delete the macs' preferences folders. Then delete the windows registry. Reboot and see which machine has more working stuff. Guarentee you it won't be windows.
Imagine what computer intrusion will be like when those peripherals that "play" smells gain wide market acceptance. Every 15 year-old script kiddie's mouth will water at the chance to make some unwary user's machine smell like a portajohn--using BackOrifice, of course!
When you consider the fact that there are black holes with millions of solar masses (i.e. millions of times the mass of our sun) it's not that suprising. No star can be 300 million solar masses, so it would figure all that matter has to come from somewhere.
If you can't join'em, beat 'em.
on
Too Old To Code?
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· Score: 1
Just because a computer company will not hire you does not mean that you can make money off of programming. If there are a bunch of older, highly experienced programmers are considered unhirable by stupid corporate entities, those older programmers should band together and start their own software company. With all their knowledge and experience (and some decent marketing), a startup of veteran coders could kick compete with and kick the butt of the people who let them go. Agism is part of the old tired economy, not the new internet economy. If you can deliver a better product faster more reliably, and no one will not hire you to do so, you have the opportunity start your own business and do it yourself and wipe out your competition.
I think one could make the arguement for Linux that the services aren't required to run for basic desktop usage and web surfing and don't have to be running. Although probably these services should be turned off by default.
The part where MacOS 9 kicks some serious butt is that it has far less dynamically linked stuff than any Linux distribution (or Windows 9x/NT). Because many applications on OS 9 will be statically linked, installing one piece of software will not break another application, nor will it preclude the user from installing yet another application. I don't care what anyone says about performance/bloat of statically linked stuff. We are not talking about The World of The Server, we are talking about The World Of The Desktop. In The World Of The Desktop, users in general (especially those coming from Wintel) are absolutely terrified that some aspect of software installation is going to destroy their currently working computer. They are often also extremely frustated with software that refuses to install (often because of some dynamically-linked snafu). I absolutely guarentee you that if you interview a thousand people walking outside of CompUSA and you ask them if given the choice between software that requires more ram/disk space or software that will always painlessly install with absolutly no bad consequences whatsoever, they will *always* pick the latter.
And now the test...
We'll install on each machine 1000 applications of many different varieties dating from the present to the last 3 years. Yes, this might involve using a version of sendmail older than your grandmother. Absolutely no patching, recoding, upgrading, or rpm/dpkg guru finagling permitted (rpm -i only). At the end of the test, OS 9 would have far more working applications installed than linux and would give the tester far less "I'm sorry but I can't do that Dave" type messages. Not that linux is inherently inferior to OS 9 in this regard (and certainly windows with its DLL's would have the same problem too), but up till now, much of the linux development community has made a legitimate engineering trade-off that favors high performance/less bloat over robustness of installation. The million dollar question is whether we penguinheads want the desktop badly enough that we will swallow our pride and statically link stuff into a real, honest-to-goodness newbie distribution.
>MacOS cut and paste is like standard >input/output in Unix -- the system is built >around it so it always works the way it should. >To me, that makes up for having to do more than >a mouse click to paste text. (I never understand >why X users find Cmd-C so difficult but think >Emacs is straightforward. Although my girlfriend >complains that dragging a folder to the Stuffit >icon is too complicated and wonders why it can't >be something obvious like tar -cvf directory.tar >directory; gzip directory.tar.)
Thank you, I have been saying the same things for years! I think that a lot of people who have never owned a mac don't understand the second mouse button is not as important when you have an OS (and a lot of applications) that apply keyboard shortcuts and drag and drop in a highly consistent manner. From day one, the mac keyboard shortcut for quit has been command+Q throughout all mac applications throughout history. Constrast this with Windows/*nix, where sometimes the keyboard shortcut for quit might not exist, might be Alt+F4, Alt+q, Ctrl-q, Alt+F+Alt+X, etc. Consistency, more than anything else, is the true halmark of ease-of-use. On the subject of Command+C, it is only natural that using command key (aka alt on windows + linux) keyboard shortcuts would work well. It places the two most dextrous fingers humans have (the thumb and index finger) in a natural position that gives good, equal coverage of all keys on one side of a keyboard equally. Contrast this with Ctrl keyboard shortcuts, which don't use the best fingers for the job and do a poor job of covering keys east of the 'D' key and west of the 'L' key. Poorly Chosen(aka Ctrl)keyboard shortcuts irk me, and make me do silly things like open GNOME applications and recode/recompile them with keyboard shortcuts that don't suck.
