It's a design principle called the Principle Of Least Surprise.
Say you copy from a spreadsheet and paste into GIMP. You expect to see *something* pasted, right? (Ignoring whether or not this is a common operation.) When you see nothing, you'd assume your computer was broken in some way. Probably you'd copy the cells again and try to paste again. After a couple tries, you'd be very frustrated and upset with your computer.
Now, if Linux was the only thing in the world, at this point you'd just accept it and cope with it, like people do with Windows bugs. (Like how control panel windows have no entry in the taskbar.) But since Windows and OS X exist, what happens in our world is that people go back to one or the other and tell their friends, "man, Linux sucks! It can't do the most simple things!"
It's also the principle of "get the damned basics down before worrying about 3D window managers" which I just made up.
You're not feeding a troll, because I'm not a troll. I'm just communicating my experience with Ubuntu. It wasn't a positive experience, but that doesn't make me a troll.
what idiot suggested the pvr250 to you? Did you even try and read up on HOW to install the damned thing before you started? The entire ivtv driver system for the pvr series is a crappy MESS.
Yes, well, this files neatly into the "too little, too late" category. It was about 3 years ago I bought the card, in hopes of making a PVR out of an old PC I had lying around. I eventually ended up using EyeTV (IIRC...) in Windows, then I switched to a DishNetwork PVR when I got DishNetwork.
AFAIK, the broadcom series cards in apple laptops work out of the box on edgy. It did not work on dapper, but I'm pretty sure edgy supports it.
I don't know which version is "Dapper" and which is "Edgy." I tried it on 6.0-something and it didn't work.
Keyboard venting heat? I'd have to say, that is a pretty idiotic design. What if you wanted to let the laptop work at a problem while protecting the screen? Opps, guess i can't do that with macs.
1) You can with a Powerbook, just not an iBook. 2) Like I said before, when you buy a small laptop with good features you expect to make a trade-off. How often do you let your laptop "work at a problem" with the lid shut? I've owned it for years, and never had the need to do that.
That also doesn't excuse a software design that could potentially damage hardware. Regardless of how well-designed the laptop is, the OS that lets it harm itself is definitely NOT well-designed.
The simple fact of the matter is that Ubuntu was never QAed on these particular laptops and despite that is freely available to download for use on them, despite having a flaw that could potentially destroy the laptop. That's the important bit. How well the laptop is designed, that's not important, which company produced it, that's not important.
Their default (not sleeping when you shut the screen) makes SENSE on the majority of laptops today.
Not for any of the laptop users I know. Everyone of of them just use their laptop interactively, and don't start some long process, then close the lid until it finishes.
Most people who are complaining about Windows instability have faulty hardware. I've found this to be true almost 100% of the time. The easiest "tell" is if they say their computer frequently bluescreens... that's always either hardware, or a third-party driver, which amounts to the same thing.
I found the oposite to be true for machines that spend most of the time online. If you share a machine with teenagers, the Windows machine quickly becomes bogged down and requires rebuilding every 3-6 months.
Just don't give them the admin password. Hell, that's an easy fix without switching OSes... every piece of Windows malware out there requires Administrator access to run. Remove Admin access, and the worst you get is a "permission denied" dialog when it tries to do its thing.
I'm not saying the Registry is the most well-designed piece of software on the planet and Microsoft should get a halo from God for it, I'm just saying it's less cryptic than a myriad of different text files in different formats at different locations.
The real point is that every other OS had it down pat a decade ago, and Linux still hasn't figured it out across all applications. Sorry if I'm wrong about the specifics related to version, but I think we can all agree that by Windows 95 and Macintosh System 6, it was done for those OSes.
Wow, I gotta stop typing replies while on conference calls. The word "email" in the second reply should be "computer":
I didn't realize there was a "correct" way of installing an OS, I just ran the Setup program from the CD. But I guess it's *my* fault that Ubuntu's setup program did something wrong with my computer.
Hmmm... I'm guessing you did some things seriously wrong.
If I did, then Ubuntu needs to rethink what actions are "correct."
I've been using Edgy since release in October, and I've never had ANY app EVER crash on me. Maybe the difference is I actually know how to install something correctly with my hardware, something most Winblows fanbois never get.
I don't use Windows except at work. That said, I've had a better experience with Windows XP than any Linux I've ever tried.
