Yes. Absolutely. You and I are in total agreement. This problem will take care of itself quite quickly.

In fact, within a few short decades all of the electronic devices capable of being entered and short-circuited by endless swarms of ants will have been destroyed, and will become extinct.

Oh, you thought that endless quadrillions of fast-reproducing tiny insects would be forced to evolve just because a tiny percentage of them get zapped? How amusing. That is not the sort of selection pressure that causes evolution. At least not on time scales less than millions of years.

But seriously, this predilection for electronics and emission of alarm pheromones is their greatest weakness, and I'm quite surprised nobody has taken advantage of it already to build an effective ant-killing trap. According to a documentary I watched on Netflix, fire ants have the same weakness for electronics, and the same reaction of emitting alarm pheromones when zapped. Therefore, all one has to do in order to combat either species is to build a box with some basic electronics inside that attracts the ants, and then make the ants walk one-by-one through some type of self-cleaning zapper before they ever reach the "bait" electronics. I see no reason a device couldn't be constructed to kill thousands of ants per hour in this manner and virtually wipe out entire colonies in a matter of days.

If it works it could provide enough selection pressure to cause the surviving ants to either stop trying to eat electronics or stop responding so strongly to the alarm pheromones, or both. But if the resulting modified species didn't have some other traits that allowed them to out-compete the original species it would only have a localized effect.

Congratulations, folks... And welcome to the Future!

We had the era of paintings, then the era of photographs, then the era of moving pictures, then the "talkies" and (gasp!) colorized films, then direct-to-video home porn rental, and now we are entering the era of the "feelies".

And of course with each new era we have a lovely renewed bout of public "moral outrage" over the increased stimulation the viewer receives with each new technology, and how it contributes to moral depravity that will destroy our nation if it isn't stopped!

During the coming decade or so we will begin to hear whispers, then breaking news stories, and finally public outcry, hysteria and demands that the government "do something" about all this simulated violence and suicide our children are partaking in, before we tragically lose an entire generation to the "new drug" of Virtual Experiences.

Brace yourselves, folks.

Simple solution: Stop giving Amazon money if you don't like their service.

Hell of a day, innit? De-do-doo.

Agreed. Stability should be better. Hopefully that will improve with the new guy in charge of Mac OS X development.

But you mention being unable to access the System menu when you're getting the Beach Ball. In my experience the menu bar will be non-responsive in that situation, but only as long as the hanging app is in the foreground. Cmd+Tabbing to any other app or clicking somewhere on the desktop (which is part of the Finder, of course) will switch you away from the hanging app and allow you access to the menu bar, etc. If you're really unable to get away from a hanging app then you're experiencing a full system freeze, but in my several years of experience with OS X this is pretty rare. Also the Option+Cmd+Esc shortcut often works, which brings up a Force Quit dialog and usually a hanging app will be highlighted in red in the list.

I've... never actually realized this was a problem in OS X. Spent several years using a Mac desktop with a mouse (a Microsoft mouse at that). I guess maybe I just adapted to whatever accelleration curve was there. I assume you're not talking about tracking speed, which is easily adjustable of course.

Yeah, you're right. Just plugged in a USB mouse to get another look at the mouse preferences. Tracking speed and scrolling speed are the only things that can be adjusted. Unfortunate.

A quick google indicates there might be more solutions to this issue than there used to be. Including one person who had good luck with a Microsoft Comfort Mouse and the IntelliPoint drivers that came with it.

Yeah, that's definitely an issue sometimes. Just one more good reason to memorize as many keyboard shortcuts as possible.

Looks like there is an app called SecondBar that's a partial solution. Same guy makes an app called BetterSnapTool which may even be a better enhancement to window management than SizeWell.

If you're talking about apps resetting file associations, I haven't really encountered this for years now. And I'd definitely notice since I have most multimedia file types set to open with VLC or Cog rather than iTunes.

Yeah, really can't argue much with this one. On the other hand your typical PC today is still a mostly-empty metal box that still needs a floppy drive to do firmware updates, while the Mac mini is so compact and purty it even looks good sitting on your A/V stack. There's pros and cons to not trying to support things for 14 years.

On the other hand, while I used Linux as my primary OS for a few years, all the little things that kept having to be tweaked to make it work the way I wanted ended up driving me to Mac, where I've found the most consistent and smooth desktop experience I've ever had. Far from perfect, but as good as it gets for my needs. To each their own.

I'm going to put all my replies to this at the top here because there are too many layers of html tags in this for me to easily insert text by hand.

