I was flying from Sydney to London at the times both the second and the third were released.:) I've skipped both star wars films at the cinema, but the reviews for this new one are good so I'll check it out.
I suspect it's more likely that once an organisation gets to a certain size (particularly in software) it collapses under the weight of - legacy commitments - needing to keep the legal department happy - large beauracracy - something that's very very powerful when done well but also something that's difficult to well, and prone to sloppiness, particularly when corporate politics become part of the culture leading to tribal promotion practices.
Microsoft is too closely tied to Windows that they can't see how it's holding them back.
Here's a hypothetical. What if Microsoft were to split their pool of talented OS engineers and form a new OS group. It would commit to creating a single API (start with.net but give the team the flexibility to change it), and start a new operating systems division aimed at reinventing their platform for this API. It would have five years of freedom to create something good. It would ship regularly, and try to be developer friendly, but would essentially be a development stream rather than a product. A project like this would give them the flexibility to create a new platform with WinFS, clean internals - essentially everything done right but with no customer commitment. Then they could start offering it as an alternative platform. Once the platform was solid, they could write a comatibility layer for software developed on this platform onto Windows - but it would be clear that this was their new direction. That's what longhorn should have been, but it sounds like they're letting the tail wag the dog. Done right, the Windows code and legacy would have been available to the longhorn team as a resource, not as something the team had to commit to. And they would have pushed Windows XP on for fifteen or twenty years to cover customers - keeping customers happy but making it clear that there was a new future.
Really, Windows 2000 was about as good as the Windows platform was going to get and they've just been wasting their time since: making Windows better than win2000 is possible but very expensive and constrained by legacy issues like the API, old customer software and that sort of thing.
There are items of hardware commonly used on the mac platform for which you can't get linux drivers. I only know of this affecting wireless cards (that's why I can't run linux on my mac laptop:( but that's OK - it runs a unix with which I'm satisfied), but there are probably other items too.
Also - driver support for linux on the desktop is fine enough that I'd be surprised if many people bought an Apple for this reason. Apple desktop machines are much much more expensive than x86, particularly if you factor RAM upgrades in.
Strangely - I did exactly that. I've been looking at mac laptops ever since mac os x came out. I feel they're pretty expensive, and knew I'd have to buy something that I was happy with and which was cheap enough rather than limiting myself to just what I could afford. I told myself I wouldn't buy one until they had wireless networking, ran reasonable speed, and came with a DVD read/CD burner all for under two grand austalian (and I'd probably have given up the task if there'd been an equivalent PC laptop out that ran linux withour driver hassles with the same functionality and cost). I only got around to it in January this year. I'm happy with it, but having seen other people's lappies over time, I'm glad I waited this long.
> I honestly think that OS/2 would have made a > much greater impact if it hadn't had such > pathetic PR support. The OS itself was > a surprsingly strong and reliable system, > but their ad campaigns were > mind-bogglingly pathetic.
I used to be a died-in-the-wool os/2 user, but even at the time through there were more obstacles than just this. I believe good software needs to have two qualities: - run well now - be able to be modified so that future versions will be good too
OS/2 ran somewhat well, although the driver support was so apalling that its stability was overrated. Nevertheless - it was powerful and you could do much neater things in it than in DOS or Win3x. But IBM lost all the easy battles by not managing the upgrade of the software. On the one hand they wanted home and desktop users, but the work they did to improve the user experience wasn't particularly well informed.
I had problems with all sorts of little things in v2 that were not fixed by v4 (five years and three major releases later). Or else they'd change things for the better and they'd still suck. All sorts of little things: the way icons lined in an annoying fashion, poor design in some preference panels, the wacky hoops you had to jump through to get dial up access working. Each release that I looked at after 2.0 I remember thinking: why don't they get the easy stuff right? In the meantime, Microsoft put out rubbish, but each release that came out you had a feeling that things were improving. I felt that Microsoft hadn't caught up until Windows 98 and the NT4 internet explorer extensions. However, even most of OS/2's hardline users had long since given up on IBM and moved on to Windows, linux or Be.