I didn't realize there was a "correct" way of installing an OS, I just ran the Setup program from the CD. But I guess it's *my* fault that Ubuntu's setup program did something wrong with my email.
The software under "Add/Remove Software" does everything correctly for me.
Good for you.
Ubuntu does FINE with wireless in iBooks. Try ndiswrapper, it works fine.
Every set of instructions I found to get wifi working on iBooks required downloading files. I can't download files with no wifi. That's the problem I'm talking about. Does your "ndiswrapper" method involve downloading files? If so, then it's part of the same problem I already described. If not, then how come you haven't posted instructions on how to do it? (And more importantly: why doesn't Ubuntu just automatically do it?)
Considering we use those PVR cards at work, I know that YOU are lying. They work fine out of the box for me. Did you try Edgy? Did you even INSTALL it???
Yes. Three times. With two different Linux experts, although maybe they didn't know what they were talking about, but they sure sounded confident. On Fedora and Ubuntu. The card simply Does. Not. Work.
(The second Linux expert who was helping me suggested that maybe Hauppauge switched the hardware they used in the card to something the existing driver didn't know about. But either way, we hit a brick wall and the card was useless in Linux.)
At best, you can say that SOME Hauppauge WinPVR 250 cards work. But I'd been told that ALL WinPVR 250 cards worked for days before buying it, which is why I bought it.
I agree about the copy/paste ordeal. However, I wish I could paste by simply middle-clicking in Winblows or OSuX. OH wait.... you don't have a middle-button Apple? Oh sorry, wouldn't want to confuse your users too much.
I'd rather have copy and paste that *works* than a slightly quicker shortcut to Paste. Control-V/Command-V works fine for me.
Finally, iBooks use the keyboard for venting heat? How idiotic of an engineering design is that???
It's designed with the assumption that the OS always sleeps the heat-producing components when the lid closes, which the OS it was designed for does. It's a very small laptop with good features, and I'm perfectly ok with tradeoffs.
Besides, whether or not it's a good design is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that Ubuntu's defaults CAN DAMAGE HARDWARE. I happened to be fortunate to know that iBooks must be sleeped when closed, but for a newbie (the person this distro is supposedly aimed for), that would come as a nasty surprise after they opened the lid of their laptop and found it bricked because some jerk at Ubuntu released it for that hardware without bothering to do any sort of QA process.
And it's so goddamned easy to fix. All they need to do is check for iBook models that vent hot air through the keyboard (there can't be more than 4-5 of them) and WARN people about it. Alternatively, they could set a SANE default on those models that will reduce the chance of harming them. Either way would be an easy fix.
The fact that it isn't fixed already means the distro probably wasn't tested whatsoever on those laptop models which, as the parent sarcastically points out, really inspires confidence, doesn't it?
The Registry isn't any more crypt than Linux configuration text files or OS X plist files. In fact, at least the Registry and plist files have a common defined file format, so I'd say they were LESS cryptic.
My answer would be, "it's the best offering any Linux has ever had, but it's still far inferior to Windows XP or Mac OS X."
Whether it's a "serious desktop contender" depends on whether people can tolerate the shortcomings, and I think the answer is no.
The big headline about Linux is stability, it never crashes. Well, when people say that, they're only talking about the OS kernel. The sad fact of the matter is that most apps in Ubuntu crash ALL THE FREAKING TIME, and when they do crash, rarely do they ever give you any useful information on how to solve the problem. In fact, a lot of the time, they seem to either just not even run at all, or start up and then immediately crash with no debugging info. Who cares about how stable the kernel is when all your apps fail in mysterious ways?
Most of the software in Ubuntu's "Add/Remove" list still doesn't even create start menu items when it's installed. Or maybe the program that creates start menu items crashed silently and I didn't know about it. Either way.
Ubuntu still can't use the wireless card in Apple laptops. That's enough to be a complete deal-breaker for me-- I don't have wired Internet in my house at all, and all the instructions for setting up wireless on Ubuntu require (irony alert!) DOWNLOADING FILES! (And no, I'm not going to download files on my work computer to get my damned laptop to work. You'd think there would be enough Apple laptop users for them to include the needed files on the damned CD.)
Many pieces of "supported" hardware don't work at all. I'm referring to a Hauppauge WinPVR 250 card I bought for my old PC specifically because Linux users recommended it... after going through the (horrible, arcane) install process with two different Linux experts, I've come to the conclusion that the card simply doesn't work in Linux. Period. The best I got was a postage-stamp sized image with no sound. In other words, all those people recommending it either flat-out lied about the level of supported for this card, or had Hauppauge cards from heaven. I'm going with lied.