1. Superior driver support. How do you install hardware on the mac? The the extension for the hardare that the hardware vendor gives you and put it into the extensions folder. Then Reboot. That's it. No wading through half-assed autodetect procedures that usually lead you to installing the driver manually , no tinkering around with modules. Just pop the device driver in the extensions folder. So simple a concept that it's ridiculously effective.
2. Protected Configuration (kinda of like protected memory). Linux has this but windows doesn't. Basically, its the concept of each program/executable having it's own configuration file, as opposed to cramming all the configuration data for many programs into a single file (a la windows registry). One executable, one set of configuration data. Period. Under the system of protected configuation, if there's a bad write that corrupts the configuration data for one program, configuration data for another program isn't going to be blown to smithereens. Making the mac's configuration system even more effective, any time that a program's configuration file is deleted, when the program is launched again, it regenerates a new configuration file. Most all mac programs are engineered such in a way that the non-existance of a configuration file will not preclude that program from running. Do an experiment. Delete the preferences folder on a mac, go into your unix machine and type "rm -rf/etc" and under windows, drag system.dat into the nice recycle bin and delete it. Reboot all the systems. See which one does the best job of "operating within normal parameters".
3. Lack of shared code. Shared code has a wonderful capacity for screwing things up. When stuff is allowed to mess with other stuff, bad stuff usually happens. On the mac (at least pre OS-x) a lot of stuff is statically linked. Yes, that means more ram/hard disk spaced used, but that almost means almost zero chance of a program install killing another program or a previous program precluding use of a new program. And most regular (i.e. non-power) users, given the choice of either being able to painlessly install and deinstall as much software as they want or having the software use less resources, they will always choose the painless install/deinstall. "Those who think statically link. For user panic, link dynamic".
4. Desktop database/dual forked system. This insures that no matter how much you might move executables/other crap around in your mac's filesystem, they'll still work. It also means that you can give your damn file *any* name with any character (barring the colon) and it will eternally be recognized as a certain type of file belonging to a specific application. There's no "I must keep it in this path/folder or else" like there is with windows and linux. No filename extensions, no mime fiddling(of the street performing or e-mail variety). If this filesytem database is ever completely corrupted, it can be completely rebuilt from scratch. As with the "no shared code" bit, the dual forked, database file system carries with it a performance (notice all that clutter see when you copy a file from a mac onto a windows-formatted floppy, and then read it with windows/linux") but it is an engineering trade off that insures that stuff will work properly.
Steve Case has a great set of hooters!!! AOL rocks
on
Totally 31337 Quickies
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With a body like that,he can take over the internet any time he want to, as far as I'm concerned.
It might seem pretty stupid that in the midst of the anti-trust decision that Microsoft is doing things like hounding slashdot, but in fact, I think Bill gates wants microsoft broken up. Why do you think that Microsoft has really acted up in the last several months with the "netscape engineers are weenies" thing. The stockholders certainly wouldn't let Microsoft split itself up on its own after all the money the company made them. However, if Bill Gates rams Microsoft into the justice department, he can accomplish the breakup without have to deal with the stockholders or board of directors. Isn't it interesting that he stepped down from his top position and into the "new technology" position? Once Bill rams Microsoft into the justice department, he'll be able to get what he sees as the profitable piece, the X-box internet appliance. After years of Microsoft being threatened by internet appliances, Bill Gates can finally get broken off into his own little division (along with a good chunk of resources that his former company) that specializes in that area. And if he is able to get X-box and the application devision broken off into a single company, he can have X-box appliances that run MS office, possibly from an MS Office ASP. Give the user a console with a basic W2000 kernel, and and them charge them subscriptions to microsoft applications that work over the web. Long ago Bill found out it was the appications that actually make the money, and with the X box, he would be taking that to the extreme.
At the risk of getting a -1 flamebait moderation, I'm going to tell all the Debian people (it seems that they're some of the major instigators of this) anyone else why RedHat is getting all this support. Once I'm done, you can do either one of two things: flame me, moderate me down, and write me off as one of the Redhat-brainwashed masses; or you can actually listen to what I say, see what truth I have in my arguement, and maybe use the advice I give to better the positions of non-RedHat distro's.
