You said "Of course it doesn't "check for previous media". It doesn't *need* to. By virtue of the fact you're installing it onto a Mac, you've already paid for an OS X license."
Now you're saying "No matter how much you wish, you cannot change the irrefutable fact that Apple still only license retail versions of MacOS X on machines that already have MacOS licenses. Hence, it is sold (and priced) as an upgrade."
What happened to the "already paid for an OS X licence" part? Now it's just any previous MacOS licence. OS 9 and OS X are two very different pieces of software, analogous to Win95 and Vista.
If I don't need a previous piece of software, then purchasing a later version of that software must be purchasing a full install, not just an upgrade. I don't need a previous version of OS X to install it (legally, under the EULA, etc), so the OS X box I buy at retail is a full install and not an upgrade.
You may believe that it's priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version that's just a guess. It's certainly priced in line with previous OS releases from Apple (I'm thinking System 6, System 7, MacOS 8, MacOS 9 here), but those could be upgrades under either of our arguments.
I see your point about the hardware dongle, and really it's the best point you've made so far. I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software. I suspect we're coming at this from different angles and probably won't agree. I refute your irrefutable point though!
The story says that they've made many approaches to New Line but not received a satisfactory reply. Those approaches can take a long time when lawyers are involved, and probably didn't start until the books closed on the third film.
Come on, we all know he wrote The Silmarillion and all the later Histories books himself. The clues are everywhere! The Silmarillion is as bad as only a first book can be, and is obviously based on clues he found in The Lord of the Rings. He got better in the Histories but it's easier to write when you don't have to complete a story.
Didn't you wonder how he kept 'finding' new text to expand on what was in a previous book? All very convenient... all too convenient!
It may well be true that the laws need updating, but New Line entered into this under the current laws. These are laws that the content industry supports strenuously at every opportunity.
New Line is wrong here. Wrong for supporting the current laws and wrong for trying to weasel out of paying their contractual obligations.
Surely if an author wanted to write a book based on the characters of another author, then that first author deserves some of the success that may come from the new books. After all, the original author did all the hard work in creating the characters, fleshing them out and getting readers to care about them. Springboarding off that means the second author gets a free pass on some important parts of the book, such as character development.
Another thought occurs. Let's say the second author wanted to write a sequel to LotR which destroyed parts of the original book. Maybe there's lots of explicit sex scenes, or you find out that the Elves were behind Saruman or whatever. What protection does the original author have to ensure their work isn't bastardised as soon as they die?
Finally (on this point), if the second author can write a story of such quality that it'll surpass the original if it weren't for those pesky copyright laws, why can't the second author either write something fresh or tweak it to step around the laws by setting it in a similar but not identical theme? If the book's good enough, it'll stand anyway. If it was always a derivative work that required great familiarity with the original book, it may deserve not to stand on its own.
Let's also not forget that LOTR itself is a variation on the basic quest story, which has been told in one form or another for thousands of years. Should the descendants of Homer have been able to bring suit against Tolkien years ago?
Tolkien's stories use mythic quest constructs, yes, but that doesn't equate to using existing stories. No characters are used, no explicit plots are lifted. There are similarities to ancient myths but similarities as vague as there are don't trigger copyright anyway. You need something far more definite to prosecute a case.
I think raising Homer is a red herring.
>> Copyright should be treated the same as any other material ownership
> Why? There's nothing material to be owned. It's an expression of an idea, not property that can be held and used.
It's not so simple. A book is very much a material version of a copyrighted work, as is a film or a CD. There are material items that can naturally flow from copyrighted works. These works are more than just ideas, as they're devised solely for the purpose of creating material items that other people can enjoy in some manner.
I agree that copyright laws should be different from material ownership laws, but I think you oversimplify here.
Maybe there should be no protection, maybe there should. I can see cases either way and since the world is currently slanted towards the life+x years model I think it's going to be a long time changing, if ever.
Whatever the eventual outcome of any copyright law reform, it's always good to debate why we have the laws, who they serve and how they could improve.
It's a bit tricky in the Tolkien case, as his son has gone on to make significant contributions to the work after his father's death. He published everything from The Silmarillion on.
Although if your point ever made it to law, then maybe his son would've just put all the later books under his own name for the purposes of copyright.