Linux apps still ask you to type in device names in a lot of places, which no user should be expected to know. Linux apps don't support OS-integrated spell-checking or drag&drop as well as OS X does. Linux apps (generally) don't support copy and paste for anything more complex than plain text. (Try copying some spreadsheet cells from Excel on OS X... if you paste it into an App (like Photoshop) that has no concept of spreadsheet cells, you end up with a bitmap of those cells. That's smart behavior. I've never seen anything close to that smart on Linux. And Mac OS did that in SYSTEM 6! Probably earlier. Windows did it in Window 95! Linux can't even do it in 2006.)
If Ubuntu had the features of Mac OS X with a better file browser (frankly, Finder sucks ass) and for cheaper than Windows, then it could make real in-roads. But it doesn't, and I don't forsee it having those features for a long, long time.
I see most of these Ubuntu problems as a failure of the QA process, if there even is one. Apple has many 8 different laptop configurations, the fact that wireless doesn't run on ANY of them out-of-the-box is pathetic. It's not like Dell that has 800 different laptop configurations, and somehow the Dell ones probably work better than the Apple ones.
Or how about this little gem: iBooks are designed to sleep when the lid closes because they use the keyboard for venting heat. This means that if your iBook doesn't go to sleep when you close the lid, it could quite possibly damage itself from overheat. Ubuntu doesn't by default sleep the iBook when you close the lid. I was actually kind of hoping that it would damage the laptop so I could sue their asses for creating software that damaged my computer. The fact that Ubuntu has *dangerous* defaults without even WARNING iBook owners is unacceptable, and you'd never see Apple or Microsoft doing it. And again, there's only like 4 models of iBook ever, how hard would it be to put in a "caution: don't close the lid without manually shutting down or sleeping first" warning somewhere?
Kind of turned into a rant, but... yeah. There you go.
Yes, the PS3 is getting ripped a lot of places. And I kind of understand the anti-Xbox slant because Xbox is by Microsoft, and GOD FORBID someone at Slashdot support a Microsoft product, even if it is a genuinely great one that's shaken up the entire console game industry!
But the vast majority of gaming articles still have very highly moderated, entirely off-topic, rants about how great Nintendo is because they make games "fun" again. Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but what is a fact is that in an article titled, "Halo 3 coming to Xbox 360 in November" ANY discussion of the Gamecube, Wii or Nintendo-anything is OFF-TOPIC, and yet it's never moderated that way.
That's where I'm getting the Nintendo bias from. The lack of off-topic mods on extremely off-topic pro-Nintendo wankfests that get posted constantly around here.
I have yet to understand why anyone in this profession would run screaming into the night because they must learn something new.
You don't have to understand it for it to be true. Besides, I'm not "in the profession." I'm just a hobbyist.
It's not that it involves learning something new, it's that it involves something that conceptually I'm just not that good at grasping. I can't learn calculus, either, I've learned through many, many disappointing grades in college math courses. That's just the way I am. C++ I get. The Visual Basic and RealBasic window designers I get.
Interface Builder I don't get. I need to ask my more knowledgeable buddies about 50 questions about how it works every time I touch it. Then the next time I touch it 6 weeks later, I need to ask all the same questions, because my brain just simply doesn't absorb it. I apologize that I don't meet your standards, but that's just the way it is.
And, frankly, since.net does it all and runs on more computers, I think Apple's in trouble when it comes to development tools. If they really wanted to make an impact, they'd allow XCode cross-compile/link for Windows.
I hated Visual Studio's designer component. Could. Not. Stand. It.
That's fine, but you *do* realize that you aren't the alpha and omega of the entire computer industry, right?
I guess I really don't get the point of your post. I thought it was basically a "well, everyone who doesn't think and act like me is wrong!" Slashdot Special, but after re-reading it I'm not so sure.
Of course, now after dropping Java like a hot potato, Apple's going to have to convince developers that if they write a Python app, it'll run longer than a few versions.
I think a "big" problem with GNUStep and Apple's Cocoa is its reliance on Objective-C, a language most people have never heard of. Apple put some work into building Java compatibility into its Cocoa environment, but they seem to have given up on that. (To the chagrin of projects like Adium, which used it extensively.) I would also argue that Java is a terrible choice for Mac programmers, who seem to favor more elegant and "artsy" results.
