I wanted to ammend that I agree that a competent programmer should be able to step through a trace of their code executing. If the programmer is coding a network application then they should know the protocols in use and be able to trace those as well. However, its a bit much to expect any one developer to know the ins and outs of every part of a system their code will touch. I highly doubt there was ever a programmer that familiar with the complex systems we have today. Sure, when a program was running on an 8-bit non-networked computer with a basic OS and no underlying drivers or abstraction layers, but in todays SMP/load-balanced/clusters/geographically diverse implementations connected by the Internet, running on various OSes and backends, written in a myriad of different languages, its more than any one person can know in detail. That is why there are QA teams and network analysts and systems engineers. Any software project a company is engineering needs input and troubleshooting from all these resources to assist.
I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, just pointing out that it's too simplistic and unrealistic to assume there's a superman programmer capable of being that knowledgable of everything. I certainly agree the vast majority of developers I interact with need A LOT MORE familiarity of with the systems they affect, but I'd never go so far as to say they should know assembly or chipset versions to troubleshoot a portal or application, especially when they're coding to another vendor's platform/toolset/language.
The example of the person implementing XML/RPC and not knowing it's limitations is an example of someone not meeting the basic qualifications of being competent to code that product. It also points to a deficiency in the company hiring him, as either they should have a higher level programmer, or a diverse team of programmers with complimentary specialties.
If you're writing a web portal in a managed language, and there's a bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine), who's going to fix it for you? Who's even going to find it and prove it's not a bug in your web code?
Don't confuse my statement with an endorsement of bad programming. Any project of sufficient need for efficiency or stability requires both good code management and good quality assurance, including testing the app in the conditions its expected to perform under.
If the app will never be used in conditions that will expose the "bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)" you're talking about, then its something the company doesn't need to worry about (i.e. if the app has a memory leak that only shows up when more than 100 people use it concurrently, but the app will never see more than 10 people concurrently, is it really an issue?) If it is something that will get exposed during normal use and it's not discovered during testing, then the failure is in the testing process as well. It is the QA cycle that "find it".
Once this bug is discovered, then the competency of the programmer comes into play in tracing the issue back to the "bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)". It is the programmer who should have the skills to determine, through inspection of his/her own code and testing in various environments, to "prove it's not a bug in your web code". At that point, a bug-report should be filed with the vendor (i.e. how bugs in the.NET CLR are reported to Microsoft). You can't tell me you seriously expect a typical programmer to have the knowlege or resources to actually resolve a problem in "some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)", can you? That "hard stuff" is what the vendor is for, and that vendor better damn well have the ability to troubleshoot their own product or else they're not worth using. The web-portal person doesn't need to know how the VM works, just how to code to it's specifications.
And if you're suggesting that because of this all programmers abandon higher-level languages and abstractions and return to "the good old days" of assembly programming, you're then suggesting abandoning all the benefits of focusing more on the logic of an app and less on the underlying implementation. You're expecting everyone to always reinvent the wheel for every application. Yes, bugs in a VM or higher level language are things to be concerned about, but like a mechanic who uses a certain vendor's power tools to build a car, if you find a defect in the tools you should report it to the vendor and if the vendor can't/won't fix it, switch vendors.
Any competent programming professional should indeed have an understanding of how their application interacts with the systems its being run on, including any network traffic and protocols it may use. I believe I said as much. Anyone not able to comprehend how their app affects memory usage or subsystem I/O or the network would not fall under "competent programming professional" and should not be employed as such. If he/she is, then the management team is also incompetent for hiring him/her and continuing to employ him/her.
Even the most computer inept people I know don't ask such a question, if for no reason other than they don't care.
This article points to a common theme faced by any aging generation. At some point you will look around and realize things have moved on without you. In this case, he should be happy that his generation's work provided the stepping stone for today's generation. And he should realize that his grand-children's generation will have built upon this generation's work and be proud of that too. Not complaigning about it.
And the argument that people don't understand how things work being a detriment, well that can be true, but its also necessary. With such advances, do you really think people could concentrate on building today's complex applications if they HAD to know assembly and how to talk to hardware? Yes, some things, like how your app affects the system and network are necessary, but I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why someone writing a web portal would need to know how the chipsets on the motherboard work . . .
because they can, even if they shouldn't
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Keeping the Lights On
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Instead, they mistakenly assume that they can hire younger, lower-paid people to perform the same tasks.
That's because they can. While more senior people have existing knowledge, they're no more or less trainable in these areas than their younger counterparts willing to work for less. The arrogance of always assuming youth is less capable of knowing older systems is just as bad as the arrogance of assuming older technologists are the only ones who can support them. If the company is willing to take the months/years of time to get someone up to speed, then its in their best interests to cut costs where they can, assuming of course they're willing and able to train their new staff on these systems AND that the younger workforce wants to learn older systems.
While objectionable in how it's carried out, the real problem isn't that companies are trying to hire younger people to support antiquated systems to replace older, higher paid employees. That's a short-sided tactic by companies and is a symptom of a larger problem: that companies aren't working to either put in place newer systems the upcoming workforce can support or implement comprehensive training programs to ensure new hires can be trained for the systems they'll be supporting.
