Silly Lemmings...

> Seriously? An underdog in server OSes? People who know stuff are laughing at you.

Then they must not do anything very serious or very large then.

Unix still rules the roost for anything that's not a glorified desktop.

Even musicians see the downside...

...it's funny you mention "high resolution photos" since just a couple of days ago I heard a tech discussion on the radio from "creative" types about how things like iPad and smart phones really destroy the full potential of film and video. They lamented this fact while still being fascinated by the idea of squeezing a tiny picture onto a small screen.

Sweden's dirty little secret.

Yes. This entire shenanigan is just one big fat black eye for Sweden and any notion that they are any more civilized than the rest of the world or the notion that it's citizens are any more free. The fact that they appear to be playing the part of America's toadie doesn't help their image either.

ANYONE who is associated to WikiLeaks will be subjected to this sort of thing. Forcing Assange out just ensures that these dirty tricks appear to be working. They will be simply applied to the next guy that comes along.

Swapping out the lead whipping boy at Wikileaks won't help a thing in the long run.

Just wallow in the latrine...

The fact that a dangerously encumbered standard is widely used is still no reason to ingore the potential dangers involved. It doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps if fewer people weren't so self-centered and short sighted then it wouldn't be that way.

The fact that "video is everywhere", is the best argument possible for why the related standards should be free, open and vendor neutral from top to bottom.

The American movie industry is located where it is because of this very sort of nonsense.

Clueless non-rocket-scientists...

The cross range capability of the Shuttle was by far not the most dangerous or unreliable aspect of the craft.

The biggest problem with the Shuttle was it's launch system and the tendency for things to fall off of it or to explode. I am not the first person to point this out here.

Two words: O ring.

The ship already sailed for you X haters.

> X was a horrible project based on a principle no one cares for anymore.

Nonsense. While X has been subjected to a wave after wave of FUD over the years, the market leader has been moving closer and closer to it with their own product. There are now special remote access hooks in Windows that allow it's own graphical terminal product to perform respectably well. While all of the X critics have been trying to shout it down, the market leader has pretty much adopted it in principle.

So, I can have reasonably good performance to a remote desktop in Win7. Trying to do the same with a Mac desktop and VNC is just painful. Meanwhile the ninny talking heads of our own want to toss the baby out with the bath water.

The "wayland approach" does not benefit the Mac so much. It doesn't even really help for games. The only thing that helps for games is having the lion's share of the market and being viewed as worthy of effort. WinDOS never had problems with games no matter how ugly the implementation details were.

X was designed when 100Mhz was a crazy fast CPU.

The value of dumping it now when phones have a 1Ghz CPU is somewhat disputable.

Someone let a troll into the castle...

> ...because this caused uncertainty about whether applications,

> utilities, improvements could run everywhere.

No. This is caused by Lemming trolls engaging in intentional fear mongering.

Yes... because the copy of gnome-lib that runs on Fedora is just SO DIFFERENT than the one that runs on Fedora, or even Solaris.

Now forking the display server. THAT will cause REAL fragmentation.

Intentionally Broken DVDs

There are a lot of DVDs that use intentional breakage that's somewhat reminiscent of the early 8-bit computing days and their forms of copy protection of floppy disks. The DVD will contain intentional errors that will trip up a computer that's trying to access the disk as raw data. The idea is that a "real" DVD player will access the disk through the TOC and IFO files and not encounter these errors.

Sometimes the on disk index will be gibberish. This manifest as a large number of visible titles (like 99). Sometimes there are intentional errors put on the disk. A disk recovery tool can avoid these.

Although the vast majority of DVDs are playable with decss.

Then again, some disks are just plain broken due to crap fabrication.

Mac? Want one? I have 3.

> Listen, if you can't afford a Mac just say it, it's ok.

> Linux is so shit it can't even be given away.

I have 3 Macs and 2 5-Bay RAID arrays.

I have no interest in MacOS and the issue isn't just cost. Although my $600 Quad Core towers do run circles around of any of my similarly priced Macs.

There is nothing terribly compelling about the Mac or MacOS that makes me want to boot any of my Macs into MacOS in order to use it.

I bought the Macs when they seemed good for HTPC use.

