Whoa, hello. Apple had a BUDGET to work with. Xerox (for all practical matters) didn't. What did a PARC workstation cost? $25,000+? Something like that?
While I'm sure that, philosophically, you're correct (and I'm not going to really debate them, because half of what you said is gibberish to me), but you have to remember that Apple is a corporation... they can't spend millions of dollars and years and years of R&D to get some high lofty goal of computing done, they had to get a product out the door to recoup their losses before the Apple ][ sales fell by the wayside.
Hell, the Lisa was slow enough on its paltry 68000 CPU *without* a smalltalk interpreter.
In any case, if the approach you prescribe had really be *SO* superior than Apple's, we'd have seen an Apple competitor using it, right? So... where were they?
Making a computer easy for the masses isn't a "technology," but it's still damned important. You talk from the typical open-source "code is everything, usability unimportant" viewpoint but you have to remember that for the average user, if they can't use a feature, that feature might as well not exist. Now you're right in that the user experience for a few reasons didn't really gel until MacOS 4 or so, but the Lisa was a thousand times better (for users) than anything that came before it.
Alto was, from every account I've read, a beast to work with. Sure, it had a GUI, but its GUI wasn't modeled after anything in real life, unlike Apple's desktop metaphor. You can make a GUI that's just as dense as a CLI easily, and that's what Xerox had done.
From my experience, from the applications I've used on Linux compared to the applications I've used on MacOS and Windows, the clipboard in Linux has troubles with anything more complicated than text and even sometimes it has trouble with formatted text. I've had applications paste in gibberish, I've seen applications paste in HTML tags without parsing them, etc.
On my Macintosh, using System 6.0 in 1988, I could copy cells from Excel and paste them into Simpletext... the system was smart enough to realize that Simpletext wasn't a grid editor of any type, and pasted the image in as a bitmap.
But what really bothers me is that Linux is working towards all kinds of advanced stuff without getting the basics nailed down first. Copy and paste should have been settled way back when X11 was invented in the first place.
So if I install RedHat (or whatever the largest Linux distro is), which 3D-rendered desktop and which database-based filesystem do I get? After-all, they're available right now, right? So it stands to reason that the biggest distro should have both right now.
But it doesn't. Why not? When the Linux community solves that problem, we might get an operating system that's truly great on every level.
Open-source advocates often talk about the thousands of coders who do their best to create good software... and it's true. The trouble is to get them all on the same page and working towards the same end. That's something a corporation is good at and a community is not. (After-all, why are there 3 DB filesystems? Wouldn't a single one with all the features of those three be even better?)
Just because Microsoft is good at getting patents issued and defending them doesn't mean they like to allocate staff and resources to actually do it. In fact, they and a lot of other tech companies, could save a ton of money yearly on reduced legal staff if software patents were outlawed and more easily make use of new computing concepts at the same time. It's a win-win.
You might have a point with text, but there are other things you can clip other than text. In OS X and Windows, you can copy parts of a Windows Media Player movie and paste them into Powerpoint. You can copy your Powerpoint slide and paste it into Word. You can copy 15 non-contiguous cells from a Excel spreadsheet and paste them into Notepad.exe... and all of these do exactly what you expect. On a Mac, you can do all the same operations... you copy Excel cells and paste into TextEdit, and it works. MacOS has had a clipboard that could handle all these operations since 1988-90ish, and Windows has since 1995.
Linux is getting better, but you still find that copy and paste does not do what you expect.
The only people who claim that Linux clipboarding is better are the people like you who, apparently, never copy anything other than text. There's a whole world of data out there, text is just a small part of it.
So don't put it under an open source license. The entire point of this discussion is that Linux users are honest enough to buy software. If that point were true, then surely there'd be no problem with a commercial DVD player for Linux, right?
BTW, there should be a policy against modding things that are true as "flamebait." Use overrated with my original post if you really want to, but it's not flamebait if it's true.
there should be a consistency across technology, from remote controls, to cell phones, to laptops, to desktops, ad nauseum (there shouldn't -- just what is the argument for this?
Usability, duh. It's like saying that radio buttons in computer UIs, regardless of the platform, should always be circles and checkboxes should always be square. It tells the user what to expect when they click on the button based on their past experience.
Wouldn't it be great if paper forms used the same conventions? Use circles for choices that are mutually exclusive, and squares for choices that are not. Now if you know how to use a paper form, you can use a computer dialog box. And vice versa.
I just finished reading a few entries in a blog about the new interface for Office 12, and I was really, really impressed at the level of thinking that's gone into the new interface and, more importantly, the level and amount of usability tests. There's some exciting stuff there, and I bet we'll be seeing that MiniBar concept in applications for years and years to come.
Same issues occur with OS X. How would you exchange a USB2 disk between Linux and OS X without formatting it as FAT32 first? And that could happen to a non-Windows-using person.
I have the same issue. I have to keep my external USB2 250 GB drive formatted as FAT32, otherwise I can't use it with the Windows machines at work.
