"Enthusiasts" aren't the only people who need to re-install Windows; in fact, everybody does sooner or later, as registry settings, DLLs, drivers, and other system components slowly but invariably get changed to the point that the system simply doesn't work at all anymore or shows some annoying behaviors.
I think the main difference is that "PC enthusiasts" are the ones who know that they actually can fix this with a reinstall, while most other people just go out and buy a new machine.
Seems reliable enough to me. I can't remember the last time my Internet connection went down either at home or at work, except when there was a power failure.
but OS X is targeted at the desktop, while Linux is not
That statement makes no sense because "Linux" can mean many things. The Linux-related analogs of OS X are SuSE, RedHat, and Ubuntu, and those are every bit as much targeted at the desktop as OS X is.
[OpenStep/Cocoa technology] uninteresting if you're running a server.
No, it's uninteresting because it is largely obsolete. Don't get me wrong: it still works pretty well and it's OK for Apple to stay with it for a while, but the technology is not something many people in the Linux world would be attracted to.
OpensStep provides portable application packages that can easily be moved from one location to another and require no extra steps to install or uninstall.
More accurately, OS X lacks a full package and dependency manager, so developers are forced to bundle up all their dependencies in bloated "application packages"; that's not simple, it's simplistic. Linux distributions have wisely and deliberately chosen a different approach.
That is integration.
Apple's Services menu is a textbook example of a poorly thought out user interface and implementation; it's obscure, cluttered, counterintuitive, and many of its entries are haphazardly and inappropriately activated and inactivated. If you're actually using it as more than an example, you're in a small minority; most people don't even now it's there.
On both Gnome and KDE I have completely failed to reproduce this functionality.
The underlying support is there and it's better architected than Apple's solution; however, it's not exposed to users in something like the Services menu, and until someone comes up with a better interface than Apple, it shouldn't be.
What makes OS X shine is the fact that someone is willing to make decisions and put manpower behind making an ideal desktop OS
I think if you checked, you'd see that OS X has considerably fewer overall resources invested in it than either KDE or Gnome. And I think that's reflected in the end product. What Apple does is they target their resources differently, and that leads to a particular kind of product that appeals to a particular kind of buyer. But it's not a "ideal desktop OS", it's only an "ideal desktop OS" for some people.
Sure maybe Apple's OpenStep implementation is no better than GNUStep as far as the qaulity of the code is concerned, but people can and do use Apple's implementation because it is built in and it works with everything.
People don't use GNUStep because Linux desktops have standardized on either Gnome or KDE, and because the *Step interface and technology is uninteresting. At this point, Apple could completely open source the OS X GUI and people still wouldn't use it.
It is a combination of smoothly working, quality technology, integration of that technology, and central decision making to make an OS for the desktop, not the desktop, server, and cell phone, that makes OS X a nicer workstation for me.
I challenge you to demonstrate that OS X is any more "smoothly working" or "integrated" than SuSE or Ubuntu according to any objective criterion. That may be your user experience, but other people have other user experiences.
Your suggestion that Linux is hampered by trying to serve too many masters is wrong. Linux desktop distributions are just as fully designed for the desktop as OS X. Furthermore, Apple is very much trying to make OS X into both a desktop and a server OS (with limited success).
Maybe some support and extra innovation will keep it viable and maintain its developers/users.
If PHP developers wanted "innovation", PHP wouldn't have succeeded as much as it did. PHP has succeeded because it's for people to develop web applications with, and to do so with little more than a text editor. It also doesn't look to me like PHP needs more support (and what kind support would Microsoft offer anyway?).
This is simply what it looks like: Microsoft wants PHP to run better on Windows servers so that people who want to run popular PHP applications aren't forced to switch to Linux in order to get good performance. It's understandable, it's reasonable, and it's not particularly nefarious.
