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Oh, you naughty devil
13 Apr 2007, 3:09

For circa six months I've been using Ubuntu as my primary operating system. And I love it. If only Killian would quit sending me m4p files, I'd wipe Windows from my desktop computer entirely.

That aside, when Apple releases MacBooks with the new OS X Leopard installed, I'll be buying one. I've never owned and Mac and have been heretofore uneasy using them. It's mostly a lot of trepidation concerning that one-button mouse. If current industry standard is two buttons and a wheel, and if they tout the OS X as the most advanced operating system on the planet (as Sun Microsystems does their Solaris—hmm...), doesn't it seem a little incongruous that your primary method of interacting with the machine is so unhandy? It's like they offer you the Navigator, but you have to drive it with penguin flippers rather than hands.

But it's based on FreeBSD (its mascot is a daemon for a reason), which means that beneath all its suave bubbles and GUIliciousness, it's running Unix. Which means that, at the command line, I'll be able to issue it the same commands as I've been using with Linux and Solaris.

Is this a regressive move—an expensive step backwards—from Linux to OS X?

Who cares. What I really want to talk about is this article. Summary: Mr Bookspan, a Mac man, uses some 3rd-party application which exposes a hidden system folder, /usr*, which he doesn't know anything about and deletes. And then asserts that it's to Apple's shame that he can "still cripple" his computer.

It's possible to cripple iPods too. Believe it.

Irrespective of the reason Mr Bookspan's /usr directory became exposed, it's a universally bad idea to get rid of things you aren't certain you don't need. And it's a universally good idea to research unfamiliar things. Not knowing what the directory was, he should have looked into it. Or at least opened it.

But people have done stupider things.

What I'm more concerned with, though, is his indignation toward the sort of power he has over his machine—toward Apple's brazen decision to sell a thing that he and people like him have the power to destroy.

However tragic it might be to get a call from mom, weeping hysterical because she trashed her registry and now her machine won't boot and she lost five years of photos and grandpa's autobiography and your younger brother's mp3 collection and oh wow how all those hours' work and memories are lost and all that family time's just gone poof and God damn I didn't mean to but I read on a site somewhere there was this handy feature I could install... it'd be even more tragic if we as consumer culture were so fearful of exploration and edification and so willy-nilly concerning of the consequences of our actions that we not only tolerated but demanded that kind of insolence, that kind of imposition of restrictions, from our machines. Because then they wouldn't be our machines. They'd be Big Brother boxes the manufacturers let us use, given certain conditions.

Ahem, excuse me, user, but it appears you're trying to block Behavior-Driven Endorsed Product/Service Notifications, aka "pop-up ads". This is not recommended.

Ahem, excuse me, user, but it appears you're trying to view or create content considered pornographic or similarly unsavory.

Ahem, excuse me, user, but it appears you're trying to convert a DRM-protected file into an unprotected format.

Ahem, excuse me, user, but we recommend you use TrustedApp©-Approved™ MSNeOffice© for all your productivity and entertainment needs. Do you want to make MSNeOffice© Suite™ your default omni-file manager? No? Yes you do.

Ahem, excuse me, user, but it's nearly midnight. Please promptly finish what you're doing and prepare for system shutdown. And beddy-by.

There are plenty of master-slave relationships in computing—the most pertinent being the one between you and your computer. It's your slave. You issue commands and it obeys you. We as progressive culture abolished that sort of relationship between people a long time ago.

The flow of control should remain from user to machine, not from manufacturer to user via the machine.

*In case you didn't click the link and read about it, know this: your /usr directory is really important. Programs and things your programs need to run are in there. You shouldn't delete it.

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