Oh, c'mon. Yes, people tend to imagine horrible things about African cities that aren't true. There's good neighborhoods and bad in every large city around the world. But saying that a city like Chicago or even Detroit would fit in with the likes of Kinshasa and Harare is, politely, a stretch.
I think the point is that Cocoa, or Glade, or whatever toolkit you want to use, lets you get the grunt work out of the way and focus your efforts on writing the code to make your app do useful things. Some toolkits are better than others for this purpose. Maybe I just don't get out enough, but I'm impressed by the fact that Cocoa lets you point and click your way to a semi-useful web browser without ever touching the keyboard. You save a hell of a lot of time.
Yeah. Obviously you've already got a wealth of free browsers to choose from. So this is just a demonstration of how brain-dead simple it is to build software with Cocoa. I'm not familiar with Python-GTK--is building GUIs this simple?
On the off chance you're really looking for advice rather than asking rhetorical questions to make a point--you'll want SubEthaEdit for your text editor, and PithHelmet to block ads and stop animated images in Safari. Command-backtick switches windows in applications. Firefox is a piece of shit, but you can download a PowerPC-optimized version with middle-click to tab built in. If the startup sound bothers you, it'll probably take about five minutes to write a script to mute the sound when you shut down and set it back to normal when you login--but why are you booting your computer instead of sleeping it, anyway? Finally, I'm sure you can find a decent X-friendly FTP program using Fink. Personally, I use Fugu. HIBT?
You know how you can't get anything done in Windows without a wizard popping up, supposedly to "guide" you through your task? I can't find it now, but Apple's Human Interface Guidelines explicitly discourage useless wizards, since they condescend to the user and keep him/her at arm's length from actual configuration. There are situations where a well-designed wizard is appropriate, but their rampant abuse in Windows is just about the most maddening thing about that OS and certainly contributes to the Fisher-Price feel. I'm glad Mac OS X treats you like an adult.
Apple knows when to sacrifice consistency for usability. It doesn't pay to be stubbornly consistent for consistency's sake. As Emerson wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
I don't know how difficult this is in Python, but with Cocoa, you can build a web browser in zero lines of code by clicking and dragging to designate actions and connections between objects in Interface Builder.
Did you read what I wrote? Of course there is no "cure" for AIDS or cancer--yet. But we can certainly expect to see better and better treatments in the future (and not just in the realm of pharmacology), treatments that will not require the patient to require care on an ongoing basis. That's what I call a cure.
Now I'm not sure what you mean by stating that the best cure for cancer that science can hope to find is to make it a chronic ailment, like HIV infection currently is, or how it's relevant to your flippant claim that there's no money in cures. Perhaps you can clear that up.
That might be a popular meme on Slashdot, and Chris Rock is a funny guy. But I just don't see that it's true. Cancer? AIDS? There's tons of money in a cure, thanks not only to the force of drug patents, but thanks also to funds set up specifically to grant big bucks to the first to find a cure.
The case that cures are just as lucrative for pharmaceuticals as treatments is even clearer for for diseases that mainly plague developing nations, such as malaria and TB, since (a) there's not much money in treatment to begin with, and (b) there's plenty of first-world foundations that would happily shell out once for a cure, rather than pay indefinitely for treatments of dubious long-term efficacy.
Like I said, Chris Rock--great guy, good insights. But it's really sort of silly to take humor as gospel.
Spot on for the most part, but the thing about Steve Jobs is that he has an innate sense of taste. He obsesses about every small detail about his products, from the angles of the bevels on the Apple II case, to the layout of the 128k Mac's motherboard, to the inclusion of authentic fonts (Helvetica instead of Arial, Times instead of Times New Roman) in Mac OS X, to the precise shade of glass in Apple Store storefronts. So while he may be a great marketer and a great businessman--and I know some people who might dispute that last bit, actually--the important thing, and what earns him adulation, is his keen aesthetic sense that's unfortunately so rare in the rest of the industry. The fact that not everybody appreciates these things doesn't hurt the cultishness of his following, either.
By the time Apple loses the audio player market to no-name copycat generics, they'll have moved on already to the next big thing. It's happened over and over again. It's practically their business model.
He's right, you know. The browser's merits aside, "Firefox" is an uninspiringly bland, ugly, generic, and all-around shitty name. "Safari" is great (reminds you both of "Surfin' Safari" and the jungle of the internet); "Internet Explorer" is about what you'd expect from Microsoft, but still conveys meaning; "Opera" may be inexplicable but at least it doesn't sound like the brainchild of some 16 year old overclocking suburbanite.