If you could code in Cocoa using C++, C# or even a language like Python, PHP or Ruby, I think it would be a lot easier to convince programmers. I know that personally I was very taken-aback by Objective-C and it's frankly mystifying and strange syntax compared to the C++ I was used to.
It also doesn't help that designing a Cocoa app is conceptually hard and has a relatively high learning curve. I've tinkered on and off with Cocoa with three years now, and designed several finished apps with it, and I still have to get help remembering which way to draw my lines in Interface Builder. (Maybe it's a case of "old dogs", but designing a UI with something like RealBasic or Visual Studio is much easier to my brain.)
Not to be a scrooge myself, but surely there are enough *real* stories of bad company Christmas bonuses that we don't have to mod a fictional account from a movie to the top spot?
It's not the guy with the SUV that's the problem, it's the trucking company that we use to ship goods all over the US. It's the airlines that use that fuel to fly all over the world. Raising the cost of those industries *could* kill the economy, by raising the price of everything at once without any equivalent raise in income or lowering in taxes.
Who gives a crap about SUV drivers when every product you buy was shipped on a truck?
Wow. Are you angry at the entire world and just taking it out on Slashdot? Or did the grandparent poster personally raped your mom? Please give me some details, Mr. Rage.
Open Office and GIMP aren't "Best of Class" applications. Maybe in the top 5. MAYbe.
Sooner or later I asked her what the flashing light was and there she found a save as item. She had given up already. I have to wonder if the light would have flashed at all for a patient person like myself who does not know the goofy keyboard shortcut.
You don't need fact-checking when it's open source!!! (Also, Vista is 32-bit only. Hah! Maybe ESR should figure out what the hell he's talking about BEFORE talking.)
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It's a design principle called the Principle Of Least Surprise.
Say you copy from a spreadsheet and paste into GIMP. You expect to see *something* pasted, right? (Ignoring whether or not this is a common operation.) When you see nothing, you'd assume your computer was broken in some way. Probably you'd copy the cells again and try to paste again. After a couple tries, you'd be very frustrated and upset with your computer.
Now, if Linux was the only thing in the world, at this point you'd just accept it and cope with it, like people do with Windows bugs. (Like how control panel windows have no entry in the taskbar.) But since Windows and OS X exist, what happens in our world is that people go back to one or the other and tell their friends, "man, Linux sucks! It can't do the most simple things!"
It's also the principle of "get the damned basics down before worrying about 3D window managers" which I just made up.
You're not feeding a troll, because I'm not a troll. I'm just communicating my experience with Ubuntu. It wasn't a positive experience, but that doesn't make me a troll.
what idiot suggested the pvr250 to you? Did you even try and read up on HOW to install the damned thing before you started? The entire ivtv driver system for the pvr series is a crappy MESS.
Yes, well, this files neatly into the "too little, too late" category. It was about 3 years ago I bought the card, in hopes of making a PVR out of an old PC I had lying around. I eventually ended up using EyeTV (IIRC...) in Windows, then I switched to a DishNetwork PVR when I got DishNetwork.
AFAIK, the broadcom series cards in apple laptops work out of the box on edgy. It did not work on dapper, but I'm pretty sure edgy supports it.
I don't know which version is "Dapper" and which is "Edgy." I tried it on 6.0-something and it didn't work.
Keyboard venting heat? I'd have to say, that is a pretty idiotic design. What if you wanted to let the laptop work at a problem while protecting the screen? Opps, guess i can't do that with macs.
1) You can with a Powerbook, just not an iBook.
2) Like I said before, when you buy a small laptop with good features you expect to make a trade-off. How often do you let your laptop "work at a problem" with the lid shut? I've owned it for years, and never had the need to do that.
That also doesn't excuse a software design that could potentially damage hardware. Regardless of how well-designed the laptop is, the OS that lets it harm itself is definitely NOT well-designed.
The simple fact of the matter is that Ubuntu was never QAed on these particular laptops and despite that is freely available to download for use on them, despite having a flaw that could potentially destroy the laptop. That's the important bit. How well the laptop is designed, that's not important, which company produced it, that's not important.
Their default (not sleeping when you shut the screen) makes SENSE on the majority of laptops today.
Not for any of the laptop users I know. Everyone of of them just use their laptop interactively, and don't start some long process, then close the lid until it finishes.
