As for nerds being more economically successful, isn't that just because nerds are miserly SOB's who use 10 year old Pentium IIIs and free open source software?;-)
The problem I have with the live and let live credo you mention is that libertarians would be against something like motorcycle helmet laws or mandatory seatbelt laws. In the long run, all these idiots who don't wear helmets and seatbelts cost EVERYONE money in increased insurance premiums and taxes for medical costs. That is the fundamental flaw with Libertarianism. They don't see that everything effects everything else in some way.
I'd rather get 1% of 1 million sales by brokering my art form through a huge record label than try to make that much money through my own direct sales. Face it, artists make more money by letting the BIG labels sell their image and music for them, because more people discover their music then if they were to try to sell it directly to people they meet at performances.
hmmm, not that I hang out in p2p much anymore now that iTunes (and others) have provided a reasonable and legit alternative, but it has been my experience that p2p is more for ENTIRE discgographies/bootlegs/live performances and NOT really the place for pop singles.
Well, let's start with the fact that he can't be trusted to, I don't know, TELL THE TRUTH? We can start with that. Then there is the whole issue of being psychologically unstable? What's illegal about trolling for sex? Maybe paying for the sex you are seeking is a start. Let's see, Sen . Craig of Idaho, who has great influence in some committee in Washington is a closet homo who would be petrified to be outed...I wonder if I could maybe somehow hold that against him if he doesn't vote a certain way, or give me some information that I, as a servant of my foreign country not friendly to the US, could possibly use? If you can't see all the personal flaws with this guy, then your post holds no credibility at all.
I don't know about you, but I don't call living within the bounds of the law "conformity". Since when is being a sound, trustworthy citizen worthy of being called a sell-out conformist? As usual with slashdot, you are merely exaggerating the implied severity of the US Government issued polygraph. It is an easy and effective tool to weed out the Sen. Craigs in our ranks. Do drugs? Sleep around on your wife? Sell secrets to Russians? The polygraph will tell. Draw pictures of naked 12-year olds? Polygraph will tell, but the polygraph admin won't care.
Oh yeah, and nice resolution too. What is that Conan O'Brien show; about 5 fps? I mean iTunes isn't great, but at least it is bearable. What about putting these episodes on my iPod or playing it full screen on my large tv? Sorry, this is just a lame solution.
Well I had to call your bluff, so I went and checked. They have 12 shows online right now (a couple of which are brain rotting soap operas). You are telling me that NBC only airs 12 different show a week? You must work for NBC.
Oh, then there is the entire issue of only being to watch the most current episode.
Seriously, what on earth makes you think you have the right to get the shows you want, when you want them, in exactly the format you want?
I don't know, the fact that every TV show I like (until this week) was available on iTunes? Without the consumer, the TV stations are nothing. That sounds like a pretty strong right to me.
You could say downloading it from bittorrent is the same thing as getting a copy on tape from your friend, couldn't you? That's my justification at times. How is it different to download a song, or to get said song on a CD-R from a friend who owns the original CD? Or to go old school, how is it different than getting a tape with a recording of a song off the radio?
I actually wrote to the iTunes business unit to request higher quality/higher priced HD content for tv shows like The Office. I'm with you, I'd be willing to pay top dollar for the few quality tv shows there are out there nowdays.
Being denied a security clearance or and going to prison are two different things...typical slashdot over-reaction. But, in all fairness, I could have picked any of 50 or so posts in this thread to say this same thing. Yours was just convenient because it was the one open a the moment.
I've had a clearance since 1990 and it is one of the least invasive aspects of my life. Sure, I've had to pass on the occassional joint being passed around at concerts, but I seem to prefer my large salary over the past 17 years over the occassional cheap buzz that is can otherwise be legally obtained in the form of a six-pack. Uninterestingly enough, I am not ashamed at my glaring lack of sexual perversion, nor do I glorify my utter lack of gambling impulse. Not to mention, I don't like telling our enemies what I know about them, for ANY cost. In otherwords, the questions they ask on polygraphs are uninteresting and not invasive at all. They use polygraphs to see if you are prone to lying, and frankly, they don't care about your fetishes (as long as they are legal). It's you people out there who say, "I never download songs of the Internet, but those record label companies sure are evil!" I pass the the polys by saying, "yes", when asked, "do you download illegal music off the Internet".
Of course, most people on slashdot have tons to hide, so they run and scream about how unfair it all seems... Good thing most of you will never actually have to go through my hell.
I'll argue the other side, in light of the Sen. Craig news, and say I'm GLAD NASA (or any government entity for that matter) is probing (pun-intended?) employees in this manner. If you think for one second that people with personal issues and perversions (and subsequent repressions) can separate these issues from public service, then I've got some ocean front propert in Arizona to sell you. If Sen. Craig had to endure half the poly stress I have in my life, this giant loser would not be in a position of public trust, as he shouldn't be.