While it's deplorable this is happening to the older technologists--and it should be stopped--the real problem is that unless systems are upgraded or younger people trained on them, then at some point there won't be any available support resources for these systems.
In an ideal world, older talent would be cherished and younger talent nurtured to eventually replace them. Unfortunately, in a capitalist society people don't matter, just the short term bottom line. Any higher-cost resource is seen as a waste when less costly resources are available.
Interface does count, and the interface has to match the intended audience.
For the core OSS audience of unix/linux geeks and programmers, the GIMP's current UI is great. All shortcuts and right clicks. For the average computer user (the type that mostly uses wordprocessing, a web browser, and IM) the GIMP UI is too complex. For them, a more Photoshop-ish interface (although I feel Photoshop could stand a lot of UI improvements) is much better.
Personally, I'm fine with GIMP as it is, although for the two "average users" I've installed GIMP for (on Windows), they've gone and downloaded PaintShop or ACDSEE instead of learning it. I'd definitely give them this interface.
I think GIMP would be wise to integrate this sort of UI as a "UI skin" where one got this by default, but an advanced user can choose to use the more complex UI (i.e. as a prompt on the first launch). Sort of a more elaborate version of the existing GIMP shortcut file.
I don't use GIMP for my photography work for one reason alone and it's not UI: GIMP's RAW support is terrible (as in non-existent by default). I've downloaded and successfully installed the open source RAW component, but you can only do rudimentary adjustments with it.
*sigh* homophobic remarks used to dis company/product. Really shows your intellect to demean one group of people to attack another.
On-topic: I commend YellowDog. i've installed them several times, mostly for personal use, but once for business. It's a solid platform, especially so if you need support from the vendor. We used it to re-use old Macs for administrative tasks at a company that was more Mac than Windows.
It'd be a shame to see them go the way of the LinuxPPC project, which closed down around 2001, so I hope they do keep up with decent hardware partners.
You're absolutely right. The cases of people being convicted in court because of SMS logs subpoena from cell companies is further, public proof of the lack of true privacy and security in our popular electronic communication methods
My blame isn't on Google at all. However, there's a difference between, say, yelling in a crowded room with the possibility of someone paying attention to your conversation and having those conversations definitely recorded, archived, indexed, and referenceable. Do I think Google is evil for doing the latter? Not at all. But I chose to not participate.
But, to be honest, its inevitable that this ease of access to personal information will happen. While the ease of access scares me, I'm more worried by the fact that there are currently no laws equating personal information with a person's property. I should own the log of my IMs or emails regardless of whether Google caches it or I keep it on my harddrive. I should be able to issue a notice to have those logs purged or to request a copy for myself. I should be able to sue should those logs get stolen and used for illegal purposes.
My concern about personal information goes further than just the whole Google/lack of security issue. It also extends to medical records (which aren't owned by you but by the entity paying for the care, which in 99% of American's cases is not the patient) and credit/purchasing records (which belong to the financial institution that processed the transaction).
End-to-end encryption does need to be adopted for all electronic communications (although a means to allow everyday users to effectively use good encryption schemes like PGP without having to figure out the complexities of those schemes needs to be developed, since the cert setup steps/key management steps turn most people away from using them). But there also needs to be more stringent legal protections for said information and clearer distinctions on who has rights to the information and for what purposes.
While it'd be nice if google was the impetus to standardize and open IM, it's rather naive to think it'll happen. As long as people are satisfied having two or three clients installed and running (other than geeks who know about GAIM and Trillian, most people I know run AIM and Yahoo and MSN messengers all at the same time) there will be no real push from the user bases of each community to interoperate.
Only once a standard does exist that does get implemented by a major IM vendor that does interoperate with at least one other major IM vendor, then people will start leaving the proprietary vendors.
Since i doubt Google has a deal with AIM and Yahoo or MSN, I doubt Google will offer anything people will consider a standard or "interoperating". They may offer a nice way to proxy all the other im networks to their own, but without some sort of agreement with those vendors I assure you it'll be blocked by the other vendor immediately (a la MSN's attempt to bridge with AIM in 2000).
Exactly why I don't actually use my GMail as anything other than what I use Hotmail for: a free account to use when I know it's going to end up on spam lists.
What concerns me is the long term usage of the data being collected. Will all IMs be logged and stored? Will someone in the nether reaches of Google (or some government agency via subpoena) be able to issue a keyword search and see all relevant IMs, emails, and contacts of mine? what about the cross-referencing abilities I'm sure someone is already salivating to set up for a fee for anyone who can pay (credit agencies, credit card purchases, government records (DMV), cell logs, etc)?
while I think the possibility of such a Big Brother entity is remote presently due to the sheer volume of information available to process and collate and catalog, one day processing power will be sufficient to make such paranoid consipiracy theories less laughable.
It doesn't break the system. Google is smart, they'd be looking for accounts that use up their invites quickly and never contacts the people once the invite is made. That would fit the profile of someone offering invites. That information would be logged and counted as one way invites are used and excluded from the similar-interests calculations.
