If he's in geek denial I can understand that, and if he has a problem with a particular hacker that compromised his security I can understand being a bit bitter on that one too, but it's no reason to demonise every top-notch programmer in the world with such a broad brush.
Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.
Key Macintosh features include a standard Mac OS X installer
Except that's not a standard Macintosh feature. Real Mac programs don't have installers, they have.app bundles and can be installed by simply dragging them to 'Programs' (or any other location of your choice) and uninstalled by dragging them to the trash.
Up till now it seemed to be mostly Microsoft products that break that model. Is the NeoOffice/J team trying way too hard to follow MS?
When their servers come back up I'll be trying it, nonetheless... with high hopes but low expectations.
You just have your non-mouse hand on the keyboard, and the layout of the cut-copy-paste shortcuts is quite ergonomic.
Even if you already have your other hand on the keyboard (which will not ALWAYS be the case) there's still a small but measurable delay in shifting focus back and forth, as well as for actually pushing the keys. Not very large, no, but it adds up when you're doing a lot of this.
not a chance? I don't see what is preventing someone knowledgeable enough from implementing this.
Then you've obviously never used an X11 Workstation, I'm sorry for you.
too much potential for mistakes
Huh? No more so than any other method of transferring text. It simply removes two 'context changes' - two instances of changing from mouse to keyboard and back. It saves even more time in comparison with using right click menus, btw, which is the mac and windows way to do this without the keyboard. There's nothing in it that makes it anymore error prone than any other method, and any errors that do occur are subject to be corrected in exactly the same way as on any other system as well. I've done my own human interface study on this (not a big fancy one, but with several users, and a stopwatch) and after the first 10 minutes of use (a minimum time to begin to get used to any new technique) it cut the time taken per paste by just short of half. If you spend two hours a day cutting and pasting, you can save around an hour a day using it. Likely more, once you get truly proficient.
Still, if you want this functionality for some reason, there's probably a way to implement it on OS X.
Nope, not a chance. It's just not the Mac way, and that's that. Believe me, I've looked into it.
The menu bar is nice. And pre-OS 10 Mac interface was pretty nice in most ways too.
The NeXT boxes were great though. The only thing I didn't like - lack of the menu bar. Every other UI element was as good, or better, IMOP.
I was really hoping OSX would be a lot closer to NeXT, or failing that, would just have the NeXT guts with an OS9 GUI. What we actually got, however, was something inconsistent with both in a lot of ways.
Still nicer than Windows, but then again, has the standard slipped so low that that means a passing grade?
See, that's just going to paste whatever the last thing was that was copied.
The behaviour he's talking about is to automatically grab the selected text and yank it to it's new location, without any CMD-C nonsense. You just select what you want, then middle click where you want it.
Once you work on a system that has that for a little while, you'll start to find it incredibly useful, particularly when coupled with the way many X window managers allow you to shift the input focus to a different window without actually pulling it on top of the first one. If you're going through one document and yanking text out of it into a new one regularly, this is a HUGE timesaver.
But truth be told, the Mac can be annoyingly toyish too. Not nearly as often as Windows, but it's there for sure.
The interface guidelines have slid downhill since OS9, the glowing gumdrops widgets annoy the hell out of anyone trying to get real work done, and of course Macs have always, and continue, to insist on the particular way they want you to do it, which is not always optimal for anyone but a rank beginner. I know, for instance, I agree with the poster that misses middle-button paste, and what he didn't mention - focus follows mouse with no autoraise. X11, whether running on top of linux or bsd or whatever, will give me that. Mac absolutely will not.
If someone comes in with a gun, or the force of the police and courts, behind them demanding I use a certain list, then that would be censorship.
If I voluntarily choose to use a list to filter what I allow on my network, that's nothing of the sort.
When you try to blur the meaning of words like this, equating theft of services with free-speech and spam filtering with censorship, you're not only insulting those who suffer from real censorship, and those of us that have put our jobs on the line many times to oppose it, you trivialise the entire issue as well.
You should be ashamed of yourself. You really should.
They (developers caught in copyright violation) always say that. It's usually bs. In this case, it's clearly BS. The GAIM guys need to get a lawyer. Every penny this company has made off this is rightfully theirs - but if they don't move soon it'll all be squirrelled away out of reach.
