Installing operating systems is for 1.) technicians, who can handle it and 2.) hobbyists, who asked for it. The idea that Ubuntu is going to gain a bunch of market share because random plumbers, school teachers, and bartenders will decide to download the install CD and install a new OS themselves on their current computers is absurd. Most users buy computers with the operating system already installed.
Cool bananas. So you're saying that Linux is not ready for the general market yet.
I disagree. I think any OS should be 'installable' by normal users. People can easily install Windows, and have since the 3.1 days. People can easily install OS X (and MacOS, System 7, etc before it). Why does Linux have to be different?
If you want Linux to reach the masses, attitudes like yours need to change. You need to target those random plumbers, school teachers and bartenders, making the OS easier than Windows for them. *That* is the best potential selling point - being *easier* to use than Windows, but free as well.
As (OS X) gets more and more popular it will be just as exploit-ridden as Windows is
That's only true if it was written by the same people who wrote Windows, in the exact same manner. Logically, one statement doesn't follow the other unless you have that condition.
Apple anti-fanboys are every bit as bad as Apple fanboys. Both use logic this poor to justify their irrational thinking.
You have become so indoctrinated that software should fail on any product you purchase, as an acceptable policy.
That's not what anyone is saying, and you're deliberately misrepresenting people. What I (and others I read here) are saying is that beta software can expire and that's fine. It's part of the nature of beta software - it's not ready for showtime yet and everyone knows this.
Apple released a new SDK version yesterday to replace the expired previous version. Devs simply reset their iPhones and install the new version.
In the *shipping* version, I would be on your side, although slightly less frothing-at-the-mouth ranty. Shipping software should absolutely not arbitrarily expire - that leads to forced upgrade paths and all sorts of stuff that would most likely result in significant and successful lawsuits against the software producers. That'd be a terrible thing.
But we're not talking about shipping software here, we're talking about a closed beta programme. Different expectations, different rules.
I do think your expectations are completely unreasonable in this case.
To use your first example - if you're developing on a computer and your programme hangs the machine, you reboot it. You don't go out and buy a new computer.
Back to the situation at hand - if you're on the iPhone beta SDK programme and the phone has been locked out by the expiration of this version of the SDK, you *reset* the phone and download the new version (which is out now) from Apple.
How is this so hard for people to understand? You reset the phone, get the new SDK version and carry on. If you were in the SDK programme you probably already knew about this expiration (and if not, *that* is the thing to criticise Apple for) so you'd have planned for some downtime today. Maybe you've even lost half a day of testing time, which you'd instead spend on the simulator or reviewing your code and sharpening up your documentation.
Now I feel so stupid You should feel a bit silly after your post. Maybe not stupid, but sheepish for misunderstanding what's happening.
These *developers* are in a beta SDK programme, and the new version has just been released. They are expected to upgrade, and the old beta is obsolete.
Furthermore, the reset process is trivially simple.
There was no self-destruct, no general user devices affected (unlike your TV and car example), no pacemaker-like danger to users (you like hyperbole, don't you?) and yes, when it comes to beta code it *is* acceptable to make it expire.
Have you ever met a developer in a beta programme? Do you even understand how these things work?
The real criticisms to be levelled at Apple are the restricted nature of the beta programme and perhaps the level of communication about the expiration (were any real developers taken by surprise here?) and definitely not the expiration of one version of a beta SDK.
The story is, in short, a beat-up for people like you to have your five minutes of frothing-at-the-mouth anger even though I'd bet you're not affected personally at all. Beat-ups get the page views and sell newspapers, which is their entire point.
Try out QT3 Designer, by Trolltech - if you want a gui scripting language. Just a heads-up.
I think the other poster meant something like AppleScript, which allows user-created scripts to tell the OS and applications to do stuff. You can pass objects (files, data, etc) around between the OS and apps pretty easily with almost natural language ("tell application "Finder"... for all files in folder "foo" do... etc).
Have a look at Automator if you're interested (here are some user-submitted scripts to get an idea of what can be done). It's a GUI that helps users write complex AppleScript sequences or record GUI actions from any app. There's always the standby text editor for this if the GUI puts you off, and both ship with the OS.