Where money is involved and personal information is available, there are algorithms upon algorithms designed to sort and classify and utilize that information and very little (if anything) can be done by the originators of that data to make it unusable in some form or another.
I love the "Furthermore, there is no risk of downloading viruses or other malware to the phone, says O'Regan: "We don't send applications or executable code.""
Riiiight.
I find the whole notion of this distasteful. Billboards are bad enough. This is adding spam to them. I don't use Bluetooth now (see no real benefit from it really) and if enabling Bluetooth is going to subject me to spam, no thanks . . .
But, considering in 2000 the hot marketing gimmick was to mount Palm Pilot's around metropolitan areas (at least Manhattan had them) and have people point their Palm at it to sync up an ad . . . and that lasted like a month . . .
The author seems to assume that Mac hardware is proprietary still. Yes, in yesteryear Apple was very proprietary, but they had to be to be the performance king of the time (NuBus far outshined 8-bit ISA, ADB was better than serial keyboard/mouse, etc) but with the maturation of the consumer PC market, Apple has embraced openness in its hardware.
No longer to Apple computers require specialized ROM code to run. No longer are there custom backplanes or peripheral cards. If you look at the Macintosh motherboard now and compare it to a PC's, you'll see it uses the same industry standards: PCI, SATA (or SCSI), ZIF sockets, DIMMs, etc. Apple isn't stupid, it costs more to develop hardware in house and to maintain their profit margins it makes sense to use standard parts these days.
The only remaining differences between the platforms is mostly CPU and BIOS/Firmware implementations. Change those and you HAVE "ported OS X to the PC". In fact, Apple's developer Intel boxes do boot Windows XP.
It sounds like his major beef is that OS X won't be supported on GENERIC PCs . . . I.e. you can't buy a Dell with OS X on it.
I don't think that's a dissapointment, it's good business sense. The geeks who want OS X on Dell's will of course find a way to boot strap the OS (intercept the DRM calls and make OS X think it has the right DRM chip . ..) but the average consumer doesn't care what their computer is as long as it runs their software. And, as anyone who's installed Windows on hardware OTHER than what a PC it was shipped with will attest, driver/hardware compatability can be quite a pain. And even with the hardware Windows ships on, Blue Screens are often the result of drivers being updated, something outside Microsoft's control.
Apple sticking to their hardware platform will ensure they can have 100% compatability and avoid being derided for lockups the same as Windows has.
The real key is if they can offer Macs at the same price points as vendors like Dell. If they can, I doubt anyone other than geeks will care. If they can't, they'll likely continue to lose market share as the end consumer cares more about price and compatability than the look of the machine.
Seriously, if your big gripe is the mouse, then Apple is definitely doing something right.
For the beginning user, one mouse button is easiest. Take your grandmother (or, rather, mine) and try to explain right-clicking. Sure, she can get it, but it takes a little time (she likes to double-right-click and often mis-clicks the left button for the right or presses the center activating both buttons).
For the rest of us, is it such a big deal we have to guy pay $10-$70 for a multi-button mouse? Sure, I wish Apple at least gave the option with a new Mac, but come on, is this worth an entire thread over? Or rather, again? The post was about Apple becoming a phone company.
I'm not sure how I feel about apple becoming a cell company. Would I buy an iPod/Phone? Doubtful. I'd rather have an all-in-one PDA that plays music instead of an iPod that makes phone calls. My Treo plays MP3s, does AIM, surfs, has a Nintendo emulator, as well as my calendar and work emails being constantly in sync wirelessly. I'd rather be able to subscribe to the iTunes cell service on my phone than buy an iPod phone.
But, then, I'm still a bit cautious about this whole itunes on the phone. Given the spotty cell reception I get, any sort of streaming service would be painful at best.
I suppose another way to view this is to think of a home network as a virtual part of a person's home. Therefore, to not be a member of that home but to still use that network uninvited could be debated as an intrusion of privacy.
Coming from that viewpoint I still think of this as similar to looking in someone's open window since unlike listening to a radio broadcast, you are actively doing something to participate. Yes, it's an intrusion of a person's privacy to look in their window, but common sense still prevails. If you don't close your curtains, you have to assume someone will look in and in fact in this case you have no legal expectation of privacy. Conversely, if you're walking past someone's house and see an open window, you are not committing a crime by looking in.
The article takes the approach that using the person's open WiFi is like walking in an open door as opposed to looking in an open window. Even if the door is open and unlocked and you don't have to break any locks, you're still tresspassing if you enter.
It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment
Actually, it is. It's more like you have a window open into your apartment and the guy across the street watches your Pay-per-view off your TV just by looking out his window and into yours.
You won't find any judge or jury willing to convict the guy across the street for stealing PPV content. It'd be REASONABLE to assume if your window is open you're aware of the risk of someone looking in.
By the same token, with the status of today's networking and the news about open WiFi points, the onus is on the network operator to take reasonable steps to secure access. If the man had to decrypt a WEP key or guess a passphrase to get access to the WiFi AP, I'd say he indeed was stealing and should be prosecuted. Since all he did was take advantage of a publically available (by all rights) network, this case is rather baseless.