No it IS about growing a sack, because most people are afraid to cut ties to Microsoft, because they THINK they have to be able run Windows software. Once most people start using OS X, they forget (mostly) all about their prior needs. Some with business needs, can thankfully keep using Windows too, but most home users (I have lots of friends like this), just can't seem to differentiate between office computing and personal/home computing needs.
OS 9 didn't suck baboon piss. On a technical level, it may have lacked the muscle that OS X does, but there are plenty of design experts that will tell you that OS 7-9 were far superior in interface design than OS X is. In comparison, OS X is lukewarm baboon piss (for interface). Fortunately it is all relative, yet some people still like frozen baboon piss ice-cubes (Windows) in their drinks.
Ok so you are expert in UID. I too am an expert in UID (or at least that's what pays my salary) but I wasn't going to stoop to such levels of appeal for authority. Oops, there I go.
Cmnd+Q is most DEFINTELY better than alt+F4, because an English speaker can GUESS a keyboard shortcut with relative success by using INTUITION, which, in my work as a systems designer, is the whole goal of UID. If you take the iPhone as the latest UID triumph, you'll see there isn't a single technical instruction in the manual, yet most users figure out most features just by picking the thing up and trying it. People would never try alt+f4. People WOULD try apple key (cmnd) + "o" for "o"pen, "s"ave, "n"ew, select "a"all...
No, it's not perfect, but in comparison to the UID nightmares that Microsoft has been serving us ever since they put a shell on DOS, it is divine.
I've lost count of how many times the task manager has stopped responding. In a classic Windows computing moment, you see "Task Manager " in Task Manager list, and of course, it has stopped responding, so you can't kill it. Trying to do so, only brings up another Task Manager Window, with yet another Task Manager not responding.Anyone who says they have never had this happen, only operates on $5000+ custom built PCs that are not connected to the Internet, or have about 10gigs of ram installed.
I have three PCs at home (XP), and they've all done it. I worked at a school, and used two computers primarily (Win2000, XP), and they both did it (especially when only equipped with 1mb of ram). Not only did my office computers do it, but most of the other 200+ various builds for the students do it as well. In the Intelligence field, we don't even use PCs other than for unclassified office tasks. In any case, the usual fix is a hard reboot, which is more evil than a single program hanging or some weird malware glitch. Ask 100 OS X users when was the last they had to reboot their machine because it wasn't responding and you'll get a completely different story when you ask the same question to 100 Windows users.
I'm not sure, but I don't think I was saying YOU in specific claim your PC never crashes. Just anytime there is a conversation about OS X and people post they are glad they switched, because now their computer never crashes, you get the usual litany of "MY PC HAS NEVER CRASHED!" guys. It doesn't take a blue screen for a computer to have "crashed". I would say anytime a program stops responding or just disappears with no dialogue window is a crash. And, this happens several times a day on EVERY PC I ever use. Why else would most people know ctlr+alt+del when most people aren't computer savy?
As for a single key stroke for ending a task, OS X has that (kinda). You can right click on the launch icon in the dock and force quit it there. Alernatively, you can go to the ever present Apple menu and kill it there, or you can do the cmd+opt+esc and kill it there, and of course you can always PID in command line and kill offending process there.
Actually, I was using contextual menus on Mac OS, long before the advent of Win95. I can't remember really if Win 3.0 had right click functionality or not, but I doubt it, considering how non-user friendly that mess was.
You may think it is dumb pride, but I think it is more of design tradeoff. Have you noticed our iPhones only have 4 buttons total? I pods have what, 2? I think Apple has decided that their are more people that are used to the Mac ctrl+click way than there are new users. You can teach new users but it is hard to unlearn for existing users.
One thing we are all forgetting...what percentage of laptop users don't plug in a mouse when they are doing desktop work? Like I said, when I'm not plugged into a mouse, I personally rarely use the mouse button at all, but some people don't like the track pad clicking. If the made track pad clicking the only option, that would scare many people away, because it has a learning curve (something Apple is very strongly against, obviously). BUT...the option is there. I think it is a good enough trade-off. Would it cost hundreds of dollars to add a physical second button? No. Would it turn off Apple purists? Not really. Does the lack of a physical button make the computer obsolete or non-functional? Hell no.
Oh, sorry. My/. prefs were weirding out for some reason and not displaying the threads the usual way. It appeared as though your response was in the wrong thread. I apologize if I was wrong. As for the right click not being on by default, as you said, this is probably to prevent erroneous clicks. My wife hates it and as it turned off under her user profile. It takes all of 5 seconds to turn it on. Since this is a feature that more advanced users would probably use over new users, it isn't that big of a deal to go into system prefs to turn it on. Actually, I'm pretty sure Apple does this on purpose, so as not to scare off new users with weird misclicks.