I think Linux, like OS X, Unix and Unix-likes can replicate just about anything at system level with standard Unix commands, but I don't think you can hook that into apps beyond the simplest level (sending a file into an app). Scripting languages like AppleScript, when properly supported by the app, allow things like automated photo resizing or retouching, taking text or pictures from a file and inserting it into a Word document in a certain place, all that sort of thing. After fifteen years of AppleScript, most quality apps have good support for AppleScript (yes, even Microsoft ones).
I'm not a Linux user, so I don't know how good the scripting support is in the OS and apps. Is this sort of thing possible under Linux?
Hmm... I've rabbitted on longer than I intended here, better get back to work.
Blizzard have released many expansions without cost. The most recent patch, 2.4, added a whole new island with end-game content. Sure, it's for 5- and 25-player groupings, but there are several 'dungeon' areas (some outside) there.
Same with many other patches. Zul'Aman was introduced a while back, as was Ahn'Qiraj and a whole bunch of other places.
PvP content is updated every so often as well, and a whole slew of new items (green, blue and purple) are introduced over time as well.
The paid expansion packs are *big* expansions, equivalent to another continent being added to the world. They include many new regions to explore, lots of dungeons, new crafting recipes and so on.
As a non-'dungeony' player, I don't get a lot out of the free updates except bug fixes and improved class balancing, but I still appreciate that many players love the 5- and 25-player dungeons. They're getting new content throughout the year as part of their subscription price. I could too if I cared to play that content.
I'm all about exploration and crafting, so the paid expansions give me lots to do. I'm okay with that.
Tell me, what would trigger you personally to respond to your government with armed force, and how could you defend yourself from the fully-armed SWAT team with helicopter support and sharpshooters on or in nearby buildings?
It's lovely that your country has the right to bear arms written into your constitution. It's quaint that so many people think you can bring down your own government through military means (hopefully a last resort!) when the balance of power is about 99% on the government's side.
You've got to face reality - unless the people in your country rise up en masse, you can't defend against your government. You'll be shot dead for resisting, and buried as a criminal and probably a terrorist. The last militia I heard about from the US included such patriots as Tim McVeigh, although the Waco cult wasn't far off in insanity. Armed resisters will be grouped with those people, unless the whole country swings against the government, and I'd say that even a totally corrupt gov't is too smart to allow that.
I'm not a US citizen, and find this 'power to the people' defence of gun ownership bizarre in the extreme. My country never had the violent revolution for separation from the UK though, so I understand the beginnings of your right to bear arms, just not the current situation.
There's more to it than that, unless you're ignoring Star Wars Galaxies.
It's not just the initial point that matters, but where they go from there. WoW is more accessible than just about any other MMORPG, looks great on just about any computer above the minimum spec and has a solid reward mechanism as players level.
It's not perfect by any means, but Blizzard has done a lot of things better than other companies (assuming the goal is maximum players and profits).
Personally I'd like to see a real story in WoW, something that doesn't feel so strongly that it was made up during a long drinking session by people who've never read anything more complex than fan fiction. But hey, I'm not running a company with ten or eleven million fans so what do I know?
Here in Australia the previous government banned the sale of guns back in 1997 (I think) after a particularly atrocious massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
Armed robbery, along with most other forms of violent crime, is down across the nation. That's not likely due to the ban in guns though, as criminals are going to step outside the ban anyway.
What has decreased are the number of fatal accidents in homes, and we've since had very few instances of some bozo kid picking up a gun and shooting people at school.
But since you're providing data, can you point out where you got it? It conflicts with everything I've heard here.
Heh, I'm still waiting for the database-based filesystem they bragged so much about when they talked about... Longhorn.
Wasn't this on the table with Cairo, back in the post Win-95 days?
My only real request for Windows is to be able to reinstall the OS without needing to reinstall a single app. This wasn't possible in XP and I think Vista hasn't improved this (but I haven't needed to reinstall Vista yet).
I'd like to see the registry taken out the back and shot, with the corpse hung up on a lamp-post outside MS headquarters. It's pure, unadulterated evil and should have no place in a modern OS.
I love this new anti-Apple meme - that they're as bad as Microsoft - as it's delivered blithely by people who don't really understand their words.
Apple have many problems, but they're a hell of a lot better for open source than Microsoft. On that spectrum, they're nowhere near as open source focused as many Linux companies.
Apple are not as bad as Microsoft with open source. Don't spread a meme when it's outright false.
