If they are serious about enforcing open document formats, that's good: open source can compete and win if formats are open. The big concern is that companies like Microsoft will try to portray their proprietary formats as "open". For example, the DOC format has been documented by Microsoft, but it isn't truly open because it keeps changing and because it is under Microsoft's control. In particular, XML is not an open format--it isn't a format at all; XML is a standard in which people can define formats, both open and proprietary.
A format isn't open until it has actually been standardized by an independent body that can guarantee that it is free from patent or other claims, and until it has been demonstrated that it can be implemented independtly by actually doing so.
We'll agree to disagree on whether its speed is OK. It works well for me but not for you. Fine.:)
Well, it may be good enough for your needs, but it is much worse than native X11 on the same hardware.
In terms of the looks of applications, I was thinking in terms of bundling versions of GTK, Qt, etc. that have themes which give the apps native-looking widgets, toolbar background colors, etc. That certainly would be within their control.
Maybe. I don't see Apple going into the Gtk or Qt theme business. Furthermore, I don't think Apple has the wherewithal to manage Gtk and Qt library versions.
I think if Macintosh actually became a credible, commonly used platform for X11 applications, the theming and behavior would take care of itself: it would approximate Macintosh native as closely as users generally desire.
The license for Apple X11 doesn't allow third parties to bundle it and redistribute it.
Wow, I didn't know that. It looks like Apple is deliberately making it hard for people to get X11 running on Mac OS X. Apple must be really scared of X11 taking over their desktop.
Can't you just ship a non-Apple version of X11? You wouldn't need much more than the server and a tiny number of utilities (assuming you are using Render for fonts, which puts it on the client-side anyway). The server itself should also be pretty small since it wouldn't need most drivers and only a few extensions. Furthermore, you could use a high connection number (:57 or whatever) so that it doesn't interfere with any Apple X11 that the user may be using.
Well, it's not a matter of "thinking", it's quantifiable, and it ain't good.
However, they need to work on a way to make X11 software look and feel more native (at least before it can compete with other OS X apps in the mainstream.)
What X11 applications look like is beyond Apple's control. If you don't like their looks, just don't use them. Most users don't give a damn in my experience.
integrate the X11 server fully into their system: it should be installed out of the box with every shipping Macintosh and it should either start up at boot time, or it should run on demand (X11 is quite lightweight compared to Quartz, so that really doesn't cost much). Apple also needs to do massive improvements on the performance of their X11 server before they are anywhere near competitive with workstations or Linux systems.
The way it is, X11 on OS X is just an emergency solution, not something you might want to actually deploy and use widely.
This sounds like a little PVM-cluster-on-a-chip. It also sounds like it's a pain to program and will, in the short term, suffer from the same problems that Intel's Itanium suffers from: it tries to push too much work on the compiler or software developer.
In the long term, it's nice that companies are exploring these kinds of architectures. It's not nice that they are trying to monopolize what are pretty straightforward architectural choices with patents. This may be a new CPU, but there is little that is new about having a bunch of fast processors interconnected via a reconfigurable network; these just happen to be on the same chip.
Because this thing really does "just work": you plug it in and all the keyboard and all the computer functionality is there.
Your Powerbook requires software installation, interface cables, multiple power connectors, a separate stand to hold the powerbook, probably a laptop security cable (so it doesn't get snarfed), software installation, and all the other complexities that come with running a general purpose laptop.
It's cool, it's geeky, but that does not make it worth the cash, especially if I'm just worried about getting things done.
No, the "geeky" thing to do is to become a computer operator in order to play the keyboard. For getting things done, solutions that work out of the box with no fiddling are the better choice.
It runs Linux, so the typical knee-jerk response is "the GUI can't be any good". Please spare us that kind of bullshit. Korg has been in the business for a long time--and I would trust them to put together a GUI that works for their market.
As for the computer part of it, people constantly hook up keyboards to computers; the target market for this device probably is used to computers and computer interfaces. I suspect they would buy this because it's easier to set up and transport than the typical keyboard/computer combo.
You don't need wormholes or any of that stuff. Just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. That will propel you instantly from this universe into some other "universe", where the laws of physics are entirely different. Or just take a bit of LSD, that will do the trick, too.
Looking on the largest channels strongly biases his analysis: in the physical world, mobs of people also do completely different things from small groups of people.
And looking at frequencies of legal/illegal use of four keywords doesn't work. It's an oversimplification, but seriously, what else other than illegally sharing them is there to talk about with Norton or Symantec?
Finally, his conclusions at most mean that these particular IRC servers are a haven for warez trading; IRC in general is used for many purposes.