I'd buy one of these in a heartbeat
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Real Wood iPod
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· Score: 1
Much hotter than the white. Excellent craftsmanship too. Doubt I'd have the patience to do this
Speeding isn't the issue. It's those without the skills to drive fast, and those who drive "at the speed limit" in such a way as to be an obstacle (staying in the left lane, changing lanes or speeding up to block people from passing) that cause the problems.
RT-78 has a posted speed of 55. The regular speed is 70. It works out well when the slower drivers stay to the right.
Some good points. Additionally, I think Windows could take a lesson from OS X-native apps and instead of requiring DLLs and OCX files to be copied to the system folders, to instead have applications as bundles with all required files contained therein.
I.e., on OS X, "Mail" is really a folder called "Mail.app" and in that folder is every dependency and appearance file that isn't part of the core OS. On Windows, "Outlook" is just an executable with 50% of it's required.DLL files in the Program Files folder structure and half in the Windows\system32 folder.
Of course, one thing I wish OS X handled natively that Windows does allow for is the changing of color schemes and having an approved theme-switching mechanism. While the default OS X theme is much prettier than the default Windows theme, being a person sensitive (as in migraine-prone) to the flicker-effect of white on a CRT, I always change the Windows color schemes to get rid of the white, something I can't do on OS X without third-party software.
I follow the speed limits to the letter becasue I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
That's fine just as long as you stay the hell out of the left lane.
Amen to that.
The worst are the people who not only drive slow in the left lane, but when you flash to pass give you this look of "I'm going fast enough" or, if you do go to pass, suddenly decide to speed up.
"And don't you dare say Spotlight... it's a resource pig too (and one it seems you can't turn off either, much like Dashboard.)"
Contrary to popular belief, you CAN disable spotlight if it so bothers you. It isn't a "pig" by any stretch but whatever. To disable it, simply change the following entry in/etc/hostconfig:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
to:
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
I have Spotlight disabled on my Tiger servers, not because I've seen any resource hogging, but just because on a server I always disable any service I don't think I'll need or use, regardless of the OS.
Do a search on www.macosxhints.com for different ways to remove the icon from your screen.
As for Dashboard, if you never push the hot key it doesn't start. The Dashboard and widgets only load the first time you invoke them, which is why there's that 10 second or so pause the first time before you see the content of the widgets. To "disable" dashboard, just change the keyboard mapping and be done with it.
As for best things about OS X, the ones listed by "isittoday" are good. I'd only add that, unlike Windows, OS X is very resilant to errant programs, which is a function of its superior security model. On Windows, if you're an administrator of the machine, you can litterally destroy your installation by just surfing the web (a properly coded website can take advantage of a bug in Internet Explorer which can install something nefarious). On OS X, the WORST that can happen without your explicit approval (typing in the password for an install, etc) is you have to create yourself a new account to log in as and clean up your personal settings. Maybe reinstall some applications if they were deleted. but on OS X you have to explicitly allow something nefarious to be installed, it can't just happen behind the scenes without your knowledge.
I'd suggest installing a Sonicwall firewall device (www.sonicwall.com) or a similar hardware firewall to physically segment your machines from the rest of the network. You can even do this in a way that's address-transparent (so that you're not NATing).
This way, you don't have to worry about a bug in your locally installed firewall allowing someone in anyhow (and then having to go patch multiple installations), nor will you have to worry about CPU overhead from processing an attack (your machine is still getting hammered even if it's not getting past the firewall program), nor will you have to worry what OS is supported or what hotfixes may break the FW.
I'm not a fan of locally-installed firewalls as an end-solution.
Not to mention, no licensing costs. One sonicwall capable of handling a couple dozen or so servers will set you back about $500. Norton Internet Security would be $129 a pop (and Norton as an example has been the target of worms that disable the firewall).
If you don't with a Sonicwall or such device (which have great support and an easy to use GUI, btw), at least put up something like OpenBSD between your servers and the network instead of trying to manage firewall rules and versions on a bunch of individual machines.
"Maybe one day people will crave a PDA that is also a phone and an MP3 player. That day has yet to come."
I crave one and the time has come. I have a Treo 650, which has strong sales and great reviews. If they made 40G SD cards, it'd replace my iPod and do it all. Much nicer to carry one palm-sized device all day than three or four.
The iPod is simple and "just works", and for that it'll remain a market leader until someone else can do it as simply. But that doesn't mean there isn't a market for a more full-featured device. I love my iPod but barely use it because it's "yet another device" I have to carry around. Carrying a handful of songs on a device I have on me already is much more convenient.