Maybe Microsoft will add a little more support to their development tools for PHP, or maybe not, but I doubt that will make a difference to anybody; people who develop with Microsoft tools probably aren't all that interested in PHP (yes, I know, I'm an insensitive clod because you, gentle reader, happen to be one of those people, but I suspect there aren't so many of you).
It doesn't really matter what they protect, they are simply trying to make copying OS X wholesale more cumbersome. Functionally, there is nothing in OS X that would be worth disassembling for anybody: there are already open source implementations of Spotlight, Finder, SystemUIServer, Doc, and all the other stuff, and arguably, the open source versions are technically better. The thing that makes Macs shine and sell is the packaging and integration, not the technology.
Ubuntu has done a stellar job: on standard hardware, the install is trivial, and afterwards you get a desktop environment with mainstream, easy-to-use applications. It's actually easier than either Windows or Macintosh since you don't even have to install the third party apps--it all "just works".
Texting is very important, in particular to low-end phone users and "emerging markets", because it's inexpensive and simple, and because it's increasingly being used for business functions. On the other hand, if money is tight, I think durability and use of standard technologies matter more than being ultra-thin and shiny.
This phone looks like an overpriced gimmick to me.
As far as I know, the UK charges extra fees for blank media to compensate artists for copying, so you should bloody well be able to copy it. That's not even "fair use", that's paid use.
This is in addition to the fact that UK tax payers and television viewers are subsidizing music and the arts through their mandatory public radio and television fees, as well as grants to the arts.
How many times over are British tax payers supposed to pay for content?
Notice how in all this discussion, everybody is implicitly assuming that the watch lists are actually worth anything. In fact, I think the reason this hole has existed for several years without any problem due to them is that the watch lists simply don't make any difference at all.
Which raises the question: why have the watch lists in the first place? I think they are more psychological than anything else: they give the impression that there is a continuing threat, they give the impression that the government is doing something, and they make people willingly give in to controls that they previously wouldn't have considered. Remember: you used to be able to travel across this nation without the government being able to track your every step.
The elder generation tells me that America has always had a pendulum effect in these types of things - we sway way the fuck too far at first, and then slowly crank it back to the middle.
Well, then the "elder generation" you talk to is full of shit. The US government didn't use to have this kind of power. Oh, sure, it wanted to, and it abused whatever power it had, but it didn't officially have this kind of power. What's happening is unprecedented for the US.
I'm pretty unimpressed with what's been coming out of the W3C over the last few years; yes, they cleaned up the specs a little, but they produced a disproportionate amount of junk in the same time and I think most of their new standards have been flops.
I think the problem is that the W3C is trying to invent new stuff rather than standardizing existing practice after the market has decided on something. Unfortunately, that kind of approach not only risks going wrong, it attracts entirely the wrong kind of people to an organization like that.
It's no surprise that Kelo went the way it did. You're thinking is that "liberals are for the little guys, conservatives for business". But, in reality, having the power of central planning is crucial to the liberal agenda. Kelo was exactly what the liberals needed: the power for government officials to confiscate your personal property in the name of a "greater good" by calling it a "public purpose" (not public use, however, as the 5th Amendment says).
It's fascinating that demagogues like you want to turn even a clear fact (four conservative justices taking away private property) into a rant against liberals. In reality, totalitarianism lurks at both the very right and the very left of the political spectrum, and at this point, US Republicans and conservatives are a lot closer to the right end than US Democrats and liberals are to the left end.
This is not about your party, the Constitution gets in the way of BOTH parties, but it's not for the parties, it's for the PEOPLE. So back the Constitution, because it's just in the way of the Democrats and the Republicans. It's time for both parties to face the hard truths: you can't execute unwarranted searchs (too bad, GOP). And Democrats: stop trying to control guns, unless you want to try to pass an Amendment. The Constitution says these things, plain and simple. Oh, and when you get a chance, read the 10th Amendment, too.
The hard truth is that you're just spouting a lot of hot air and that both parties can do these things and are doing them. The US government is executing unwarranted searches and seizures, and the US government is implementing gun control.