When we bought our current iMac online, my wife was configuring it online under my account and she actually ended up odering the 24" one by accident;-) (I sent it back though for the 20", and now my wife doesn't get to buy anything using my account, heh).
As a long time Mac user, I've lived through 20 years of doubt and misrepresentation about the supposed limitation of Mac OS. The "no-right" click one easily is the biggest bs argument of them all, right ahead of "no software". I've been using multiple button mice with Mac OS since the early/mid 90s, with just a little bit of system tweaking (at first), and none at all now.
Fair enough story...(and too frequent, unfortunately). One thing I've noticed is that novice computer users from the PC side make horrible Mac converts. Since this type of person doesn't really care to take the time to learn about computers when they were a PC user, they will be even MORE frustrated when having to relearn a few things on the Mac. Now granted, there isn't anything show-stoppingly different between the two computers, and it always amazes me that intelligent people can't figure things out on a computer, some people STILL don't give an effort, for whatever reason (they don't care, don't want too, don't have the time/patience, whatever). These people don't see the advantages of OS X, because frankly, these people don't care.
As easy and intuitive Mac OS X is to use, "easy" is still a relative term. A full-fledged OS X computer is nowhere as easy to figure out as the iPhone (no technical instructions anywhere, just started using it, still haven't read any instructions on how to use it) or an iPod, but given the alternative of dorking around in Windows for hours on end, I'll take the OS X and no-manual and take my chances.
They may be assembled in the same craptacular factories, but they are DESIGNED in Cupertino. Every piece of machinery has two very important elements: engineering and manufacture. The best manufacturing plants in the world can't manufacture a good product if it is poorly engineered
Apple products are engineered to use standard parts much better than many other major players. Apple puts thoughts into things like mag-safe adapters, latchless laptop screens, CD-Rom slots that have a darker bezel on the side of the computer so you don't have to look to see where the slot is. They have to make engineering trade-offs, just like every other company, but tend to make their tradeoffs favor the consumer's experience, instead of the stockholders' interests. Are they perfect? No. Things like not being able to adjust the height of the iMac, all the connetions on the back of the iMac, or perfectly square keyboards on the MacBooks are obviously form-over-function choices, but it's not like these small things are preventing the computer from working well. There is a tradeoff in looks vs. performance, and in my book, Apple has made the right choices.
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As for nerds being more economically successful, isn't that just because nerds are miserly SOB's who use 10 year old Pentium IIIs and free open source software? ;-)
The problem I have with the live and let live credo you mention is that libertarians would be against something like motorcycle helmet laws or mandatory seatbelt laws. In the long run, all these idiots who don't wear helmets and seatbelts cost EVERYONE money in increased insurance premiums and taxes for medical costs. That is the fundamental flaw with Libertarianism. They don't see that everything effects everything else in some way.
Nerds are practical? The same guys who tweak code line by line for no apparent outcome other than satisfying their inner geekdom?
I'd rather get 1% of 1 million sales by brokering my art form through a huge record label than try to make that much money through my own direct sales. Face it, artists make more money by letting the BIG labels sell their image and music for them, because more people discover their music then if they were to try to sell it directly to people they meet at performances.
hmmm, not that I hang out in p2p much anymore now that iTunes (and others) have provided a reasonable and legit alternative, but it has been my experience that p2p is more for ENTIRE discgographies/bootlegs/live performances and NOT really the place for pop singles.
You didn't read my last line where I compared it to taping a radio broadcast and giving that to a friend. So that fixes #1.
I don't know about you, but I don't call living within the bounds of the law "conformity". Since when is being a sound, trustworthy citizen worthy of being called a sell-out conformist? As usual with slashdot, you are merely exaggerating the implied severity of the US Government issued polygraph. It is an easy and effective tool to weed out the Sen. Craigs in our ranks. Do drugs? Sleep around on your wife? Sell secrets to Russians? The polygraph will tell. Draw pictures of naked 12-year olds? Polygraph will tell, but the polygraph admin won't care.
Oh yeah, and nice resolution too. What is that Conan O'Brien show; about 5 fps? I mean iTunes isn't great, but at least it is bearable. What about putting these episodes on my iPod or playing it full screen on my large tv? Sorry, this is just a lame solution.
Oh, then there is the entire issue of only being to watch the most current episode.
Oh yeah....nice commercials. Must...buy....Toyota.....Tundra......now.
You could say downloading it from bittorrent is the same thing as getting a copy on tape from your friend, couldn't you? That's my justification at times. How is it different to download a song, or to get said song on a CD-R from a friend who owns the original CD? Or to go old school, how is it different than getting a tape with a recording of a song off the radio?