I'm also going to try and reply to your original post and provide a few more pointers to those issues.

Re: Cmd key needing to be released.

Never thought of this being an issue. As long as you hold the Cmd key you can tab or shift-tab through the list or even hit Esc and remain in the current app. Until you let go of the Cmd key you haven't actually switched apps. Cycling through open documents/windows is a completely separate keyboard shortcut. And, honestly, the window that I want is usually in the front when I switch to the app so I don't need to cycle between windows that much anyway.

Re: SIMBL

I also hesitate to use hacky things, and probably wouldn't install SIMBL on any kind of production/server Mac, but like I said I've used it for years now with no problems, and many other people do also. It doesn't seem to have any history of causing the kind of issues that were caused in the past by things like Unsanity's APE.

Re: Lack of underlines in menu

I agree it's far from perfect but I can't imagine it would take more than a few tries to become familiar with the key combinations to access any commonly used menu items.

Thanks for the gracious acceptance of my pointers. Best of luck with whatever OS you choose to use.

This reply is mainly for the benefit of those who still use OS X and may have some of these problems.

How long has it been since you used OS X? I don't remember when it happened exactly but most apps let you resize from all edges and corners now. I can't remember when this wasn't the case with OS X, actually.

App switching in OS X works like this: Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+` (backtick, it's under the tilde and right above the Tab key) cycles between individual windows within an application. Took a while to give up the Windows-centric paradigm of treating each window as something totally separate to Alt-Tab through, but once I got used to treating each application as a set of grouped windows it was quite easy to work with. Without knowing the Cmd+` shortcut I'm sure it seems much more tedious to find the window you want quickly.

I think recent versions of Windows have improved window management, but my point is that window management on OS X is not nearly as bad as it is perceived to be. It's just different. Personally I find it remarkably efficient.

I have also been vexed by this issue after coming from the Windows and/or Linux world where maximize really means "use every available pixel to make this window as big as possible". I got used to it, and with the advent of larger screens over the years it's started to make quite a bit less sense for some apps (like web browsers where most web pages end up filling a small center strip of the window).

However, there is hope for those who can't get used to it: There is a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell that's been around a few years and almost completely solves this, bringing a true "maximize window" ability to the green/plus button in most applications. Both SIMBL and SizeWell are free and I've been using them both for at least a couple of years with no known problems. You can either assign "true maximize" as the default for the green button or have a right-click context menu that allows you to do all sorts of other things like sizing a window to a half/third/quarter of the screen, set windows to specific pixel sizes, change positioning or even move windows between different spaces. I use this all the time especially with Finder windows. It's awesome and significantly enhances the joy of using OS X. Spread the word.

Bonus: Most of the SizeWell resizing/moving options I mentioned have keyboard shortcuts.

Um, there is poor _default_ support for the keyboard, but clicking a single radio button control in the Keyboard preferences enables full keyboard support for tabbing through buttons in dialogs and clicking buttons with the spacebar and so forth. This is always one of the first things I do when setting up a new user on a Mac (that and enabling the right mouse button of course, which is also disabled by default). This option has been there for a LOOONG time, at the very least back to Panther (10.3) or even Jaguar (10.2). Just look in Keyboard preferences under the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Always been there.

A few minutes of googling should have revealed that there is also a keyboard shortcut for accessing the menu bar, if you really can't remember the keyboard shortcuts for what you want to do in your app. Once you move focus to the menu bar you can move around with the arrow keys just fine. Getting around by typing the first letter of the menu title also works in most cases. Of course every menu option that has a keyboard shortcut displays that shortcut right in the menu, so with a little practice you'll never actually need to access the menu bar in most applications. Hitting the Option key while the menu is open will show any menu commands that have alternate versions. In Safari, for instance, the Close Tab command becomes Close Other Tabs when you add the Option key.

The keyboard shortcut list is also fully editable, so if you want to change some keyboard shortcuts to work like Windows or Linux you can do that easily. Although once I got used to the common Mac keyboard shortcuts I found them far faster and more intuitive than anything I'd ever encountered in Windows or Linux, so I don't know why you'd want to mess with that. Using the control key for most shortcuts rather than the Alt/Cmd key right under your thumb seems far less usable to me. This is one of the things that will keep me on Mac OS X until there is a viable option in a Linux desktop.

I feel your pain on this one, although in most cases I have found that with a little googling you can usually find a simple command-line option to reboot the offending service. But for this particular issue I have no solution yet.