Most people who are complaining about Windows instability have faulty hardware. I've found this to be true almost 100% of the time. The easiest "tell" is if they say their computer frequently bluescreens... that's always either hardware, or a third-party driver, which amounts to the same thing.
I found the oposite to be true for machines that spend most of the time online. If you share a machine with teenagers, the Windows machine quickly becomes bogged down and requires rebuilding every 3-6 months.
Just don't give them the admin password. Hell, that's an easy fix without switching OSes... every piece of Windows malware out there requires Administrator access to run. Remove Admin access, and the worst you get is a "permission denied" dialog when it tries to do its thing.
3) You can auto-tile or auto-cascade windows under MS Windows? I never found anything of the sort in the 17 years that I've had a copy around.
You've got to be f-ing kidding me.
I'm not saying the Registry is the most well-designed piece of software on the planet and Microsoft should get a halo from God for it, I'm just saying it's less cryptic than a myriad of different text files in different formats at different locations.
The real point is that every other OS had it down pat a decade ago, and Linux still hasn't figured it out across all applications. Sorry if I'm wrong about the specifics related to version, but I think we can all agree that by Windows 95 and Macintosh System 6, it was done for those OSes.
Your first reason is compelling, for the Registry. Apple's plist files allow comments, also.
Your second reason is one of those things that Linux users might do, but 99.999% of the populace doesn't. Therefore, I consider it pretty irrelevant.
Wow, I gotta stop typing replies while on conference calls. The word "email" in the second reply should be "computer":
I didn't realize there was a "correct" way of installing an OS, I just ran the Setup program from the CD. But I guess it's *my* fault that Ubuntu's setup program did something wrong with my computer.
Hmmm... I'm guessing you did some things seriously wrong.
If I did, then Ubuntu needs to rethink what actions are "correct."
I've been using Edgy since release in October, and I've never had ANY app EVER crash on me. Maybe the difference is I actually know how to install something correctly with my hardware, something most Winblows fanbois never get.
I don't use Windows except at work. That said, I've had a better experience with Windows XP than any Linux I've ever tried.
I didn't realize there was a "correct" way of installing an OS, I just ran the Setup program from the CD. But I guess it's *my* fault that Ubuntu's setup program did something wrong with my email.
The software under "Add/Remove Software" does everything correctly for me.
Good for you.
Ubuntu does FINE with wireless in iBooks. Try ndiswrapper, it works fine.
Every set of instructions I found to get wifi working on iBooks required downloading files. I can't download files with no wifi. That's the problem I'm talking about. Does your "ndiswrapper" method involve downloading files? If so, then it's part of the same problem I already described. If not, then how come you haven't posted instructions on how to do it? (And more importantly: why doesn't Ubuntu just automatically do it?)
Considering we use those PVR cards at work, I know that YOU are lying. They work fine out of the box for me. Did you try Edgy? Did you even INSTALL it???
Yes. Three times. With two different Linux experts, although maybe they didn't know what they were talking about, but they sure sounded confident. On Fedora and Ubuntu. The card simply Does. Not. Work.
(The second Linux expert who was helping me suggested that maybe Hauppauge switched the hardware they used in the card to something the existing driver didn't know about. But either way, we hit a brick wall and the card was useless in Linux.)
At best, you can say that SOME Hauppauge WinPVR 250 cards work. But I'd been told that ALL WinPVR 250 cards worked for days before buying it, which is why I bought it.
I agree about the copy/paste ordeal. However, I wish I could paste by simply middle-clicking in Winblows or OSuX. OH wait.... you don't have a middle-button Apple? Oh sorry, wouldn't want to confuse your users too much.
I'd rather have copy and paste that *works* than a slightly quicker shortcut to Paste. Control-V/Command-V works fine for me.
Finally, iBooks use the keyboard for venting heat? How idiotic of an engineering design is that???
It's designed with the assumption that the OS always sleeps the heat-producing components when the lid closes, which the OS it was designed for does. It's a very small laptop with good features, and I'm perfectly ok with tradeoffs.
Besides, whether or not it's a good design is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that Ubuntu's defaults CAN DAMAGE HARDWARE. I happened to be fortunate to know that iBooks must be sleeped when closed, but for a newbie (the person this distro is supposedly aimed for), that would come as a nasty surprise after they opened the lid of their laptop and found it bricked because some jerk at Ubuntu released it for that hardware without bothering to do any sort of QA process.
