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HH
HighHopes
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We’re gonna need a bigger horse!

Is this a reference to the movie "Jaws" when Chief Brody sees the size of the shark and tells Quint:

"You're gonna need a bigger boat!"
 
Posts: 1908 | Registered: Wed May 28 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
BN
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Yes. Bingo. I was debating with my brother here at the office as to whether that reference was too obscure. I thought it was. He thought it would work. Glad it did!
 
Posts: 15349 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
THALO.net divinity
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Double H

Inquiring minds want to know.

a. Did you fuck yourself yet?

b. Was Grab involved in anyway?

c. How much was paid for the Services?

Using Grabs capture window function after clicking on choose and the little camera becomes your cursor select the menu bar as the window.

For me the menu bar goes grey. You then can not use Grabs menu bar. Clicking in the greyed out menu bar brings up the Finder. I have to quit Grab to fix it.

Mighty pointing out the lack of printing the windows full list goes back to the original Print Window command in the Legacy. This K-base article gives the solutions for the problem in systems prior to 9.1.

So Mighty you might want to try some of those solutions for Grab.
 
Posts: 4185 | Registered: Sat June 07 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Thalo.net's official Master-debaiter
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quote:
Originally posted by RicoX:
Using Grabs capture window function after clicking on choose and the little camera becomes your cursor select the menu bar as the window.

For me the menu bar goes grey. You then can not use Grabs menu bar. Clicking in the greyed out menu bar brings up the Finder. I have to quit Grab to fix it.


I'm no defender of Grab.app itself. I never, ever use it. Why bother when all the screen grabbing utilities are keyboard commands? Only Timed Screen is not a key command. So the fact that is spazzes on capturing it's own menu isn't surprising.

Regardless, we had been talking about Grab as a Service. Grab works as advertised as a Service from another application such as TextEdit or Stickies (and any 3rd party app that would decide to take advantage of Services properly!).

So, go to TextEdit, choose Services: Grab: and do whichever image you want. It dumps the capture in the TextEdit document.

Now, myself, I'm just going to use the cmd-3 or 4 and variants.
(command-4 & click space and you can click the menubar to capture it. That works everywhere.)

Fuck services, fuck Grab. I'm with ya. But that is a separate argument, ya see, from "Services don't work".

"Should Grab even be a Service at all?" != "Services don't work"

Should Grab.app exist? Perhaps not. It probably should be just part of iPhoto or Preview or all applications that can handle image data something. But there ought to be a menu-driven equivalent, certainly. Newbies will not do the key commands that I find so useful and easy.


--
I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care.
 
Posts: 924 | Registered: Wed June 11 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Thalo.net Skeptic
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This brings up another point that I made way back in the beginning of thalo.net. I think the front page is a sort of false negative advertising with its promise of a "Battle Royale" and fists pointing at you.... They won't find what the advertisement says is here.

Excellent point, HH. This forum has evolved from the early days. The "Battle Royale" has really calmed down over time. THIS thread is the first really energetic debate on OS X in ages. As you know, I feel that the subject is more and more moot. The front page does make people think we're all stuck in 1999 or 2000. Maybe the content of the front page should be re-examined with the passage of time.

quote:
I'm more than willing to bring out the whips, chains, rings, clamps, studded leather garments or whatever it takes...

Have a good supply conveniently at hand there, Brad....?


Markle
 
Posts: 3205 | Location: Agoura Hills, California | Registered: Sun June 08 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Master Baiter
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They are barely mentioned, first off.


They ARE barely mentioned...uh, NOW. (Why do you think THAT is? Because they are working so damn well?) But back in the day, c'mon my brother, I'm sure you read everything I did. The shill rags were calling them the second coming, they were all over the Apple site when it was first touting OS X. They were hyped and hyped big. To developers too. Nobody bit. Like I said, things that have every right to BE services, ain't. They created a junk drawer, and the junk that SHOULD be in there, never got put in there.