> Well, according to their web page, the > ReactOS people actually plan an OS/2 > subsystem.
There's been an os/2 subsystem in NT since (I think) 3.50, but it only runs applications designed for OS/2 v1. I assume they did this because a lot of banks had apps on os/2 v1 and they wanted to be able to pick up the business. And because they could - being involved in the project as they were.
I never used it but believe that OS/2 v1 was a lot smaller and simpler than 2. Less APIs and no Program Manager (or else a vastly different and almost unrecognisable PM from the one shipped with v2.0 and advanced through later versions)
> Finder is a piece of crap on an os that > is otherwise high class
Yes.
I wish I could have the gnome experience but with the driver support I get from mac os x.
I find my gnome workstation is much more usable in this respect. It has workspaces which work very rapidly and with the hotkeys reliable under all circumstances. And under metacity, you can drag and resize windows using control keys and moving the mouse. So hold down alt, click anywhere in the window - drag. Apple are praised for their user interfaces, but I don't think they've ever really had it right. The priority shouldn't be looking good, it should be that it looks functional and feels fluid. The default ubuntu setup is by far the best GUI I've used in this respect.
Unfortunately many aspects of the os x API are ahead of anything I've encountered on linux, particularly in the area of sound and java integration, and Apple have locked down some of the hardware specs meaning I can't get my laptop to support my wireless card under linux either:(. There's a cool UI tool called quicksilver that reduces my dependence on the stupid interface design enough for me to be only slightly uncomfortable.
What happens when the manufacturer offers you a full refund for the whole laptop, but not for sections of bundled components? Is it vaid for them to do this? Is there a valid timeout? What happens if you keep buying laptops and refunding them once a month, backing up your partition and reinstalling it each time you get your new unit?
What happens when the manufacturer puts a seal on the packaging and says "by opening thism you agree to use the software" or something in more legally respectable language?
int main() {
char* data="10001100001111110101011000010111101011111010 010";
long value=0;
int i;
for (i=0;istrlen(data);i++)
{
if ('1' == data[i])
{
value = value + power(2);
}
}// printf("%d\n", value);
printf("%x\n", value); }
There are varying opinions on slashdot, and it's irrational to clump them.
> are quite happy to demonize the RIAA when it > goes after infringers of its copyright. > Posters will go so far to defend (snip) > intellectual property. There are entire belief > systems and mindsets invented to justify this > piracy.
OK - it's like this. There exist some slashdot users who believe "piracy" is a nasty word used to describe something that would be less emotively called copyright infringement. Some of these users don't believe in the virtues of copyright law and choose to ignore or fight it.
It's quite consistent for these people to get upset at the actions of a company like CherryOS. CherryOS is a commercial company that uses copyright law to make money while allegedly flouting it at the same time. *That's* inconsistent, and criticism of it is deserved.
> Note to those preparing to reply with > "That's not everyone on Slashdot" replies, > I know. If none of the above applies to (etc)
It's fair rebuttal. You have not cited *any* evidence on what the majority of slashdot readers do or do not believe, and you've just lumped as all in to a group and put words in our mouth.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make a coherent case than to write rubbish and then suffix it with preemptive rebuttal?
I'm new to this, but this is what I understand to be the problem:
Current situation: firefox is ascendent, with other browsers making up ground as well. It's the first time in years that the consumer has felt that browsers other than IE can do their job, and they're turning to alternatives because of new features they offer.
One group in w3c (including Microsoft) are advocating a start-again approach to web forms. This is XForms.
The other group fear that if that happens, in the confusion, Microsoft could push forward its own proprietary solution, supporting it with more vigour than XForms. Consumers will be back in the hole of having to use IE to get their work done.
The result of this would be: alternative browsers will be locked out of the marketplace, and the potential of the internet to offer a low cost of entry to new players (described at length by Paul Graham in _Hackers and Painters_ will be compromised, at least in the medium term, because Microsoft will control the APIs and delivery of the web.