And it's so goddamned easy to fix. All they need to do is check for iBook models that vent hot air through the keyboard (there can't be more than 4-5 of them) and WARN people about it. Alternatively, they could set a SANE default on those models that will reduce the chance of harming them. Either way would be an easy fix.
The fact that it isn't fixed already means the distro probably wasn't tested whatsoever on those laptop models which, as the parent sarcastically points out, really inspires confidence, doesn't it?
Does it support the wireless cards on Apple laptops?
The Registry isn't any more crypt than Linux configuration text files or OS X plist files. In fact, at least the Registry and plist files have a common defined file format, so I'd say they were LESS cryptic.
My answer would be, "it's the best offering any Linux has ever had, but it's still far inferior to Windows XP or Mac OS X."
... yeah. There you go.
Whether it's a "serious desktop contender" depends on whether people can tolerate the shortcomings, and I think the answer is no.
The big headline about Linux is stability, it never crashes. Well, when people say that, they're only talking about the OS kernel. The sad fact of the matter is that most apps in Ubuntu crash ALL THE FREAKING TIME, and when they do crash, rarely do they ever give you any useful information on how to solve the problem. In fact, a lot of the time, they seem to either just not even run at all, or start up and then immediately crash with no debugging info. Who cares about how stable the kernel is when all your apps fail in mysterious ways?
Most of the software in Ubuntu's "Add/Remove" list still doesn't even create start menu items when it's installed. Or maybe the program that creates start menu items crashed silently and I didn't know about it. Either way.
Ubuntu still can't use the wireless card in Apple laptops. That's enough to be a complete deal-breaker for me-- I don't have wired Internet in my house at all, and all the instructions for setting up wireless on Ubuntu require (irony alert!) DOWNLOADING FILES! (And no, I'm not going to download files on my work computer to get my damned laptop to work. You'd think there would be enough Apple laptop users for them to include the needed files on the damned CD.)
Many pieces of "supported" hardware don't work at all. I'm referring to a Hauppauge WinPVR 250 card I bought for my old PC specifically because Linux users recommended it... after going through the (horrible, arcane) install process with two different Linux experts, I've come to the conclusion that the card simply doesn't work in Linux. Period. The best I got was a postage-stamp sized image with no sound. In other words, all those people recommending it either flat-out lied about the level of supported for this card, or had Hauppauge cards from heaven. I'm going with lied.
Linux apps still ask you to type in device names in a lot of places, which no user should be expected to know. Linux apps don't support OS-integrated spell-checking or drag&drop as well as OS X does. Linux apps (generally) don't support copy and paste for anything more complex than plain text. (Try copying some spreadsheet cells from Excel on OS X... if you paste it into an App (like Photoshop) that has no concept of spreadsheet cells, you end up with a bitmap of those cells. That's smart behavior. I've never seen anything close to that smart on Linux. And Mac OS did that in SYSTEM 6! Probably earlier. Windows did it in Window 95! Linux can't even do it in 2006.)
If Ubuntu had the features of Mac OS X with a better file browser (frankly, Finder sucks ass) and for cheaper than Windows, then it could make real in-roads. But it doesn't, and I don't forsee it having those features for a long, long time.
I see most of these Ubuntu problems as a failure of the QA process, if there even is one. Apple has many 8 different laptop configurations, the fact that wireless doesn't run on ANY of them out-of-the-box is pathetic. It's not like Dell that has 800 different laptop configurations, and somehow the Dell ones probably work better than the Apple ones.
Or how about this little gem: iBooks are designed to sleep when the lid closes because they use the keyboard for venting heat. This means that if your iBook doesn't go to sleep when you close the lid, it could quite possibly damage itself from overheat. Ubuntu doesn't by default sleep the iBook when you close the lid. I was actually kind of hoping that it would damage the laptop so I could sue their asses for creating software that damaged my computer. The fact that Ubuntu has *dangerous* defaults without even WARNING iBook owners is unacceptable, and you'd never see Apple or Microsoft doing it. And again, there's only like 4 models of iBook ever, how hard would it be to put in a "caution: don't close the lid without manually shutting down or sleeping first" warning somewhere?
Kind of turned into a rant, but
Yes, the PS3 is getting ripped a lot of places. And I kind of understand the anti-Xbox slant because Xbox is by Microsoft, and GOD FORBID someone at Slashdot support a Microsoft product, even if it is a genuinely great one that's shaken up the entire console game industry!