Most copyrighted works have much simpler situations though, leaving families pulling in royalties years after the 'breadwinner' died. It must be nice to have such a secure income stream for doing nothing at all.
Now I've not done this specifically, but I do have a Dock shortcut for an Applescript that connects to my backup drive (an AFP share). I can't find the original code I used, but you should find something at http://www.macosxhints.com/ - they've got people who actually know stuff (ie not me) there.
George Ou is not a good person to quote as an authority on fonts. He's not a graphic designer and he happily uses the wrong information whenever it makes his point.
His examples of OS X font rendering are just poor. There's an update which shows something, but none of the images reflect the default font smoothing on OS X.
Nice troll though. You link to a Dvorak-wannabe, use his bile to spit on OS X and say how good your "humble" Linux box is. You've missed the chance to slap Windows though, so your troll is a bit weaker than it could've been.
Microsoft does have a far, far greater range of hardware that must be compatible, but if Vista shows us anything, it's that they developed an API for drivers and stuck to it. Lots of hardware drivers broke immediately, leading to many problems. I'd say that it's largely not Microsoft's fault although I see why they get tarred and feathered over it.
Surely a clean, well-implemented driver API isn't going to change in SP1, so testing all the hardware configurations shouldn't slow things down that much.
I know, real world ideals (ie my last sentence) versus reality (your point) but still!
I have no sympathy for people who prefer ALT-137 to option-e e, which is a bit more sensible to me. All accents of the same type have the same option key combo first, then the letter to be accented. It saves me having to remember 20-30 ASCII codes if I want to add lots of accents to text.
You're right though, moving from one OS to another requires some getting used to.
The latest version has an installer that include APE, the "utility" that almost single-handedly borked many 10.5 installations and was a major security hole (and still may be, it's a nice way to get keyloggers installed into OS X).
I suspect the reason Unsanity haven't released an update is because they don't want to rewrite Windowshade to be non-APE-based/compliant with Apple development guidelines.
The enter/return keys have done renaming since the original Mac in 1984. Why should Apple change such a simple and established mechanism?
Screenshots have also been command-shift-4 since 1984 or thereabouts, but there you go. I agree that it's an awkward key combination, but again it's been in use for over twenty years so it's not so easy to change now.
And yes, Unsanity should get their act together on Windowshade. Since it's a paid piece of software, I imagine they'll realise 10.5 is out soon enough and put their own update out at some point. Their customers should expect no less.
does every machine the license lets me install it on come with a previous version? YES!
Bzzt! Wrong, thanks for playing.
I don't need OS X on the machine to install it. I've installed it on an old Mac iBook that shipped with OS 9. No previous version required, thanks very much.
I'll repeat that because it knocks the support out from your upgrade point: You do not need a previous version of OS X installed to install any OS X on any Mac that is capable of running it.
Hell, I can also install it on any EFI-based computer with a blank hard drive, and don't need to make any funky kernel changes to do it. It installs right out of the box.
OS X retail copies are not sold as upgrades, and all the bad logic in the world won't make it so.
Of course it's 'refutable.' It installs without regard for any previous OS version, therefore it's a standalone OS install.
I can buy OS X 10.5 and install it on a machine that shipped with OS 9. No check is made for a previous version of OS X, or even a previous version of any Mac OS.
Want to install OS X on non-Apple hardware? Just get an EFI-based PC and go ahead. No checks, no upgrades. Yes, it's not within the licence but it again shows the nature of the non-upgrade OS X retail box.
OS X is not sold as an upgrade, and does not act as an upgrade. You need to show at least one of these to prove it's an upgrade OS.
That's an interesting thought, but I've never seen a spec doc for any OS, or any off-the-shelf application.
For custom apps, definitely - write the spec, get the resources, kick off the project. But for off-the-shelf stuff?
Now I think about it - do any OS vendors release a road map that goes beyond the next release? I know there are sometimes wish-lists, and Linux would no doubt have a bunch of work lists, but what about road-maps of features to be implemented?
OS X is sold at retail as a full release, not an upgrade. Wipe the hard drive and it'll install with no problems and no checks for previous media.
I'm not getting into the argument of whether OS X or Vista is cheaper, because frankly I don't care, but it's not true that OS X retail boxes are upgrades and you shouldn't slant the numbers by comparing OS X retail to Vista upgrades.