Fitt's law bollocks

Good point. I suppose this is why I like to put my "dock" at the top of the screen in Linux.

One nice thing about having a proper top panel is the fact that I can actually make good use out of it for notification and monitors and such. These sorts of applets are woefully lacking in MacOS. There just isn't enough room in a menu bar tailored for text to accomodate nice pretty icons that can display useful information.

Plus, the "real estate loss" is effectively just the height of the single menu which is pretty small on a modern monitor.

Fitts law is bogus

Fitts law might have made sense on the original puny Mac.

However, Fitts law is bogus nonsense on a modern monitor.

Fitts law clearly is WRONG on my 28 inch monitor.

This is just something that Apple users cling to like some article of faith, like American fundies and creationism.

Huh???

> Once I'll be able to install and use Skype at a first go

> then wake me up. Until then I use Mac with VM's W7

> and CentOS.

??? Skype has explicitly supported Ubuntu with no-brainer pre-packaged deb files for ages.

Small frys and whatnot...

2 cores and 4GB barely qualifies as a DESKTOP machine these days.

If your "servers" are so puny, then it is little wonder you virtualize them.

Invisible Free Software

...yes. The monopolyware still sells because the hardware vendors are still installing the latest iteration on the MS-DOS hegemony. However, there's a very good chance that the end user will have some significant bits of Free Software by the time it is made fully functional.

The same goes for Macs.

That spiffy app for you iPhone might even depend on it.

...almost homebrew.

Considering that one of the top contenders is PC-software-turned-appliance, the idea that you can just build your own with minimal fuss or cost is a rather obvious point. If any PC hosted content is a part of your solution then you will be engaging in the futz-ware anyways.

The real question is why are the free software solutions still spanking the consumer electronics consoles?

Just give me the files...

DNLA is kind of moot if you have a device that can hit file shares directly.

Such a device is bound to be able to handle more formats and features too.

We have always been at war with eurasia...

> Users are not mainframe administrators, but the current PC really demands these skills.

No. WinDOS demands this thing.

Anything that is automated with the intent of "alleviating the burden" from end users ultimately runs the risk of blurring the lines between data and programs and enabling malware.

Infact, there is a current PhoneOS vulnerablity of just this sort.

Moldy Oldies

> Don't Stop Believing by Journey (NOT Glee) was obviously the song of the year.

...and worth a $80K tort judgement if you're caught pirating it.

Hecho in Mexico...

> Fear the terrorist, the alien, the freak.

Clearly you've never been in a Wal-mart. '-)

The great deciever and Apple trees...

A "mobile computing device" is something that I can control. I am in control of what data is on the device and I am in control of what programs run on the device. I can even create programs of my own with little effort or bother.

A jailbroken iPad can be called a mobile computing device.

A stock iPad is just the Apple version of the Archos 9.

I don't try to call my Archos 5 a "computing device" despite the fact that it can play my PC video files without transcoding, doesn't require some special app for device management, has the ability to browse the local LAN, and has it's own silly little "apps".

Put your foot behind your head while you're at it.

The iPad is a big iPod. There's a lot of contortions you can do to get around this fact,the fact that it is basically tethered to iTunes. However, they all lead ultimately to the same place: a proper PC.

Big-iPod is how this sort of "computer" is generally used.

Non-fanboy end users don't even find the "Big iPod" moniker the least bit derogatory. They LIKE the idea. They don't have any need to see the device as something it is not or try to sell some lie to anyone else.

Rewriting history!

Yes. McNealy did live in a different universe. The problem with Linux wasn't that it was Free Software but that it was Unix on cheap x86 hardware. While Sun did have an early version of Solaris on x86, it was poorly supported. It was treated like an ugly red headed stepchild by both Sun and it's 3rd parties (like Oracle).

I personally started using Linux not because it was "free" or because it was "libre" but because it actually ran on my hardware. I would have actually been willing to spend the asking price for Solaris x86 back in the day if only it supported normal consumer grade PC hardware.

Sun tried to ignore the PC in favor of it's higher margin server business.

THIS is why Linux had the opportunity to sneak in and undercut Sun's business.

Sun's approach to x86 hardware ultimately did them in, not their approach to Free Software.

Server indeed...