What I think will truly do the iPod in will be if someone comes out with a device as easy to use as the iPod but as full featured as the PSP. If my iPod or iPod-like device could watch movies and play games with the simplicity and ease of how I currently select playlists and songs but with the power and quality of the PSP's screen and games, that'd be cool. Especially if it was a phone and PDA too;-)
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I wanted to ammend that I agree that a competent programmer should be able to step through a trace of their code executing. If the programmer is coding a network application then they should know the protocols in use and be able to trace those as well. However, its a bit much to expect any one developer to know the ins and outs of every part of a system their code will touch. I highly doubt there was ever a programmer that familiar with the complex systems we have today. Sure, when a program was running on an 8-bit non-networked computer with a basic OS and no underlying drivers or abstraction layers, but in todays SMP/load-balanced/clusters/geographically diverse implementations connected by the Internet, running on various OSes and backends, written in a myriad of different languages, its more than any one person can know in detail. That is why there are QA teams and network analysts and systems engineers. Any software project a company is engineering needs input and troubleshooting from all these resources to assist.
I'm not disagreeing with any of your points, just pointing out that it's too simplistic and unrealistic to assume there's a superman programmer capable of being that knowledgable of everything. I certainly agree the vast majority of developers I interact with need A LOT MORE familiarity of with the systems they affect, but I'd never go so far as to say they should know assembly or chipset versions to troubleshoot a portal or application, especially when they're coding to another vendor's platform/toolset/language.
The example of the person implementing XML/RPC and not knowing it's limitations is an example of someone not meeting the basic qualifications of being competent to code that product. It also points to a deficiency in the company hiring him, as either they should have a higher level programmer, or a diverse team of programmers with complimentary specialties.
If you're writing a web portal in a managed language, and there's a bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine), who's going to fix it for you? Who's even going to find it and prove it's not a bug in your web code?
.NET CLR are reported to Microsoft). You can't tell me you seriously expect a typical programmer to have the knowlege or resources to actually resolve a problem in "some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)", can you? That "hard stuff" is what the vendor is for, and that vendor better damn well have the ability to troubleshoot their own product or else they're not worth using. The web-portal person doesn't need to know how the VM works, just how to code to it's specifications.
Don't confuse my statement with an endorsement of bad programming. Any project of sufficient need for efficiency or stability requires both good code management and good quality assurance, including testing the app in the conditions its expected to perform under.
If the app will never be used in conditions that will expose the "bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)" you're talking about, then its something the company doesn't need to worry about (i.e. if the app has a memory leak that only shows up when more than 100 people use it concurrently, but the app will never see more than 10 people concurrently, is it really an issue?) If it is something that will get exposed during normal use and it's not discovered during testing, then the failure is in the testing process as well. It is the QA cycle that "find it".
Once this bug is discovered, then the competency of the programmer comes into play in tracing the issue back to the "bug in some platform-specific code in language itself (or the virtual machine)". It is the programmer who should have the skills to determine, through inspection of his/her own code and testing in various environments, to "prove it's not a bug in your web code". At that point, a bug-report should be filed with the vendor (i.e. how bugs in the
And if you're suggesting that because of this all programmers abandon higher-level languages and abstractions and return to "the good old days" of assembly programming, you're then suggesting abandoning all the benefits of focusing more on the logic of an app and less on the underlying implementation. You're expecting everyone to always reinvent the wheel for every application. Yes, bugs in a VM or higher level language are things to be concerned about, but like a mechanic who uses a certain vendor's power tools to build a car, if you find a defect in the tools you should report it to the vendor and if the vendor can't/won't fix it, switch vendors.
Any competent programming professional should indeed have an understanding of how their application interacts with the systems its being run on, including any network traffic and protocols it may use. I believe I said as much. Anyone not able to comprehend how their app affects memory usage or subsystem I/O or the network would not fall under "competent programming professional" and should not be employed as such. If he/she is, then the management team is also incompetent for hiring him/her and continuing to employ him/her.
Really, you get: "How, exactly, does my typing code on my computer result in the CPU actually doing things" in "tech forums"?
Why does google return nothing for that phrase?
Even the most computer inept people I know don't ask such a question, if for no reason other than they don't care.
This article points to a common theme faced by any aging generation. At some point you will look around and realize things have moved on without you. In this case, he should be happy that his generation's work provided the stepping stone for today's generation. And he should realize that his grand-children's generation will have built upon this generation's work and be proud of that too. Not complaigning about it.
And the argument that people don't understand how things work being a detriment, well that can be true, but its also necessary. With such advances, do you really think people could concentrate on building today's complex applications if they HAD to know assembly and how to talk to hardware? Yes, some things, like how your app affects the system and network are necessary, but I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why someone writing a web portal would need to know how the chipsets on the motherboard work . . .
That's because they can. While more senior people have existing knowledge, they're no more or less trainable in these areas than their younger counterparts willing to work for less. The arrogance of always assuming youth is less capable of knowing older systems is just as bad as the arrogance of assuming older technologists are the only ones who can support them. If the company is willing to take the months/years of time to get someone up to speed, then its in their best interests to cut costs where they can, assuming of course they're willing and able to train their new staff on these systems AND that the younger workforce wants to learn older systems.
While objectionable in how it's carried out, the real problem isn't that companies are trying to hire younger people to support antiquated systems to replace older, higher paid employees. That's a short-sided tactic by companies and is a symptom of a larger problem: that companies aren't working to either put in place newer systems the upcoming workforce can support or implement comprehensive training programs to ensure new hires can be trained for the systems they'll be supporting.
