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The Nation of Macintosh?
Devon Avenger writes "A new short British film has been released according to this article at Wired depicting a cult of Macintosh fanatics who are organised in a manner reminiscent of the Nation of Islam."
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So it stars an "an original Macintosh, the 512K," huh? The original Mac had a big bad 128K of RAM. (and a 400K single sided 3.5" floppy)
Yeah but the BSD/VMS/BeOS/OS/2/Linux user (man OS/2 really screwed that up) doesn't talk about how much more superior his hardware is as well as the OS.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
They should try Amiga users, they're several times worse Mac users. Really.
BitGeek,
I just wanted to let you know why I modded several of your posts offtopic. While I am a Mac user, and former evangelist, these platform wars have gone on quite long enough on Usenet. We don't need them here.
The whole attitude of "The Windows users are persecuting me because my machine is prettier and it runs better!" is really over the top, incorrect, and irrelevent.
So please, just relax, enjoy your own machine, and quit worrying about what everyone else thinks about Macs.
Actually, what the article is referring to is the Nation of Islam group - not Islam in general. If you're not familiar with the Nation of Islam you can find more information here.
Those who will sacrifice Freedom and Security will get Windows...
Hopefully, this is just an issue of absorbing the R&D costs [fool.com] of their new O/S. I'm not a Mac user, but some of my best friends are ...
Read the earnings report yourself. They actually posted a 7M profit before one-time non-recuring changes due to an internal reorg and recent acquisitions.
Given this, they actually met their predictions. This is pretty good while other hardware manufacturers plummet.
With more than 4 billion in cash reserve, a net loss of 47M is just a good tax evasion for the next quarter.
I'm getting tired of this old chestnut. More expensive than what, exactly?
Yes, the retail cost of a new Mac is more than your average clone, or built-it-yerself project, but this is not where Apple is positioned.
When I decided to get a Mac to replace a Windows box to run commercial applications, I decided to do an accurate price compare with other high-end vendors. That means I only looked at higher-end Compaqs (or whatever they are now), IBM (when they sold desktops), and anything from Sony. I did a build-your-own run on dell.com, making sure to choose all the "extra" items that came standard on a new G4.
Plainly put, I found that a Mac was less than $500 (Canadian) in most cases.
If I was building a super-deluxe gaming box, I would have built my own Intel/AMD box (again) and been done with it. This would not have been an economy solution either, based on the numbers I racked up pricing out an AMD godbox.
Look, a modest off-the-shelf or built-to-order Intel/AMD box running Windows is probably good enough for most people. If you want or need anything more, however, any top of the line brand-name box is going to be siginficantly pricier. Apple is not alone in this.
The bottom line is that, for what I wanted a home computer to be (semi-pro music production, web development, modest amount of gaming, software development) a Mac fit my life perfectly. I get a commercially supported OS, standardized equipment and a deep well of user experience I can draw on.
And I don't have to use Windows. I get enough of that at work.
If you want to criticize the Mac platform, a better place to start is the lack of cheap or free software. There isn't the same culture of freeware as in the BSD or Linux world, and the commercial apps tend toward higher prices. I attribute this to market-share.
This is changing, however. Anyone who uses OS X (and who doesn't) has access to Fink for opensource love.
If it's fanatical to choose a platform that allows you the benefits of a commercially-supported platform with the pleasures of a nice UNIX GUI, then go ahead and call me a fanatic. I don't know from anything earlier than OS X, so cannot comment. People tend to get attached to their first user experience. Heck, I have a soft spot in my heart for the TRS-80 Model I and Northstar minis.
From my experience though, if you fairly compare a recent G4 with a recent offering from Sony, add the DVD-RW/CD-RW and Gigabit ethernet (ok, this last is a bit spurious -- who can use 1000 mbit devices to the fullest right now?) you'll find the price difference almost meaningless. Add a $500 tax for running Windows (that's only a dollar a crash), and the price ends up the same.
-- clvrmnky
I got so much trouble on my mind
I refuse to lose
Here's your ticket
Hear the drummer get wicked
The crew to you to push the back to Black
Attack so I sat and japped
Then slapped the Mac(Intosh)
Now I'm ready to mike it
(You know I like it)
It's written exactly like that in the liner notes too.