Security in Israel does similar things. I think they ask many questions simply to see how you react and to get an impression of you. I guess it's some kind of weird psychological game dreamed up by people who are used to interrogating prisoners.
My conclusion is that if an airline/country has gotten so messed up that they need to do this as a regular matter of their normal travel procedures, I just don't go there anymore until they get their house in order. Fortunately, the US hasn't reached that level yet (although AA might).
Um, no... Like I said in my very first response; I based my answers an real-world experience, not on Apple marketing.
Your real-life experience doesn't tell you supposed "facts" like Quartz being accelerated and X11 not. You are parrotting Apple marketing claims, you just mistake it for your "experience".
About the quartz, duh the console will be slow. I already said quartz has no optimized text rendering.
Yes, you said that. After berating me for claiming that Quartz is slow.
The argument is that generally, QE makes for a faster desktop experience than X11 w/ XDI.
Quartz Extreme does make for a faster desktop experience than X11 in many cases, not because QE is faster (which it isn't), but because it spends a boatload of memory on caching window contents on the server. That's how Quartz gets away with slow, unaccelerated drawing operations and still looks like it's fast. You can get some of the same effect in X11 by enabling backing store.
Your silly accusations of me being a zealot are boring me and have led me to consider you as somewhat of a troll so I don't think I'll be spending anymore time toward this enlightening conversation. Take care, friend.
The "troll" is people like you, who go into an open source advocacy site (and that's what/. is to a large degree), make unsubstantiated claims about the inferiority of open source software.
If you at least accompanied your assertions by evidence, one could use them as a starting point for improving OSS further. But the problem is: there is nothing; one can't improve OSS software like X11 or Gnome in ways that would appeal to you because you guys can't even demonstrate what you think is wrong.
People who have written peer-reviewed research papers related to this (e.g. one of David Salesin's current grad students, whose name escapes me at the moment) have pointed out that the actual difference in a document set with a multiline composer versus a proper single line composer is surprisingly small
So are the differences between the looks of Mother Theresa and Britney Spears. But they still matter to a lot of people.
Using multiple fonts in TeX is nowhere near trivial. I've never managed to get the complete Adobe Minion, including expert sets and small caps, installed properly in TeX without screwed up kerning, even using the command-line font install utility.
So, you aren't talking about "using" fonts, you are talking about installing them.
There's a reason virtually every TeX document out there uses either Computer Modern or Times Roman, [...] It's nearly impossible for average people to install new fonts.
Yup: the reason is that installing fonts in a way that integrates them properly with styles is hard in principle. So, in LaTeX, someone usually does it for you. In Word, it doesn't happen at all, since Word isn't even capable of producing consistently styled documents.
The main reason is probably that bringing out a programmable platform is a boatload of work for a company. By not opening it up, they don't have to write reams of documentation, they can change things around without being accountable to anyone and without any testing with third party software.
There may be other reasons (licensing issues, desire to keep some differentiation among models even if it's just software), but those would be easy to overcome if it weren't for the huge extra cost and small perceived benefit.
Telling people that they don't have to die has to be the oldest get-famous-quick scam out there.
How credible this guy is is something you can tell from the fact that he has never actually done any hands-on biology. Unfortunately, in real life, biological systems are enormously complex and unpredictable. We can't even cure the common cold or create a safe and effective diet pill; immortality is likely still very far off. (And whether it is at all desirable, even from the completely selfish view of an individual, is also an open question.)
Some people say that providing open source applications on Windows helps proprietary software and the Windows monopoly, but I don't think so. Software like Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL on the server, and Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice on the client lets Windows users gradually move over to open source applications. I think that's a much better way of getting people to switch than to ask them to do an all-or-nothing switch.
That doesn't work for anything complicated: it means you have to re-enter the equation when you want to change it. OpenOffice's solution is OK (although it would be nice if it accepted TeX).
However when you review my original response, you should note that all I did was disagree with you and point out possible misstatements.
That's why you start out your post with the phras "Haha"?
Got a link?
Sure: got to "sgi.com", "hp.com", or "sun.com". They have been designing and shipping X11-specific graphics hardware for nearly as long as they have been shipping workstations. Of course, their old products aren't even on-line anymore.
Odd limits, too; for example text rendering is dog-slow [...] I assume this comment is based on perceived speed and not measured benchmarks--unless you can provide a link
You just provided one yourself.
Keep in mind that Aqua has more [complex] eye-candy than do X11 desktop enviroments. Perhaps you should try again after turning off Aqua's fancy effects for a more fair comparison.