The current meaning of the Constitution is determined by how the current US government, Congress, and courts interpret and implement it. And that's a good thing because otherwise our society would still be stuck in the 18th century.
People like you are one of the reasons this country is in so much trouble: you are so in love with your hare-brained ideology that you are intellectually incapable of participating in the day to day business of democracy.
You have to judge information on Wikipedia on its own merits: is it internally consistent, is it consistent with other information, and does it have proper sources and attributions. But, then, you have to do that with everything that's printed: the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nature, Science, whatever.
Academics who think that this is a problem are the kinds of intellectual sloths who themselves believe that if "it's printed somewhere, it must be true". They are academics that falsely judge the quality of a paper by the name of its authors and the length of its reference list.
The error that has "slipped into" academia is those kinds of pseudo-academics; public, truly peer reviewed content like Wikipedia is the antidote to current, widespread academic sloppiness and intellectual laziness. The fact that you know that anybody can edit almost anything on Wikipedia at any time is what makes it so great, and the fact that it is actually pretty accurate is what makes it still useful.
It isn't? I always thought the expose features, widgets, various transition effects, perfectly working transparency, sleep visual style, etc. were outstanding features, even if they're not as important separately. Together, they make a really sleek and organized operating system that is easy to use and easy to get things done with.
All that stuff makes the machine fun to use, which is a good thing. But I don't think the Mac is actually any easier or more efficient for getting things done (and I'm writing this from a Mac).
I've tried to mac-ify my windows machines with litestep and flyakiteOSX and various explorer replacements, widgets, visual styles, and so on, but none of them work as smoothly and reliably as anything I've seen on macs.
And your PC won't work as "smoothly and reliably" as a Mac either by installing OS X.
If you like OS X (and there is quite a bit to like), then get a Mac.
If you want Final Cut Pro, you need to pay for the right kind of machine to run it.
Give me a break. Porting the Darwin kernel and then running an OS X userland on top of it is not "cracking". It may be in violation of Apple's EULA, but I really don't see any reason to get pushed out of shape about it.
Apple will do whatever they will do in response to it. If they're smart, they're just going to leave it alone: in the end, this really doesn't matter, since people by Macs for the whole package; OS X itself really isn't all that special.
t seems funny, though, when your government takes bits and pieces away from the 'democracy' (like Patriot Act) what's left is still called democracy.
It's not so funny that people like you reduce democracy and participatory government to platitudes and sound bites. If you want to know why governments can take bits and pieces of our rights away, look no further than to people like yourself.
And, don't kid yourself: Canada isn't called the 51st state for nothing.
Good, I feel safe and warm now. Is it a kind of democracy like this?
You aren't supposed to "feel safe and warm" now, you're supposed to be concerned for the future of US democracy because it is at risk. But, for the time being, it still is a democracy and it can remain one if people like you stop making cynical remarks and instead roll up their sleeves.
"Alain Levy, the chairman of EMI Music, made a speech at the London Business School declaring 'the end of the music CD as it is.' He went on to say that most CDs are simply used for ripping onto digital audio players.
He's right on the second point. He's wrong on the first point, because companies like his have yet to come up with a reasonable alternative to distributing music other than CDs. CDs are a backup medium, they are a largely open format, and they don't have DRM.
And he can shove is "additional features" on the CD where the sun don't shine; as far as I'm concerned, any CD that comes with "additional features" is immediately suspect.
So, the message is: fellow American, wait until it becomes unbearable in the USA, then run away - bankrupt and chased by authorities.
No, the message is the following: You can't run away again, since there is no place left to go. But the good news is that the US is a democracy, so if you stop behaving like morons, lazy bums, or headless chicken, you can, in fact, make things work here.
Slashdot Mirror
"Enthusiasts" aren't the only people who need to re-install Windows; in fact, everybody does sooner or later, as registry settings, DLLs, drivers, and other system components slowly but invariably get changed to the point that the system simply doesn't work at all anymore or shows some annoying behaviors.