While it's deplorable this is happening to the older technologists--and it should be stopped--the real problem is that unless systems are upgraded or younger people trained on them, then at some point there won't be any available support resources for these systems.
In an ideal world, older talent would be cherished and younger talent nurtured to eventually replace them. Unfortunately, in a capitalist society people don't matter, just the short term bottom line. Any higher-cost resource is seen as a waste when less costly resources are available.
Interface does count, and the interface has to match the intended audience.
For the core OSS audience of unix/linux geeks and programmers, the GIMP's current UI is great. All shortcuts and right clicks. For the average computer user (the type that mostly uses wordprocessing, a web browser, and IM) the GIMP UI is too complex. For them, a more Photoshop-ish interface (although I feel Photoshop could stand a lot of UI improvements) is much better.
Personally, I'm fine with GIMP as it is, although for the two "average users" I've installed GIMP for (on Windows), they've gone and downloaded PaintShop or ACDSEE instead of learning it. I'd definitely give them this interface.
I think GIMP would be wise to integrate this sort of UI as a "UI skin" where one got this by default, but an advanced user can choose to use the more complex UI (i.e. as a prompt on the first launch). Sort of a more elaborate version of the existing GIMP shortcut file.
I don't use GIMP for my photography work for one reason alone and it's not UI: GIMP's RAW support is terrible (as in non-existent by default). I've downloaded and successfully installed the open source RAW component, but you can only do rudimentary adjustments with it.
*sigh* homophobic remarks used to dis company/product. Really shows your intellect to demean one group of people to attack another.
On-topic: I commend YellowDog. i've installed them several times, mostly for personal use, but once for business. It's a solid platform, especially so if you need support from the vendor. We used it to re-use old Macs for administrative tasks at a company that was more Mac than Windows.
It'd be a shame to see them go the way of the LinuxPPC project, which closed down around 2001, so I hope they do keep up with decent hardware partners.
You're absolutely right. The cases of people being convicted in court because of SMS logs subpoena from cell companies is further, public proof of the lack of true privacy and security in our popular electronic communication methods
My blame isn't on Google at all. However, there's a difference between, say, yelling in a crowded room with the possibility of someone paying attention to your conversation and having those conversations definitely recorded, archived, indexed, and referenceable. Do I think Google is evil for doing the latter? Not at all. But I chose to not participate.
But, to be honest, its inevitable that this ease of access to personal information will happen. While the ease of access scares me, I'm more worried by the fact that there are currently no laws equating personal information with a person's property. I should own the log of my IMs or emails regardless of whether Google caches it or I keep it on my harddrive. I should be able to issue a notice to have those logs purged or to request a copy for myself. I should be able to sue should those logs get stolen and used for illegal purposes.
My concern about personal information goes further than just the whole Google/lack of security issue. It also extends to medical records (which aren't owned by you but by the entity paying for the care, which in 99% of American's cases is not the patient) and credit/purchasing records (which belong to the financial institution that processed the transaction).
End-to-end encryption does need to be adopted for all electronic communications (although a means to allow everyday users to effectively use good encryption schemes like PGP without having to figure out the complexities of those schemes needs to be developed, since the cert setup steps/key management steps turn most people away from using them). But there also needs to be more stringent legal protections for said information and clearer distinctions on who has rights to the information and for what purposes.
Lol, exactly.
While it'd be nice if google was the impetus to standardize and open IM, it's rather naive to think it'll happen. As long as people are satisfied having two or three clients installed and running (other than geeks who know about GAIM and Trillian, most people I know run AIM and Yahoo and MSN messengers all at the same time) there will be no real push from the user bases of each community to interoperate.
Only once a standard does exist that does get implemented by a major IM vendor that does interoperate with at least one other major IM vendor, then people will start leaving the proprietary vendors.
Since i doubt Google has a deal with AIM and Yahoo or MSN, I doubt Google will offer anything people will consider a standard or "interoperating". They may offer a nice way to proxy all the other im networks to their own, but without some sort of agreement with those vendors I assure you it'll be blocked by the other vendor immediately (a la MSN's attempt to bridge with AIM in 2000).
Exactly why I don't actually use my GMail as anything other than what I use Hotmail for: a free account to use when I know it's going to end up on spam lists.
What concerns me is the long term usage of the data being collected. Will all IMs be logged and stored? Will someone in the nether reaches of Google (or some government agency via subpoena) be able to issue a keyword search and see all relevant IMs, emails, and contacts of mine? what about the cross-referencing abilities I'm sure someone is already salivating to set up for a fee for anyone who can pay (credit agencies, credit card purchases, government records (DMV), cell logs, etc)?
while I think the possibility of such a Big Brother entity is remote presently due to the sheer volume of information available to process and collate and catalog, one day processing power will be sufficient to make such paranoid consipiracy theories less laughable.
It doesn't break the system. Google is smart, they'd be looking for accounts that use up their invites quickly and never contacts the people once the invite is made. That would fit the profile of someone offering invites. That information would be logged and counted as one way invites are used and excluded from the similar-interests calculations.
