OS's on which it runs. Since OS X is my desktop of choice for a lot of my work and since I do a lot of writing in the browser these days, I want a browser that can actually use all the cool features of OS X.
Unlike Safari and Adobe InDesign, and Pages, and BBEdit, and Mail.app, and iChat, and Dreamweaver, and well, pretty much everything else, Opera ignores the built in spellchecker in OS X. Instead it uses it's own spellchecker which, of course, does not know the hundreds of technology specific words I've trained it with over the years. Further, it ignores the built in grammar checker and does not include a replacement version, so if I want to use grammar checking I have to copy and paste text out of opera and into any other program, check it, then copy and paste it back. It's like I'm back in the 90's. And then there are mouse gestures. It's really cool that they implement them, but I already installed a service to handle them for all programs on my machine as well and Opera, of course, can't use the standard OS X service. So I have to retrain that too and using a different interface and set of defaults. And then there are all my translation and text manipulation services for statistical analysis of text, fixing broken line endings from NotePad, bibliography auto formatting, smart quote cleanup, list sorting, etc. So for all of those functions I have to remember not to use my key combos and copy and paste out and back.
Frankly, that's way too annoying and as a power user I'm not willing to give up all my convenient solutions. Opera may well be my favorite browser on Windows, where such functionality does not exist, but as an OS X application it kind of sucks for power users.
The test specifies reference hardware, but most people don't bother with that part and just run it on whatever is handy as a less formal version. Technically, the test also specifies it must render animations smoothly, regardless of overall FPS.
But why is Google getting these deals? I'm betting it is because the OEMs want some of that sweet search revenue from Google.
Google buying a spot on a desktop is not leveraging an existing monopoly regardless of where they obtained the money to do it. That's because they're buying the spot from a separate company in competition with other companies that might want to do the same, on the open market. It would be leveraging a monopoly if they forced Sony to do it without being paid, by say, telling Sony that otherwise Google was going to return no results for any search including the string "sony". You' might note MS isn't paying Sony to include IE with Sony computers, but is instead bundling it with Windows, leveraging their influence on that market and forcing Sony to work both technically and against market forces to use something else. If MS were to stop bundling IE with Windows, but instead paid companies directly on the open market for including IE as a separate transaction from licensing Windows and with clear delineation of those transactions, then MS would get rid of most of their antitrust issues going forward.
Sounds a bit like Microsoft, doesn't it?
Only if you don't understand the illegal and economically undesirable aspect of what MS is doing.
How are other browser vendors going to compete with Google here exactly?
By offering more money or a browser that makes Sony's customers happier and gets Sony more computer sales. That's competition.
Is that a similar unfair advantage to Microsoft's operating system monopoly and the destruction of the browser market?
No. That's just the market favoring those with more money and/or better products.
According to this article from two weeks ago [usatoday.com], Google has a 65% share of the U.S. search market. That's hardly a monopoly.
It is, according to the legal definition.
I don' think that is true. None of the laws I know of specify actual percentages of a market, but the general rule of thumb has been to start investigating market influence on customers at about 70%. Beyond that, abuse requires leveraging of that to gain an advantage in another market through bundling (every Google search installs Chrome) or tying (Chrome has google search features only accessible in Chrome and refuses to let other browsers implement them or Google places a Chrome download link in the main Google search page).
And that is precisely what evens out the prices. Windows is, and always has been, amazing at backwards compatibility. I have no doubt that most of the programs I use now on XP and Vista will work on a fresh copy of Windows7.
Except of course that Adobe announced the same thing for Windows 7 as Snow Leopard. CS 2 is unsupported on both platforms, seems to run on both platforms, and has bugs they won't fix on both platforms.
That said, here's my bone to pick. I've been using Photoshop CS2 on Leopard. My $29 upgrade will mean either no Photoshop or another few hundred bucks additional cost in order to get CS4.
This is a significant concern, not only with Adobe CS, but with a number f other packages. The question remains, however, how much this has to do with Apple and how much it has to do with those software vendors. Early reports seem to indicate CS2 is actually working quite well in in Snow Leopard (and I've been reading as I rely upon CS2 and don't have a compelling reason to upgrade or a client ready to foot the bill). Adobe has just declared they won't support it, which looks a lot more like Adobe trying to force an unneeded upgrade to suck a bit more money from users. This is not really any different from Windows in that CS 2 is unsupported under Windows 7 and has a number of bugs Adobe says they won't fix, including some critical ones like blend being broken in Illustrator.