Ya wanna know why Redhat is at the forefront, because of all the linux distributions (which is still not saying too much) Redhat was the easiest. I'm sorry, but I think Debian and everyone else needs to stop complaining. You can make your distribution whatever you want it to be. You have absolutely every right in the world to make your linux distribution a massively confusing, living hell for newbie users. Just understand that all our actions eventually have consequences. In the computer world, if you do not make a program easy to use, linux or otherwise, people will not buy your stuff if they have any choice in the matter. If they do not buy what you make, what you make will have little support. Meanwhile, stuff that is well designed and has good ease of use will be move like hotcakes. That's just how the world of the "the desktop" (and capitalism) works. Ease of use is not so much about auto-detection and dancing paper-clips and sappy wizards, but basic common sense, respect for the newbie user, and clear and consistent layout. Case in point: My first linux distribution was Debian (1+ years ago) because I thought that it would be really cool to go with the most "free" linux there was. Well, guess what? Debian had absolutely no default pager exported for the man pages. None. As a new user trying to stumble my way around a new and confusing operating system, the absolute last thing I needed was the help section flying past my eyes at 8 million miles and hour. I heard RedHat was good, I installed that over Debian, and I was impressed. "Finally", I said to my self, "I can actually scroll through the man pages". From this point on, I developed a strong liking for Redhat-based systems and a strong bias against Debian. They could have exported a default pager for the man pages and it wouldn't have infringed on the flexibility the power user had to choose whatever pager he wanted. But they didn't have the common sense/courtesy to do it this way. They were free to make that choice and they made that choice. And they reaped the consequences of my disdain. To end this first argument: you want marketshare, make your stuff easy to use. It's just that simple. Free software means having the freedom to screw yourself in whatever way you see fit. Second, the first two syllables in "marketshare" are "market". If Debian et. al want maretshare, they should market what they put out. That means giving speeches to pointy-haired bosses, building strong relationships with developers who aren't currently developing for your OS, advertising, etc. Basically, doing the stuff that Microsoft does. Yes, they're evil but they have a killer marketing dept. Apple has already proved what happens when you have a great product but a poor business strategy. Perhaps the anti-redhat crowd should rent "Triumph of the nerds" and watch it...several dozen times.
There. I've said my piece. You can either spend the time to flame me and moderate me down, or you can spend the time thinking about what I've said and using that to make your distribution better.
Why would a mac user like myself use Linux? The macintosh (as I see it) is not so much about a piece of hardware or a company but a set of ideals about how a computer should interact with the user. People who are not like you or I, people who have never worked with a mac for any long period of time, don't understand that it's the ideals like consistency between OS and Applications, plain english for system file names, properly chosen keyboard shortcuts, and other such things that make a computer easy to use and inspire our loyalty to the macintosh. It's those ideals that are important, not the machine or particular OS itself. I use linux because I get a feeling of satisfaction when I take a program with a poorly designed interface and I make it easier for normal people to use, something that probably most mac programmers would get a kick out of. I use linux because I enjoy the challenge of giving linux the same values that have so endeared me to the mac. Who knows, I might some day release the first distribution that actually has *real* ease of use. Only time will.
First off, Microsoft did not improve on the mac GUI. They never really understood how it was supposed to work and did a quick copy that did very little to embody the ideals of ease of use or rules of interface design (yes, there are general rules, like consistency and plain english names, just to name a few). It was sort of like copying one videotape to another. The original was clear and vibrant, the copy was grainy and of poor quality. Most people think that us mac people are hate at Microsoft because they copied apple. No, we don't hate Microsoft because they copied apple; we hate them because they did a crappy rip-off and then forced it on us. If Microsoft did a wonderful, competant job at copying the Mac UI, I seriously doubt there would be as many mac users as there are today. This rumor that you heard is true. There are at least two groups of people I know of (maybe more) who come from mac backgrounds who are trying to make GNOME actually usable. One is Eazel, run by Andy Hertzfeld, who designed some (if not all)of the original mac interface. They are designing the new GNOME file manager, Nautilus. Second is myself, Ukab the Great. I plan to take what concepts worked well on the Macintosh (and which M$, GNOME and others still can't seem to grasp) and apply those to existing Linux applications. It's quite fun to do. I took Miguel Icaza's gmc, which had very poorly designed keyboard shortcuts and menus, and ripped out the stuff that didn't work (e.g. mnemonics, ctrl shortcuts, etc) and replaced it with stuff that worked a lot better (alt shortcuts, better terminology, etc). Open source interface allows one to take confusing, poorly designed interfaces and turn them into clear, easily understandable interfaces.
Clarux the PenguinCow says "four flippers good, two flippers bad".
Yes, it can predict the rain, but can it run in William Scott emulation mode? Will there be some daemon that notifies the administrator of birthday of a 103 year old lady in Texas? Does it have tupee error correction? We want to know these things, dammit!