While we're here, tell me, have you rewritten your Linux kernel? I mean yes, it is possible, but who actually does anything more than setting a few flags in a source file and recompiling? Who actually writes their own (say) threading or application-launching system?
It's a strength of Linux, but advocates overstate the value of it. I can rewrite the kernel, but I've got about ten million things I'd rather bother with. It's great for the handful of people who want to do this, but it's of no value to the rest of us. Users just don't care. Apple allows rewriting the kernel as well, but as you mention, they're *far* more restrictive than Linux with the code.
I don't believe that demo was really recognising the phones (or credit cards) through some amazing sensing technology. I'm almost certain that these objects had some barcode or detail on the back that the Surface read to determine what they were.
I'd like to be wrong, 'cause there's some cool stuff that flows from true object recognition.
Care to give a few examples? Not that I don't agree with you, but... no, actually I don't agree with you and think you need more than just your unsupported word to make an argument.
I can follow your Slashdot user ID around posting stuff about you, but that doesn't make it true. There'd be lots of smoke, but no fire. (I wouldn't do this, by the way!)
The whole smoke and fire thing is great for smearing people with scandal, but it can be terribly unfair.
Lobby your local politician then. I'm not sure if Apple could be classed as having a monopoly in the mp3 player world, but it might need people like you to get that ball rolling.
Any monopoly can be abused, and if Apple has a monopoly in the mp3 player market, their tactics deserve some attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Installing operating systems is for 1.) technicians, who can handle it and 2.) hobbyists, who asked for it. The idea that Ubuntu is going to gain a bunch of market share because random plumbers, school teachers, and bartenders will decide to download the install CD and install a new OS themselves on their current computers is absurd. Most users buy computers with the operating system already installed.
Cool bananas. So you're saying that Linux is not ready for the general market yet.
I disagree. I think any OS should be 'installable' by normal users. People can easily install Windows, and have since the 3.1 days. People can easily install OS X (and MacOS, System 7, etc before it). Why does Linux have to be different?
If you want Linux to reach the masses, attitudes like yours need to change. You need to target those random plumbers, school teachers and bartenders, making the OS easier than Windows for them. *That* is the best potential selling point - being *easier* to use than Windows, but free as well.
Couldn't be simpler.
I plug a new monitor in and it just works.
It seems to me that a *fifteen minute* process with instructions could be a lot simpler.
Not that Linux hasn't improved vastly over the years, but it's nowhere near simple. Some people like that. Most don't.
Is your point that Linux doesn't have to be any better behaved than Windows?
Hmm... that's not a point I'd have made.
I recall a few years ago a patent lawyer here in Australia managed to patent a circular device for assisting motion.
He then went public and said that the system was so broken he patented the wheel.
Yay to the patent examiners.
Stop being so sensible and reasonable! No conversation about WoW should be this sensible. Where's the ranting?
Now let's all talk about why Retribution-spec'd Paladins are the best type of character! That should get things back to an uneven keel.
As (OS X) gets more and more popular it will be just as exploit-ridden as Windows is
That's only true if it was written by the same people who wrote Windows, in the exact same manner. Logically, one statement doesn't follow the other unless you have that condition.
Apple anti-fanboys are every bit as bad as Apple fanboys. Both use logic this poor to justify their irrational thinking.
You have become so indoctrinated that software should fail on any product you purchase, as an acceptable policy.
That's not what anyone is saying, and you're deliberately misrepresenting people. What I (and others I read here) are saying is that beta software can expire and that's fine. It's part of the nature of beta software - it's not ready for showtime yet and everyone knows this.
Apple released a new SDK version yesterday to replace the expired previous version. Devs simply reset their iPhones and install the new version.
In the *shipping* version, I would be on your side, although slightly less frothing-at-the-mouth ranty. Shipping software should absolutely not arbitrarily expire - that leads to forced upgrade paths and all sorts of stuff that would most likely result in significant and successful lawsuits against the software producers. That'd be a terrible thing.
But we're not talking about shipping software here, we're talking about a closed beta programme. Different expectations, different rules.
I do think your expectations are completely unreasonable in this case.
Shh! You'll bring the greybeards out. Nothing brings them from their deep pits faster than a UID thread.
No. You're wrong.
To use your first example - if you're developing on a computer and your programme hangs the machine, you reboot it. You don't go out and buy a new computer.