Then later in the article he goes on about how Apple controls the entire hardware platform and Microsoft has to battle with countless configuration combinations.
This is actually a two-edged sword. MS doesn't write the drivers for hardware. Their dominance in the market ensures hardware companies will do that for them. Apple has to write (or convince hardware makers to write) drivers for OS X, because they're still a pretty small chunk of the market and arguably not worth pursuing. So the comparison between what happens on Windows and OS X is both more different and more disparate than you imply. The same reason many hardware components and devices don't work with OS X results in the hardware Apple does ship being smoother out of the box.
That said, i don't think it is necessarily reasonable to ding Windows 7 for not having a driver out of the box, although maybe for making it too difficult for OEMs to ship a single disk that will do a clean install including drivers without resorting to pulling stuff over the internet.
30 bucks... Plus you have to put it on a Mac computer, which is marked up at least ten percent compared to a comparable computer from any other manufacturer.
Except of course every respectable analyst who has looked into it disagrees with you. Apple's margins are higher than average in the personal computer industry, but that's not comparing comparable machines, that's counting all the low end crap machines with razor thin margins. If you look at machines with hardware reliability numbers and features similar to Apple, Like Sony, for example, the margins are about the same and so are the prices.
That price tag looks less appealing when you consider those attached strings.
The price tag is certainly less appealing because it's tied to Apple hardware and that severely limits your choices, especially on the low end. You, however, overstated the argument by making statements about their margins that are simply untrue. The lack of choice in hardware will result in higher prices for the average person because they won't be able to select a model that fits their needs as closely, which is a compelling argument without bringing blatantly wrong assertions about pricing into it.
fundamentalist Christians don't believe in translation from Old Testament to common law. They believe the new testament freed them from having to follow the law of the old testament, hence non kosher diets and not stoning your daughter for being raped. Attend a fundamentalist church and ask them what they think.
I know a number of such people, however, your depiction of their common belief is inaccurate. For the most part they believe the new testament freed them from some of the commandments of old testament common law, but not all. Most agree on dietary and clothing rules, but not all. They tend to go through the new testament looking for support for a given issue, but rarely looking very hard. Most if asked will tell you they allowed to shave but not allowed to have gay sex won't be able to provide any support for a scriptural difference between these two old testament bans.
In any case, I find your suggestion that they don't adhere to and try to enforce a subset of old testament common law to be, well, completely contradicting my personal experience with every one of them I've discussed the issue with.
We solved that problem and we will solve this one, eventually, in the exact same way, using science and reason.
Will solve? There must not be many biologists on Slashdot. It's simple kin selection. When resources are scarce those that survive are genetic groups where there are more adults for each child. Your gay uncle and his boyfriend were the reason your extended family had enough money to send you to Harvard where you made connections needed to make a lot money, get all the chicks and breed, subsequently losing all your money to child support. In a drastic oversimplification, you have a 33% chance of passing on the recessive "gay gene set" he inherited from your grandparents. Of course in our society where gays are encouraged to hide their homosexuality, sometimes by having children, and where adoption is often denied to gay couples we see even greater passing on of genetic tendencies towards it. One could argue laws designed to "punish" gay people and demonize their proclivities actually encourage its proliferation in our gene pool.
Homosexuality in animals with family groupings is easily shown to be advantageous in many species, especially when subjected to limited resources such as in overpopulated areas.
Yes, the hatred and bigotry shown by Neo-Nazis was only just eclipsed by the GP poster's hatred and bigotry of... Neo-Nazis. Good job swinging the hypocrisy needle to OVER 9000 there, dood.
I don't know where these "Neo Nazi White Supremacists" of yours live. I've never met someone that professed to be a White Supremacist and promoted hatred or bigotry of anyone. Perhaps it's not prevalent where I live.
I'm sorry I had to do that, but seriously. The fundamentalist christian movement is a movement made up of disparate churches but who are classified together based upon their belief that the words of a particular version of the bible are literally true. Interpreted literally almost every version of bible used by these groups is factually wrong in many places and incredibly bigoted, especially towards homosexuals. It's not prejudice to say White supremacists are racist or fundamentalist christians are bigoted because those are core beliefs of the respective movements.
Maybe you don't know any fundamentalist christians, but unless you live in a cave, surely you've heard of people who call themselves christians engaging in acts of hatred against homosexuals, based upon their religious beliefs?