I think that one of the most ends to the DOJ/Microsoft fiasco would be for the U.S. government to drop the case and declare that from now on, they will no longer buy Microsoft products. If the government is so concerned about M$ as a monopoly (and they should be) they should put their money where their mouth is. Literally. As the world's largest user of software, the U.S. government forcing all it's branches to no longer support microsoft would reduce Microsoft's monopoly power fairly effectively. And Microsoft could not have any legal recourse to stop this, because the US government could most easily reject M$ products on the basis of their poor quality.
While I certainly think apple should add another mouse button because it does give users more options, I think that there is something that people coming from windows/linux backgrounds are not understanding about Mac software design. Keyboard shortcuts on the Mac receive far more emphasis in the design of softare than in Windows/Gnome (contrary to popular belief). Mac programmers, arguably the world's most experienced at programming interfaces, assign easily remembered keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly repeated functions. The logic being, the tenth time you do x procedure, you'll look at the keyboard shortcut on the menu and start using that. "But many users rarely use the keyboard for stuff" you might say. My response: it's not surprising. Windows' (and GNOME and KDE's, which both aspire to emulate Windoze down to all it's UI mistakes) keyboard shortcuts are crippled by two things. The first is that Windows cripples any element of ease of use that keyboard shortcuts have by using all those mnemonics (the underline things that you use with the alt key control menus with). These are very good at distracting the user's attention away from the actual keyboard shortcuts themselves. With all those underline thingies already in the menus, the average user is going to feel like it is too much trouble to remember the actual shortcuts. This was originally done because in ye olde Windows days, some people didn't have mice. So the original goal of Windows' keyboard UI was to replace the mouse, whereas from day one, the goal of the mac keyboard UI was to complement it. And that's exactly the function that a second mouse button performs: it complements the basic mouse. Since macs have no mnemonics, there is less clutter around the actual keyboard shortcuts, which means the keyboard shortcuts stand out like sore thumbs, which means the user's attention is more quickly drawn to them, which means the user is more likely to use them. So by using keyboard shortcuts in menus uncluttered with mnemonics, we mac people have been able to get along pretty well without a second mouse button. The second thing that both the linux and windows development community have done to cripple the ease and power of keyboard shortcuts is using the control key for keyboard shortcuts. The modifier keys next to the space bar (the alt key on windows, the command key on macs) have the widest key coverage of any other modifier key. It is ideal for fast, easy keyboard shortcuts because of its good central location on the keyboard and the fact that it puts the two most dextrous fingers of the human hand, the thumb and index fingers, in a very natural position If you don't believe me, put your thumb on the alt/command key, hold your index finger 2-3 inches from where your thumb is resting, and move your index finger in an arc motion that pivots around the thumb on the alt key. You'll notice in that arc that all the keys on that side of the keyboard are covered. If you tried the same thing only with the thumb resting on the control key and still using your index finger, after the first few letters your hand would immediately start bending in weird contortions. I know some people who use their pinky on the control key instead of their thumb, but that is still less natural than the thumb+index combination. PC keyboard design also helps discourage use of keyboard shortcuts. If you take a look at mac keyboard, the command keys will often (but not always)be larger and more centralized than the alt key on a PC keyboard. To sum everything I've said, macs have other ways (often more elegant) of performing the same tasks a second mouse button does. Understand this before you bash macs for having a one-button mouse.
*Note this post does not mean to a flame directed towards Linux. The wonderful open source nature of Linux makes it very easy to rip out the messy mnemonics and control key shortcut sequences in GNOME applications and replace these beasts with uncluttered menus that use the alt keys and appropriately chosen letters. (I've done with with the gnome file manager (gmc) and Dia, among others. I can't wait to do it with Nautilus. I love you, Gtk ItemFactory).
Screw water. Gin would be better, since it could be cooled to far lower temperatures than water. Plus, your laptop would be a whole lot more fun on those long flights.
The most kick ass processor of our time. Has incredibly low power consumption, does not contain any closed proprietary technology owned by a single company, and has had several thousand years of debugging. Though it might take a lot of bead pushing to get good frame rates on Q3 Arena.
for the Windows 2000 product launch! If Microsoft could put a copy on a BA-2 and send it hurtling towards the sun. Then, they can honestly say it finally got off the ground, really flew, and had blazing performance!
the world's most intelligent space heater. Intel should be bundling marshmellows and hershey bars with that chip. The pentium III might not actually "make the web better", but I bet it could produce some damned fine smores.
Slashdot Mirror
delete the macs' preferences folders. Then delete the windows registry. Reboot and see which machine has more working stuff. Guarentee you it won't be windows.
