You will have to... buy an all new PC, with all new video/audio card.... buy an all new home stereo system.... buy an all plasma TV.... carry around yet another set of cables and adapters when traveling with your laptop.
You won't be able to digitally rip content from your DVI connector anymore, not that you were actually ever doing that.
Sorry, but this thing is pointless for the user; it's a big rip-off.
The number of variables in this study are not even remotely controlled. There are no sensible conclusions you can draw from this,
Scientific experiments don't "control the number of variables", they control the number of variables that actually vary between experimental conditions.
For all we know an increase in the cost of beef in Tokyo is encouraging the russian mafia to hire more hackers to fake livestock reports and therefore there's less hackers available to attack the useless machines involved in these tests.
That's a random variable that affects all experimental conditions equally. Those kinds of random variables exist in most experimental settings. Their existence doesn't make an experiment "unscientific". One doesn't "eliminate them", one discloses all the ones one knows about and deals with them statistically if possible.
They could have improved the experiment by including an old version of Linux as a control experiment, to see whether the rate of break-ins is roughly the same this year as it was last year. But such controls are often not feasible in the sciences because of cost or other constraints.
You don't gain credibility by calling anyone who disagrees with you a 'zealot.'
I don't call "anybody" who disagrees with me a "zealot", I call people who behave like zealots "zealots". People like Zelet and you.
Desktop experience is, after all, a matter of ones own personal preference.
Good that you realize that now. You should think about that before you post. Also go read the parent post that I originally responded to.
X11 is a standard, so it makes little sense to say it has hardware acceleration when it's really a network-based protocol.
X11 server implementations have had hardware acceleration for graphics since the 1980's. In fact, a lot of hardware has been specifically designed to support X11 graphics, and is to this day.
I'm talking about real hardware acceleration on par with Quartz Extreme.
Quartz's use of hardware acceleration is very limited; it doesn't even accelerate all the graphics operations that are accelerated in a good X11 server, and it shows in Quartz's sluggish performance. X11-based desktops are far more responsive on the same hardware as Aqua.
You know, most people wouldn't give a damn about what you think about your Macintosh. But people like you and Zelet should stop badmouthing and spreading FUD about Linux and X11 and making exaggerated claims about Macintosh technology: the Macintosh is a decent desktop machine, but that's all.
While it's great if Gnome & KDE work for you, but your comments about Aqua are misguided and show that you've probably never or have had very little use of Aqua.
Quite to the contrary: I have used Aqua quite a bit, as well as helped other people using it. It's not bad, but it's not better than any of the other desktops out there. When I talk about systems, I have actually used them day-to-day.
Can you or all the other Apple zealots here on Slashdot say the same about KDE and Gnome? Or does your experience of other systems come down to "tried it for a couple fo weeks and didn't like it"? I suspect it's the latter.
Being able to sit down with a program you've never used and automatically know how to use it is a powerful thing, my friend.
Yes. Too bad that Macintosh doesn't achieve that any more than any of the other platforms. In fact, some of its gratuitous incompatibilities (menu bar, one button mouse, weird window management, etc.) make it unnecessarily hard to use for users. And my statement is based on real-world observations of real-world users.
Haha. Did you just say Gnome/KDE is probably more integrated and consistent than Aqua?
Yes. While people like you like to make unfounded assertions about the degree of consistency in systems like Macintosh, there is actually no formal measure of that. So, which system is more consistent is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that Gnome and KDE are more consistent than Macintosh. But you may have a different opinion. Just don't present your opinion as an irrefutable fact. In fact, most of the claims about Macintosh are just opinions, not facts.
Oh boy... And what's so great about X.org? It just added eye candy and Aqua has been able to do that since its release in 2001.
What's so great about it is that it provides an open, general, and efficient approach to those features that is preferable to Apple's proprietary and complex DisplayPDF system.
It's even been hardware accelerated for a couple years now and X.org isn't even close to that.
X11 servers have had hardware acceleration since the 1980's.
Rather than wasting time on porting OOo to Cocoa, the time is better spent on improving the integration of X11 into the Macintosh desktop and improving X11 performance when run as a guest under Quartz. That way, all developers of X11 applications benefit.
OOo might, for example, have a little wrapper that tries to find X11 (it is usually around as an uninstalled package on the machine) and install it if it's not there.
And X11 might get a small Macintosh-specific extension or helper app that allows things like drag-and-drop and the menu bar to work better.