Lookit, the Americans and Western Europeans did some bad things, and then we got over it! We moved on! We entered the 21st Century!!
Which is why same sex partners can get insurance covered the same as heterosexual partners. Which is why gay marriage is legal throughout the US. Which is why gay men don't get beaten and killed regularly by homophobes in the US. Which is why homosexuals can serve openly in the US military and be war heroes like Turing was without being punished if their homosexuality is discovered like Turing's was.
Sorry, but the US and many EU countries are a long long way from "over it". There is still a lot of work to be done and Turing is a good example to the world, both the west and east as to why we should be getting over it and moving on. Obviously the abuses in some countries that are not christian are as bad or worse, but that's the "we're not as bad as China" defense and it doesn't hold up. What happens in Iraq doesn't make what happens in Arkansas any less horrific and the poster you're responding to was right to point that out.
One thing that is important is to remember that in nearly every generation for at least the last three hundred years there's been a tendency for a certain kind of comfortable intellectual to shake their heads and decry the downfall of civilization, the irreverence of youth and the death of literacy and wisdom.
300!?! I've read ancient greek writings espousing the same sentiment.
Anyhow - are you seriously saying that you are only bothered about your applications requiring approval if it's MS? That if Apple did this for their desktop machines too, they'd still be just as good a platform?
No, he said the difference was MS is a monopoly in the market and Apple isn't. That clearly makes the difference important to him being a monopolist, not being MS.
If Apple did this for desktop machines it would be very annoying, but only because Apple's OS X is one of the few workable ways to get around the monopolized desktop OS market and the courts have declined to solve that problem.
Remember, no one is discussing legality or antitrust issues here (which is the only point where MS being a monopoly is relevant)...
That's true, if you think the only thing wrong with being an abusive, anti-competitive, monopolist is that it's illegal. If, however, you think it is a bad thing because of how much damage it does to markets, innovation, and consumers, one might see it differently. If Apple doesn't approve apps or do things I like with regard to the iPhone (like requiring apps to be approved), I can walk away and buy a Blackberry or a Pre or one of a dozen other phones that will work compatibly for me. If however, I'm one of MS's customers for desktop OS's, that means I build desktop computer systems for a living an I have no viable economic alternatives to buying licenses from them. That means, regardless of what MS does, as a businessman working in my own best interests, I'm stuck buying their crap and foisting it on my customers anyway (at least for the vast majority of my market segments).
Do you see the difference? Without monopoly abuse, company making these decisions hurts themselves as much as consumers and the market solves it. With a monopoly, it hurts everyone in the market and related markets and brings progress to a slow crawl.
Also, consider if Apple did become a monopoly in the area of mobile computing - are you saying it's fine to only then worry, when the damage is done?
Yes. Until then, there actions are just part of the competitive free market and are helping to drive innovation from either Apple or Apple's competitors.
That the problem will be solved with an antitrust case (because we know how successful that was with Microsoft!)?
If people bothered to educate themselves enough to understand antitrust and bothered to vote out idiots who gave criminals a free pass then it would work fine. Unfortunately people are idiots and get what they deserve, both corrupt politicians and a crippled desktop OS market.
But all the time that the BBC and even Slashdot only tell people about the Iphone...
Umm, what planet do you live on? Both Slashdot and the BBC run articles about other phones, including Blackberry and Pre.
...the Iphone will be the only choice.
With 1% or less of the worldwide cell phone market, I think we can afford to wait a while before worrying about this coming iPhone apocalypse. How about when it hits 50%, you get back to me.
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm.
And still is.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
Code Apple wrote and decided to stop offering. Why can't palm write iSync plug-ins... like every other phone manufacturer? Apple hasn't banned them from supplying iSync plug-ins, just stopped doing it for them for free.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
That could be because Adobe support is required to replicate a bug before they are allowed to even enter it into their bug report system.
I gave them detailed instructions. This was not a hard bug to replicate. It happened every time you tried to use a feature in a specific way. As I said, it was even cross-platform because I tried using the Windows version as a work around. Adobe was, and probably is, just horribly unresponsive about fixes in some of their projects.
I *really* hate how the idea of cloud computing has been perverted to somehow mean your data is stored in "the cloud"...but anyone who actually understands this technology knows that's not really what it's about.