Imagine what computer intrusion will be like when those peripherals that "play" smells gain wide market acceptance. Every 15 year-old script kiddie's mouth will water at the chance to make some unwary user's machine smell like a portajohn--using BackOrifice, of course!
When you consider the fact that there are black holes with millions of solar masses (i.e. millions of times the mass of our sun) it's not that suprising. No star can be 300 million solar masses, so it would figure all that matter has to come from somewhere.
Just because a computer company will not hire you does not mean that you can make money off of programming. If there are a bunch of older, highly experienced programmers are considered unhirable by stupid corporate entities, those older programmers should band together and start their own software company. With all their knowledge and experience (and some decent marketing), a startup of veteran coders could kick compete with and kick the butt of the people who let them go. Agism is part of the old tired economy, not the new internet economy. If you can deliver a better product faster more reliably, and no one will not hire you to do so, you have the opportunity start your own business and do it yourself and wipe out your competition.
nuff said
I think one could make the arguement for Linux that the services aren't required to run for basic desktop usage and web surfing and don't have to be running. Although probably these services should be turned off by default.
The part where MacOS 9 kicks some serious butt is that it has far less dynamically linked stuff than any Linux distribution (or Windows 9x/NT). Because many applications on OS 9 will be statically linked, installing one piece of software will not break another application, nor will it preclude the user from installing yet another application. I don't care what anyone says about performance/bloat of statically linked stuff. We are not talking about The World of The Server, we are talking about The World Of The Desktop. In The World Of The Desktop, users in general (especially those coming from Wintel) are absolutely terrified that some aspect of software installation is going to destroy their currently working computer. They are often also extremely frustated with software that refuses to install (often because of some dynamically-linked snafu).
I absolutely guarentee you that if you interview a thousand people walking outside of CompUSA and you ask them if given the choice between software that requires more ram/disk space or software that will always painlessly install with absolutly no bad consequences whatsoever, they will *always* pick the latter.
And now the test...
We'll install on each machine 1000 applications of many different varieties dating from the present to the last 3 years. Yes, this might involve using a version of sendmail older than your grandmother. Absolutely no patching, recoding, upgrading, or rpm/dpkg guru finagling permitted (rpm -i only). At the end of the test, OS 9 would have far more working applications installed than linux and would give the tester far less "I'm sorry but I can't do that Dave" type messages. Not that linux is inherently inferior to OS 9 in this regard (and certainly windows with its DLL's would have the same problem too), but up till now, much of the linux development community has made a legitimate engineering trade-off that favors high performance/less bloat over robustness of installation. The million dollar question is whether we penguinheads want the desktop badly enough that we will swallow our pride and statically link stuff into a real, honest-to-goodness newbie distribution.
>MacOS cut and paste is like standard >input/output in Unix -- the system is built >around it so it always works the way it should. >To me, that makes up for having to do more than >a mouse click to paste text. (I never understand >why X users find Cmd-C so difficult but think >Emacs is straightforward. Although my girlfriend >complains that dragging a folder to the Stuffit >icon is too complicated and wonders why it can't >be something obvious like tar -cvf directory.tar >directory; gzip directory.tar.)
Thank you, I have been saying the same things for years! I think that a lot of people who have never owned a mac don't understand the second mouse button is not as important when you have an OS (and a lot of applications) that apply keyboard shortcuts and drag and drop in a highly consistent manner. From day one, the mac keyboard shortcut for quit has been command+Q throughout all mac applications throughout history. Constrast this with Windows/*nix, where sometimes the keyboard shortcut for quit might not exist, might be Alt+F4, Alt+q, Ctrl-q, Alt+F+Alt+X, etc. Consistency, more than anything else, is the true halmark of ease-of-use. On the subject of Command+C, it is only natural that using command key (aka alt on windows + linux) keyboard shortcuts would work well. It places the two most dextrous fingers humans have (the thumb and index finger) in a natural position that gives good, equal coverage of all keys on one side of a keyboard equally. Contrast this with Ctrl keyboard shortcuts, which don't use the best fingers for the job and do a poor job of covering keys east of the 'D' key and west of the 'L' key. Poorly Chosen(aka Ctrl)keyboard shortcuts irk me, and make me do silly things like open GNOME applications and recode/recompile them with keyboard shortcuts that don't suck.
Several reasons.
/etc" and under windows, drag system.dat into the nice recycle bin and delete it. Reboot all the systems. See which one does the best job of "operating within normal parameters".