Neither. North Korea did well until the 1990s partly due to its success in playing the Russians and Chinese off against one another. Thus each country was inclined to give North Korea aid in a bidding war for loyalty. When the USSR dried up they lost most of their leverage, and the evolution of China away from idealogical motivations and into a weird capitalist state further reduced their attractiveness. It was Stalin who Kim Jong Il saught permission from to move against the South. From http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/kim-il -sung/ (not necessarily definitive, but I've read it in other places): """ In March 1949, Kim began to nag Joseph Stalin for permission to invade South Korea. "We believe that the situation makes it necessary and possible to liberate the whole country through military means," Kim pleaded. Stalin disagreed, believing that the North was incapable of prevailing against their adversary. In August and September the North Koreans nagged Stalin again. He still said no. In April 1950, Kim spent the entire month in Moscow lobbying for war. Finally, Stalin agreed. And on June 25, 1950 the Korean War began. """
Equally, it was China that got involved hoping to aid the North late in the war.
But North Korea is certainly not just a Chinese puppet.
Thanks. BTW, Webobjects 4.5 wasn't before java - it supported both. I believe webobjects had a java option back as far as version 3; version 4 definitely did.
I'm not *that* familiar with gnustep, but used to be a webobjects developer. I know a group of WO developers felt disenfranchised when Apple abandoned objective C in WO (and webscript! webscript!:) ). Would there be many obstacles remaining to people in that situation using this as an upgrade over those old environments? Certainly this might be very helpful to people with legacy projects out there who hate the old interface (which looks much like gnustep but is a lot more quirky in nasty ways - broken tab orderings, random segfaults, that sort of thing). Off the top of my head I'd guess the major pieces would be (1) an EOModeller and the model itself and (2) the interface builder. Are there any free implementations of these systems? Not a huge deal to me - I have a mac and write java, but it's still interesting to know the options that are around..
I had a couple of other thoughts after posting: - Apple's recommended configurations have a ridiculously small amount of RAM. The default config for the top powermac has only 512MB. (For that sort of money you could build a far more powerful windows/linux workstation, too.) I pushed the laptop up to 768MB. - Now that half-life 2 has been and gone, it's a lot easier to justify putting your money into macintosh and rather than your PC (aaah the relief).
And.. I noticed two edits.. - %s/than a PC/than an equivalent PC/ - %s/my first mac/my first new mac/
At http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/mi niapplesandoranges/index.php I read this:
""" But it was only a matter of time before someone would argue, "It's still not price-competitive with the cheapest Dell." And within days we've got our first such columns and articles, all of which leave me scratching my head, wondering if these guys are as bad at comparing products when they shop for themselves as they apparently are when comparing products for their columns. """
I agree. I'm a really recent switcher. I had a second hand mac kicking around years ago (and despised the OS - I ran Be on it), but bought an iBook laptop last Friday. It's my first mac and my first laptop. My justification was that it was cheap, runs unix, has full driver support, especially for wireless networking. I've held off for about two years waiting for a laptop that can deliver that for less than two grand Australian. That's a really compelling formula, and a far better geek computer than a PC.
To get a happy unix experience on a PC laptop you either pay a lot more money or roll the dice on linux drivers and winmodems. Or you can try and run Windows and put up with the limitations of cygwin or the speed hit of vmware. Yuck.
Not that it's always been this way. Until recently, Apples sucked. But OS X has become usable and the hardware has a better reputation than it used to - laptops in particular.
If I were Apple I'd be a bit concerned at the powerbook line - the iBooks deliver so much for so little now the powerbooks don't look very attractive.
There's a type of fabric that's been invented recently that breathes but only transfers moisture in a single direction - outwards. I understand police have hailed this as a revolution in law enforcement as they can now walk the beat under pretty much any circumstances. I don't know what it's called, but this is just one area where it's had an effect. I'd think this a lot more significant in the long term than something as vague as "voice mail" which isn't even a technology.
> Valve is a business... They're a business that > is out to make money.
Nevertheless, many of us have respect for the good work that valve do and don't like to see them lose out. A group like valve are creative *and* create wealth - this is incredible!
How can a geek not admire such a combination?