No, if Linux users were legit, some of them would call up the DVD consortium and license the CSS encryption to create a legal and correctly licensed DVD player app for Linux. The DVD consortium doesn't *prevent* anybody from making a DVD player app for Linux, just no Linux developer has ever licensed the tech from them.
You do DVD-css because it's cheaper than doing it the legal way.
The colored background makes it impossible to read your recent posts, which is just as well considering the title of the most recent one has a huge spelling error right in the first word.
Do you think it's moral to spend only $5 a month, download as many tracks as you want, and remove the DRM so that if your subscription lapses you can keep playing them?
Do you think it's moral to rent a Xbox game at Blockbuster then use a modded Xbox to copy the game disk to the hard drive so you can play it long after the rental has been returned?
I think most people, when they buy music, want to support the artist who created the music. After-all, that's the point of the copyright laws the RIAA uses in the first place. Allofmp3.com doesn't send any of their earnings back to the artists who originally recorded the music. Whether it's legal or not isn't the issue, whether it shows support for the artists you like is.
This is what bugs me about the liberals in this country. Iraqis have as much right to freedom as anybody here in the US, and if it takes the US invading that country to get rid of their horrible dictator, then that is what we should do. Our nation is founded on the priciple of "all men are created equal" not "all Americans are created equal."
A war unwanted by those you were "saving".
Do you really believe that? Truly? You think that the average Iraqi wanted Saddam as their uncontested leader?
... except that to do that, we'd have to understand how the brain works on an atomic level and we don't. Additionally, if we *did* understand how a brain works on an atomic level, there's nothing stopping us from building an array of machines to simulate the process right now. It might be slower than snot, but it'd work.
Well, at least it doesn't have a really really stupid name. In any case, I can use it for free, you can use it for free, and that's all 99% of people care about. Plus my iPod will play AAC and it won't play OGG.
Uh, maybe because Harvey Danger is signed and heard of? (Given, mostly as a one-hit wonder, but heard of none the less.)
If you're into the Seattle Alternative scene, they're pretty big as well. One of the more prominent local bands along with, say, Presidents of the United States of America.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa, hello. Apple had a BUDGET to work with. Xerox (for all practical matters) didn't. What did a PARC workstation cost? $25,000+? Something like that?
While I'm sure that, philosophically, you're correct (and I'm not going to really debate them, because half of what you said is gibberish to me), but you have to remember that Apple is a corporation... they can't spend millions of dollars and years and years of R&D to get some high lofty goal of computing done, they had to get a product out the door to recoup their losses before the Apple ][ sales fell by the wayside.
Hell, the Lisa was slow enough on its paltry 68000 CPU *without* a smalltalk interpreter.
In any case, if the approach you prescribe had really be *SO* superior than Apple's, we'd have seen an Apple competitor using it, right? So... where were they?
Making a computer easy for the masses isn't a "technology," but it's still damned important. You talk from the typical open-source "code is everything, usability unimportant" viewpoint but you have to remember that for the average user, if they can't use a feature, that feature might as well not exist. Now you're right in that the user experience for a few reasons didn't really gel until MacOS 4 or so, but the Lisa was a thousand times better (for users) than anything that came before it.
Alto was, from every account I've read, a beast to work with. Sure, it had a GUI, but its GUI wasn't modeled after anything in real life, unlike Apple's desktop metaphor. You can make a GUI that's just as dense as a CLI easily, and that's what Xerox had done.
Anyway, I think your criticism is unfair.
From my experience, from the applications I've used on Linux compared to the applications I've used on MacOS and Windows, the clipboard in Linux has troubles with anything more complicated than text and even sometimes it has trouble with formatted text. I've had applications paste in gibberish, I've seen applications paste in HTML tags without parsing them, etc.
On my Macintosh, using System 6.0 in 1988, I could copy cells from Excel and paste them into Simpletext... the system was smart enough to realize that Simpletext wasn't a grid editor of any type, and pasted the image in as a bitmap.
But what really bothers me is that Linux is working towards all kinds of advanced stuff without getting the basics nailed down first. Copy and paste should have been settled way back when X11 was invented in the first place.
So if I install RedHat (or whatever the largest Linux distro is), which 3D-rendered desktop and which database-based filesystem do I get? After-all, they're available right now, right? So it stands to reason that the biggest distro should have both right now.
But it doesn't. Why not? When the Linux community solves that problem, we might get an operating system that's truly great on every level.
Open-source advocates often talk about the thousands of coders who do their best to create good software... and it's true. The trouble is to get them all on the same page and working towards the same end. That's something a corporation is good at and a community is not. (After-all, why are there 3 DB filesystems? Wouldn't a single one with all the features of those three be even better?)
Don't blame the player, blame the game.
Just because Microsoft is good at getting patents issued and defending them doesn't mean they like to allocate staff and resources to actually do it. In fact, they and a lot of other tech companies, could save a ton of money yearly on reduced legal staff if software patents were outlawed and more easily make use of new computing concepts at the same time. It's a win-win.