1. Superior driver support. How do you install hardware on the mac? The the extension for the hardare that the hardware vendor gives you and put it into the extensions folder. Then Reboot. That's it. No wading through half-assed autodetect procedures that usually lead you to installing the driver manually , no tinkering around with modules. Just pop the device driver in the extensions folder. So simple a concept that it's ridiculously effective.
2. Protected Configuration (kinda of like protected memory). Linux has this but windows doesn't. Basically, its the concept of each program/executable having it's own configuration file, as opposed to cramming all the configuration data for many programs into a single file (a la windows registry). One executable, one set of configuration data. Period. Under the system of protected configuation, if there's a bad write that corrupts the configuration data for one program, configuration data for another program isn't going to be blown to smithereens. Making the mac's configuration system even more effective, any time that a program's configuration file is deleted, when the program is launched again, it regenerates a new configuration file. Most all mac programs are engineered such in a way that the non-existance of a configuration file will not preclude that program from running. Do an experiment. Delete the preferences folder on a mac, go into your unix machine and type "rm -rf
3. Lack of shared code. Shared code has a wonderful capacity for screwing things up. When stuff is allowed to mess with other stuff, bad stuff usually happens. On the mac (at least pre OS-x) a lot of stuff is statically linked. Yes, that means more ram/hard disk spaced used, but that almost means almost zero chance of a program install killing another program or a previous program precluding use of a new program. And most regular (i.e. non-power) users, given the choice of either being able to painlessly install and deinstall as much software as they want or having the software use less resources, they will always choose the painless install/deinstall. "Those who think statically link. For user panic, link dynamic".
4. Desktop database/dual forked system. This insures that no matter how much you might move executables/other crap around in your mac's filesystem, they'll still work. It also means that you can give your damn file *any* name with any character (barring the colon) and it will eternally be recognized as a certain type of file belonging to a specific application. There's no "I must keep it in this path/folder or else" like there is with windows and linux. No filename extensions, no mime fiddling(of the street performing or e-mail variety). If this filesytem database is ever completely corrupted, it can be completely rebuilt from scratch. As with the "no shared code" bit, the dual forked, database file system carries with it a performance (notice all that clutter see when you copy a file from a mac onto a windows-formatted floppy, and then read it with windows/linux") but it is an engineering trade off that insures that stuff will work properly.
With a body like that,he can take over the internet any time he want to, as far as I'm concerned.
;)
Oh, wait, that's *Stevie* Case
It might seem pretty stupid that in the midst of the anti-trust decision that Microsoft is doing things like hounding slashdot, but in fact, I think Bill gates wants microsoft broken up. Why do you think that Microsoft has really acted up in the last several months with the "netscape engineers are weenies" thing. The stockholders certainly wouldn't let Microsoft split itself up on its own after all the money the company made them. However, if Bill Gates rams Microsoft into the justice department, he can accomplish the breakup without have to deal with the stockholders or board of directors. Isn't it interesting that he stepped down from his top position and into the "new technology" position? Once Bill rams Microsoft into the justice department, he'll be able to get what he sees as the profitable piece, the X-box internet appliance. After years of Microsoft being threatened by internet appliances, Bill Gates can finally get broken off into his own little division (along with a good chunk of resources that his former company)
that specializes in that area. And if he is able to get X-box and the application devision broken off into a single company, he can have X-box appliances that run MS office, possibly from an MS Office ASP. Give the user a console with a basic W2000 kernel, and and them charge them subscriptions to microsoft applications that work over the web. Long ago Bill found out it was the appications that actually make the money, and with the X box, he would be taking that to the extreme.
still going to on and on about Natalie Portman, or are we going to start seeing posts like "i 4M 4 L00cy C14arK W00mb r4id3r"? Only time will tell.
At the risk of getting a -1 flamebait moderation, I'm going to tell all the Debian people (it seems that they're some of the major instigators of this) anyone else why RedHat is getting all this support. Once I'm done, you can do either one of two things: flame me, moderate me down, and write me off as one of the Redhat-brainwashed masses; or you can actually listen to what I say, see what truth I have in my arguement, and maybe use the advice I give to better the positions of non-RedHat distro's.