Back to the situation at hand - if you're on the iPhone beta SDK programme and the phone has been locked out by the expiration of this version of the SDK, you *reset* the phone and download the new version (which is out now) from Apple.
How is this so hard for people to understand? You reset the phone, get the new SDK version and carry on. If you were in the SDK programme you probably already knew about this expiration (and if not, *that* is the thing to criticise Apple for) so you'd have planned for some downtime today. Maybe you've even lost half a day of testing time, which you'd instead spend on the simulator or reviewing your code and sharpening up your documentation.
Now I feel so stupid
You should feel a bit silly after your post. Maybe not stupid, but sheepish for misunderstanding what's happening.
You've got to be kidding.
These *developers* are in a beta SDK programme, and the new version has just been released. They are expected to upgrade, and the old beta is obsolete.
Furthermore, the reset process is trivially simple.
There was no self-destruct, no general user devices affected (unlike your TV and car example), no pacemaker-like danger to users (you like hyperbole, don't you?) and yes, when it comes to beta code it *is* acceptable to make it expire.
Have you ever met a developer in a beta programme? Do you even understand how these things work?
The real criticisms to be levelled at Apple are the restricted nature of the beta programme and perhaps the level of communication about the expiration (were any real developers taken by surprise here?) and definitely not the expiration of one version of a beta SDK.
The story is, in short, a beat-up for people like you to have your five minutes of frothing-at-the-mouth anger even though I'd bet you're not affected personally at all. Beat-ups get the page views and sell newspapers, which is their entire point.
Those boxes suffer from the same problem Macs have, namely they cost 1.5+ times the cost of a regular Windows machine.
Come on, if you're going to make stuff up you might as well go the full hog.
"Macs cost ten gazillion times what Windows machines do, and Linux machines are only slightly less than that."
Try out QT3 Designer, by Trolltech - if you want a gui scripting language. Just a heads-up.
I think the other poster meant something like AppleScript, which allows user-created scripts to tell the OS and applications to do stuff. You can pass objects (files, data, etc) around between the OS and apps pretty easily with almost natural language ("tell application "Finder"... for all files in folder "foo" do... etc).
Have a look at Automator if you're interested (here are some user-submitted scripts to get an idea of what can be done). It's a GUI that helps users write complex AppleScript sequences or record GUI actions from any app. There's always the standby text editor for this if the GUI puts you off, and both ship with the OS.
I think Linux, like OS X, Unix and Unix-likes can replicate just about anything at system level with standard Unix commands, but I don't think you can hook that into apps beyond the simplest level (sending a file into an app). Scripting languages like AppleScript, when properly supported by the app, allow things like automated photo resizing or retouching, taking text or pictures from a file and inserting it into a Word document in a certain place, all that sort of thing. After fifteen years of AppleScript, most quality apps have good support for AppleScript (yes, even Microsoft ones).
I'm not a Linux user, so I don't know how good the scripting support is in the OS and apps. Is this sort of thing possible under Linux?
Hmm... I've rabbitted on longer than I intended here, better get back to work.
Thanks for replying.
Blizzard have released many expansions without cost. The most recent patch, 2.4, added a whole new island with end-game content. Sure, it's for 5- and 25-player groupings, but there are several 'dungeon' areas (some outside) there.
Same with many other patches. Zul'Aman was introduced a while back, as was Ahn'Qiraj and a whole bunch of other places.
PvP content is updated every so often as well, and a whole slew of new items (green, blue and purple) are introduced over time as well.
The paid expansion packs are *big* expansions, equivalent to another continent being added to the world. They include many new regions to explore, lots of dungeons, new crafting recipes and so on.
As a non-'dungeony' player, I don't get a lot out of the free updates except bug fixes and improved class balancing, but I still appreciate that many players love the 5- and 25-player dungeons. They're getting new content throughout the year as part of their subscription price. I could too if I cared to play that content.
I'm all about exploration and crafting, so the paid expansions give me lots to do. I'm okay with that.
Tell me, what would trigger you personally to respond to your government with armed force, and how could you defend yourself from the fully-armed SWAT team with helicopter support and sharpshooters on or in nearby buildings?
It's lovely that your country has the right to bear arms written into your constitution. It's quaint that so many people think you can bring down your own government through military means (hopefully a last resort!) when the balance of power is about 99% on the government's side.