By the way, to get value out of the family licence for OS X, you'd only need two Macs and you've saved $100 over the cost of the separate retail boxes. There are two Macs in my household, making it a good deal. The two Windows licences we have (also on the Macs) are Vista and XP and there are no deals there to save us money.
You're really celebrating something much older than Christianity, and Christians are coming around to the idea that Dec-25 was chosen for the celebration of Christ's birth for purely political reasons (ie glomming onto existing celebrations to smooth conversions). It even looks like Jesus was born in March or April, and there's evidence in the Bible itself for it not being in Winter (shepherds were never out in Winter!)
Celebrate the turn of the year, enjoy the gifts and have a clear conscience that it's nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.
No, the Betamax players all had a record button. I know that the one my family bought had the ability to record.
It even had a set of programmable timers to record shows while you were out or asleep.
Another poster may have hit the nail on the head by saying the Beta tapes were generally 60m and that wasn't enough for movies, although we had a bunch of 90m tapes and a few 2h tapes. I recall taping the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series on a single Beta tape. That would've been three hours, I think, and back then we didn't have a long-play feature to double recording times.
I don't think you can say that iLife is "part of the OS". It's bundled with all new Macs but never comes on the OS standalone discs that you buy when a major new OS version rolls out. It also doesn't tie into the system in any way except through the normal APIs that any other app can, making it just a bunch of apps and not a part of the OS.
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Sorry for the over-reaction. It was late, I was tired and let some irritation creep through.
You're changing your argument now.
You said "Of course it doesn't "check for previous media". It doesn't *need* to. By virtue of the fact you're installing it onto a Mac, you've already paid for an OS X license."
Now you're saying "No matter how much you wish, you cannot change the irrefutable fact that Apple still only license retail versions of MacOS X on machines that already have MacOS licenses. Hence, it is sold (and priced) as an upgrade."
What happened to the "already paid for an OS X licence" part? Now it's just any previous MacOS licence. OS 9 and OS X are two very different pieces of software, analogous to Win95 and Vista.
If I don't need a previous piece of software, then purchasing a later version of that software must be purchasing a full install, not just an upgrade. I don't need a previous version of OS X to install it (legally, under the EULA, etc), so the OS X box I buy at retail is a full install and not an upgrade.
You may believe that it's priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version that's just a guess. It's certainly priced in line with previous OS releases from Apple (I'm thinking System 6, System 7, MacOS 8, MacOS 9 here), but those could be upgrades under either of our arguments.
I see your point about the hardware dongle, and really it's the best point you've made so far. I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software. I suspect we're coming at this from different angles and probably won't agree. I refute your irrefutable point though!
Well, when you put your case in such a clear and detailed way, how could anyone disagree?
The story says that they've made many approaches to New Line but not received a satisfactory reply. Those approaches can take a long time when lawyers are involved, and probably didn't start until the books closed on the third film.
Come on, we all know he wrote The Silmarillion and all the later Histories books himself. The clues are everywhere! The Silmarillion is as bad as only a first book can be, and is obviously based on clues he found in The Lord of the Rings. He got better in the Histories but it's easier to write when you don't have to complete a story.
Didn't you wonder how he kept 'finding' new text to expand on what was in a previous book? All very convenient... all too convenient!
Now, what's the emoticon for "I kid, I kid" ?
It may well be true that the laws need updating, but New Line entered into this under the current laws. These are laws that the content industry supports strenuously at every opportunity.
New Line is wrong here. Wrong for supporting the current laws and wrong for trying to weasel out of paying their contractual obligations.
Surely if an author wanted to write a book based on the characters of another author, then that first author deserves some of the success that may come from the new books. After all, the original author did all the hard work in creating the characters, fleshing them out and getting readers to care about them. Springboarding off that means the second author gets a free pass on some important parts of the book, such as character development.
Another thought occurs. Let's say the second author wanted to write a sequel to LotR which destroyed parts of the original book. Maybe there's lots of explicit sex scenes, or you find out that the Elves were behind Saruman or whatever. What protection does the original author have to ensure their work isn't bastardised as soon as they die?