You keep saying you object to the phrase "they don't work." You, like so many before you, key in on the vocabulary words, rush to the defense of Apple.

Now let me drop the hammer on this. People in our industry say things like this or that "doesn't work" ALL THE TIME. A Queer Eye for a Straight Guy metrosexual with impeccable fashion sense will look at my beat up old lucky fishing hat and say thalo, baby, darling, that doesn't work. To which I'll reply, "what do you mean? It's a hat, it covers my head! It keeps the rain off my skull!" Yes, dear, but it's not FABULOUS... you would be so much hotter if you coordinated. It's most definitely not working with your outfit.

I'll design some type headline or a logo. Look at it. Say shit like: now THAT.. just DOES NOT WORK! I can read it, I can see it. Other designers could get away with it. Me? I think it's broken. It's not doing what it was intended to do. It doesn't work in context, or doesn't work visually, conceptually, whatever.

Services not only don't work (grab), they DON'T WORK. I hate that you have to select text. Some services have nothing to do with selecting text. And others, work--I mean function--when you select something totally inappropriate, but then can't do anything with the selection. For example, select a chunk of text and do Services > Finder > open/reveal/whatever... THOSE menus aren't greyed out! you can invoke the service just to get a dialog saying you can't do that. And yet most other services are greyed out ALL THE TIME if you don't have something selected. You can't even invoke them to get a dialog that says: hey, hammerhead! SELECT SOMETHING!

This is useless junk drawer functionality, and like so much of OS X, it doesn't work.
 
Posts: 9101 | Registered: Thu May 01 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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rotflmao Big Grin

I love it


--
I do care. I just want to have a beer while I care.
 
Posts: 924 | Registered: Wed June 11 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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This brings up another point that I made way back in the beginning of thalo.net. I think the front page is a sort of false negative advertising with its promise of a "Battle Royale" and fists pointing at you.


Here, we just got through with people telling each other to Fuck off, getting really hot... and suddenly the pugilistic theme of thalo.net is all wrong.

Sorry, my brothers, I still think it's not only a battle royale, but a crusade. X-Men do consider us the Morlocks of the Apple Universe. That's a great analogy. But the fact is, the brothership is one of the few things that CAN save the zoftig damsel in distress. We're the knights of the round table. And we don't all even have to be greybeards. There's guys here who like OS X and Aqua, and guys who don't. Me, I can't stand the fucking thing. Aqua gives me douche chills. But you know what? I WANT to like it. And I'll fight to make it better. And I figure the way to do that is to point out the stuff that doesn't work, or is blatantly stupid.

But the problem is, and really always has been, that when people get emotionally involved and throw in behind Apple in such a way that we feel comfortable saying Apple has a "cult following" or that they're a "fan" (short for fanatic)--MYSELF INCLUDED-- hey, it's kinda difficult to get them to see reason. Kind of difficult to get them to face reality. Like if you marry a chick with a big, fat melanoma off to the side of her nose. You can pretend it's not there, because you LOVE the girl and don't want to hurt her feelings... or you can say moley shit, honey, cut that thing off before I puke, and get it biopsied before it kills you.

OS X is the big honkin' Igelsias-mole that nobody wants to be the one to say is ugly. I volunteer. It's ugly and needs to be dealt with. I don't care how promising or cute what's underneath the mole is. The mole is growing out of control. It's ruining the (inter) face of the victim. It' not character, it's not a birthmark, it's not overlookable. You can't say it's going to get better, or smaller over time. It's distracting and ugly and life-threatening and invasive. It's friggin' gnarly supersized cancer.

But ga head and say that to an Enrique Inglesias fan (I know, bad analogy, he got bai-la-mole removed, but humor me)... they'll flip out. They'll go: But he's so cute, so talented, so romantic. They'll apologize for it. They'll crap settle because they love him. They'll turn it into this distinctive thing that makes him even more sexy. Matches the brown of his eyes, whatever. They'll attack anyone who makes fun of bai-la-mole.