And the OOo developers are exactly right about consistency: consistency of OOo (and Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) is more important than consistency within the Mac environment, both for development and for many end users (who usually end up having to use multiple platforms anyway).
First, X11 on OS X is slow; that's not X11's fault, it's a problem with the X11 implementation on OS X. In fact, run natively, X11 is much faster and less memory intensive than Quartz on the same hardware. Second, as for "ugly", that's a matter of opinion. People shouldn't take the FUD of Macintosh zealots like you as a fact, they should look for themselves.
At this point, Gnome and KDE are probably better desktops than Aqua: better integrated, more consistent, more efficient on comparable hardware, and better looking. And it's only getting better with X.org.
Don't believe the Macintosh marketing FUD: Gnome and KDE are excellent desktops.
Setting up X11 on the Mac is non-trivial, and it is impossible for X11 applications to behave like normal Mac applications. Basically, if you must, you can get it to work, but it's not a solution you would want to deploy for a whole computer lab.
The solution to this problem is, however, not to convert every X11 application under the sun to Cocoa, the solution is to fix X11 integration on the Mac.
I don't particularly like Lyx and have found it to be quite limited, and installing Texmacs on the Mac is hard (it requires X11 and helper apps).
It's Apple that keeps talking about native apps for the Mac. Well, where is the native, high quality academic word processor? Looks like LaTeX is still it on the Mac.
Ok, so it's XML, but it's non-standard. Too bad. That does make it kind of like Microsoft Office: both DOC and its XML successor are documented as well, but neither is standardized. Too bad: Apple missed an opportunity there.
You're kind of missing the point. iWork, like other word processors, can export/import DOC (more or less). But it also has its own, native format. That could be yet another messy, proprietary format, or it could be a standard XML-based format like OASIS. Well, which is it?
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much.
It would be doing a great deal: the documents you create in iWork would then be accessible as standard XML documents, and they would rely on standards like SVG and MathML.
So, there are lots of questions. Like, what kinds of formats is it using? XML? SVG? The to-be-standardized OOo format? MathML? Does it have LaTeX import/export? Does it support mathematics? LaTeX notation? MathML export/import?
Apple's page (apple.com/iwork) shows lots of pretty pictures but has little technical details, other than that it imports/exports Word and can generate PDF.
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You will have to ... buy an all new PC, with all new video/audio card. ... buy an all new home stereo system. ... buy an all plasma TV. ... carry around yet another set of cables and adapters when traveling with your laptop.
You won't be able to digitally rip content from your DVI connector anymore, not that you were actually ever doing that.
Sorry, but this thing is pointless for the user; it's a big rip-off.
The number of variables in this study are not even remotely controlled. There are no sensible conclusions you can draw from this,
Scientific experiments don't "control the number of variables", they control the number of variables that actually vary between experimental conditions.
For all we know an increase in the cost of beef in Tokyo is encouraging the russian mafia to hire more hackers to fake livestock reports and therefore there's less hackers available to attack the useless machines involved in these tests.
That's a random variable that affects all experimental conditions equally. Those kinds of random variables exist in most experimental settings. Their existence doesn't make an experiment "unscientific". One doesn't "eliminate them", one discloses all the ones one knows about and deals with them statistically if possible.
They could have improved the experiment by including an old version of Linux as a control experiment, to see whether the rate of break-ins is roughly the same this year as it was last year. But such controls are often not feasible in the sciences because of cost or other constraints.
You don't gain credibility by calling anyone who disagrees with you a 'zealot.'
I don't call "anybody" who disagrees with me a "zealot", I call people who behave like zealots "zealots". People like Zelet and you.
Desktop experience is, after all, a matter of ones own personal preference.
Good that you realize that now. You should think about that before you post. Also go read the parent post that I originally responded to.
X11 is a standard, so it makes little sense to say it has hardware acceleration when it's really a network-based protocol.
X11 server implementations have had hardware acceleration for graphics since the 1980's. In fact, a lot of hardware has been specifically designed to support X11 graphics, and is to this day.
I'm talking about real hardware acceleration on par with Quartz Extreme.
Quartz's use of hardware acceleration is very limited; it doesn't even accelerate all the graphics operations that are accelerated in a good X11 server, and it shows in Quartz's sluggish performance. X11-based desktops are far more responsive on the same hardware as Aqua.
You know, most people wouldn't give a damn about what you think about your Macintosh. But people like you and Zelet should stop badmouthing and spreading FUD about Linux and X11 and making exaggerated claims about Macintosh technology: the Macintosh is a decent desktop machine, but that's all.