Undoubtedly many companies look at cloud computing and see it as the customer lock-in strategy that file formats used to be. That said, you're doing the issue a disservice to unjustly imply there are no customer benefits to data stored in the cloud. Being able to get to your word processing document from any internet connected device and being able to collaborate and share that data provides significant benefit to the end user. Additionally, the data backup easily available and affordable and in use by normal consumers, makes the backup capabilities of cloud computing facilities very attractive.
Rather than fight an uphill battle against cloud computing, I think it makes more sense for industry regulators and legislators to step in and mandate privacy protections on user data, (encrypted storage, no access without direct approval of each instance/usage) as well as mandating data portability between "in the cloud" computing services.
What Google has done is cooperate with the Chinese government in their censorship programs. To me, 'dont be evil' went out of the window right there and then.
That's just moral grey area. It's perfectly reasonable to consider obeying the Chinese censorship laws in order to do business there to be bringing more "good" to the people, then pulling out of the country entirely and leaving them with fewer, worse options would.
In any case, outdated Linux stereotype? Not at all. I love Linux but the fact is it still requires some fiddling...
Umm, ChromeOS is Linux. Some cell phones and PDA's are Linux. Linux doesn't necessarily mean a community driven distro distributed by hippies and with no central support.
What I was saying is that having a free (libre) computer experience does and will always require some legwork, and some people do prefer ease to freedom.
Why do you assert that? How much legwork do people have to put in to use a Linux cell phone? The same can be just as true for computers if MS's monopoly power and illegal actions are stopped. There is no reason free software can't be polished and easy to use and tailored to a hardware device by the OEM. The problem is the current market, largely due to criminal actions by MS, makes it uneconomical.
Agreed, well maybe it's worse than you state. I found a cross platform bug in InDesign. It would consistently crash on Windows or OS X and made one of their lesser known but advertised features completely useless for a large number of shops. I reported the bug multiple times, in detail and it still persisted through three versions. Heck, it's probably still there, I haven't checked the latest version because I have not bothered to upgrade.
Why is it that pretty much everyone in the world is in complete accord about this, except a bunch of Americans?
This actually isn't true. According to recent surveys the general populace of Russia and China are just as bad or worse on the issue. The US lags behind Europe (except Poland), the Middle East, and South America... but Asia is just as bad as the US.
A splendid appeal to authority: "Scientists who publish papers...
FAIL!
An appeal to authority would be, "I'm an expert at tracking topics in scientific journals, therefore my opinion on what is in scientific journals must be correct". An appeal to authority would be "because a paper was published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, the theories in that paper must be correct". The topic we're discussing is the "scientific consensus on global warming". Since peer review is part of the scientific method, it's pretty hard not to reference peer reviewed scientific journals to determine what content is in them. That is NOT an appeal to authority.
If this rumor is true, and regardless of what scanning engine they decide to use, isn't Apple toying dangerously close to MS's already trodden antitrust territory?
No, since Apple is not in a position where bundling something with their OS is able to undermine said market. Apple would need overwhelming market share in the desktop OS market first.
You know if MS included AV as part of an operating installation, the whole tech world would be in an uproar.
Rightly so. Likewise if the local power distribution monopoly started giving away a free antivirus suite with your monthly electrical service.
Give it away as a free download but for goodness sake don't repeat Microsoft's sins.
I don't think you understand what is illegal and "sinful" about MS's actions.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's a nice hypothesis, and it very well may be right. But I want empirical evidence. For instance with the case of the eye, we see examples of all of the evolutionary intermediate stages and we have computer programs that very nicely simulate eye evolution.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You want a study of intermediate evolutionary steps in the development of homosexual tendencies in animals with two sexes? That sounds, well, both difficult and pointless. Unlike the eye, we're talking about behavioral traits influenced by genetics here. So do you really want a slideshow with a hundred different animals with various medians of homosexual behavior, maybe some male camels standing next to each other, then some male chimps leaning against one another, then some male sheep making out, then some human men getting naked, and finally some male ducks doing it?
Look kin selection is a very common, very well understood, fundamental concept in genetics. It's as close to proven as you're ever going to get. Homosexuality has been well demonstrated in numerous studies to have a genetic component in numerous species. Evolution is a core principal of modern genetics and an accepted fact among people educated enough to understand it. So what I'm asking is, do you think homosexuality was magically created by a process other than evolution? Since homosexuality is a kin selecting trait, do you think there is some other evolutionary mechanism we don't know about that is likely to have caused it, because if you have a hypothesis that might be worth researching.