But is that true love? Sometimes isn't tough love really the way to go? Just because the victim, or his fans don't want to face an uncomfortable, ugly problem, doesn't mean that it will go away.

So think about our pugilistic theme again now. CALLING it a battle royale is kind of silly because it shouldn't be one. That it frequently BECOMES one, is the whole idea for it. It calls attention to the battles (example, this thread) that we always have... and says, hey, are these really fistfights? I say they ain't. But lord knows, the way some people react to our words, you'd never know that we weren't sticking knives in their children's hearts.

I, for one, as you all know have ALWAYS been on Apple's side. I am every bit as rabid a fan of Steve Jobs as digikids and X-Men. If I met him, I'd giggle like a schoolgirl and ask for his autograph. If the Apple site sold posters of him in his mock turtleneck, I'd buy one and frame it and hang it on my office wall alongside the one of Jon Ive. I am to the Mac, what the Star Wars Kid is to Star Wars movies. What Trekkies are to Star Trek. Guy Kawasaki himself would look at me and call me over-the-top with Mac love.

Every word I've typed comes from that place. My disappointment with this operating system is a direct result of knowing that Apple has always had seeds of greatness. They had a destiny that it's POSSIBLE to elevate to myth and legend. It HAD a set of governing ideas that were noble, good, and true and really thought hard about what was good for people like you and me. That's what I don't want people to forget. For me, this is TOTALLY a fight, and totally a crusade. But the two fisted thalo.net branding is kind of a joke.

It speaks to how seriously people take these issues. How much these VIRTUAL fights lead to really powerful emotional outbursts.

Lookit brother jay. He did the same things every X-Man used to do: lashed out, started giving out his resume, and eventually couldn't take it and left. It's all symptomatic of folks who don't want to deal with the mole. They need to be in the company of other people who deny the mole's existence, and challenge anyone who suggests that it might not be healthy. Accuse them of throwing out babies with bathwater, Enrique with the mole, lol.

When confronted with the reality that there could be serious problems, he bailed rather face that. That's the barometer for the Mac Faithful. In a way, it's kind of charming. I dig people who believe so strongly in stuff. But the measure of being able to enter free and open discourse is to see how they react to people with opposing views. If they become THREATENED or angry or evil... if they go to lengths to silence the opposition rather than put forward their own views, you can be pretty sure that the REASON they do that is that they're NOT SURE EVERYTHING IS OK.

Methinks the X-Men doth protest too much. The ones that really, honestly believe that OS X is the balls, don't feel the need to defend it to people who criticize it. Not unless they know that the criticism has merit. Then, all they do is try to get people to be NICER with their criticism. It becomes about manners and decorum instead of making the product better. That's what gets people emotionally involved... and once emotionally involved, they can decide to become intellectually involved.

The fight has always been there for entertainment value, but our style of fighting gives people a lot of stuff to think about. And I have full confidence that both the emotional issues and the rational issues are changing the face of the Mac for the better. Every now and then I'll lurk in other Mac forums. X-Men and Apple Apologists are clearly on the defensive. Everywhere you look. Literally, everywhere you look. Their entire vocabulary has evolved in such a way as to address or repel detractors.

Here, it's evolved to attract them into the fray. Provoke and troll... but we sneak in the good stuff and that's why we're winning the war. Sooner or later, we're going to send Apple to the dermatologist for surgery.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: thalo,
 
Posts: 9101 | Registered: Thu May 01 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
HH
HighHopes
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Double H
Inquiring minds want to know.
a. Did you fuck yourself yet?...


Hahahha, Why no, Rico. No I haven't. I don't know what that means. It's the mechanics of the thing that is puzzling. I guess I should ask the fellow who suggested it. One would think he would know.
 
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BN
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It's all symptomatic of folks who don't want to deal with the mole. They need to be in the company of other people who deny the mole's existence, and challenge anyone who suggests that it might not be healthy.