Compare this combination to the your typical recording industry schmo. The recording industry creates some wealth. However, because they operate as ologopoly within their own industry and with the way they leverage with other big media interests they suck in much more than they pay out and at the expense of the artist.
Having said that, I think there are probably a lot of artists who should stop whinging, and get a spare time job to fund their own distribution and to busk to get exposure. Artists who get caught up now when there's so much publicity around about what a lot of bastards the recording industry are are naive, and there is a derth of decent artistic talent engaged in street busking in every city I've been to.
None of this is any reason to pay any more regard for the recording industry or its profit lines, though.
> My sincerest apologies to everyone who lost > relatives, friends, loved ones etc. in the > holocaust, BTW
!
How do you convincingly offer apologies to something you've said in the same post where you post it? This is... apologising for doing something... and then *doing it*. How can you *apologise* for what you've said and then click on the submit button that sends off the comments you're apologising for!? It's an obviously not-even-remotely-genuine apology.
Has anyone had good experience with emacspeak? It looks promising, but I've never been able to locate the software for it that actually turns words on the screen onto a voice when I've played around with setting it up. From memory it wasn't particularly easy to set up on the distribution I was trying for (debian).
Where they could do good business is in the field of classical music. There are lots of talented musicians around playing high quality classical music that's way out of copyright. As yet there's no easy way to
And it's seriously hard to get classical music through online services without through the nose (particularly if you want an ogg format).
I've been trying to get a version of Mendelssohn's Octet from various file share systems for weeks (not continuously - but every time I do bittorrent stuff or log on to eMule I look for it search for it). Can't find it anywhere - and it's one of this great composer's finest works.
Slashdot Mirror
I was flying from Sydney to London at the times both the second and the third were released. :) I've skipped both star wars films at the cinema, but the reviews for this new one are good so I'll check it out.
I suspect it's more likely that once an organisation gets to a certain size (particularly in software) it collapses under the weight of
.net but give the team the flexibility to change it), and start a new operating systems division aimed at reinventing their platform for this API. It would have five years of freedom to create something good. It would ship regularly, and try to be developer friendly, but would essentially be a development stream rather than a product. A project like this would give them the flexibility to create a new platform with WinFS, clean internals - essentially everything done right but with no customer commitment. Then they could start offering it as an alternative platform. Once the platform was solid, they could write a comatibility layer for software developed on this platform onto Windows - but it would be clear that this was their new direction. That's what longhorn should have been, but it sounds like they're letting the tail wag the dog. Done right, the Windows code and legacy would have been available to the longhorn team as a resource, not as something the team had to commit to. And they would have pushed Windows XP on for fifteen or twenty years to cover customers - keeping customers happy but making it clear that there was a new future.
- legacy commitments
- needing to keep the legal department happy
- large beauracracy - something that's very very powerful when done well but also something that's difficult to well, and prone to sloppiness, particularly when corporate politics become part of the culture leading to tribal promotion practices.
Microsoft is too closely tied to Windows that they can't see how it's holding them back.
Here's a hypothetical. What if Microsoft were to split their pool of talented OS engineers and form a new OS group. It would commit to creating a single API (start with
Really, Windows 2000 was about as good as the Windows platform was going to get and they've just been wasting their time since: making Windows better than win2000 is possible but very expensive and constrained by legacy issues like the API, old customer software and that sort of thing.
There are items of hardware commonly used on the mac platform for which you can't get linux drivers. I only know of this affecting wireless cards (that's why I can't run linux on my mac laptop :( but that's OK - it runs a unix with which I'm satisfied), but there are probably other items too.
Also - driver support for linux on the desktop is fine enough that I'd be surprised if many people bought an Apple for this reason. Apple desktop machines are much much more expensive than x86, particularly if you factor RAM upgrades in.
Strangely - I did exactly that. I've been looking at mac laptops ever since mac os x came out. I feel they're pretty expensive, and knew I'd have to buy something that I was happy with and which was cheap enough rather than limiting myself to just what I could afford. I told myself I wouldn't buy one until they had wireless networking, ran reasonable speed, and came with a DVD read/CD burner all for under two grand austalian (and I'd probably have given up the task if there'd been an equivalent PC laptop out that ran linux withour driver hassles with the same functionality and cost). I only got around to it in January this year. I'm happy with it, but having seen other people's lappies over time, I'm glad I waited this long.