FWIW, Chuck D has gone around helping indie rapper set up Mac-based ProTools studios for quite some time.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The followers of the Nation Of Islam believe in (all quotes taken from their homepage or their publications): ...one God (Allah) and that Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W.Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long awaited 'Messiah' of the Christians and the 'Mahdi' of the Muslims...
... ". And according to a hadith narrated by Masruq, in Sahih Bukhari, 'Aisha said, "If anyone tells you that Muhammad has seen his Lord, he is a liar, for Allah says (in 6:103), 'No vision can grasp Him.'...".
...the blackman is god and his proper name is ALLAH. Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head.
However, the Qur`an states in chapter 4, verse 36, "Serve Allah, and join not Any partners with Him;
The followers of the Nation Of Islam further believe "in the resurrection of the dead--not in physical resurrection--but in mental resurrection. We also believe that the so-called Negroes are most in need of mental resurrection; therefore, they will be resurrected first." But the Qur`an states in chapter 20, verse 55, "From the earth did We Create you, and into it Shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again." Even more pointedly, the Qur'an also states in 64:7,
The Unbelievers think that they will not be raised up (for Judgement). Say: "Yea, by my Lord, Ye shall surely be Raised up: then shall ye Be told (the truth) of All that ye did. And that is easy for Allah."
Besides the above two differences, the followers of the Nation of Islam also believe in other things contrary to Islam as defined in the Qur'an and Sunnah, such as:
*
[We, the Black Muslims, believe] "in the truth of the Bible, but we believe that it has been tampered with and must be reinterpreted so that mankind will not be snared by the falsehoods that have been added to it".
The problem with this belief: The true Prophet of Islam ordered Muslims to neither accept the Bible nor reject it - certainly there was no mention of reinterpretation.
*
"That we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for".
The problem with this belief: The Qur'an and Sunnah are crystal clear on the necessity of going to war when the situation demands it.
The Nation of Gods and Earths (5% Nation of Islam) is apparently an offshoot of the so-called Nation of Islam. Like its parent, this group's beliefs clearly identify it as being fundamentally outside the pale of Islam. Specifically, and we quote (from their homepage):
The original man is the Asiatic Blackman, the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth, father of civilization, God of the Universe.
This is in clear contradiction with one of the essential axioms of Islam, namely that Allah (God) is Creator and all else (including men - asiatic blacks or otherwise) is created. In chapter 25, verse 54 of the Qur'an, Allah says that He has created man, therefore it is logically impossible for man to be Allah.
The second quote above is a prime example of a tendency of the "Nation of Gods and Earths" to conjure up beliefs that are, to a large extent, highly confused. Some examples of these beliefs that have nothing to do with Islam are "supreme mathematics and alphabet", an evil person named Yacob, a prophet named W. D. Fard, and a belief that black people are superior in some way.
The true Prophet of Islam refuted this last racist belief in his Farewell Address,
O people! Verily your Lord is one and your father is one. All of you belong to one ancestry of Adam and Adam was created out of clay. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an Arab; nor for white over the black nor for the black over the white except in piety. Verily the noblest among you is he who is the most pious.
For a deeper expose of this group and its parent (the Nation of Islam), the interested reader might wish to examine the autobiography of the late Malik Al-Shabaz (Malcolm X).
" It also stars an original Macintosh, the 512K. "
wasn't the 512k the second mac? AFAIK the first one was called "macintosh" and was later renamed "128K"
You've got it all wrong re:The Nation of Islam.
I find it sad that so many sheeple jump to the conclustion that:
Nation of Islam = arabic muslims = terrorists.
Extremist? Yup
Violent? Historically, some
Terrorists? No freaking way
The two most prominent members I can think of historically were Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
Of course, there was plenty of infighting: X was assasinated by Nation of Islam goons after his trip to Mecca (which convinced him that racial integration was possible).
Ali was expelled in 1969.
The Nation of Islam helped spark whole civil rights movement and played an integral role in its unfolding. Some would say it was their extremism that made the moderation of people like Dr. Martin Luther King successful.