Just a text console will do nicely to see how slow it is. Graphics drawing is slow, too, though, in my measurements.
I don't care who gives a damn about what I think about what.
And I don't care what you think either. What I care about is when people like you lie or distort the facts over Linux and X11 out of some fanboy-ism for Apple. And the facts are that Apple has never proven that OS X usability is better than any other platform, and nobody has provided any benchmarks proving that Apple's Quartz Extreme is anything other than a marketing gimmick. And, in fact, you yourself point out that important operations (like text rendering) are "dog-slow" (your words).
If you do, then great; I don't mind being proven wrong.
So, your approach to communication is to uncritically repeat Apple marketing claims and then insist that other people have the obligation to prove you wrong. Well, that's what makes you a zealot. The correct order of things is that if people make claims about a commercial product, they prove them first, since vendors have a strong interest in exggerating the performance and capabilities of their products.
Verifying Apple marketing claims is particularly important since Apple apparently has a problem with facts: for example, for years, they claimed that the G4 was much faster than its clock rate indicated, but when people actually did the benchmark, it turned out that was a lie. They also claimed that their machines were the first 64bit personal computer--wrong, and they knew it.
There are lots of low-power embeddable boards out there based on x86, ARM, and even PPC. Cannibalizing an Apple desktop system for that purpose makes little sense: you'll pay more and get something far less suitable (more power consumption, fewer I/O options, etc.).
It will be less hilarious when these idiots go to Congress and have various legal restrictions put on clicking on web pages "because their business model is threatened". Apparently, these days, you come up with a stupid business model and then whine until Congress fixes all the loopholes.
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If they are serious about enforcing open document formats, that's good: open source can compete and win if formats are open. The big concern is that companies like Microsoft will try to portray their proprietary formats as "open". For example, the DOC format has been documented by Microsoft, but it isn't truly open because it keeps changing and because it is under Microsoft's control. In particular, XML is not an open format--it isn't a format at all; XML is a standard in which people can define formats, both open and proprietary.
A format isn't open until it has actually been standardized by an independent body that can guarantee that it is free from patent or other claims, and until it has been demonstrated that it can be implemented independtly by actually doing so.
If you had read it, you'd know, though, that a lot of people use relational databases for purposes for which they are ill suited.
Nevertheless, streaming databases is a topic that a lot of companies and research groups are working on right now.
I realize we're stuck with X11 on Unix, but if you're sitting on top of Quartz, might as well use it, no?
Why do Macintosh users feel this compulsion to say bad things about Linux and X11?
But since you ask: no, I think between Quartz and X11, X11 is the cleaner and better designed system.
We'll agree to disagree on whether its speed is OK. It works well for me but not for you. Fine. :)
Well, it may be good enough for your needs, but it is much worse than native X11 on the same hardware.
In terms of the looks of applications, I was thinking in terms of bundling versions of GTK, Qt, etc. that have themes which give the apps native-looking widgets, toolbar background colors, etc. That certainly would be within their control.
Maybe. I don't see Apple going into the Gtk or Qt theme business. Furthermore, I don't think Apple has the wherewithal to manage Gtk and Qt library versions.
I think if Macintosh actually became a credible, commonly used platform for X11 applications, the theming and behavior would take care of itself: it would approximate Macintosh native as closely as users generally desire.
The license for Apple X11 doesn't allow third parties to bundle it and redistribute it.
Wow, I didn't know that. It looks like Apple is deliberately making it hard for people to get X11 running on Mac OS X. Apple must be really scared of X11 taking over their desktop.
Can't you just ship a non-Apple version of X11? You wouldn't need much more than the server and a tiny number of utilities (assuming you are using Render for fonts, which puts it on the client-side anyway). The server itself should also be pretty small since it wouldn't need most drivers and only a few extensions. Furthermore, you could use a high connection number (:57 or whatever) so that it doesn't interfere with any Apple X11 that the user may be using.
Really? I think performance is great.
Well, it's not a matter of "thinking", it's quantifiable, and it ain't good.
However, they need to work on a way to make X11 software look and feel more native (at least before it can compete with other OS X apps in the mainstream.)
What X11 applications look like is beyond Apple's control. If you don't like their looks, just don't use them. Most users don't give a damn in my experience.
integrate the X11 server fully into their system: it should be installed out of the box with every shipping Macintosh and it should either start up at boot time, or it should run on demand (X11 is quite lightweight compared to Quartz, so that really doesn't cost much). Apple also needs to do massive improvements on the performance of their X11 server before they are anywhere near competitive with workstations or Linux systems.
The way it is, X11 on OS X is just an emergency solution, not something you might want to actually deploy and use widely.