Okay, I was laughing almost all the way through that post. But I'm not even sure I want to play the language or analogy game. I'm not sure we can win at it. Image and misdirection are the strengths of the X-Men. They're schooled in it by nature. I have no doubt that people actually like OS X because of its flaws, its moles. It would be along the same lines as loving "diversity". That sort of crap has been ingrained in people. They no longer think twice about it. In fact, they unwittingly allow so much of their thinking to be done for them by somebody else. That's part of the problem. They don't recognize this sort of stuff as somebody else's thinking. The way people take stuff on board and make it their own is just incredible.

I also have little doubt, as silly as this may sound, that some people just love OS X because multitasking reminds them of multiculturalism. Protected memory sounds as if some racial or ethnic minority is being given a break. Even the term "Aqua" draws power and favor from being associated with an environmental concern. If, early on, someone had code-named it 8% Cyanide then we might still we working with Platinum.

Thalo, if you draw so much heat for your provocations it's not just because you're an asshole. You're digging deeply into some of these truths, truths that are so revealing and indefensible that they are better attacked and discredited rather than being faced. Whether my or your characterizations are spot on hardly matters. The fact is that there is more here than meets the eye. Fixing Aqua, fixing OS X, igniting a MacLash is about more than just pleading for logic in terms of HIG's or whatever. This is a cultural war. That you and I should be on the same side of this issue, particularly considering our vast differences politically, culturally, and socially on most other issues shows just how "out there" the ideology is both inside and outside of Apple.
 
Posts: 15349 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Master Baiter
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You know that famous line in "Cool Hand Luke" where the boss goes:

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate."

If you know the movie, you know that there actually WASN'T a failure to communicate at all. There was a failure to COMPLY. For a prison warden, "communication" was more about CONTROL.

At thalo.net, we don't have a failure to communicate. We communicate exactly the way people, in reality, really communicate. And yet look at how we're frequently mischaracterized by the Mac community at large. Heretics, bad-boys, rebels.

People need to start seeing the difference between language and truth. Vocabulary and issues. Crap like Apple ASKING for "feedback" when what they really want is market data. X-men ASKING for "constructive criticism" when really what they want is people to tell them everything is OK.

The whole problem with OS X goes so deep, that it's frightening to address. As with anything where an organization or institution takes a walk on the dark side. Apple took noble aims, intent, and idealism to a place that the Mac Faithful really don't want to believe they went: namely, they made it all about making money.

The intent went from something like "making the best possible personal computer for human beings--because human beings deserve it" to...
"finding ways to appeal to the lowest common denominator, so human beings who don't deserve our products will buy them anyway."

When you change the empahsis off of making great tools, and put it on making great money, you are in trouble. Because you start being able to justify things that have nothing to do with doing GOOD.

And keep in mind, that I'm a capitalist pig, not a commie. I like to turn a buck just as much as the next guy. But that's not my destiny... that's a (hopefully someday) fringe benefit from doing what IS my destiny.

Apple's destiny? Easy: the personal computer. They can follow their star AND make money. But they fuck up if they navigate to the mammon-star instead of the product-star.

We have crap, because Apple, like Microsoft, began listening to marketeers telling them not to SERVE mankind, serving is for losers... but to exploit. And so they began sacrificing great ideas for facile, dumbed down ones. They started on a footing that says why offer quality, if the average computer user is too dumb to even know what quality is? After all, they buy PCs!

That's where they went wrong. Right there. That's where they lost focus and vision.

Occasionally they'll tap into some pop culture thing and make huge wads of cash, like the iPod... but you know what? They didn't make iPods because they love us. If they did, they'd be even better. They would have made even more.

Apple's real strength, if they'd just open their friggin' eyes, is to say people are WORTH making great things for. When other people are conning these poor slobs and taking their money, we can be building things for them that liberates their creativity. That makes their lives and work easier. They don't OWE us their allegiance, we want to make stuff so insanely great, that we EARN it.

I'm not such an idealist that I can overlook the bottom line. But when it comes to making good tools for people, you have to put people first. And you can't start off with the strategy of what can I do to separate this fool from his money? Where am I smarter or more savvy than him, and how can I exploit that?