> I honestly think that OS/2 would have made a
> much greater impact if it hadn't had such
> pathetic PR support. The OS itself was
> a surprsingly strong and reliable system,
> but their ad campaigns were
> mind-bogglingly pathetic.
I used to be a died-in-the-wool os/2 user, but even at the time through there were more obstacles than just this. I believe good software needs to have two qualities:
- run well now
- be able to be modified so that future versions will be good too
OS/2 ran somewhat well, although the driver support was so apalling that its stability was overrated. Nevertheless - it was powerful and you could do much neater things in it than in DOS or Win3x. But IBM lost all the easy battles by not managing the upgrade of the software. On the one hand they wanted home and desktop users, but the work they did to improve the user experience wasn't particularly well informed.
I had problems with all sorts of little things in v2 that were not fixed by v4 (five years and three major releases later). Or else they'd change things for the better and they'd still suck. All sorts of little things: the way icons lined in an annoying fashion, poor design in some preference panels, the wacky hoops you had to jump through to get dial up access working. Each release that I looked at after 2.0 I remember thinking: why don't they get the easy stuff right? In the meantime, Microsoft put out rubbish, but each release that came out you had a feeling that things were improving. I felt that Microsoft hadn't caught up until Windows 98 and the NT4 internet explorer extensions. However, even most of OS/2's hardline users had long since given up on IBM and moved on to Windows, linux or Be.
> Well, according to their web page, the
> ReactOS people actually plan an OS/2
> subsystem.
There's been an os/2 subsystem in NT since (I think) 3.50, but it only runs applications designed for OS/2 v1. I assume they did this because a lot of banks had apps on os/2 v1 and they wanted to be able to pick up the business. And because they could - being involved in the project as they were.
I never used it but believe that OS/2 v1 was a lot smaller and simpler than 2. Less APIs and no Program Manager (or else a vastly different and almost unrecognisable PM from the one shipped with v2.0 and advanced through later versions)
I'm put in mind of the evil character from _Who framed roger rabbit_;
... throughout the movie he does everything he can to destroy the toons and then turns out to be one himself.
(--- spoiler warning ---)
Hmm... Now I'm thinking about Jessica Rabbit.
> Finder is a piece of crap on an os that
:(. There's a cool UI tool called quicksilver that reduces my dependence on the stupid interface design enough for me to be only slightly uncomfortable.
> is otherwise high class
Yes.
I wish I could have the gnome experience but with the driver support I get from mac os x.
I find my gnome workstation is much more usable in this respect. It has workspaces which work very rapidly and with the hotkeys reliable under all circumstances. And under metacity, you can drag and resize windows using control keys and moving the mouse. So hold down alt, click anywhere in the window - drag. Apple are praised for their user interfaces, but I don't think they've ever really had it right. The priority shouldn't be looking good, it should be that it looks functional and feels fluid. The default ubuntu setup is by far the best GUI I've used in this respect.
Unfortunately many aspects of the os x API are ahead of anything I've encountered on linux, particularly in the area of sound and java integration, and Apple have locked down some of the hardware specs meaning I can't get my laptop to support my wireless card under linux either
What happens when the manufacturer offers you a full refund for the whole laptop, but not for sections of bundled components? Is it vaid for them to do this? Is there a valid timeout? What happens if you keep buying laptops and refunding them once a month, backing up your partition and reinstalling it each time you get your new unit?
What happens when the manufacturer puts a seal on the packaging and says "by opening thism you agree to use the software" or something in more legally respectable language?
I got "do" which could be short for 'doh'.... ??
0 010";
// printf("%d\n", value);
#include
#include
int
power(int i);
int
main()
{
char* data="1000110000111111010101100001011110101111101
long value=0;
int i;
for (i=0;istrlen(data);i++)
{
if ('1' == data[i])
{
value = value + power(2);
}
}
printf("%x\n", value);
}
int
power(int tothe)
{
int i;
int val=2;
for (i=0; itothe; ++i)
{
val = val*2;
}
return val;
}
"Giles" from 'Buffy' is another Tom Baker waiting to happen and he comes pre-type-cast. Make it happen, BBC, make it happen!