Actually if I'm reading this correctly they aren't complying with the source requirement either. Miranda displays a copyright notice on a screen where StarMessenger displays a different, incorrect, and altered copyright notice. Yet the source they have available for download does not have any alterations to the copyright notices. Therefore, it seems that the source they provide for download is NOT the source to the binaries they are distributing, eh?
Huh? The Mac Mini is a threat to Linux? How do you figure that? It's just another inexpensive platform to deploy Linux on. Debian PPC, Yellow Dog, probably a few others...
Linux is not an OS. Linux is a kernel. Suse, RedHat, Slack, Debian, etc. produce OS's based on that kernel, but they're all different.
And that kernel is just as suited for Workstations as Servers. Any specialisation is at higher level. It may be that some Linux-based Operating Systems are as you say (although I dispute that as well, any of them work quite well for using the web and email) but Linux just provides access to the hardware, very efficiently, which is what you need in a kernel, whether running a server or a workstation.
I use Debian Sarge, but I still think Slack is best for beginners.
I guess we have a different focus here on beginner. To me, a beginner is someone that is beginning to learn. You seem to have a different definition?
I suspect you mean users, people that don't want to learn, just want something that works with the minimum fuss. For them, I'll set it up myself, for less than the cost of XP or SUSE, and then handle routine admin tasks for a very reasonable yearly fee. In my experience they're much happier with that than any 'easy to use' distro.
Soft tends to only have meaning within a phonological and orthographical system.
For instance, while both English and Swedish have soft 'g's, in English that means the g is realised as a 'zh' sound, while in Swedish it's more like an English 'y.'
The only sensible parsing I could make of a 'soft e' in English would be a silent e. BTW, the linked page has already corrected that big of misinformation, although more remains.
But back to what you wrote, a soft c in English is obviously an 's' sound, but in, for instance, Italian, it's what we would write as 'ch' (and, to confuse English speakers trying to learn Italian even more, 'ch' is used in Italian to indicate a 'hard c' in a position where it would normally be soft.) In Castillian Spanish, it's a 'th.'
So, if I had to guess at what someone might mean by a 'hard' and 'soft' 't' in English, the only thing I can come up with off the top of my head would be to parse 'hard' as 'aspirated' - but most non-linguists don't seem to notice that English actually has both, and a linguist would simply say 'aspirated' instead I would think.
He's already corrected the first one (SUSE, being from Germany, is not pronounced with a silent 'E') but more remain. For instance, he confuses Debian testing and unstable, reversing them.
Does anyone think there will be anything benificial to linux to borrow from solaris now that the source is out, or does their license even allow this?
Short answer: No, and no.
Longer answer, while there are a few places Solaris still has an advantage, you can't just rip code out of one and stick it another. The structure of the code is quite different, so an implementation in one codebase just won't transfer to another cleanly.
And two, the CDDL, besides being horridly written, is clearly and intentionally not GPL compatible, so even if you could transplant code like that technically, it wouldn't work legally.
It may be technically feasible, but not socially. Most of the volunteers that make a project like Debian work care about Free Software, and read licenses.
Sure email's not a life and death situation, but the principle is the same in both cases.
No it's not. Not at all.
I don't have a right to drop a bomb on you. I don't have the right to shoot you, or knife you, or torture you. Those things are assaults.
Refusing your email is not an assault. Refusing your snail-mail, for that matter, would not be an assault. Refusing to take your phone calls, is not an assault.
You have no right to force me to carry your traffic, period. I do it, by default, in the interest of the common good, but if you abuse that initial goodwill and use it to steal from me, I have every right to stop. And if you abuse people around the world by hosting spammers, and people start refusing to coöperate with you because of this, and your customers get hurt by it - it's YOUR fault. Not the fault of the people whose goodwill you abused and exhausted.
If you can't see the difference between killing someone, and declining to receive email from someone, then I'm afraid not knowing the meaning of the word 'hypocrisy' is the least of your problems.
Slashdot Mirror
What does this guy have against hackers?
If he's in geek denial I can understand that, and if he has a problem with a particular hacker that compromised his security I can understand being a bit bitter on that one too, but it's no reason to demonise every top-notch programmer in the world with such a broad brush.