Nope. A real RAID chassis is what you usually associate with real servers that do things like serve up email and web domains or really serious stuff. OTOH, you could have the sort of "server" you describe running on an AppleTV. Sometimes I am occasionally tempted to do just that with my old ATV that no longer has the guts to by a PVR extender.

You're trying to run a "server" on lowend consumer gear with no redundancy to speak of either way.

It's not production hardware.

> ...a lot of small businesses simply don't need

> anything more than the Mac Mini server offers.

Well, they certainly tend to think that until something goes wrong.

This highlights the problem with Apple in general. They only cater to a very few use cases when it comes to the hardware they put together. Then they ignore everything else.

Don't kid yourselves.

> It's amazing that you feel so vehemently opposed to something that was in part 'very true'.

Only in Oceania...

It is not infact true. It's total revisionist fanboy nonsense.

By the time the iMac came out, broadband was already starting to emerge. So the entire idea of trying to support something old and tired like serial modems was already starting to get rediculously out of date.

No, high speed internet probably did more to help along internet adoption than the bundleware that came on Apple's after it was already on every other major brand of PC.

> Compare that to the last time I installed anew PC out of the box.

> It was 2 hours before it was in any fit state to use.

You can install a new OS from scratch quicker than that, nevermind a ready made box.

A ready made brand name PC is the same as dealing with a Mac Mini.

The problem with being willfully ignorant

The problem with being willfully ignorant is that you are vulnerable to being taken advantage of by anyone that is not. You can see this at work in a lot of places if you just watch the differences between how men and women are treated by a car salesmen or mechanic. A lot of cultural baggage goes into play and you get a nice eyeful of what "glorifying ignorance" can do.

You have to have at least half a clue or you won't know why your new game from the Apple store won't play on your not very old Mac Mini.

If you don't know what you're doing, it's far too easy to be sold total crap and be overcharged for it.

This extends far beyond computing.

Regarding OpenStep application bundles.

Actually, those OpenStep application bundles are not all they are cracked up to be. They are not nearly as portable or robust as you make them out to be. If you are doing anything terribly interesting you will still need to do the sort of dependency management that Apple likes to ignore.

Also, the very fact that you expect the end user to automagically know what to do with one of those OpenStep bundles is neither easy or intuitive.

"double click and it installs" is actually a much more usable approach.

"copy some stuff somewhere yourself" is actually almost more of an "arcane Unix approach". Outdated too by modern Unix standards. Then again, this is an idea from the early 90s.

I use a proper Unix because it involves "less hassle" and I don't have to make any functional compromises.

Man, why so much hate towards it?

It's not the device that gets the negative attention. It's all of the nonsense propaganda surrounding it. It was nice and pretty and helped save Apple from oblivion. Anything beyond that is highly disputable.

One extra cable. Oh the humanity.

...yes. Because it's just SO HARD to plug one extra cable into a PC.

That's what this boils down to, an extra cable for the external monitor.

At the very dawn of the Internet age, it was pretty trivial to get on the net with a PC. There were plenty of 3rd parties quite willing to help you. This included the PC makers themselves as well as the ISPs themselves. It was by no means rocket science.

Linux serial modem scripts were rocket science but that was something else entirely...

Broadband made all of that moot. Even a 1994 copy of Slackware could get on the net easy after that.

What JEDIDIAH actually said...

...is more along the lines of "you are a clueless fanboy" that's trying to rewrite history. An open platform doesn't have to be driven by it's "owner". 3rd parties can handle the enhancements. 3rd parties did infact handle these sorts of enhancements.

The idea that Apple beat the entire cabal of PC manufacturers to anything is a little absurd.

Apple might have raised visibility a bit and made more noise, but they probably weren't first in anything ever.

If you are trying to frame this as "Gates versus Jobs" then you simply don't understand anything.

By 1998, it was a bit late to be fixating on stuff like Earthlink.

It's not the computer that's complicated.

> Just because other OSes are confusing and geeky doesn't mean that is how it should be.

Some things are just inherently difficult. It has nothing to do with the fact that you're using a computer.

Photoshop is a great example of this. So is the fact that 90% of msoffice features go unused.

Dumbing things down too much simply limits what you can do.

Apples are only "easy" if you follow the pre-ordained path. It's like what the OP said "those who want no burden".