Parent poster does an excellent job outlining all the ways in which both the grandparent poster and the original submitter of this Ask Slashdot are incorrect about the perceived "iOSification" of Mac OS X. He makes an excellent point about the recent removal of Scott Forstall, which will probably bring both the "skeumorphism" BS and any further iOSification of OS X to a complete halt.

The main thing that people like the original submitter seem to be worried about, that Mac OS X will become a locked-down walled garden in some future version, is so unlikely as to be preposterous until someone like Microsoft leads the way. There is a huge difference between creating a walled garden for maintaining control of a brand new software ecosystem on proprietary limited-function devices like tablets and phones, and locking down a previously-open general purpose operating system on a general purpose computer. It would be suicidal for Apple to do something so stupid with Mac OS X, and those who are expecting it to be right around the corner are just ideologues fighting an imaginary enemy. The backlash if either Microsoft or Apple tried this would be legendary.

I'll be the first to eat my hat if this really happens, and join the crowd moving away from Mac, but for now the submitter is a part of a very small group of zealots who have simply latched onto a cause without sufficient evidence. Mac OS X is still the best, most consistent and user-friendly desktop for something like 90% of the populace outside of the small group of people who are technically minded enough to deal with the remaining quirks of Linux and who need the better environment for programming work. There are a lot of technical folks here which makes it seem like there are a lot of people who don't like Mac anymore, but the rest of the population is doing just fine with both OS X and Windows 8. Honestly at least two thirds of the few posts I see on articles like this from people who moved away from Mac are always from some kind of programmer, and they don't seem to realize what a tiny fraction of computer users they represent.

The funniest part about all this is how many of these idealogues are "fleeing" Mac and going to Windows of all things, as if this is some sort of improvement that will protect their computing "freedom". It's a rather bizarre phenomenon.

Here is what I simply don't understand about all this. I block ads because they are annoying as hell and I NEVER click on any of them anyway, so whether I am looking at ads or not, the companies doing the advertising will NEVER make any money off me through those ads. The people who bother to block ads are mostly the same as me, so who are the advertisers going to blame when everyone turns off their ad blockers and they STILL don't sell enough products per billion ad impressions?

Isn't the main problem here that the whole Internet advertising scheme is faulty? Ad prices have been plummeting each year for the entire history of the Internet because they are orders of magnitude less effective than advertisers imagined they would be. The people who are going to click on ads AND BUY THE PRODUCTS through those ad links are exactly the same people who don't bother to block ads in the first place. So I don't see what difference it will make if the people who WON'T click on your ads and WON'T buy your products consent to view the ads. All the websites will be doing is almost fraudulently inflating the impact/distribution of ads on their site while failing to provide any additional value to the people advertising their products.

No, even if everyone suddenly turned off their ad blockers the Internet would continue to descend into a place where sites that can't pay for themselves any other way will have to show exponentially more ads (since the ad prices will continue to decrease) until it will be impossible to find any actual content betwixt all the ads. Since this has basically already happened on a ton of useless sites I'd say it's pretty well proven that the Internet advertising model is a failure, and ad blocking couldn't account for more than a small percentage of this failure. It's basically a type of pyramid scheme that is continually collapsing in on itself, and in the long term it will fail completely.

A functional micro-payment system is the only thing that will keep sites alive in the future. Until that gets figured out, websites that don't directly charge users for some kind of valued product or service will continue to fail. The idea of running free websites solely on the advertising model with no other source of income is pure bunk from the get-go.

Not entirely off-topic:

I got curious again just the other day and tried to install OS/2 in a virtual machine just to experience it. However I was completely stymied by the fact that the floppy disk images are in some odd-sized proprietary "DSK" format that neither VirtualBox nor Parallels seem to be able to read, and the CD images are apparently not bootable. I googled for half a day unsuccessfully looking for some way to convert the the floppy images into a compatible format. There was no way that I could see to bypass the floppies and run the installation directly from the CD image either, as far as I could tell.

I'd really love to know how the hell people manage to get OS/2 running in any VM. In almost two decades of playing around with nearly every obscure x86-compatible operating system under the sun (anyone else heard of Native Oberon?) I've never been so stumped just trying to get an OS installed.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

It's very odd to me that they seem to have left out Lexar completely from this little test. Back when I was really into digital photography I spent a lot of time on DPReview and Amazon and B&H Photo looking for the best deals on the fastest CompactFlash and SD cards. The top competitors seemed to always be the SanDisk Ultra/Extreme lines and Lexar's Professional cards. Kingston has usually done well also, but the most prominent/popular over the years have always have seemed to be SanDisk and Lexar.