Where money is involved and personal information is available, there are algorithms upon algorithms designed to sort and classify and utilize that information and very little (if anything) can be done by the originators of that data to make it unusable in some form or another.
I love the "Furthermore, there is no risk of downloading viruses or other malware to the phone, says O'Regan: "We don't send applications or executable code.""
Riiiight.
I find the whole notion of this distasteful. Billboards are bad enough. This is adding spam to them. I don't use Bluetooth now (see no real benefit from it really) and if enabling Bluetooth is going to subject me to spam, no thanks . . .
But, considering in 2000 the hot marketing gimmick was to mount Palm Pilot's around metropolitan areas (at least Manhattan had them) and have people point their Palm at it to sync up an ad . . . and that lasted like a month . . .
The author seems to assume that Mac hardware is proprietary still. Yes, in yesteryear Apple was very proprietary, but they had to be to be the performance king of the time (NuBus far outshined 8-bit ISA, ADB was better than serial keyboard/mouse, etc) but with the maturation of the consumer PC market, Apple has embraced openness in its hardware.
.) but the average consumer doesn't care what their computer is as long as it runs their software. And, as anyone who's installed Windows on hardware OTHER than what a PC it was shipped with will attest, driver/hardware compatability can be quite a pain. And even with the hardware Windows ships on, Blue Screens are often the result of drivers being updated, something outside Microsoft's control.
No longer to Apple computers require specialized ROM code to run. No longer are there custom backplanes or peripheral cards. If you look at the Macintosh motherboard now and compare it to a PC's, you'll see it uses the same industry standards: PCI, SATA (or SCSI), ZIF sockets, DIMMs, etc. Apple isn't stupid, it costs more to develop hardware in house and to maintain their profit margins it makes sense to use standard parts these days.
The only remaining differences between the platforms is mostly CPU and BIOS/Firmware implementations. Change those and you HAVE "ported OS X to the PC". In fact, Apple's developer Intel boxes do boot Windows XP.
It sounds like his major beef is that OS X won't be supported on GENERIC PCs . . . I.e. you can't buy a Dell with OS X on it.
I don't think that's a dissapointment, it's good business sense. The geeks who want OS X on Dell's will of course find a way to boot strap the OS (intercept the DRM calls and make OS X think it has the right DRM chip . .
Apple sticking to their hardware platform will ensure they can have 100% compatability and avoid being derided for lockups the same as Windows has.
The real key is if they can offer Macs at the same price points as vendors like Dell. If they can, I doubt anyone other than geeks will care. If they can't, they'll likely continue to lose market share as the end consumer cares more about price and compatability than the look of the machine.
to "Think Different" I wonder if the phone will just have a scroll wheel/pad.
Perhaps ctrl+click to hang up.
Seriously, if your big gripe is the mouse, then Apple is definitely doing something right.
For the beginning user, one mouse button is easiest. Take your grandmother (or, rather, mine) and try to explain right-clicking. Sure, she can get it, but it takes a little time (she likes to double-right-click and often mis-clicks the left button for the right or presses the center activating both buttons).
For the rest of us, is it such a big deal we have to guy pay $10-$70 for a multi-button mouse? Sure, I wish Apple at least gave the option with a new Mac, but come on, is this worth an entire thread over? Or rather, again? The post was about Apple becoming a phone company.
I'm not sure how I feel about apple becoming a cell company. Would I buy an iPod/Phone? Doubtful. I'd rather have an all-in-one PDA that plays music instead of an iPod that makes phone calls. My Treo plays MP3s, does AIM, surfs, has a Nintendo emulator, as well as my calendar and work emails being constantly in sync wirelessly. I'd rather be able to subscribe to the iTunes cell service on my phone than buy an iPod phone.
But, then, I'm still a bit cautious about this whole itunes on the phone. Given the spotty cell reception I get, any sort of streaming service would be painful at best.
Good counter.
I suppose another way to view this is to think of a home network as a virtual part of a person's home. Therefore, to not be a member of that home but to still use that network uninvited could be debated as an intrusion of privacy.
Coming from that viewpoint I still think of this as similar to looking in someone's open window since unlike listening to a radio broadcast, you are actively doing something to participate. Yes, it's an intrusion of a person's privacy to look in their window, but common sense still prevails. If you don't close your curtains, you have to assume someone will look in and in fact in this case you have no legal expectation of privacy. Conversely, if you're walking past someone's house and see an open window, you are not committing a crime by looking in.
The article takes the approach that using the person's open WiFi is like walking in an open door as opposed to looking in an open window. Even if the door is open and unlocked and you don't have to break any locks, you're still tresspassing if you enter.
Admittedly, I see that side of the argument too.
Actually, it is. It's more like you have a window open into your apartment and the guy across the street watches your Pay-per-view off your TV just by looking out his window and into yours.
You won't find any judge or jury willing to convict the guy across the street for stealing PPV content. It'd be REASONABLE to assume if your window is open you're aware of the risk of someone looking in.