*cough*
Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.
Except that's not a standard Macintosh feature. Real Mac programs don't have installers, they have .app bundles and can be installed by simply dragging them to 'Programs' (or any other location of your choice) and uninstalled by dragging them to the trash.
Up till now it seemed to be mostly Microsoft products that break that model. Is the NeoOffice/J team trying way too hard to follow MS?
When their servers come back up I'll be trying it, nonetheless... with high hopes but low expectations.
NO, you're drunk. Or something. Linux runs real nice on my TiBook, thanks. It saves me a lot of time getting real work done too.
Even if you already have your other hand on the keyboard (which will not ALWAYS be the case) there's still a small but measurable delay in shifting focus back and forth, as well as for actually pushing the keys. Not very large, no, but it adds up when you're doing a lot of this.
Access to the source code for Aqua.
Then you've obviously never used an X11 Workstation, I'm sorry for you.
Huh? No more so than any other method of transferring text. It simply removes two 'context changes' - two instances of changing from mouse to keyboard and back. It saves even more time in comparison with using right click menus, btw, which is the mac and windows way to do this without the keyboard. There's nothing in it that makes it anymore error prone than any other method, and any errors that do occur are subject to be corrected in exactly the same way as on any other system as well. I've done my own human interface study on this (not a big fancy one, but with several users, and a stopwatch) and after the first 10 minutes of use (a minimum time to begin to get used to any new technique) it cut the time taken per paste by just short of half. If you spend two hours a day cutting and pasting, you can save around an hour a day using it. Likely more, once you get truly proficient.
Nope, not a chance. It's just not the Mac way, and that's that. Believe me, I've looked into it.
It is, although sometimes it takes a little poking around to figure out exactly which files.
I almost agree with you.
The menu bar is nice. And pre-OS 10 Mac interface was pretty nice in most ways too.
The NeXT boxes were great though. The only thing I didn't like - lack of the menu bar. Every other UI element was as good, or better, IMOP.
I was really hoping OSX would be a lot closer to NeXT, or failing that, would just have the NeXT guts with an OS9 GUI. What we actually got, however, was something inconsistent with both in a lot of ways.
Still nicer than Windows, but then again, has the standard slipped so low that that means a passing grade?
That doesn't give the desired result at all.
See, that's just going to paste whatever the last thing was that was copied.
The behaviour he's talking about is to automatically grab the selected text and yank it to it's new location, without any CMD-C nonsense. You just select what you want, then middle click where you want it.
Once you work on a system that has that for a little while, you'll start to find it incredibly useful, particularly when coupled with the way many X window managers allow you to shift the input focus to a different window without actually pulling it on top of the first one. If you're going through one document and yanking text out of it into a new one regularly, this is a HUGE timesaver.
That's very true.
And I love my Mac.
But truth be told, the Mac can be annoyingly toyish too. Not nearly as often as Windows, but it's there for sure.
The interface guidelines have slid downhill since OS9, the glowing gumdrops widgets annoy the hell out of anyone trying to get real work done, and of course Macs have always, and continue, to insist on the particular way they want you to do it, which is not always optimal for anyone but a rank beginner. I know, for instance, I agree with the poster that misses middle-button paste, and what he didn't mention - focus follows mouse with no autoraise. X11, whether running on top of linux or bsd or whatever, will give me that. Mac absolutely will not.
No, Jamie, it's not censorship.
If someone comes in with a gun, or the force of the police and courts, behind them demanding I use a certain list, then that would be censorship.
If I voluntarily choose to use a list to filter what I allow on my network, that's nothing of the sort.
When you try to blur the meaning of words like this, equating theft of services with free-speech and spam filtering with censorship, you're not only insulting those who suffer from real censorship, and those of us that have put our jobs on the line many times to oppose it, you trivialise the entire issue as well.
You should be ashamed of yourself. You really should.
Don't worry. If it's ever finished and shipped, JPSoft will have a usable replacement for it too, as they've done with every previous MS shell.
They (developers caught in copyright violation) always say that. It's usually bs. In this case, it's clearly BS. The GAIM guys need to get a lawyer. Every penny this company has made off this is rightfully theirs - but if they don't move soon it'll all be squirrelled away out of reach.