But I am strongly scientifically skeptical too, and I want hard evidence first.
I'm not sure what there is to be skeptical about. I mean, my example in my previous comment was tongue-in-cheek story telling, but I don't see that there is any scientific gap needing to be filled by more research in our understanding of homosexuality as a genetic trait. Science is more than two minute YouTube blurbs designed to persuade and educate people who have no understanding of an issue. A lot of research went into the evolution of the eye because people claimed such a thing could not evolve. Are you thinking that there is something about homosexuality that differentiates it from other kin selection traits that would make it impossible to evolve or is it that you just don't believe in kin selection and haven't bothered to look at the hundreds of studies that verify it?
And its consistent on every platform, and always has been *the browser* to push new things on browsers. Mouse gestures, speed dial, advanced browsers on Wii/Mobile phones etc.
That's exactly why I don't use it and why after testing Opera 10, it will now sit around until I need to use it for compatibility testing. It is too consistent among different platforms. The problem is, it limits itself to the features supported by the least common denominator of OS's on which it runs. Since OS X is my desktop of choice for a lot of my work and since I do a lot of writing in the browser these days, I want a browser that can actually use all the cool features of OS X.
Unlike Safari and Adobe InDesign, and Pages, and BBEdit, and Mail.app, and iChat, and Dreamweaver, and well, pretty much everything else, Opera ignores the built in spellchecker in OS X. Instead it uses it's own spellchecker which, of course, does not know the hundreds of technology specific words I've trained it with over the years. Further, it ignores the built in grammar checker and does not include a replacement version, so if I want to use grammar checking I have to copy and paste text out of opera and into any other program, check it, then copy and paste it back. It's like I'm back in the 90's. And then there are mouse gestures. It's really cool that they implement them, but I already installed a service to handle them for all programs on my machine as well and Opera, of course, can't use the standard OS X service. So I have to retrain that too and using a different interface and set of defaults. And then there are all my translation and text manipulation services for statistical analysis of text, fixing broken line endings from NotePad, bibliography auto formatting, smart quote cleanup, list sorting, etc. So for all of those functions I have to remember not to use my key combos and copy and paste out and back.
Frankly, that's way too annoying and as a power user I'm not willing to give up all my convenient solutions. Opera may well be my favorite browser on Windows, where such functionality does not exist, but as an OS X application it kind of sucks for power users.
The test specifies reference hardware, but most people don't bother with that part and just run it on whatever is handy as a less formal version. Technically, the test also specifies it must render animations smoothly, regardless of overall FPS.
Don't feed the trolls.
But why is Google getting these deals? I'm betting it is because the OEMs want some of that sweet search revenue from Google.
Google buying a spot on a desktop is not leveraging an existing monopoly regardless of where they obtained the money to do it. That's because they're buying the spot from a separate company in competition with other companies that might want to do the same, on the open market. It would be leveraging a monopoly if they forced Sony to do it without being paid, by say, telling Sony that otherwise Google was going to return no results for any search including the string "sony". You' might note MS isn't paying Sony to include IE with Sony computers, but is instead bundling it with Windows, leveraging their influence on that market and forcing Sony to work both technically and against market forces to use something else. If MS were to stop bundling IE with Windows, but instead paid companies directly on the open market for including IE as a separate transaction from licensing Windows and with clear delineation of those transactions, then MS would get rid of most of their antitrust issues going forward.
Sounds a bit like Microsoft, doesn't it?
Only if you don't understand the illegal and economically undesirable aspect of what MS is doing.
How are other browser vendors going to compete with Google here exactly?
By offering more money or a browser that makes Sony's customers happier and gets Sony more computer sales. That's competition.
Is that a similar unfair advantage to Microsoft's operating system monopoly and the destruction of the browser market?
No. That's just the market favoring those with more money and/or better products.
According to this article from two weeks ago [usatoday.com], Google has a 65% share of the U.S. search market. That's hardly a monopoly.
It is, according to the legal definition.
I don' think that is true. None of the laws I know of specify actual percentages of a market, but the general rule of thumb has been to start investigating market influence on customers at about 70%. Beyond that, abuse requires leveraging of that to gain an advantage in another market through bundling (every Google search installs Chrome) or tying (Chrome has google search features only accessible in Chrome and refuses to let other browsers implement them or Google places a Chrome download link in the main Google search page).