But the vast majority of gaming articles still have very highly moderated, entirely off-topic, rants about how great Nintendo is because they make games "fun" again. Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but what is a fact is that in an article titled, "Halo 3 coming to Xbox 360 in November" ANY discussion of the Gamecube, Wii or Nintendo-anything is OFF-TOPIC, and yet it's never moderated that way.
That's where I'm getting the Nintendo bias from. The lack of off-topic mods on extremely off-topic pro-Nintendo wankfests that get posted constantly around here.
I have yet to understand why anyone in this profession would run screaming into the night because they must learn something new.
.net does it all and runs on more computers, I think Apple's in trouble when it comes to development tools. If they really wanted to make an impact, they'd allow XCode cross-compile/link for Windows.
You don't have to understand it for it to be true. Besides, I'm not "in the profession." I'm just a hobbyist.
It's not that it involves learning something new, it's that it involves something that conceptually I'm just not that good at grasping. I can't learn calculus, either, I've learned through many, many disappointing grades in college math courses. That's just the way I am. C++ I get. The Visual Basic and RealBasic window designers I get.
Interface Builder I don't get. I need to ask my more knowledgeable buddies about 50 questions about how it works every time I touch it. Then the next time I touch it 6 weeks later, I need to ask all the same questions, because my brain just simply doesn't absorb it. I apologize that I don't meet your standards, but that's just the way it is.
And, frankly, since
I hated Visual Studio's designer component. Could. Not. Stand. It.
That's fine, but you *do* realize that you aren't the alpha and omega of the entire computer industry, right?
I guess I really don't get the point of your post. I thought it was basically a "well, everyone who doesn't think and act like me is wrong!" Slashdot Special, but after re-reading it I'm not so sure.
Of course, now after dropping Java like a hot potato, Apple's going to have to convince developers that if they write a Python app, it'll run longer than a few versions.
I probably would, too. But I'd pick C# over both, and that's the real problem Apple faces.
I think a "big" problem with GNUStep and Apple's Cocoa is its reliance on Objective-C, a language most people have never heard of. Apple put some work into building Java compatibility into its Cocoa environment, but they seem to have given up on that. (To the chagrin of projects like Adium, which used it extensively.) I would also argue that Java is a terrible choice for Mac programmers, who seem to favor more elegant and "artsy" results.
If you could code in Cocoa using C++, C# or even a language like Python, PHP or Ruby, I think it would be a lot easier to convince programmers. I know that personally I was very taken-aback by Objective-C and it's frankly mystifying and strange syntax compared to the C++ I was used to.
It also doesn't help that designing a Cocoa app is conceptually hard and has a relatively high learning curve. I've tinkered on and off with Cocoa with three years now, and designed several finished apps with it, and I still have to get help remembering which way to draw my lines in Interface Builder. (Maybe it's a case of "old dogs", but designing a UI with something like RealBasic or Visual Studio is much easier to my brain.)
Not to be a scrooge myself, but surely there are enough *real* stories of bad company Christmas bonuses that we don't have to mod a fictional account from a movie to the top spot?
It's not the guy with the SUV that's the problem, it's the trucking company that we use to ship goods all over the US. It's the airlines that use that fuel to fly all over the world. Raising the cost of those industries *could* kill the economy, by raising the price of everything at once without any equivalent raise in income or lowering in taxes.
Who gives a crap about SUV drivers when every product you buy was shipped on a truck?
Wow. Are you angry at the entire world and just taking it out on Slashdot? Or did the grandparent poster personally raped your mom? Please give me some details, Mr. Rage.
Sure, it's retail, but their Christmas bonus was insulting. It was 5% off anything in the store for a period of one week. Which is great except:
1) Where I worked, sales tax was 8.6%
2) Who the hell wants to buy Christmas gifts at an office supply store? Criminy.
Open Office and GIMP aren't "Best of Class" applications. Maybe in the top 5. MAYbe.
Sooner or later I asked her what the flashing light was and there she found a save as item. She had given up already. I have to wonder if the light would have flashed at all for a patient person like myself who does not know the goofy keyboard shortcut.
I have no clue what you are talking about.
You don't need fact-checking when it's open source!!! (Also, Vista is 32-bit only. Hah! Maybe ESR should figure out what the hell he's talking about BEFORE talking.)