So what? So you'll just create sloppy code and the Cell will still outperform any other consumer CPU by a large factor.
Probably not. A lot of code is performance-limited by memory bandwidth and wouldn't run any faster no matter how fast you make the CPU and FPU.
Other than that, I think the chaining of APU's is a pretty new idea.
No; that's one of the standard ways of parallelizing things.
Pretty much this entire design space has been explored before; the "cell architecture" just happens to pick some point in the middle.
This sounds like a little PVM-cluster-on-a-chip. It also sounds like it's a pain to program and will, in the short term, suffer from the same problems that Intel's Itanium suffers from: it tries to push too much work on the compiler or software developer.
In the long term, it's nice that companies are exploring these kinds of architectures. It's not nice that they are trying to monopolize what are pretty straightforward architectural choices with patents. This may be a new CPU, but there is little that is new about having a bunch of fast processors interconnected via a reconfigurable network; these just happen to be on the same chip.
Because this thing really does "just work": you plug it in and all the keyboard and all the computer functionality is there.
Your Powerbook requires software installation, interface cables, multiple power connectors, a separate stand to hold the powerbook, probably a laptop security cable (so it doesn't get snarfed), software installation, and all the other complexities that come with running a general purpose laptop.
It's cool, it's geeky, but that does not make it worth the cash, especially if I'm just worried about getting things done.
No, the "geeky" thing to do is to become a computer operator in order to play the keyboard. For getting things done, solutions that work out of the box with no fiddling are the better choice.
It runs Linux, so the typical knee-jerk response is "the GUI can't be any good". Please spare us that kind of bullshit. Korg has been in the business for a long time--and I would trust them to put together a GUI that works for their market.
As for the computer part of it, people constantly hook up keyboards to computers; the target market for this device probably is used to computers and computer interfaces. I suspect they would buy this because it's easier to set up and transport than the typical keyboard/computer combo.
You don't need wormholes or any of that stuff. Just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. That will propel you instantly from this universe into some other "universe", where the laws of physics are entirely different. Or just take a bit of LSD, that will do the trick, too.
Looking on the largest channels strongly biases his analysis: in the physical world, mobs of people also do completely different things from small groups of people.
And looking at frequencies of legal/illegal use of four keywords doesn't work. It's an oversimplification, but seriously, what else other than illegally sharing them is there to talk about with Norton or Symantec?
Finally, his conclusions at most mean that these particular IRC servers are a haven for warez trading; IRC in general is used for many purposes.
Security in Israel does similar things. I think they ask many questions simply to see how you react and to get an impression of you. I guess it's some kind of weird psychological game dreamed up by people who are used to interrogating prisoners.
My conclusion is that if an airline/country has gotten so messed up that they need to do this as a regular matter of their normal travel procedures, I just don't go there anymore until they get their house in order. Fortunately, the US hasn't reached that level yet (although AA might).
Um, no... Like I said in my very first response; I based my answers an real-world experience, not on Apple marketing.
/. is to a large degree), make unsubstantiated claims about the inferiority of open source software.
Your real-life experience doesn't tell you supposed "facts" like Quartz being accelerated and X11 not. You are parrotting Apple marketing claims, you just mistake it for your "experience".
About the quartz, duh the console will be slow. I already said quartz has no optimized text rendering.
Yes, you said that. After berating me for claiming that Quartz is slow.
The argument is that generally, QE makes for a faster desktop experience than X11 w/ XDI.
Quartz Extreme does make for a faster desktop experience than X11 in many cases, not because QE is faster (which it isn't), but because it spends a boatload of memory on caching window contents on the server. That's how Quartz gets away with slow, unaccelerated drawing operations and still looks like it's fast. You can get some of the same effect in X11 by enabling backing store.
Your silly accusations of me being a zealot are boring me and have led me to consider you as somewhat of a troll so I don't think I'll be spending anymore time toward this enlightening conversation. Take care, friend.
The "troll" is people like you, who go into an open source advocacy site (and that's what
If you at least accompanied your assertions by evidence, one could use them as a starting point for improving OSS further. But the problem is: there is nothing; one can't improve OSS software like X11 or Gnome in ways that would appeal to you because you guys can't even demonstrate what you think is wrong.
People who have written peer-reviewed research papers related to this (e.g. one of David Salesin's current grad students, whose name escapes me at the moment) have pointed out that the actual difference in a document set with a multiline composer versus a proper single line composer is surprisingly small
So are the differences between the looks of Mother Theresa and Britney Spears. But they still matter to a lot of people.