And that is precisely what evens out the prices. Windows is, and always has been, amazing at backwards compatibility. I have no doubt that most of the programs I use now on XP and Vista will work on a fresh copy of Windows7.
Except of course that Adobe announced the same thing for Windows 7 as Snow Leopard. CS 2 is unsupported on both platforms, seems to run on both platforms, and has bugs they won't fix on both platforms.
That said, here's my bone to pick. I've been using Photoshop CS2 on Leopard. My $29 upgrade will mean either no Photoshop or another few hundred bucks additional cost in order to get CS4.
This is a significant concern, not only with Adobe CS, but with a number f other packages. The question remains, however, how much this has to do with Apple and how much it has to do with those software vendors. Early reports seem to indicate CS2 is actually working quite well in in Snow Leopard (and I've been reading as I rely upon CS2 and don't have a compelling reason to upgrade or a client ready to foot the bill). Adobe has just declared they won't support it, which looks a lot more like Adobe trying to force an unneeded upgrade to suck a bit more money from users. This is not really any different from Windows in that CS 2 is unsupported under Windows 7 and has a number of bugs Adobe says they won't fix, including some critical ones like blend being broken in Illustrator.
Then later in the article he goes on about how Apple controls the entire hardware platform and Microsoft has to battle with countless configuration combinations.
This is actually a two-edged sword. MS doesn't write the drivers for hardware. Their dominance in the market ensures hardware companies will do that for them. Apple has to write (or convince hardware makers to write) drivers for OS X, because they're still a pretty small chunk of the market and arguably not worth pursuing. So the comparison between what happens on Windows and OS X is both more different and more disparate than you imply. The same reason many hardware components and devices don't work with OS X results in the hardware Apple does ship being smoother out of the box.
That said, i don't think it is necessarily reasonable to ding Windows 7 for not having a driver out of the box, although maybe for making it too difficult for OEMs to ship a single disk that will do a clean install including drivers without resorting to pulling stuff over the internet.
30 bucks... Plus you have to put it on a Mac computer, which is marked up at least ten percent compared to a comparable computer from any other manufacturer.
Except of course every respectable analyst who has looked into it disagrees with you. Apple's margins are higher than average in the personal computer industry, but that's not comparing comparable machines, that's counting all the low end crap machines with razor thin margins. If you look at machines with hardware reliability numbers and features similar to Apple, Like Sony, for example, the margins are about the same and so are the prices.
That price tag looks less appealing when you consider those attached strings.
The price tag is certainly less appealing because it's tied to Apple hardware and that severely limits your choices, especially on the low end. You, however, overstated the argument by making statements about their margins that are simply untrue. The lack of choice in hardware will result in higher prices for the average person because they won't be able to select a model that fits their needs as closely, which is a compelling argument without bringing blatantly wrong assertions about pricing into it.
fundamentalist Christians don't believe in translation from Old Testament to common law. They believe the new testament freed them from having to follow the law of the old testament, hence non kosher diets and not stoning your daughter for being raped. Attend a fundamentalist church and ask them what they think.
I know a number of such people, however, your depiction of their common belief is inaccurate. For the most part they believe the new testament freed them from some of the commandments of old testament common law, but not all. Most agree on dietary and clothing rules, but not all. They tend to go through the new testament looking for support for a given issue, but rarely looking very hard. Most if asked will tell you they allowed to shave but not allowed to have gay sex won't be able to provide any support for a scriptural difference between these two old testament bans.
In any case, I find your suggestion that they don't adhere to and try to enforce a subset of old testament common law to be, well, completely contradicting my personal experience with every one of them I've discussed the issue with.
We solved that problem and we will solve this one, eventually, in the exact same way, using science and reason.
Will solve? There must not be many biologists on Slashdot. It's simple kin selection. When resources are scarce those that survive are genetic groups where there are more adults for each child. Your gay uncle and his boyfriend were the reason your extended family had enough money to send you to Harvard where you made connections needed to make a lot money, get all the chicks and breed, subsequently losing all your money to child support. In a drastic oversimplification, you have a 33% chance of passing on the recessive "gay gene set" he inherited from your grandparents. Of course in our society where gays are encouraged to hide their homosexuality, sometimes by having children, and where adoption is often denied to gay couples we see even greater passing on of genetic tendencies towards it. One could argue laws designed to "punish" gay people and demonize their proclivities actually encourage its proliferation in our gene pool.