Ya wanna know why Redhat is at the forefront, because of all the linux distributions (which is still not saying too much) Redhat was the easiest. I'm sorry, but I think Debian and everyone else needs to stop complaining. You can make your distribution whatever you want it to be. You have absolutely every right in the world to make your linux distribution a massively confusing, living hell for newbie users. Just understand that all our actions eventually have consequences. In the computer world, if you do not make a program easy to use, linux or otherwise, people will not buy your stuff if they have any choice in the matter. If they do not buy what you make, what you make will have little support. Meanwhile, stuff that is well designed and has good ease of use will be move like hotcakes. That's just how the world of the "the desktop" (and capitalism) works. Ease of use is not so much about auto-detection and dancing paper-clips and sappy wizards, but basic common sense, respect for the newbie user, and clear and consistent layout. Case in point: My first linux distribution was Debian (1+ years ago) because I thought that it would be really cool to go with the most "free" linux there was. Well, guess what? Debian had absolutely no default pager exported for the man pages. None. As a new user trying to stumble my way around a new and confusing operating system, the absolute last thing I needed was the help section flying past my eyes at 8 million miles and hour. I heard RedHat was good, I installed that over Debian, and I was impressed. "Finally", I said to my self, "I can actually scroll through the man pages". From this point on, I developed a strong liking for Redhat-based systems and a strong bias against Debian. They could have exported a default pager for the man pages and it wouldn't have infringed on the flexibility the power user had to choose whatever pager he wanted. But they didn't have the common sense/courtesy to do it this way. They were free to make that choice and they made that choice. And they reaped the consequences of my disdain. To end this first argument: you want marketshare, make your stuff easy to use. It's just that simple. Free software means having the freedom to screw yourself in whatever way you see fit.
Second, the first two syllables in "marketshare" are "market". If Debian et. al want maretshare, they should market what they put out. That means giving speeches to pointy-haired bosses, building strong relationships with developers who aren't currently developing for your OS, advertising, etc. Basically, doing the stuff that Microsoft does. Yes, they're evil but they have a killer marketing dept. Apple has already proved what happens when you have a great product but a poor business strategy. Perhaps the anti-redhat crowd should rent "Triumph of the nerds" and watch it...several dozen times.
There. I've said my piece. You can either spend the time to flame me and moderate me down, or you can spend the time thinking about what I've said and using that to make your distribution better.
my bad.
Why would a mac user like myself use Linux? The macintosh (as I see it) is not so much about a piece of hardware or a company but a set of ideals about how a computer should interact with the user. People who are not like you or I, people who have never worked with a mac for any long period of time, don't understand that it's the ideals like consistency between OS and Applications, plain english for system file names, properly chosen keyboard shortcuts, and other such things that make a computer easy to use and inspire our loyalty to the macintosh.
It's those ideals that are important, not the machine or particular OS itself. I use linux because I get a feeling of satisfaction when I take a program with a poorly designed interface and I make it easier for normal people to use, something that probably most mac programmers would get a kick out of. I use linux because I enjoy the challenge of giving linux the same values that have so endeared me to the mac. Who knows, I might some day release the first distribution that actually has *real* ease of use. Only time will.
First off, Microsoft did not improve on the mac GUI. They never really understood how it was supposed to work and did a quick copy that did very little to embody the ideals of ease of use or rules of interface design (yes, there are general rules, like consistency and plain english names, just to name a few). It was sort of like copying one videotape to another. The original was clear and vibrant, the copy was grainy and of poor quality. Most people think that us mac people are hate at Microsoft because they copied apple. No, we don't hate Microsoft because they copied apple; we hate them because they did a crappy rip-off and then forced it on us. If Microsoft did a wonderful, competant job at copying the Mac UI, I seriously doubt there would be as many mac users as there are today.
This rumor that you heard is true. There are at least two groups of people I know of (maybe more) who come from mac backgrounds who are trying to make GNOME actually usable. One is Eazel, run by Andy Hertzfeld, who designed some (if not all)of the original mac interface. They are designing the new GNOME file manager, Nautilus. Second is myself, Ukab the Great. I plan to take what concepts worked well on the Macintosh (and which M$, GNOME and others still can't seem to grasp) and apply those to existing Linux applications. It's quite fun to do. I took Miguel Icaza's gmc, which had very poorly designed keyboard shortcuts and menus, and ripped out the stuff that didn't work (e.g. mnemonics, ctrl shortcuts, etc) and replaced it with stuff that worked a lot better (alt shortcuts, better terminology, etc). Open source interface allows one to take confusing, poorly designed interfaces and turn them into clear, easily understandable interfaces.
Clarux the PenguinCow says "four flippers good, two flippers bad".
Any version of Mac OS
Or do you have to use something as clumsy as a Cat 5 cable.
Yes, it can predict the rain, but can it run in William Scott emulation mode? Will there be some daemon that notifies the administrator of birthday of a 103 year old lady in Texas? Does it have tupee error correction? We want to know these things, dammit!