Using multiple fonts in TeX is nowhere near trivial. I've never managed to get the complete Adobe Minion, including expert sets and small caps, installed properly in TeX without screwed up kerning, even using the command-line font install utility.
So, you aren't talking about "using" fonts, you are talking about installing them.
There's a reason virtually every TeX document out there uses either Computer Modern or Times Roman, [...] It's nearly impossible for average people to install new fonts.
Yup: the reason is that installing fonts in a way that integrates them properly with styles is hard in principle. So, in LaTeX, someone usually does it for you. In Word, it doesn't happen at all, since Word isn't even capable of producing consistently styled documents.
The continual TeX/LaTeX edit then compile then view then edit then compile then view cycle bothers me more [...]
TeX effectively has live preview these days, so you edit in one window and see the formatted output in another.
in a real WYSIWYG word processor with quality typography
No WYSIWYG word processor comes even remotely close to TeX typesetting quality.
(granted, without TeX's multiline composer, but with automatic ligatures and easy use of multiple fonts).
Using multiple fonts in TeX is trivial, and ligatures are automatic in it.
The main reason is probably that bringing out a programmable platform is a boatload of work for a company. By not opening it up, they don't have to write reams of documentation, they can change things around without being accountable to anyone and without any testing with third party software.
There may be other reasons (licensing issues, desire to keep some differentiation among models even if it's just software), but those would be easy to overcome if it weren't for the huge extra cost and small perceived benefit.
Telling people that they don't have to die has to be the oldest get-famous-quick scam out there.
How credible this guy is is something you can tell from the fact that he has never actually done any hands-on biology. Unfortunately, in real life, biological systems are enormously complex and unpredictable. We can't even cure the common cold or create a safe and effective diet pill; immortality is likely still very far off. (And whether it is at all desirable, even from the completely selfish view of an individual, is also an open question.)
Some people say that providing open source applications on Windows helps proprietary software and the Windows monopoly, but I don't think so. Software like Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL on the server, and Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice on the client lets Windows users gradually move over to open source applications. I think that's a much better way of getting people to switch than to ask them to do an all-or-nothing switch.
That doesn't work for anything complicated: it means you have to re-enter the equation when you want to change it. OpenOffice's solution is OK (although it would be nice if it accepted TeX).
However when you review my original response, you should note that all I did was disagree with you and point out possible misstatements.
That's why you start out your post with the phras "Haha"?
Got a link?
Sure: got to "sgi.com", "hp.com", or "sun.com". They have been designing and shipping X11-specific graphics hardware for nearly as long as they have been shipping workstations. Of course, their old products aren't even on-line anymore.
Odd limits, too; for example text rendering is dog-slow [...] I assume this comment is based on perceived speed and not measured benchmarks--unless you can provide a link
You just provided one yourself.
Keep in mind that Aqua has more [complex] eye-candy than do X11 desktop enviroments. Perhaps you should try again after turning off Aqua's fancy effects for a more fair comparison.
Just a text console will do nicely to see how slow it is. Graphics drawing is slow, too, though, in my measurements.
I don't care who gives a damn about what I think about what.
And I don't care what you think either. What I care about is when people like you lie or distort the facts over Linux and X11 out of some fanboy-ism for Apple. And the facts are that Apple has never proven that OS X usability is better than any other platform, and nobody has provided any benchmarks proving that Apple's Quartz Extreme is anything other than a marketing gimmick. And, in fact, you yourself point out that important operations (like text rendering) are "dog-slow" (your words).
If you do, then great; I don't mind being proven wrong.
So, your approach to communication is to uncritically repeat Apple marketing claims and then insist that other people have the obligation to prove you wrong. Well, that's what makes you a zealot. The correct order of things is that if people make claims about a commercial product, they prove them first, since vendors have a strong interest in exggerating the performance and capabilities of their products.
Verifying Apple marketing claims is particularly important since Apple apparently has a problem with facts: for example, for years, they claimed that the G4 was much faster than its clock rate indicated, but when people actually did the benchmark, it turned out that was a lie. They also claimed that their machines were the first 64bit personal computer--wrong, and they knew it.
There are lots of low-power embeddable boards out there based on x86, ARM, and even PPC. Cannibalizing an Apple desktop system for that purpose makes little sense: you'll pay more and get something far less suitable (more power consumption, fewer I/O options, etc.).
Compare the Mac Mini with Hoojum products. Coincidence? Engaged made made the same comparison.
It will be less hilarious when these idiots go to Congress and have various legal restrictions put on clicking on web pages "because their business model is threatened". Apparently, these days, you come up with a stupid business model and then whine until Congress fixes all the loopholes.