BTW, "Google" is a combination of "go" and "ogle," and indeed the name connotes a sense of looking thanks to its similarity to "goggle." A stroke of genius if you ask me. And PowerPoint is a presentation program that helps you make points. Powerfully, one would hope, but I agree it's a lackluster name (certainly not up to snuff with "Keynote"). Still, it's better than "Firefox."
Seriously. They can't even come up with a unique name--we had the torrent already, so Microsoft introduces an "avalanche"? Somewhere, Zeus is crying. Fuck 'em.
Yup, that's fair use. But in this situation, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court's decision that timeshifting the entire work falls under fair use because... well, this page describes it a lot better than I could:
The District Court concluded that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the
public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement. It
emphasized the fact that the material was broadcast free to the public at large, the noncommercial
character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. Moreover, the court found that the purpose of this use served the public interest in increasing access to television programming, an interest that "is consistent with the First Amendment policy of providing the fullest possible access to information through the public airwaves. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 102." Id., at 454. n8 Even when an entire copyrighted work was recorded, [p.426] the District Court regarded the copying as fair use "because there is no accompanying reduction in the market for 'plaintiff's original work.'" Ibid.
(Why can't I login or post from my IP, Taco? Grrr...)
If you're referring to his first sentence, you misread him. I did too at first. What he's saying is that fair use doesn't let you swap movies and music on the internet, which is true. If you're the copyright holder, of course, you can do whatever you like.
No, he's right, even if he wasn't being clear. You can claim fair use for making entire copies of a work for backup purposes, but pointedly not for sharing it on BitTorrent with 100,000 of your best friends. On the other hand, sharing "excerpts and quotations" is OK if for one of the incidental or judicial uses he gave as examples.
Also, I think you misread a lot of what he wrote, not that that's relevant to your bileful screed.
I'm mostly referring to the power supplies, though I guess I shouldn't have described it the way I did. Like another poster described, they'll either blow up within the warranty period or you'll be fine, and Dell considers that acceptable. For all Apple's well-publicized goofs, that's something that Apple hasn't and (I hope) never will sink to.
The "X11 sucks" thing is sort of a red herring. The real problem is that these things just don't look, feel or behave like Mac programs. Microsoft learned this lesson about 10 years ago with Word 6, and it's incredible to me that other big projects (e.g. Firefox) are treading the same doomed path today.
Except that NeoOffice/J is, to put it bluntly, a steaming turd of a Mac application. At least Microsoft Office:Mac uses native OS X widgets instead of reimplementing a UI that looks like it came dancing out of Windows 3.1's coffin.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, c'mon. Yes, people tend to imagine horrible things about African cities that aren't true. There's good neighborhoods and bad in every large city around the world. But saying that a city like Chicago or even Detroit would fit in with the likes of Kinshasa and Harare is, politely, a stretch.
I think you're absolutely right. It's too bad it's so hard to quantify aesthetics.
I think the point is that Cocoa, or Glade, or whatever toolkit you want to use, lets you get the grunt work out of the way and focus your efforts on writing the code to make your app do useful things. Some toolkits are better than others for this purpose. Maybe I just don't get out enough, but I'm impressed by the fact that Cocoa lets you point and click your way to a semi-useful web browser without ever touching the keyboard. You save a hell of a lot of time.
Yeah. Obviously you've already got a wealth of free browsers to choose from. So this is just a demonstration of how brain-dead simple it is to build software with Cocoa. I'm not familiar with Python-GTK--is building GUIs this simple?
On the off chance you're really looking for advice rather than asking rhetorical questions to make a point--you'll want SubEthaEdit for your text editor, and PithHelmet to block ads and stop animated images in Safari. Command-backtick switches windows in applications. Firefox is a piece of shit, but you can download a PowerPC-optimized version with middle-click to tab built in. If the startup sound bothers you, it'll probably take about five minutes to write a script to mute the sound when you shut down and set it back to normal when you login--but why are you booting your computer instead of sleeping it, anyway? Finally, I'm sure you can find a decent X-friendly FTP program using Fink. Personally, I use Fugu. HIBT?
You know how you can't get anything done in Windows without a wizard popping up, supposedly to "guide" you through your task? I can't find it now, but Apple's Human Interface Guidelines explicitly discourage useless wizards, since they condescend to the user and keep him/her at arm's length from actual configuration. There are situations where a well-designed wizard is appropriate, but their rampant abuse in Windows is just about the most maddening thing about that OS and certainly contributes to the Fisher-Price feel. I'm glad Mac OS X treats you like an adult.
Apple knows when to sacrifice consistency for usability. It doesn't pay to be stubbornly consistent for consistency's sake. As Emerson wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
I don't know how difficult this is in Python, but with Cocoa, you can build a web browser in zero lines of code by clicking and dragging to designate actions and connections between objects in Interface Builder.