Even 2-3 years ago I remember Lexar having "300x" cards competing with the SanDisk Extreme lineup. Just now doing a quick search on Amazon shows Lexar "600x" SD cards available, so it's not like they've dropped out of the market.

Maybe somebody at Lexar pissed off the editor of PC Pro? I can't imagine why else you'd leave one of the fastest cards on the market out of a speed test. Hmm...

Oh, yeah. PC Pro. Why the f**k am I even reading Slashdot anymore?

Beau'iful plumage!

I'm afraid I have to agree. I used to use Linux as my main desktop OS, years ago. Various flavors from Gentoo and straight up Debian to more user-friendly things like Mandrake. Enjoyed most of them, but got quite fed up with all the little things that always had to be fixed and tweaked in order to make each distro run right. Over a decade later each distro is still continually changing miscellaneous stuff, introducing as many regressions as fixes, and reinventing the wheel for simple stuff (like the installer) that should have been standardized years ago. It's ridiculous. I've tried to test drive a few distros every couple of years and I've had a hell of a time even getting some of the installer discs to boot up in a VM! I almost never ran into such problems years ago.

At this point I'm terrified that when Apple finally collapses in a few years the only choices I'll have for a desktop OS will be between some bizarre and unrecognizable future nightmare version of Windows and half a dozen supposedly user-friendly Linux distros that will be full of so many bugs and quirks that I'll want to give up using computers entirely. The promise of computing nirvana that Linux/Open Source seemed to offer years ago has never been realized. Linux changes constantly, but never in any particular direction. That is both its strength and its shortcoming.

You declare that it is unethical, but then all you have are questions, not reasons why it is unethical. The only way humanity will ever find answers to these questions is to be confronted with the reality of the existence of things such as non-human sentient species. Society in general and especially the legal system requires something to occur in reality in order to even begin coming to terms whether it is good or bad. If we leave it as a thought experiment we'll still be arguing about it ten thousand years from now, and the neanderthal species will still be extinct.

More importantly, someone somewhere is eventually going to perform this experiment, and succeed. Do you want it to be us, or some isolated totalitarian dictatorship country *COUGH*northkorea*COUGH* which may be far more inclined to breeding a population of hybrid-human slaves who are given no rights under the law? There needs to be established international precedent for treating non-human sentient beings as equals, otherwise the opposite might easily happen. The only way to resolve these issues is to confront them in reality, and short of having some sentient aliens immigrate here from Tau Ceti Alpha, I don't know how else we're going to tackle these ethical choices.

Bottom line is that denying the advancement of technology because "I have some questions" is pointless. If we were resurrecting the dodo would you declare it perfectly ethical just because the dodo is clueless about what's happening? Of course you would. It would be lauded as an important project. On the other hand, neanderthals would be sentient so you want to deny them a chance at continued existence in this universe just because their lives might be complicated and difficult? Guess what would probably happen with a resurrected dodo species, after we have enough of them. Yeah, we'll start carving them up for Thanksgiving dinner (and enjoying it). Hard to believe we could really do anything worse to the neanderthals. Outside of certain segments of the population I think most people will treat them just about as well as they treat fellow humans. Of course by that I mean they will be treated badly, just like we treat each other. But at the same time it will highlight the fact that we do treat each other badly, and how we should stop doing that.

Some individuals resulting from these experiments may get mistreated horribly, but I can see nothing but a positive effect for humanity as a whole in the long term to be forced to confront the reality that we are not the only sentient species in the universe. And if we get things resolved sufficiently maybe we won't be so bad off when we meet some other non-human sentient species, and maybe they won't decide to exterminate us for being absolutely horrid, hateful little creatures.

You really don't go far enough with this comment. You've acknowledged that it happened, but you haven't acknowledged what it really means. The plain and simple truth is this: A firearms registry was just abused to target firearms owners, thus proving that firearms registries will be abused to target firearms owners. There is no other side to this argument. It is not "counter productive" that the list was abused, it is simply reality. The idea that such a list would not be abused has always been preposterous and always will be preposterous. Gun registries are not a workable solution in a free society. Period. QED. Thus it is proven.

It's funny how the gun control crowd is constantly "shooting themselves in the foot" with actions and rhetoric like this that simply strengthens the other side and guarantees there will absolutely be millions more firearms ending up being sold and used, especially illegal black market firearms. The more they push, the more the other side pushes back and the results will end up being the exact opposite of what they want.