Ok, you know, I usually hate trolls, but that was made my day. I laughed and laughed and laughed...
Actually if I'm reading this correctly they aren't complying with the source requirement either. Miranda displays a copyright notice on a screen where StarMessenger displays a different, incorrect, and altered copyright notice. Yet the source they have available for download does not have any alterations to the copyright notices. Therefore, it seems that the source they provide for download is NOT the source to the binaries they are distributing, eh?
Huh? The Mac Mini is a threat to Linux? How do you figure that? It's just another inexpensive platform to deploy Linux on. Debian PPC, Yellow Dog, probably a few others...
Mmm no they haven't. The source code they released will not compile to the binary they're distributing.
See, here's where you're wrong. Fundamentally.
Linux is not an OS. Linux is a kernel. Suse, RedHat, Slack, Debian, etc. produce OS's based on that kernel, but they're all different.
And that kernel is just as suited for Workstations as Servers. Any specialisation is at higher level. It may be that some Linux-based Operating Systems are as you say (although I dispute that as well, any of them work quite well for using the web and email) but Linux just provides access to the hardware, very efficiently, which is what you need in a kernel, whether running a server or a workstation.
Heh, that's funny.
I use Debian Sarge, but I still think Slack is best for beginners.
I guess we have a different focus here on beginner. To me, a beginner is someone that is beginning to learn. You seem to have a different definition?
I suspect you mean users, people that don't want to learn, just want something that works with the minimum fuss. For them, I'll set it up myself, for less than the cost of XP or SUSE, and then handle routine admin tasks for a very reasonable yearly fee. In my experience they're much happier with that than any 'easy to use' distro.
That's a reasonable English approximation. If you really want to sound like you work there, it's more like 'zoozer' though.
Soft tends to only have meaning within a phonological and orthographical system. For instance, while both English and Swedish have soft 'g's, in English that means the g is realised as a 'zh' sound, while in Swedish it's more like an English 'y.' The only sensible parsing I could make of a 'soft e' in English would be a silent e. BTW, the linked page has already corrected that big of misinformation, although more remains. But back to what you wrote, a soft c in English is obviously an 's' sound, but in, for instance, Italian, it's what we would write as 'ch' (and, to confuse English speakers trying to learn Italian even more, 'ch' is used in Italian to indicate a 'hard c' in a position where it would normally be soft.) In Castillian Spanish, it's a 'th.' So, if I had to guess at what someone might mean by a 'hard' and 'soft' 't' in English, the only thing I can come up with off the top of my head would be to parse 'hard' as 'aspirated' - but most non-linguists don't seem to notice that English actually has both, and a linguist would simply say 'aspirated' instead I would think.
It's actually full of errors.
He's already corrected the first one (SUSE, being from Germany, is not pronounced with a silent 'E') but more remain. For instance, he confuses Debian testing and unstable, reversing them.
Short answer: No, and no.
Longer answer, while there are a few places Solaris still has an advantage, you can't just rip code out of one and stick it another. The structure of the code is quite different, so an implementation in one codebase just won't transfer to another cleanly.
And two, the CDDL, besides being horridly written, is clearly and intentionally not GPL compatible, so even if you could transplant code like that technically, it wouldn't work legally.
It may be technically feasible, but not socially. Most of the volunteers that make a project like Debian work care about Free Software, and read licenses.
Not likely. Take a look at the OSolaris license.
Then I guess you don't know what hypocrisy is.
No it's not. Not at all.
I don't have a right to drop a bomb on you. I don't have the right to shoot you, or knife you, or torture you. Those things are assaults.
Refusing your email is not an assault. Refusing your snail-mail, for that matter, would not be an assault. Refusing to take your phone calls, is not an assault.
You have no right to force me to carry your traffic, period. I do it, by default, in the interest of the common good, but if you abuse that initial goodwill and use it to steal from me, I have every right to stop. And if you abuse people around the world by hosting spammers, and people start refusing to coöperate with you because of this, and your customers get hurt by it - it's YOUR fault. Not the fault of the people whose goodwill you abused and exhausted.
If you can't see the difference between killing someone, and declining to receive email from someone, then I'm afraid not knowing the meaning of the word 'hypocrisy' is the least of your problems.