Finally (on this point), if the second author can write a story of such quality that it'll surpass the original if it weren't for those pesky copyright laws, why can't the second author either write something fresh or tweak it to step around the laws by setting it in a similar but not identical theme? If the book's good enough, it'll stand anyway. If it was always a derivative work that required great familiarity with the original book, it may deserve not to stand on its own.
Let's also not forget that LOTR itself is a variation on the basic quest story, which has been told in one form or another for thousands of years. Should the descendants of Homer have been able to bring suit against Tolkien years ago?
Tolkien's stories use mythic quest constructs, yes, but that doesn't equate to using existing stories. No characters are used, no explicit plots are lifted. There are similarities to ancient myths but similarities as vague as there are don't trigger copyright anyway. You need something far more definite to prosecute a case.
I think raising Homer is a red herring.
>> Copyright should be treated the same as any other material ownership
> Why? There's nothing material to be owned. It's an expression of an idea, not property that can be held and used.
It's not so simple. A book is very much a material version of a copyrighted work, as is a film or a CD. There are material items that can naturally flow from copyrighted works. These works are more than just ideas, as they're devised solely for the purpose of creating material items that other people can enjoy in some manner.
I agree that copyright laws should be different from material ownership laws, but I think you oversimplify here.
Maybe there should be no protection, maybe there should. I can see cases either way and since the world is currently slanted towards the life+x years model I think it's going to be a long time changing, if ever.
Whatever the eventual outcome of any copyright law reform, it's always good to debate why we have the laws, who they serve and how they could improve.
It's a bit tricky in the Tolkien case, as his son has gone on to make significant contributions to the work after his father's death. He published everything from The Silmarillion on.
Although if your point ever made it to law, then maybe his son would've just put all the later books under his own name for the purposes of copyright.
Most copyrighted works have much simpler situations though, leaving families pulling in royalties years after the 'breadwinner' died. It must be nice to have such a secure income stream for doing nothing at all.
Now I've not done this specifically, but I do have a Dock shortcut for an Applescript that connects to my backup drive (an AFP share). I can't find the original code I used, but you should find something at http://www.macosxhints.com/ - they've got people who actually know stuff (ie not me) there.
Have a look here or here to start with.
Good luck.
Please.
George Ou is not a good person to quote as an authority on fonts. He's not a graphic designer and he happily uses the wrong information whenever it makes his point.
His examples of OS X font rendering are just poor. There's an update which shows something, but none of the images reflect the default font smoothing on OS X.
Nice troll though. You link to a Dvorak-wannabe, use his bile to spit on OS X and say how good your "humble" Linux box is. You've missed the chance to slap Windows though, so your troll is a bit weaker than it could've been.
I read your post and thought "Right! Another obvious falsehood about 10.5! I can knock that down."
Remembering that I did this a few times in 10.4, I launched it and found that you were spot on. Apple removed a useful feature for no apparent reason!
Well, there you go. Apple screw up every so often and that's another one.
Microsoft does have a far, far greater range of hardware that must be compatible, but if Vista shows us anything, it's that they developed an API for drivers and stuck to it. Lots of hardware drivers broke immediately, leading to many problems. I'd say that it's largely not Microsoft's fault although I see why they get tarred and feathered over it.
Surely a clean, well-implemented driver API isn't going to change in SP1, so testing all the hardware configurations shouldn't slow things down that much.
I know, real world ideals (ie my last sentence) versus reality (your point) but still!
Finder doesn't provide any cursor feedback when your mouse is above a column resizer and able to be clicked
Yes it does. Try it and see. It's always done that in OS X.
The Finder is by no means perfect, but you don't have to make stuff up to criticise it.
I have no sympathy for people who prefer ALT-137 to option-e e, which is a bit more sensible to me. All accents of the same type have the same option key combo first, then the letter to be accented. It saves me having to remember 20-30 ASCII codes if I want to add lots of accents to text.
You're right though, moving from one OS to another requires some getting used to.
The latest version has an installer that include APE, the "utility" that almost single-handedly borked many 10.5 installations and was a major security hole (and still may be, it's a nice way to get keyloggers installed into OS X).
I suspect the reason Unsanity haven't released an update is because they don't want to rewrite Windowshade to be non-APE-based/compliant with Apple development guidelines.