While it's great if Gnome & KDE work for you, but your comments about Aqua are misguided and show that you've probably never or have had very little use of Aqua.
Quite to the contrary: I have used Aqua quite a bit, as well as helped other people using it. It's not bad, but it's not better than any of the other desktops out there. When I talk about systems, I have actually used them day-to-day.
Can you or all the other Apple zealots here on Slashdot say the same about KDE and Gnome? Or does your experience of other systems come down to "tried it for a couple fo weeks and didn't like it"? I suspect it's the latter.
Being able to sit down with a program you've never used and automatically know how to use it is a powerful thing, my friend.
Yes. Too bad that Macintosh doesn't achieve that any more than any of the other platforms. In fact, some of its gratuitous incompatibilities (menu bar, one button mouse, weird window management, etc.) make it unnecessarily hard to use for users. And my statement is based on real-world observations of real-world users.
Haha. Did you just say Gnome/KDE is probably more integrated and consistent than Aqua?
Yes. While people like you like to make unfounded assertions about the degree of consistency in systems like Macintosh, there is actually no formal measure of that. So, which system is more consistent is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that Gnome and KDE are more consistent than Macintosh. But you may have a different opinion. Just don't present your opinion as an irrefutable fact. In fact, most of the claims about Macintosh are just opinions, not facts.
Oh boy... And what's so great about X.org? It just added eye candy and Aqua has been able to do that since its release in 2001.
What's so great about it is that it provides an open, general, and efficient approach to those features that is preferable to Apple's proprietary and complex DisplayPDF system.
It's even been hardware accelerated for a couple years now and X.org isn't even close to that.
X11 servers have had hardware acceleration since the 1980's.
Rather than wasting time on porting OOo to Cocoa, the time is better spent on improving the integration of X11 into the Macintosh desktop and improving X11 performance when run as a guest under Quartz. That way, all developers of X11 applications benefit.
OOo might, for example, have a little wrapper that tries to find X11 (it is usually around as an uninstalled package on the machine) and install it if it's not there.
And X11 might get a small Macintosh-specific extension or helper app that allows things like drag-and-drop and the menu bar to work better.
And the OOo developers are exactly right about consistency: consistency of OOo (and Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) is more important than consistency within the Mac environment, both for development and for many end users (who usually end up having to use multiple platforms anyway).
First, X11 on OS X is slow; that's not X11's fault, it's a problem with the X11 implementation on OS X. In fact, run natively, X11 is much faster and less memory intensive than Quartz on the same hardware. Second, as for "ugly", that's a matter of opinion. People shouldn't take the FUD of Macintosh zealots like you as a fact, they should look for themselves.
At this point, Gnome and KDE are probably better desktops than Aqua: better integrated, more consistent, more efficient on comparable hardware, and better looking. And it's only getting better with X.org.
Don't believe the Macintosh marketing FUD: Gnome and KDE are excellent desktops.
Setting up X11 on the Mac is non-trivial, and it is impossible for X11 applications to behave like normal Mac applications. Basically, if you must, you can get it to work, but it's not a solution you would want to deploy for a whole computer lab.
The solution to this problem is, however, not to convert every X11 application under the sun to Cocoa, the solution is to fix X11 integration on the Mac.
I don't particularly like Lyx and have found it to be quite limited, and installing Texmacs on the Mac is hard (it requires X11 and helper apps).
It's Apple that keeps talking about native apps for the Mac. Well, where is the native, high quality academic word processor? Looks like LaTeX is still it on the Mac.
Ok, so it's XML, but it's non-standard. Too bad. That does make it kind of like Microsoft Office: both DOC and its XML successor are documented as well, but neither is standardized. Too bad: Apple missed an opportunity there.
You're kind of missing the point. iWork, like other word processors, can export/import DOC (more or less). But it also has its own, native format. That could be yet another messy, proprietary format, or it could be a standard XML-based format like OASIS. Well, which is it?
If apple supported OASIS, all the better, but until people are actually using the format it's not going do very much.
It would be doing a great deal: the documents you create in iWork would then be accessible as standard XML documents, and they would rely on standards like SVG and MathML.
So, there are lots of questions. Like, what kinds of formats is it using? XML? SVG? The to-be-standardized OOo format? MathML? Does it have LaTeX import/export? Does it support mathematics? LaTeX notation? MathML export/import? Apple's page (apple.com/iwork) shows lots of pretty pictures but has little technical details, other than that it imports/exports Word and can generate PDF.