Did you read what I wrote? Of course there is no "cure" for AIDS or cancer--yet. But we can certainly expect to see better and better treatments in the future (and not just in the realm of pharmacology), treatments that will not require the patient to require care on an ongoing basis. That's what I call a cure.
Now I'm not sure what you mean by stating that the best cure for cancer that science can hope to find is to make it a chronic ailment, like HIV infection currently is, or how it's relevant to your flippant claim that there's no money in cures. Perhaps you can clear that up.
That might be a popular meme on Slashdot, and Chris Rock is a funny guy. But I just don't see that it's true. Cancer? AIDS? There's tons of money in a cure, thanks not only to the force of drug patents, but thanks also to funds set up specifically to grant big bucks to the first to find a cure.
The case that cures are just as lucrative for pharmaceuticals as treatments is even clearer for for diseases that mainly plague developing nations, such as malaria and TB, since (a) there's not much money in treatment to begin with, and (b) there's plenty of first-world foundations that would happily shell out once for a cure, rather than pay indefinitely for treatments of dubious long-term efficacy.
Like I said, Chris Rock--great guy, good insights. But it's really sort of silly to take humor as gospel.
Spot on for the most part, but the thing about Steve Jobs is that he has an innate sense of taste. He obsesses about every small detail about his products, from the angles of the bevels on the Apple II case, to the layout of the 128k Mac's motherboard, to the inclusion of authentic fonts (Helvetica instead of Arial, Times instead of Times New Roman) in Mac OS X, to the precise shade of glass in Apple Store storefronts. So while he may be a great marketer and a great businessman--and I know some people who might dispute that last bit, actually--the important thing, and what earns him adulation, is his keen aesthetic sense that's unfortunately so rare in the rest of the industry. The fact that not everybody appreciates these things doesn't hurt the cultishness of his following, either.
Have you tried the punch yet? It's really good.
By the time Apple loses the audio player market to no-name copycat generics, they'll have moved on already to the next big thing. It's happened over and over again. It's practically their business model.
You make the mistake of thinking Wal*Mart gives two shits about social responsibility. Actually, you'd probably have better luck petitioning Costco.
Commence political flamewar.
He's right, you know. The browser's merits aside, "Firefox" is an uninspiringly bland, ugly, generic, and all-around shitty name. "Safari" is great (reminds you both of "Surfin' Safari" and the jungle of the internet); "Internet Explorer" is about what you'd expect from Microsoft, but still conveys meaning; "Opera" may be inexplicable but at least it doesn't sound like the brainchild of some 16 year old overclocking suburbanite.
BTW, "Google" is a combination of "go" and "ogle," and indeed the name connotes a sense of looking thanks to its similarity to "goggle." A stroke of genius if you ask me. And PowerPoint is a presentation program that helps you make points. Powerfully, one would hope, but I agree it's a lackluster name (certainly not up to snuff with "Keynote"). Still, it's better than "Firefox."
And it's a shame nobody replying to you or modding you down understands that. Par for the course here. :p
Seriously. They can't even come up with a unique name--we had the torrent already, so Microsoft introduces an "avalanche"? Somewhere, Zeus is crying. Fuck 'em.
(Why can't I login or post from my IP, Taco? Grrr...)
If you're referring to his first sentence, you misread him. I did too at first. What he's saying is that fair use doesn't let you swap movies and music on the internet, which is true. If you're the copyright holder, of course, you can do whatever you like.
Wow, it's been a while since I tried Camino... it's looking really good now. I'll have to give it another go, thanks.
No, he's right, even if he wasn't being clear. You can claim fair use for making entire copies of a work for backup purposes, but pointedly not for sharing it on BitTorrent with 100,000 of your best friends. On the other hand, sharing "excerpts and quotations" is OK if for one of the incidental or judicial uses he gave as examples.
Also, I think you misread a lot of what he wrote, not that that's relevant to your bileful screed.
I'm excited too. :-) We live in exciting times. Sort of.
I think you mean patented. How would you copyright a file system?
(I know, I know... it's beside the point...)
I'm mostly referring to the power supplies, though I guess I shouldn't have described it the way I did. Like another poster described, they'll either blow up within the warranty period or you'll be fine, and Dell considers that acceptable. For all Apple's well-publicized goofs, that's something that Apple hasn't and (I hope) never will sink to.
The "X11 sucks" thing is sort of a red herring. The real problem is that these things just don't look, feel or behave like Mac programs. Microsoft learned this lesson about 10 years ago with Word 6, and it's incredible to me that other big projects (e.g. Firefox) are treading the same doomed path today.
Except that NeoOffice/J is, to put it bluntly, a steaming turd of a Mac application. At least Microsoft Office:Mac uses native OS X widgets instead of reimplementing a UI that looks like it came dancing out of Windows 3.1's coffin.