That's what con-artists do. That's what creates aristocracies and dysfunction.

Increasing market share is not the same as making a great personal computer that everyone can use. It's not as noble an agenda.

The ferocity and desperateness with which Apple designed the Aqua interface has shown me from day one that they don't have their users in mind the way they used to. Instead, they're listening to focus groups and modeling themselves after companies who got where they got by putting the screws to us.

And so we're screwed.

And eventually, there's going to be an adversarial relationship between Apple and the Mac Faithful. Just like between Windows users and Microsoft.

To get back the glory days of the Mac, the bullshit has to be cut. The ballast dropped. It's holding us back. To find its soul again, the end user has to be elevated. Simple doesn't equal stupid. Complicated doesn't equal smart. Arcane doesn't equal more elegant. Underneath all the happy horseshit, there is a WAY to make this hardware and software work better for whatever uses human beings have for personal computers.

A way that frees us up, makes us think less about "is it cool and fashionable" and more about how WELL it works. Remember the old Mac saying, it makes us go: wow, what can I DO with this??

Now, it's all a question about what Apple will LET us do with this. They became controlling instead of liberating. Instead of tool makers, they'd rather we be satisfied with bread and circuses, all nice and compliant... voracious consumers.

If sugar is as addictive as heroin, and some say it is... food companies will add more of it, to make us eat more. Fat people equal voracious consumers of food, and that means more money for people who are in the food business. The emphasis isn't on creating the BEST food for people, just the food that's best at making people WANT food.

That's where the computer industry is. We're on the hook. We're easy prey, marks. We blame ourselves when the computer is difficult to use. We think it's our shortcomings, and maybe if we just keep upgrading, we'll eventually be smart enough to master this complicated, arcane, mystical machine that only really smart people can ever know fully.

I say, it's time for us to BE in control of computers, rather than computers and geek aristocrats being in control of us. We need to be given the keys to the kingdom. You can't be in the business of creating something like the personal computer, and then withhold its true power... by making that power hard to get to or use.

That shit's gotta stop. A GUI makes the personal computer either easier to use, or harder to use. It makes things either confusing, or makes them make sense. When so many things in OS X simply don't make sense, you have to wonder why.

And the reason is, if it made too much sense, end users become harder to dupe. They start asking smart questions, start raising standards, start demanding high quality. That's scary to companies who want to be lazy and just have the money roll in.

Viva la revolución, baby. Let the MacLash begin.
 
Posts: 9101 | Registered: Thu May 01 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
BN
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People need to start seeing the difference between language and truth. Vocabulary and issues. Crap like Apple ASKING for "feedback" when what they really want is market data. X-men ASKING for "constructive criticism" when really what they want is people to tell them everything is OK.

Oh, I’m up for that. But what Jack Nicholson said is often quite true. "You can’t handle the truth."

That doesn’t mean I’m immune from the same phenomenon or hold some special place in the truth hierarchy. But I think the preponderance of truth-repulsion illustrates how marvelously clever we all are at self-deception. Sometimes we do so to protect our egos. Sometimes we do so because it’s convenient to our lust for power. But inevitably we do so and not because we subscribe to philosophical Idealism or that our sensory apparatuses are inherently limited. Often it’s just easier than thinking.

"You want me in those HIG’s. You need me in those HIG’s."
 
Posts: 15349 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
BN
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And keep in mind, that I'm a capitalist pig, not a commie. I like to turn a buck just as much as the next guy. But that's not my destiny... that's a (hopefully someday) fringe benefit from doing what IS my destiny.

That’s another attraction of Apple and OS X. For those capitalist-hating, socialist-loving libs and lefties out there, Apple’s reputation as anti-Microsoft (which is an inherently anti-capitalist stance) and pro-OpenSource puts them in good stead with the ideology of what is becoming, by default, their core market.

We have crap, because Apple, like Microsoft, began listening to marketeers telling them not to SERVE mankind, serving is for losers... but to exploit.