I think the main difference is that "PC enthusiasts" are the ones who know that they actually can fix this with a reinstall, while most other people just go out and buy a new machine.
Seems reliable enough to me. I can't remember the last time my Internet connection went down either at home or at work, except when there was a power failure.
the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth)
Well, then the FBI was stupid; they should have bought the Lasso of Truth from Marston.
but OS X is targeted at the desktop, while Linux is not
That statement makes no sense because "Linux" can mean many things. The Linux-related analogs of OS X are SuSE, RedHat, and Ubuntu, and those are every bit as much targeted at the desktop as OS X is.
[OpenStep/Cocoa technology] uninteresting if you're running a server.
No, it's uninteresting because it is largely obsolete. Don't get me wrong: it still works pretty well and it's OK for Apple to stay with it for a while, but the technology is not something many people in the Linux world would be attracted to.
OpensStep provides portable application packages that can easily be moved from one location to another and require no extra steps to install or uninstall.
More accurately, OS X lacks a full package and dependency manager, so developers are forced to bundle up all their dependencies in bloated "application packages"; that's not simple, it's simplistic. Linux distributions have wisely and deliberately chosen a different approach.
That is integration.
Apple's Services menu is a textbook example of a poorly thought out user interface and implementation; it's obscure, cluttered, counterintuitive, and many of its entries are haphazardly and inappropriately activated and inactivated. If you're actually using it as more than an example, you're in a small minority; most people don't even now it's there.
On both Gnome and KDE I have completely failed to reproduce this functionality.
The underlying support is there and it's better architected than Apple's solution; however, it's not exposed to users in something like the Services menu, and until someone comes up with a better interface than Apple, it shouldn't be.
I use Linux and OS X on the desktop every day.
So do I.
What makes OS X shine is the fact that someone is willing to make decisions and put manpower behind making an ideal desktop OS
I think if you checked, you'd see that OS X has considerably fewer overall resources invested in it than either KDE or Gnome. And I think that's reflected in the end product. What Apple does is they target their resources differently, and that leads to a particular kind of product that appeals to a particular kind of buyer. But it's not a "ideal desktop OS", it's only an "ideal desktop OS" for some people.
Sure maybe Apple's OpenStep implementation is no better than GNUStep as far as the qaulity of the code is concerned, but people can and do use Apple's implementation because it is built in and it works with everything.
People don't use GNUStep because Linux desktops have standardized on either Gnome or KDE, and because the *Step interface and technology is uninteresting. At this point, Apple could completely open source the OS X GUI and people still wouldn't use it.
It is a combination of smoothly working, quality technology, integration of that technology, and central decision making to make an OS for the desktop, not the desktop, server, and cell phone, that makes OS X a nicer workstation for me.
I challenge you to demonstrate that OS X is any more "smoothly working" or "integrated" than SuSE or Ubuntu according to any objective criterion. That may be your user experience, but other people have other user experiences.
Your suggestion that Linux is hampered by trying to serve too many masters is wrong. Linux desktop distributions are just as fully designed for the desktop as OS X. Furthermore, Apple is very much trying to make OS X into both a desktop and a server OS (with limited success).
Maybe some support and extra innovation will keep it viable and maintain its developers/users.
If PHP developers wanted "innovation", PHP wouldn't have succeeded as much as it did. PHP has succeeded because it's for people to develop web applications with, and to do so with little more than a text editor. It also doesn't look to me like PHP needs more support (and what kind support would Microsoft offer anyway?).
This is simply what it looks like: Microsoft wants PHP to run better on Windows servers so that people who want to run popular PHP applications aren't forced to switch to Linux in order to get good performance. It's understandable, it's reasonable, and it's not particularly nefarious.