I only have one working eye you insensitive clod!
> Slashdot and its readership
There are varying opinions on slashdot, and it's irrational to clump them.
> are quite happy to demonize the RIAA when it
> goes after infringers of its copyright.
> Posters will go so far to defend
(snip)
> intellectual property. There are entire belief
> systems and mindsets invented to justify this
> piracy.
OK - it's like this. There exist some slashdot users who believe "piracy" is a nasty word used to describe something that would be less emotively called copyright infringement. Some of these users don't believe in the virtues of copyright law and choose to ignore or fight it.
It's quite consistent for these people to get upset at the actions of a company like CherryOS. CherryOS is a commercial company that uses copyright law to make money while allegedly flouting it at the same time. *That's* inconsistent, and criticism of it is deserved.
> Note to those preparing to reply with
> "That's not everyone on Slashdot" replies,
> I know. If none of the above applies to
(etc)
It's fair rebuttal. You have not cited *any* evidence on what the majority of slashdot readers do or do not believe, and you've just lumped as all in to a group and put words in our mouth.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make a coherent case than to write rubbish and then suffix it with preemptive rebuttal?
I'm new to this, but this is what I understand to be the problem:
Current situation: firefox is ascendent, with other browsers making up ground as well. It's the first time in years that the consumer has felt that browsers other than IE can do their job, and they're turning to alternatives because of new features they offer.
One group in w3c (including Microsoft) are advocating a start-again approach to web forms. This is XForms.
The other group fear that if that happens, in the confusion, Microsoft could push forward its own proprietary solution, supporting it with more vigour than XForms. Consumers will be back in the hole of having to use IE to get their work done.
The result of this would be: alternative browsers will be locked out of the marketplace, and the potential of the internet to offer a low cost of entry to new players (described at length by Paul Graham in _Hackers and Painters_ will be compromised, at least in the medium term, because Microsoft will control the APIs and delivery of the web.
> he's their puppet nutbar and not ours
l -sung/ (not necessarily definitive, but I've read it in other places):
Neither. North Korea did well until the 1990s partly due to its success in playing the Russians and Chinese off against one another. Thus each country was inclined to give North Korea aid in a bidding war for loyalty. When the USSR dried up they lost most of their leverage, and the evolution of China away from idealogical motivations and into a weird capitalist state further reduced their attractiveness. It was Stalin who Kim Jong Il saught permission from to move against the South. From http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/kim-i
"""
In March 1949, Kim began to nag Joseph Stalin for permission to invade South Korea. "We believe that the situation makes it necessary and possible to liberate the whole country through military means," Kim pleaded. Stalin disagreed, believing that the North was incapable of prevailing against their adversary. In August and September the North Koreans nagged Stalin again. He still said no. In April 1950, Kim spent the entire month in Moscow lobbying for war. Finally, Stalin agreed. And on June 25, 1950 the Korean War began.
"""
Equally, it was China that got involved hoping to aid the North late in the war.
But North Korea is certainly not just a Chinese puppet.
Thanks. BTW, Webobjects 4.5 wasn't before java - it supported both. I believe webobjects had a java option back as far as version 3; version 4 definitely did.
I'm not *that* familiar with gnustep, but used to be a webobjects developer. I know a group of WO developers felt disenfranchised when Apple abandoned objective C in WO (and webscript! webscript! :) ). Would there be many obstacles remaining to people in that situation using this as an upgrade over those old environments? Certainly this might be very helpful to people with legacy projects out there who hate the old interface (which looks much like gnustep but is a lot more quirky in nasty ways - broken tab orderings, random segfaults, that sort of thing). Off the top of my head I'd guess the major pieces would be (1) an EOModeller and the model itself and (2) the interface builder. Are there any free implementations of these systems? Not a huge deal to me - I have a mac and write java, but it's still interesting to know the options that are around..