You've got to face reality - unless the people in your country rise up en masse, you can't defend against your government. You'll be shot dead for resisting, and buried as a criminal and probably a terrorist. The last militia I heard about from the US included such patriots as Tim McVeigh, although the Waco cult wasn't far off in insanity. Armed resisters will be grouped with those people, unless the whole country swings against the government, and I'd say that even a totally corrupt gov't is too smart to allow that.
I'm not a US citizen, and find this 'power to the people' defence of gun ownership bizarre in the extreme. My country never had the violent revolution for separation from the UK though, so I understand the beginnings of your right to bear arms, just not the current situation.
There's more to it than that, unless you're ignoring Star Wars Galaxies.
It's not just the initial point that matters, but where they go from there. WoW is more accessible than just about any other MMORPG, looks great on just about any computer above the minimum spec and has a solid reward mechanism as players level.
It's not perfect by any means, but Blizzard has done a lot of things better than other companies (assuming the goal is maximum players and profits).
Personally I'd like to see a real story in WoW, something that doesn't feel so strongly that it was made up during a long drinking session by people who've never read anything more complex than fan fiction. But hey, I'm not running a company with ten or eleven million fans so what do I know?
Here in Australia the previous government banned the sale of guns back in 1997 (I think) after a particularly atrocious massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
Armed robbery, along with most other forms of violent crime, is down across the nation. That's not likely due to the ban in guns though, as criminals are going to step outside the ban anyway.
What has decreased are the number of fatal accidents in homes, and we've since had very few instances of some bozo kid picking up a gun and shooting people at school.
But since you're providing data, can you point out where you got it? It conflicts with everything I've heard here.
Heh, I'm still waiting for the database-based filesystem they bragged so much about when they talked about... Longhorn.
Wasn't this on the table with Cairo, back in the post Win-95 days?
My only real request for Windows is to be able to reinstall the OS without needing to reinstall a single app. This wasn't possible in XP and I think Vista hasn't improved this (but I haven't needed to reinstall Vista yet).
I'd like to see the registry taken out the back and shot, with the corpse hung up on a lamp-post outside MS headquarters. It's pure, unadulterated evil and should have no place in a modern OS.
Cool bananas. Can you please point me to the place I can legally download the Windows kernel code?
I can point you to Apple's kernel code:
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html
Or more specifically:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
I love this new anti-Apple meme - that they're as bad as Microsoft - as it's delivered blithely by people who don't really understand their words.
Apple have many problems, but they're a hell of a lot better for open source than Microsoft. On that spectrum, they're nowhere near as open source focused as many Linux companies.
Apple are not as bad as Microsoft with open source. Don't spread a meme when it's outright false.
While we're here, tell me, have you rewritten your Linux kernel? I mean yes, it is possible, but who actually does anything more than setting a few flags in a source file and recompiling? Who actually writes their own (say) threading or application-launching system?
It's a strength of Linux, but advocates overstate the value of it. I can rewrite the kernel, but I've got about ten million things I'd rather bother with. It's great for the handful of people who want to do this, but it's of no value to the rest of us. Users just don't care. Apple allows rewriting the kernel as well, but as you mention, they're *far* more restrictive than Linux with the code.
I don't believe that demo was really recognising the phones (or credit cards) through some amazing sensing technology. I'm almost certain that these objects had some barcode or detail on the back that the Surface read to determine what they were.
I'd like to be wrong, 'cause there's some cool stuff that flows from true object recognition.
Care to give a few examples? Not that I don't agree with you, but... no, actually I don't agree with you and think you need more than just your unsupported word to make an argument.
The parent to my earlier post deserves *all* the credit. With a setup line like that, my comment was just obvious.
No, Mr Bondo! We expect it to die.
I can follow your Slashdot user ID around posting stuff about you, but that doesn't make it true. There'd be lots of smoke, but no fire. (I wouldn't do this, by the way!)
The whole smoke and fire thing is great for smearing people with scandal, but it can be terribly unfair.
Lobby your local politician then. I'm not sure if Apple could be classed as having a monopoly in the mp3 player world, but it might need people like you to get that ball rolling.
Any monopoly can be abused, and if Apple has a monopoly in the mp3 player market, their tactics deserve some attention.