It’s pretty much considered an axiom that if you want to make it in business you have to think about serving people, not exploiting them. There is a difference.

I'm not such an idealist that I can overlook the bottom line. But when it comes to making good tools for people, you have to put people first. And you can't start off with the strategy of what can I do to separate this fool from his money? Where am I smarter or more savvy than him, and how can I exploit that?

That's what con-artists do. That's what creates aristocracies and dysfunction.


You can make money either way, but I prefer the way you outlined. But it’s too late to put the soul back into Apple. Besides, because of the very course they are now taking that is exactly how people perceive them at present. They see Apple as a company that is very conscientious, innovative, high-minded, politically correct, caring, warm, nice, stop me before I puke. A few misplaced widgets here, a misfiring Quartz routine there, what does this matter in the scheme of things? It will all get fixed because Apple are the good guys.

It's to your credit, thalo, that you're willing to spit into the wind. I think this is necessary and often a noble thing to do. But I'm not sure you really understand the depths of this little Apple addiction we've got going here. Steve Jobs could double the carnage and bloat of OS X tomorrow and people would be defending him a la Kofi Annan. When ideologies predominate the particulars aren’t nearly as important as protecting one’s utopic ideal. Those ideals become antithetical to truth and facts. But once you go down that road it’s hard to turn back.
 
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Master Baiter
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But it’s too late to put the soul back into Apple.


La la la la la la--I'm not listening--la la la la!
 
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BN
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LOL.

Smart ass.
 
Posts: 15349 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
jay
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Having given it some thought: I'd like to apologize for my deplorable conduct here. Good day.


Ours is not to ask why - ours is but to do and die.
 
Posts: 39 | Registered: Tue December 28 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
THALO.net divinity
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Well a good day to you to jay. Smile

Mighty using the key commands is so much quicker than having to open or shift to Grab to do the same thing.

I think the K-base article linked is a good example of how things were no different in 1999 than the way they are now.

We are still the same chimps.

The K-base article starts out with:

Note : Updating to Mac OS 9.1 resolves this issue.

Those were the days 9.1.

Good old 9.1 cleared up that nasty Photoshop cache file problem were the invisible cache files were not being deleted accumulating Gigs of phantom space from peoples hard drives with no trace. There was a freeware app splurge or something like that to flush out the invisible folder full of cache files. Or you would eventually get the dreaded "Your disk is full errors." 9.1 fixed that issue.

Here is one of the solutions from the K-base article:

* Reducing the number of items in the folder before printing.

That is almost like a universal solution.

Brother thalo has trouble moving files:

If you encounter this issue

* Try reducing the number of items in the folder.

See how easy it can be.

But there is a last Note to the K-base article that starts:

* These solutions may not work in all cases.

This is paramount to a troubleshooting guide that starts with "Is the device plugged in?"

If the answer is Yes you are shit out of luck.
 
Posts: 4185 | Registered: Sat June 07 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
HH
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.. and suddenly the pugilistic theme of thalo.net is all wrong.

How is this sudden? I said the theme was wrong from the beginning. I think brother Jay was led astray. He came here to battle royale the 'crusade' that we are all on. What crusade? The only person that may be said to be on a crusade is you. And that's only because that's the way you define it. But, it's only a metaphysical crusade at best. You are not an unreasonable crusading zealot. And the problems with OS X is not a fairy tale of good vs. evil.

If the framework is constructed as fight between good vs. evil where is the room for that discussion that you want to generate? How can there be discussion if each side starts off thinking the other is the 'evil' only to be fought? No discussion. Just noise.

Jay was led astray by this pre-existing framework, but so were you. You seemed to think he was an X-man of old and constructed your argument as though you were talking to one. I viewed him more like the software engineers that work for me. We write applications for Windows because we have to and not because of any great dedication to Microsoft. Jay made a few good points in the exchanges. His presentation sucked, but I see that he is a big enough man to apologize for that, so presentation aside, he made a few good points that you glossed over in your haste to do battle with an X-man who wasn't really one.