Maybe Microsoft will add a little more support to their development tools for PHP, or maybe not, but I doubt that will make a difference to anybody; people who develop with Microsoft tools probably aren't all that interested in PHP (yes, I know, I'm an insensitive clod because you, gentle reader, happen to be one of those people, but I suspect there aren't so many of you).
It doesn't really matter what they protect, they are simply trying to make copying OS X wholesale more cumbersome. Functionally, there is nothing in OS X that would be worth disassembling for anybody: there are already open source implementations of Spotlight, Finder, SystemUIServer, Doc, and all the other stuff, and arguably, the open source versions are technically better. The thing that makes Macs shine and sell is the packaging and integration, not the technology.
Ubuntu has done a stellar job: on standard hardware, the install is trivial, and afterwards you get a desktop environment with mainstream, easy-to-use applications. It's actually easier than either Windows or Macintosh since you don't even have to install the third party apps--it all "just works".
Texting is very important, in particular to low-end phone users and "emerging markets", because it's inexpensive and simple, and because it's increasingly being used for business functions. On the other hand, if money is tight, I think durability and use of standard technologies matter more than being ultra-thin and shiny.
This phone looks like an overpriced gimmick to me.
Insects have "antennae", phones have "antennas".
In different words, "Après moi, le déluge".
As far as I know, the UK charges extra fees for blank media to compensate artists for copying, so you should bloody well be able to copy it. That's not even "fair use", that's paid use.
This is in addition to the fact that UK tax payers and television viewers are subsidizing music and the arts through their mandatory public radio and television fees, as well as grants to the arts.
How many times over are British tax payers supposed to pay for content?
I upgraded a couple of boxes and it went like a charm.
Notice how in all this discussion, everybody is implicitly assuming that the watch lists are actually worth anything. In fact, I think the reason this hole has existed for several years without any problem due to them is that the watch lists simply don't make any difference at all.
Which raises the question: why have the watch lists in the first place? I think they are more psychological than anything else: they give the impression that there is a continuing threat, they give the impression that the government is doing something, and they make people willingly give in to controls that they previously wouldn't have considered. Remember: you used to be able to travel across this nation without the government being able to track your every step.
The elder generation tells me that America has always had a pendulum effect in these types of things - we sway way the fuck too far at first, and then slowly crank it back to the middle.
Well, then the "elder generation" you talk to is full of shit. The US government didn't use to have this kind of power. Oh, sure, it wanted to, and it abused whatever power it had, but it didn't officially have this kind of power. What's happening is unprecedented for the US.
I'm pretty unimpressed with what's been coming out of the W3C over the last few years; yes, they cleaned up the specs a little, but they produced a disproportionate amount of junk in the same time and I think most of their new standards have been flops.
I think the problem is that the W3C is trying to invent new stuff rather than standardizing existing practice after the market has decided on something. Unfortunately, that kind of approach not only risks going wrong, it attracts entirely the wrong kind of people to an organization like that.
You know the blink tag is based on AJAX when the Slashdot effect makes its blink rate slow down.
It's no surprise that Kelo went the way it did. You're thinking is that "liberals are for the little guys, conservatives for business". But, in reality, having the power of central planning is crucial to the liberal agenda. Kelo was exactly what the liberals needed: the power for government officials to confiscate your personal property in the name of a "greater good" by calling it a "public purpose" (not public use, however, as the 5th Amendment says).
It's fascinating that demagogues like you want to turn even a clear fact (four conservative justices taking away private property) into a rant against liberals. In reality, totalitarianism lurks at both the very right and the very left of the political spectrum, and at this point, US Republicans and conservatives are a lot closer to the right end than US Democrats and liberals are to the left end.
This is not about your party, the Constitution gets in the way of BOTH parties, but it's not for the parties, it's for the PEOPLE. So back the Constitution, because it's just in the way of the Democrats and the Republicans. It's time for both parties to face the hard truths: you can't execute unwarranted searchs (too bad, GOP). And Democrats: stop trying to control guns, unless you want to try to pass an Amendment. The Constitution says these things, plain and simple. Oh, and when you get a chance, read the 10th Amendment, too.