I think that one of the most ends to the DOJ/Microsoft fiasco would be for the U.S. government to drop the case and declare that from now on, they will no longer buy Microsoft products. If the government is so concerned about M$ as a monopoly (and they should be) they should put their money where their mouth is. Literally. As the world's largest user of software, the U.S. government forcing all it's branches to no longer support microsoft would reduce Microsoft's monopoly power fairly effectively. And Microsoft could not have any legal recourse to stop this, because the US government could most easily reject M$ products on the basis of their poor quality.
While I certainly think apple should add another mouse button because it does give users more options, I think that there is something that people coming from windows/linux backgrounds are not understanding about Mac software design. Keyboard shortcuts on the Mac receive far more emphasis in the design of softare than in Windows/Gnome (contrary to popular belief). Mac programmers, arguably the world's most experienced at programming interfaces, assign easily remembered keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly repeated functions. The logic being, the tenth time you do x procedure, you'll look at the keyboard shortcut on the menu and start using that. "But many users rarely use the keyboard for stuff" you might say. My response: it's not surprising. Windows' (and GNOME and KDE's, which both aspire to emulate Windoze down to all it's UI mistakes) keyboard shortcuts are crippled by two things. The first is that Windows cripples any element of ease of use that keyboard shortcuts have by using all those mnemonics (the underline things that you use with the alt key control menus with). These are very good at distracting the user's attention away from the actual keyboard shortcuts themselves. With all those underline thingies already in the menus, the average user is going to feel like it is too much trouble to remember the actual shortcuts. This was originally done because in ye olde Windows days, some people didn't have mice. So the original goal of Windows' keyboard UI was to replace the mouse, whereas from day one, the goal of the mac keyboard UI was to complement it. And that's exactly the function that a second mouse button performs: it complements the basic mouse. Since macs have no mnemonics, there is less clutter around the actual keyboard shortcuts, which means the keyboard shortcuts stand out like sore thumbs, which means the user's attention is more quickly drawn to them, which means the user is more likely to use them. So by using keyboard shortcuts in menus uncluttered with mnemonics, we mac people have been able to get along pretty well without a second mouse button. The second thing that both the linux and windows development community have done to cripple the ease and power of keyboard shortcuts is using the control key for keyboard shortcuts. The modifier keys next to the space bar (the alt key on windows, the command key on macs) have the widest key coverage of any other modifier key. It is ideal for fast, easy keyboard shortcuts because of its good central location on the keyboard and the fact that it puts the two most dextrous fingers of the human hand, the thumb and index fingers, in a very natural position If you don't believe me, put your thumb on the alt/command key, hold your index finger 2-3 inches from where your thumb is resting, and move your index finger in an arc motion that pivots around the thumb on the alt key. You'll notice in that arc that all the keys on that side of the keyboard are covered. If you tried the same thing only with the thumb resting on the control key and still using your index finger, after the first few letters your hand would immediately start bending in weird contortions. I know some people who use their pinky on the control key instead of their thumb, but that is still less natural than the thumb+index combination. PC keyboard design also helps discourage use of keyboard shortcuts. If you take a look at mac keyboard, the command keys will often (but not always)be larger and more centralized than the alt key on a PC keyboard.
To sum everything I've said, macs have other ways (often more elegant) of performing the same tasks a second mouse button does. Understand this before you bash macs for having a one-button mouse.
*Note this post does not mean to a flame directed towards Linux. The wonderful open source nature of Linux makes it very easy to rip out the messy mnemonics and control key shortcut sequences in GNOME applications and replace these beasts with uncluttered menus that use the alt keys and appropriately chosen letters. (I've done with with the gnome file manager (gmc) and Dia, among others. I can't wait to do it with Nautilus. I love you, Gtk ItemFactory).
Screw water. Gin would be better, since it could be cooled to far lower temperatures than water. Plus, your laptop would be a whole lot more fun on those long flights.
But what do you do if the sun explodes? What are you going to do with your solar panels then?
The most kick ass processor of our time. Has incredibly low power consumption, does not contain any closed proprietary technology owned by a single company, and has had several thousand years of debugging. Though it might take a lot of bead pushing to get good frame rates on Q3 Arena.
for the Windows 2000 product launch! If Microsoft could put a copy on a BA-2 and send it hurtling towards the sun. Then, they can honestly say it finally got off the ground, really flew, and had blazing performance!
the world's most intelligent space heater. Intel should be bundling marshmellows and hershey bars with that chip. The pentium III might not actually "make the web better", but I bet it could produce some damned fine smores.