I had a couple of other thoughts after posting:
.. I noticed two edits..
- Apple's recommended configurations have a ridiculously small amount of RAM. The default config for the top powermac has only 512MB. (For that sort of money you could build a far more powerful windows/linux workstation, too.) I pushed the laptop up to 768MB.
- Now that half-life 2 has been and gone, it's a lot easier to justify putting your money into macintosh and rather than your PC (aaah the relief).
And
- %s/than a PC/than an equivalent PC/
- %s/my first mac/my first new mac/
At http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/mi niapplesandoranges/index.php I read this:
"""
But it was only a matter of time before someone would argue, "It's still not price-competitive with the cheapest Dell." And within days we've got our first such columns and articles, all of which leave me scratching my head, wondering if these guys are as bad at comparing products when they shop for themselves as they apparently are when comparing products for their columns.
"""
I agree. I'm a really recent switcher. I had a second hand mac kicking around years ago (and despised the OS - I ran Be on it), but bought an iBook laptop last Friday. It's my first mac and my first laptop. My justification was that it was cheap, runs unix, has full driver support, especially for wireless networking. I've held off for about two years waiting for a laptop that can deliver that for less than two grand Australian. That's a really compelling formula, and a far better geek computer than a PC.
To get a happy unix experience on a PC laptop you either pay a lot more money or roll the dice on linux drivers and winmodems. Or you can try and run Windows and put up with the limitations of cygwin or the speed hit of vmware. Yuck.
Not that it's always been this way. Until recently, Apples sucked. But OS X has become usable and the hardware has a better reputation than it used to - laptops in particular.
If I were Apple I'd be a bit concerned at the powerbook line - the iBooks deliver so much for so little now the powerbooks don't look very attractive.
There's a type of fabric that's been invented recently that breathes but only transfers moisture in a single direction - outwards. I understand police have hailed this as a revolution in law enforcement as they can now walk the beat under pretty much any circumstances. I don't know what it's called, but this is just one area where it's had an effect. I'd think this a lot more significant in the long term than something as vague as "voice mail" which isn't even a technology.
> Valve is a business... They're a business that
> is out to make money.
Nevertheless, many of us have respect for the good work that valve do and don't like to see them lose out. A group like valve are creative *and* create wealth - this is incredible!
How can a geek not admire such a combination?
Compare this combination to the your typical recording industry schmo. The recording industry creates some wealth. However, because they operate as ologopoly within their own industry and with the way they leverage with other big media interests they suck in much more than they pay out and at the expense of the artist.
Having said that, I think there are probably a lot of artists who should stop whinging, and get a spare time job to fund their own distribution and to busk to get exposure. Artists who get caught up now when there's so much publicity around about what a lot of bastards the recording industry are are naive, and there is a derth of decent artistic talent engaged in street busking in every city I've been to.
None of this is any reason to pay any more regard for the recording industry or its profit lines, though.
> My sincerest apologies to everyone who lost
> relatives, friends, loved ones etc. in the
> holocaust, BTW
!
How do you convincingly offer apologies to something you've said in the same post where you post it? This is... apologising for doing something... and then *doing it*. How can you *apologise* for what you've said and then click on the submit button that sends off the comments you're apologising for!? It's an obviously not-even-remotely-genuine apology.
Thanks for your response. It sounds like you've thought through a number of issues many people would run into.
Has anyone had good experience with emacspeak? It looks promising, but I've never been able to locate the software for it that actually turns words on the screen onto a voice when I've played around with setting it up. From memory it wasn't particularly easy to set up on the distribution I was trying for (debian).
Where they could do good business is in the field of classical music. There are lots of talented musicians around playing high quality classical music that's way out of copyright. As yet there's no easy way to
And it's seriously hard to get classical music through online services without through the nose (particularly if you want an ogg format).
I've been trying to get a version of Mendelssohn's Octet from various file share systems for weeks (not continuously - but every time I do bittorrent stuff or log on to eMule I look for it search for it). Can't find it anywhere - and it's one of this great composer's finest works.