The hard truth is that you're just spouting a lot of hot air and that both parties can do these things and are doing them. The US government is executing unwarranted searches and seizures, and the US government is implementing gun control.
The current meaning of the Constitution is determined by how the current US government, Congress, and courts interpret and implement it. And that's a good thing because otherwise our society would still be stuck in the 18th century.
People like you are one of the reasons this country is in so much trouble: you are so in love with your hare-brained ideology that you are intellectually incapable of participating in the day to day business of democracy.
You have to judge information on Wikipedia on its own merits: is it internally consistent, is it consistent with other information, and does it have proper sources and attributions. But, then, you have to do that with everything that's printed: the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nature, Science, whatever.
Academics who think that this is a problem are the kinds of intellectual sloths who themselves believe that if "it's printed somewhere, it must be true". They are academics that falsely judge the quality of a paper by the name of its authors and the length of its reference list.
The error that has "slipped into" academia is those kinds of pseudo-academics; public, truly peer reviewed content like Wikipedia is the antidote to current, widespread academic sloppiness and intellectual laziness. The fact that you know that anybody can edit almost anything on Wikipedia at any time is what makes it so great, and the fact that it is actually pretty accurate is what makes it still useful.
It isn't? I always thought the expose features, widgets, various transition effects, perfectly working transparency, sleep visual style, etc. were outstanding features, even if they're not as important separately. Together, they make a really sleek and organized operating system that is easy to use and easy to get things done with.
All that stuff makes the machine fun to use, which is a good thing. But I don't think the Mac is actually any easier or more efficient for getting things done (and I'm writing this from a Mac).
I've tried to mac-ify my windows machines with litestep and flyakiteOSX and various explorer replacements, widgets, visual styles, and so on, but none of them work as smoothly and reliably as anything I've seen on macs.
And your PC won't work as "smoothly and reliably" as a Mac either by installing OS X.
If you like OS X (and there is quite a bit to like), then get a Mac.
If you want Final Cut Pro, you need to pay for the right kind of machine to run it.
Give me a break. Porting the Darwin kernel and then running an OS X userland on top of it is not "cracking". It may be in violation of Apple's EULA, but I really don't see any reason to get pushed out of shape about it.
Apple will do whatever they will do in response to it. If they're smart, they're just going to leave it alone: in the end, this really doesn't matter, since people by Macs for the whole package; OS X itself really isn't all that special.
t seems funny, though, when your government takes bits and pieces away from the 'democracy' (like Patriot Act) what's left is still called democracy.
It's not so funny that people like you reduce democracy and participatory government to platitudes and sound bites. If you want to know why governments can take bits and pieces of our rights away, look no further than to people like yourself.
And, don't kid yourself: Canada isn't called the 51st state for nothing.
Good, I feel safe and warm now. Is it a kind of democracy like this?
You aren't supposed to "feel safe and warm" now, you're supposed to be concerned for the future of US democracy because it is at risk. But, for the time being, it still is a democracy and it can remain one if people like you stop making cynical remarks and instead roll up their sleeves.
"Alain Levy, the chairman of EMI Music, made a speech at the London Business School declaring 'the end of the music CD as it is.' He went on to say that most CDs are simply used for ripping onto digital audio players.
He's right on the second point. He's wrong on the first point, because companies like his have yet to come up with a reasonable alternative to distributing music other than CDs. CDs are a backup medium, they are a largely open format, and they don't have DRM.
And he can shove is "additional features" on the CD where the sun don't shine; as far as I'm concerned, any CD that comes with "additional features" is immediately suspect.
So, the message is: fellow American, wait until it becomes unbearable in the USA, then run away - bankrupt and chased by authorities.
No, the message is the following: You can't run away again, since there is no place left to go. But the good news is that the US is a democracy, so if you stop behaving like morons, lazy bums, or headless chicken, you can, in fact, make things work here.