Broadcast rights are secured from the BMI and ASCAP organizations, not the RIAA. The RIAA handles "recordings," not "performances."
You might have a point with text, but there are other things you can clip other than text. In OS X and Windows, you can copy parts of a Windows Media Player movie and paste them into Powerpoint. You can copy your Powerpoint slide and paste it into Word. You can copy 15 non-contiguous cells from a Excel spreadsheet and paste them into Notepad.exe... and all of these do exactly what you expect. On a Mac, you can do all the same operations... you copy Excel cells and paste into TextEdit, and it works. MacOS has had a clipboard that could handle all these operations since 1988-90ish, and Windows has since 1995.
Linux is getting better, but you still find that copy and paste does not do what you expect.
The only people who claim that Linux clipboarding is better are the people like you who, apparently, never copy anything other than text. There's a whole world of data out there, text is just a small part of it.
Yeah! Those bastards! ... wanna buy WindowsCista.com?
So don't put it under an open source license. The entire point of this discussion is that Linux users are honest enough to buy software. If that point were true, then surely there'd be no problem with a commercial DVD player for Linux, right?
BTW, there should be a policy against modding things that are true as "flamebait." Use overrated with my original post if you really want to, but it's not flamebait if it's true.
Various office programs working together predates MS-Office,
Can you give a source/example for this one?
there should be a consistency across technology, from remote controls, to cell phones, to laptops, to desktops, ad nauseum (there shouldn't -- just what is the argument for this?
Usability, duh. It's like saying that radio buttons in computer UIs, regardless of the platform, should always be circles and checkboxes should always be square. It tells the user what to expect when they click on the button based on their past experience.
Wouldn't it be great if paper forms used the same conventions? Use circles for choices that are mutually exclusive, and squares for choices that are not. Now if you know how to use a paper form, you can use a computer dialog box. And vice versa.
I just finished reading a few entries in a blog about the new interface for Office 12, and I was really, really impressed at the level of thinking that's gone into the new interface and, more importantly, the level and amount of usability tests. There's some exciting stuff there, and I bet we'll be seeing that MiniBar concept in applications for years and years to come.
(The blog is here if you're interested: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx)
I don't know how others feel, but my impression of Microsoft is that they're always *trying* to innovate, whether or not they happen to succeed.
Same issues occur with OS X. How would you exchange a USB2 disk between Linux and OS X without formatting it as FAT32 first? And that could happen to a non-Windows-using person.
I have the same issue. I have to keep my external USB2 250 GB drive formatted as FAT32, otherwise I can't use it with the Windows machines at work.
No, if Linux users were legit, some of them would call up the DVD consortium and license the CSS encryption to create a legal and correctly licensed DVD player app for Linux. The DVD consortium doesn't *prevent* anybody from making a DVD player app for Linux, just no Linux developer has ever licensed the tech from them.
You do DVD-css because it's cheaper than doing it the legal way.
Maybe it's because your blog sucks?
The colored background makes it impossible to read your recent posts, which is just as well considering the title of the most recent one has a huge spelling error right in the first word.
And if you do cancel, do you plan on deleting the music you've acquired using Yahoo's service?
Have you played Morrowind? That's the most "pure" RP environment I've seen in a long time.
Do you think it's moral to spend only $5 a month, download as many tracks as you want, and remove the DRM so that if your subscription lapses you can keep playing them?
Do you think it's moral to rent a Xbox game at Blockbuster then use a modded Xbox to copy the game disk to the hard drive so you can play it long after the rental has been returned?
I think most people, when they buy music, want to support the artist who created the music. After-all, that's the point of the copyright laws the RIAA uses in the first place. Allofmp3.com doesn't send any of their earnings back to the artists who originally recorded the music. Whether it's legal or not isn't the issue, whether it shows support for the artists you like is.
This is what bugs me about the liberals in this country. Iraqis have as much right to freedom as anybody here in the US, and if it takes the US invading that country to get rid of their horrible dictator, then that is what we should do. Our nation is founded on the priciple of "all men are created equal" not "all Americans are created equal."
A war unwanted by those you were "saving".
Do you really believe that? Truly? You think that the average Iraqi wanted Saddam as their uncontested leader?
I'm saying don't put the cart before the horse.
It could be Dr. Girlfriend from The Venture Brothers, I suppose...
... except that to do that, we'd have to understand how the brain works on an atomic level and we don't. Additionally, if we *did* understand how a brain works on an atomic level, there's nothing stopping us from building an array of machines to simulate the process right now. It might be slower than snot, but it'd work.
Well, at least it doesn't have a really really stupid name. In any case, I can use it for free, you can use it for free, and that's all 99% of people care about. Plus my iPod will play AAC and it won't play OGG.
Uh, maybe because Harvey Danger is signed and heard of? (Given, mostly as a one-hit wonder, but heard of none the less.)
If you're into the Seattle Alternative scene, they're pretty big as well. One of the more prominent local bands along with, say, Presidents of the United States of America.