Homosexuality in animals with family groupings is easily shown to be advantageous in many species, especially when subjected to limited resources such as in overpopulated areas.
Yes, the hatred and bigotry shown by Neo-Nazis was only just eclipsed by the GP poster's hatred and bigotry of ... Neo-Nazis. Good job swinging the hypocrisy needle to OVER 9000 there, dood.
I don't know where these "Neo Nazi White Supremacists" of yours live. I've never met someone that professed to be a White Supremacist and promoted hatred or bigotry of anyone. Perhaps it's not prevalent where I live.
I'm sorry I had to do that, but seriously. The fundamentalist christian movement is a movement made up of disparate churches but who are classified together based upon their belief that the words of a particular version of the bible are literally true. Interpreted literally almost every version of bible used by these groups is factually wrong in many places and incredibly bigoted, especially towards homosexuals. It's not prejudice to say White supremacists are racist or fundamentalist christians are bigoted because those are core beliefs of the respective movements.
Maybe you don't know any fundamentalist christians, but unless you live in a cave, surely you've heard of people who call themselves christians engaging in acts of hatred against homosexuals, based upon their religious beliefs?
Lookit, the Americans and Western Europeans did some bad things, and then we got over it! We moved on! We entered the 21st Century!!
Which is why same sex partners can get insurance covered the same as heterosexual partners. Which is why gay marriage is legal throughout the US. Which is why gay men don't get beaten and killed regularly by homophobes in the US. Which is why homosexuals can serve openly in the US military and be war heroes like Turing was without being punished if their homosexuality is discovered like Turing's was.
Sorry, but the US and many EU countries are a long long way from "over it". There is still a lot of work to be done and Turing is a good example to the world, both the west and east as to why we should be getting over it and moving on. Obviously the abuses in some countries that are not christian are as bad or worse, but that's the "we're not as bad as China" defense and it doesn't hold up. What happens in Iraq doesn't make what happens in Arkansas any less horrific and the poster you're responding to was right to point that out.
One thing that is important is to remember that in nearly every generation for at least the last three hundred years there's been a tendency for a certain kind of comfortable intellectual to shake their heads and decry the downfall of civilization, the irreverence of youth and the death of literacy and wisdom.
300!?! I've read ancient greek writings espousing the same sentiment.
Anyhow - are you seriously saying that you are only bothered about your applications requiring approval if it's MS? That if Apple did this for their desktop machines too, they'd still be just as good a platform?
No, he said the difference was MS is a monopoly in the market and Apple isn't. That clearly makes the difference important to him being a monopolist, not being MS.
If Apple did this for desktop machines it would be very annoying, but only because Apple's OS X is one of the few workable ways to get around the monopolized desktop OS market and the courts have declined to solve that problem.
Remember, no one is discussing legality or antitrust issues here (which is the only point where MS being a monopoly is relevant)...
That's true, if you think the only thing wrong with being an abusive, anti-competitive, monopolist is that it's illegal. If, however, you think it is a bad thing because of how much damage it does to markets, innovation, and consumers, one might see it differently. If Apple doesn't approve apps or do things I like with regard to the iPhone (like requiring apps to be approved), I can walk away and buy a Blackberry or a Pre or one of a dozen other phones that will work compatibly for me. If however, I'm one of MS's customers for desktop OS's, that means I build desktop computer systems for a living an I have no viable economic alternatives to buying licenses from them. That means, regardless of what MS does, as a businessman working in my own best interests, I'm stuck buying their crap and foisting it on my customers anyway (at least for the vast majority of my market segments).
Do you see the difference? Without monopoly abuse, company making these decisions hurts themselves as much as consumers and the market solves it. With a monopoly, it hurts everyone in the market and related markets and brings progress to a slow crawl.
Also, consider if Apple did become a monopoly in the area of mobile computing - are you saying it's fine to only then worry, when the damage is done?
Yes. Until then, there actions are just part of the competitive free market and are helping to drive innovation from either Apple or Apple's competitors.
That the problem will be solved with an antitrust case (because we know how successful that was with Microsoft!)?
If people bothered to educate themselves enough to understand antitrust and bothered to vote out idiots who gave criminals a free pass then it would work fine. Unfortunately people are idiots and get what they deserve, both corrupt politicians and a crippled desktop OS market.
But all the time that the BBC and even Slashdot only tell people about the Iphone...
Umm, what planet do you live on? Both Slashdot and the BBC run articles about other phones, including Blackberry and Pre.