The enter/return keys have done renaming since the original Mac in 1984. Why should Apple change such a simple and established mechanism?
Screenshots have also been command-shift-4 since 1984 or thereabouts, but there you go. I agree that it's an awkward key combination, but again it's been in use for over twenty years so it's not so easy to change now.
And yes, Unsanity should get their act together on Windowshade. Since it's a paid piece of software, I imagine they'll realise 10.5 is out soon enough and put their own update out at some point. Their customers should expect no less.
Can we mod the parent post +5 Lives In The Real World?
Is there a mod for that?
I mean, we may not like it in every single way, but it's the *real* world!
does every machine the license lets me install it on come with a previous version? YES!
Bzzt! Wrong, thanks for playing.
I don't need OS X on the machine to install it. I've installed it on an old Mac iBook that shipped with OS 9. No previous version required, thanks very much.
I'll repeat that because it knocks the support out from your upgrade point: You do not need a previous version of OS X installed to install any OS X on any Mac that is capable of running it.
Hell, I can also install it on any EFI-based computer with a blank hard drive, and don't need to make any funky kernel changes to do it. It installs right out of the box.
OS X retail copies are not sold as upgrades, and all the bad logic in the world won't make it so.
Of course it's 'refutable.' It installs without regard for any previous OS version, therefore it's a standalone OS install.
I can buy OS X 10.5 and install it on a machine that shipped with OS 9. No check is made for a previous version of OS X, or even a previous version of any Mac OS.
Want to install OS X on non-Apple hardware? Just get an EFI-based PC and go ahead. No checks, no upgrades. Yes, it's not within the licence but it again shows the nature of the non-upgrade OS X retail box.
OS X is not sold as an upgrade, and does not act as an upgrade. You need to show at least one of these to prove it's an upgrade OS.
Wishing don't make it so, drsmithy.
That's an interesting thought, but I've never seen a spec doc for any OS, or any off-the-shelf application.
For custom apps, definitely - write the spec, get the resources, kick off the project. But for off-the-shelf stuff?
Now I think about it - do any OS vendors release a road map that goes beyond the next release? I know there are sometimes wish-lists, and Linux would no doubt have a bunch of work lists, but what about road-maps of features to be implemented?
OS X is sold at retail as a full release, not an upgrade. Wipe the hard drive and it'll install with no problems and no checks for previous media.
I'm not getting into the argument of whether OS X or Vista is cheaper, because frankly I don't care, but it's not true that OS X retail boxes are upgrades and you shouldn't slant the numbers by comparing OS X retail to Vista upgrades.
By the way, to get value out of the family licence for OS X, you'd only need two Macs and you've saved $100 over the cost of the separate retail boxes. There are two Macs in my household, making it a good deal. The two Windows licences we have (also on the Macs) are Vista and XP and there are no deals there to save us money.
You're really celebrating something much older than Christianity, and Christians are coming around to the idea that Dec-25 was chosen for the celebration of Christ's birth for purely political reasons (ie glomming onto existing celebrations to smooth conversions). It even looks like Jesus was born in March or April, and there's evidence in the Bible itself for it not being in Winter (shepherds were never out in Winter!)
Celebrate the turn of the year, enjoy the gifts and have a clear conscience that it's nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever.
Thanks for the reminder.
One of these days I'm going to remember this sort of stuff and not just extrapolate it from the little I do remember.
I'm suffering from Too Many Buzzword Syndrome (or TMBS, but I also suffer from a similar, acronym-based syndrome).
No, the Betamax players all had a record button. I know that the one my family bought had the ability to record.
It even had a set of programmable timers to record shows while you were out or asleep.
Another poster may have hit the nail on the head by saying the Beta tapes were generally 60m and that wasn't enough for movies, although we had a bunch of 90m tapes and a few 2h tapes. I recall taping the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series on a single Beta tape. That would've been three hours, I think, and back then we didn't have a long-play feature to double recording times.
The reasons were more likely price and marketing.
I don't think you can say that iLife is "part of the OS". It's bundled with all new Macs but never comes on the OS standalone discs that you buy when a major new OS version rolls out. It also doesn't tie into the system in any way except through the normal APIs that any other app can, making it just a bunch of apps and not a part of the OS.