By the same token, with the status of today's networking and the news about open WiFi points, the onus is on the network operator to take reasonable steps to secure access. If the man had to decrypt a WEP key or guess a passphrase to get access to the WiFi AP, I'd say he indeed was stealing and should be prosecuted. Since all he did was take advantage of a publically available (by all rights) network, this case is rather baseless.
Much hotter than the white. Excellent craftsmanship too. Doubt I'd have the patience to do this
You're the exception then. Thank you for driving properly.
Speeding isn't the issue. It's those without the skills to drive fast, and those who drive "at the speed limit" in such a way as to be an obstacle (staying in the left lane, changing lanes or speeding up to block people from passing) that cause the problems.
RT-78 has a posted speed of 55. The regular speed is 70. It works out well when the slower drivers stay to the right.
Some good points. Additionally, I think Windows could take a lesson from OS X-native apps and instead of requiring DLLs and OCX files to be copied to the system folders, to instead have applications as bundles with all required files contained therein.
.DLL files in the Program Files folder structure and half in the Windows\system32 folder.
I.e., on OS X, "Mail" is really a folder called "Mail.app" and in that folder is every dependency and appearance file that isn't part of the core OS. On Windows, "Outlook" is just an executable with 50% of it's required
Of course, one thing I wish OS X handled natively that Windows does allow for is the changing of color schemes and having an approved theme-switching mechanism. While the default OS X theme is much prettier than the default Windows theme, being a person sensitive (as in migraine-prone) to the flicker-effect of white on a CRT, I always change the Windows color schemes to get rid of the white, something I can't do on OS X without third-party software.
Amen to that.
The worst are the people who not only drive slow in the left lane, but when you flash to pass give you this look of "I'm going fast enough" or, if you do go to pass, suddenly decide to speed up.
Contrary to popular belief, you CAN disable spotlight if it so bothers you. It isn't a "pig" by any stretch but whatever. To disable it, simply change the following entry in
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
to:
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
I have Spotlight disabled on my Tiger servers, not because I've seen any resource hogging, but just because on a server I always disable any service I don't think I'll need or use, regardless of the OS.
Do a search on www.macosxhints.com for different ways to remove the icon from your screen.
As for Dashboard, if you never push the hot key it doesn't start. The Dashboard and widgets only load the first time you invoke them, which is why there's that 10 second or so pause the first time before you see the content of the widgets. To "disable" dashboard, just change the keyboard mapping and be done with it.
As for best things about OS X, the ones listed by "isittoday" are good. I'd only add that, unlike Windows, OS X is very resilant to errant programs, which is a function of its superior security model. On Windows, if you're an administrator of the machine, you can litterally destroy your installation by just surfing the web (a properly coded website can take advantage of a bug in Internet Explorer which can install something nefarious). On OS X, the WORST that can happen without your explicit approval (typing in the password for an install, etc) is you have to create yourself a new account to log in as and clean up your personal settings. Maybe reinstall some applications if they were deleted. but on OS X you have to explicitly allow something nefarious to be installed, it can't just happen behind the scenes without your knowledge.
I'd suggest installing a Sonicwall firewall device (www.sonicwall.com) or a similar hardware firewall to physically segment your machines from the rest of the network. You can even do this in a way that's address-transparent (so that you're not NATing).
This way, you don't have to worry about a bug in your locally installed firewall allowing someone in anyhow (and then having to go patch multiple installations), nor will you have to worry about CPU overhead from processing an attack (your machine is still getting hammered even if it's not getting past the firewall program), nor will you have to worry what OS is supported or what hotfixes may break the FW.
I'm not a fan of locally-installed firewalls as an end-solution.
Not to mention, no licensing costs. One sonicwall capable of handling a couple dozen or so servers will set you back about $500. Norton Internet Security would be $129 a pop (and Norton as an example has been the target of worms that disable the firewall).
If you don't with a Sonicwall or such device (which have great support and an easy to use GUI, btw), at least put up something like OpenBSD between your servers and the network instead of trying to manage firewall rules and versions on a bunch of individual machines.
"Maybe one day people will crave a PDA that is also a phone and an MP3 player. That day has yet to come."
;-)
I crave one and the time has come. I have a Treo 650, which has strong sales and great reviews. If they made 40G SD cards, it'd replace my iPod and do it all. Much nicer to carry one palm-sized device all day than three or four.
The iPod is simple and "just works", and for that it'll remain a market leader until someone else can do it as simply. But that doesn't mean there isn't a market for a more full-featured device. I love my iPod but barely use it because it's "yet another device" I have to carry around. Carrying a handful of songs on a device I have on me already is much more convenient.
What I think will truly do the iPod in will be if someone comes out with a device as easy to use as the iPod but as full featured as the PSP. If my iPod or iPod-like device could watch movies and play games with the simplicity and ease of how I currently select playlists and songs but with the power and quality of the PSP's screen and games, that'd be cool. Especially if it was a phone and PDA too
" then why can i watch any wmv file i dl off the net?"
Probably because they're not WMV9 or 10. Earlier WMV versions were reverse engineered and are included in VLC's codecs.