Outside of Oceania Big Brother is not such a big deal.

> Well, it certainly wasnt 'jump started' by Mr Gates,

The key thing that Apple Fanboys continue to fail to grasp is the fact that you don't need to be dependent on a single platform tyrant or "Big Brother" if there is a healthy open and free market for 3rd party products. Gates doesn't have to drive everything. There are plenty of others capable of driving innovation.

How far out of touch can you be?

> The iMac was the first personal computer to ship that was ready

> to connect to the internet in seconds,

It's amazing that you guys actually believe this nonsense.

I am not a number!

>> Noone wants the same phone as everyone else...

>

> ...unless it's an iPhone.

Clearly not anymore.

Although it helps to buy into the groupthink if you are an Apple fan since you know that Jobs won't ever accomodate any more interesting options. It would spoil that whole "garden of pure ideology" thing he has going.

NINS

> Would you care to compare how much Novell has done for the kernel, for KDE

Novell is not Suse.

Novell is the company that bought Suse and then trashed it.

Completely unjustifiable level of optimism.

> The books you buy from Amazon are not tied to your kindle.

Of course it is. Or rather, it is tied to the Kindle app. It's not quite so much like proprietary Mac software but more like proprietary MS-DOS software. The effect is still the same. YOUR "property" remains essentially a rental that Amazon can revoke at any time it likes.

The fact that Amazon is not a single hardware vendor standard is somewhat nice but the same basic problem remains. You don't really own what you buy. You are not in a position to resell it or take your own steps to preserve it. You remain always at the mercy of Amazon.

As long as some corporation "owns the format" of your data, you are in the same vulnerable position.

Crassius Maximus is the real problem.

> We haven't really caught on but our digital storage

> lasts a nanofraction of how long print lasts. Alright,

> there's plenty of pulp and acidic paper and ink that'll

> rot, but we know pretty well how to deal with it. We

> don't yet know that for digital.

Nonsense. If the data formats are open, and not owned by some company like Microsoft or Amazon then dealing with pure data is actually pretty simple.

My "media store" includes stuff that's over 15 years old. It includes things in well understood formats and even includes some older "e-books". If data is in a format that is actually intended to be read openly by any platform, then the challenges are much less difficult.

Most of my digital music collection predates any effort by Apple in this area.

Stuff like DRM and proprietary formats are what complicate things.

Are you stuck using a Microsoft, Apple or Amazon product to read your data?

Books simply should not come with a corporate brand and associated necessary proprietary decoders.

Oh Pulleeeze...

> House big enough to keep a library of paper books - a very large six-figure sum.

Are you kidding? There were people in the Soviet Union that could afford books and had place to put them. What kind of spoiled American (oops, forgot where I was posting) suburbanite are you that you can't find a little space for a bookshelf or three?

You will put yourself in the poor house buying everything for that DRM-laden book reader. You will be stuck paying hard cover prices for stuff that you could get at the local used book shop for pennies on the dollar. Passing stuff around friends or lending from the local library would also be out.

I offered the kid an e-book reader. His immediate response was lackluster due to the understanding that we would have to pay to put stuff on it. Smart kid. Reads lots of books. Most come from the library.

No. LIBRARIES enable the poor.

Guns and thumb drives...

> For a start this is a fallacy. In the US you can legally own a Glock 9mm pistol.

and this is an entirely different fallacy.

Weapons are an entirely separate category of their own that are quite unlike anything else you could try to compare them to. Or are you seriously going to equate a semi-automatic pistol with a video game machine?

Your argument is disengious at best.

So much for the "freetard" label...

> 4 Tb of data so far ? You have archived nearly 7000 cd ?

I have archived somewhere north of 1600 DVDs.

Just today I slapped in another 2TB drive. I shuffled some things around between my 2 "arrays" so that I would have the free bay in my main "Video Jukebox Array".

Tripping over the garden wall.

> There is no software reason to buy an android pad.

The software reason to buy an android pad is obvious. You want to do something that Steve won't allow. That could be any number of netbook-esque things that an iPad could do if only Steve would allow it.

The truth of the matter is that most people don't need a lot. However, they need what they need. If an alternate doesn't provide what they need, they won't use it.

This applies equally well to PhoneOS as it does Android.