If you like heated, energetic debate that's fine. It's going to happen on its own anyway. You know that's true. It happened at MFI with site management doing their best to constrain it. It will certainly spontaneously happen in the free environment of thalo.net, and does. If you construct an artificial framework it will happen in an artificial sense. Let it come naturally. This having people show up already in fighting mode without ever having read a post by any of us is a pain in the ass. All of us are capable of getting into fighting mode on our own without artificial help from anyone, and have, but it should originate from the discussion.

Also, there is the issue of false negative advertising that I brought up back in June of 2003. When they get here all they find is us and not the flaming whackos the advertisement promises. So, we have to put up with twenty or so posts of new members talking to us as though we were crazy before they catch on, or sometimes don't. This is real tiresome. You may get a kick out of the deception, but we live here too.

The theme of this site is deceptive and, as Markle noted, increasingly dated. Our membership is all over the map concerning OS X and most other matters. I'm not suggesting that criticism of OS X be muted, nothing like that, you know I agree with you on this. All I'm saying is the theme should reflect the actual existing composition of the site. If they want to come here for a battle royale with the great defender of all that is good about the Macintosh, the mighty thalo, that's great! Wonderful! First they have to come here. Promising them in advance they'll get pugilistic abuse by the membership isn't a good way to attract them. Besides, it just ain't so.
 
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Crap Settler Extraordinaire
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quote:
Having given it some thought: I'd like to apologize for my deplorable conduct here.


That's somewhat harsh on yourself jay. After all, you're human and subject to human emotions. People here are very opinionated, and if history has demonstrated anything, their opinions often evoke strong emotions. Hell, back in the days of OSXTalk at MFI when I joined the fray, thalo, Brad and HH often had my panties in a wad or me punching pillows with my curled up baby fists. Sometimes they still do. Although, even during the sometimes heated exchanges, I never hurled any f-bombs or the like (nothing wrong with that either if it conveys your point). But I won't apologize for any emotional outbursts. I have every right to be upset when I choose. The important thing is not to let your anger cloud your ability to listen or to articulate what you want to say. And not to let your anger develop a hatred for people you have never met and know virtually nothing about.

The guys here are extremely intelligent. Arguments based on diminishing your opponent rarely, if ever, work. In fact, you'll more than likely find that many play the foil here just to get you to fall into that mindset. The challenge is to provide cogent debate on the merits of an opinion. Too often in other forums the debate deteriorates into a personality argument. And then the cries for punishment and subjugation start almost immediately.

Like I said, I looked at your Rhapsody pictures on your website and read a little more about your opinions in OSX. You do have something to offer here, if you choose. Much of the tack by many here is tongue-in-cheek and playful ribbing. You would see that if you stayed longer. Really, go and read many of the threads here and you will see a comradery amid sometimes heated and emotional debate. Too often I see people come in here from other online forums with a chip firmly implanted on the shoulder. That is a prescription for disaster if I have ever seen one.

Anyway, just my opinion. Stay or go. It is your choice.
 
Posts: 899 | Registered: Fri May 16 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Crap Settler Extraordinaire
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I am with HighHopes on the "battle royale" as well.

I think it fair to say that many of us, on both sides of the OSX debate, wish to strengthen, if not reclaim, the "heart and soul" of the Mac. But we aren't fighting a good vs evil battle. We are fighting a battle for common sense.

If the site is going to be dated, why not build from a Thomas Paine "Common Sense" ideal that, although may be literary technology from 1770's, is quite salient in today's world. Besides, being in advertising and marketing, I think you can see how the message is quite old and stale for the forum-dwelling digikid of now, or even the crufty ole graybeard of yesteryear.

Coming up on the two-year anniversary, maybe a new theme could be freedom: freedom of expression and desire for a freedom in ease-of-use in OSX. They are the main debating topics around here. That might convey our intent without setting up a pugilistic construct.
 
Posts: 899 | Registered: Fri May 16 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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