...the Iphone will be the only choice.
With 1% or less of the worldwide cell phone market, I think we can afford to wait a while before worrying about this coming iPhone apocalypse. How about when it hits 50%, you get back to me.
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm.
And still is.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
Code Apple wrote and decided to stop offering. Why can't palm write iSync plug-ins... like every other phone manufacturer? Apple hasn't banned them from supplying iSync plug-ins, just stopped doing it for them for free.
Nothing like anticompetitiveness to turn me off.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
That could be because Adobe support is required to replicate a bug before they are allowed to even enter it into their bug report system.
I gave them detailed instructions. This was not a hard bug to replicate. It happened every time you tried to use a feature in a specific way. As I said, it was even cross-platform because I tried using the Windows version as a work around. Adobe was, and probably is, just horribly unresponsive about fixes in some of their projects.
I *really* hate how the idea of cloud computing has been perverted to somehow mean your data is stored in "the cloud" ...but anyone who actually understands this technology knows that's not really what it's about.
Undoubtedly many companies look at cloud computing and see it as the customer lock-in strategy that file formats used to be. That said, you're doing the issue a disservice to unjustly imply there are no customer benefits to data stored in the cloud. Being able to get to your word processing document from any internet connected device and being able to collaborate and share that data provides significant benefit to the end user. Additionally, the data backup easily available and affordable and in use by normal consumers, makes the backup capabilities of cloud computing facilities very attractive.
Rather than fight an uphill battle against cloud computing, I think it makes more sense for industry regulators and legislators to step in and mandate privacy protections on user data, (encrypted storage, no access without direct approval of each instance/usage) as well as mandating data portability between "in the cloud" computing services.
What Google has done is cooperate with the Chinese government in their censorship programs. To me, 'dont be evil' went out of the window right there and then.
That's just moral grey area. It's perfectly reasonable to consider obeying the Chinese censorship laws in order to do business there to be bringing more "good" to the people, then pulling out of the country entirely and leaving them with fewer, worse options would.
In any case, outdated Linux stereotype? Not at all. I love Linux but the fact is it still requires some fiddling...
Umm, ChromeOS is Linux. Some cell phones and PDA's are Linux. Linux doesn't necessarily mean a community driven distro distributed by hippies and with no central support.
What I was saying is that having a free (libre) computer experience does and will always require some legwork, and some people do prefer ease to freedom.
Why do you assert that? How much legwork do people have to put in to use a Linux cell phone? The same can be just as true for computers if MS's monopoly power and illegal actions are stopped. There is no reason free software can't be polished and easy to use and tailored to a hardware device by the OEM. The problem is the current market, largely due to criminal actions by MS, makes it uneconomical.
Agreed, well maybe it's worse than you state. I found a cross platform bug in InDesign. It would consistently crash on Windows or OS X and made one of their lesser known but advertised features completely useless for a large number of shops. I reported the bug multiple times, in detail and it still persisted through three versions. Heck, it's probably still there, I haven't checked the latest version because I have not bothered to upgrade.
Why is it that pretty much everyone in the world is in complete accord about this, except a bunch of Americans?
This actually isn't true. According to recent surveys the general populace of Russia and China are just as bad or worse on the issue. The US lags behind Europe (except Poland), the Middle East, and South America... but Asia is just as bad as the US.
A splendid appeal to authority: "Scientists who publish papers...
FAIL!
An appeal to authority would be, "I'm an expert at tracking topics in scientific journals, therefore my opinion on what is in scientific journals must be correct". An appeal to authority would be "because a paper was published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, the theories in that paper must be correct". The topic we're discussing is the "scientific consensus on global warming". Since peer review is part of the scientific method, it's pretty hard not to reference peer reviewed scientific journals to determine what content is in them. That is NOT an appeal to authority.
If this rumor is true, and regardless of what scanning engine they decide to use, isn't Apple toying dangerously close to MS's already trodden antitrust territory?
No, since Apple is not in a position where bundling something with their OS is able to undermine said market. Apple would need overwhelming market share in the desktop OS market first.
You know if MS included AV as part of an operating installation, the whole tech world would be in an uproar.
Rightly so. Likewise if the local power distribution monopoly started giving away a free antivirus suite with your monthly electrical service.
Give it away as a free download but for goodness sake don't repeat Microsoft's sins.
I don't think you understand what is illegal and "sinful" about MS's actions.