I actually wrote to the iTunes business unit to request higher quality/higher priced HD content for tv shows like The Office. I'm with you, I'd be willing to pay top dollar for the few quality tv shows there are out there nowdays.
Yeah, me too. Too bad NBC is missing out on the whole new media thing and is stuck in a 30 year-old business paradigm.
I've had a clearance since 1990 and it is one of the least invasive aspects of my life. Sure, I've had to pass on the occassional joint being passed around at concerts, but I seem to prefer my large salary over the past 17 years over the occassional cheap buzz that is can otherwise be legally obtained in the form of a six-pack. Uninterestingly enough, I am not ashamed at my glaring lack of sexual perversion, nor do I glorify my utter lack of gambling impulse. Not to mention, I don't like telling our enemies what I know about them, for ANY cost. In otherwords, the questions they ask on polygraphs are uninteresting and not invasive at all. They use polygraphs to see if you are prone to lying, and frankly, they don't care about your fetishes (as long as they are legal). It's you people out there who say, "I never download songs of the Internet, but those record label companies sure are evil!" I pass the the polys by saying, "yes", when asked, "do you download illegal music off the Internet".
Of course, most people on slashdot have tons to hide, so they run and scream about how unfair it all seems... Good thing most of you will never actually have to go through my hell.
I'll argue the other side, in light of the Sen. Craig news, and say I'm GLAD NASA (or any government entity for that matter) is probing (pun-intended?) employees in this manner. If you think for one second that people with personal issues and perversions (and subsequent repressions) can separate these issues from public service, then I've got some ocean front propert in Arizona to sell you. If Sen. Craig had to endure half the poly stress I have in my life, this giant loser would not be in a position of public trust, as he shouldn't be.
OS 9 didn't suck baboon piss. On a technical level, it may have lacked the muscle that OS X does, but there are plenty of design experts that will tell you that OS 7-9 were far superior in interface design than OS X is. In comparison, OS X is lukewarm baboon piss (for interface). Fortunately it is all relative, yet some people still like frozen baboon piss ice-cubes (Windows) in their drinks.
Cmnd+Q is most DEFINTELY better than alt+F4, because an English speaker can GUESS a keyboard shortcut with relative success by using INTUITION, which, in my work as a systems designer, is the whole goal of UID. If you take the iPhone as the latest UID triumph, you'll see there isn't a single technical instruction in the manual, yet most users figure out most features just by picking the thing up and trying it. People would never try alt+f4. People WOULD try apple key (cmnd) + "o" for "o"pen, "s"ave, "n"ew, select "a"all...
No, it's not perfect, but in comparison to the UID nightmares that Microsoft has been serving us ever since they put a shell on DOS, it is divine.
Fifty years ago they said, "what's so important about schools that my taxes have to be used to other people can have it". Same thing, different era.
I have three PCs at home (XP), and they've all done it. I worked at a school, and used two computers primarily (Win2000, XP), and they both did it (especially when only equipped with 1mb of ram). Not only did my office computers do it, but most of the other 200+ various builds for the students do it as well. In the Intelligence field, we don't even use PCs other than for unclassified office tasks. In any case, the usual fix is a hard reboot, which is more evil than a single program hanging or some weird malware glitch. Ask 100 OS X users when was the last they had to reboot their machine because it wasn't responding and you'll get a completely different story when you ask the same question to 100 Windows users.
I'm not sure, but I don't think I was saying YOU in specific claim your PC never crashes. Just anytime there is a conversation about OS X and people post they are glad they switched, because now their computer never crashes, you get the usual litany of "MY PC HAS NEVER CRASHED!" guys. It doesn't take a blue screen for a computer to have "crashed". I would say anytime a program stops responding or just disappears with no dialogue window is a crash. And, this happens several times a day on EVERY PC I ever use. Why else would most people know ctlr+alt+del when most people aren't computer savy?
As for a single key stroke for ending a task, OS X has that (kinda). You can right click on the launch icon in the dock and force quit it there. Alernatively, you can go to the ever present Apple menu and kill it there, or you can do the cmd+opt+esc and kill it there, and of course you can always PID in command line and kill offending process there.
You may think it is dumb pride, but I think it is more of design tradeoff. Have you noticed our iPhones only have 4 buttons total? I pods have what, 2? I think Apple has decided that their are more people that are used to the Mac ctrl+click way than there are new users. You can teach new users but it is hard to unlearn for existing users.
One thing we are all forgetting...what percentage of laptop users don't plug in a mouse when they are doing desktop work? Like I said, when I'm not plugged into a mouse, I personally rarely use the mouse button at all, but some people don't like the track pad clicking. If the made track pad clicking the only option, that would scare many people away, because it has a learning curve (something Apple is very strongly against, obviously). BUT...the option is there. I think it is a good enough trade-off. Would it cost hundreds of dollars to add a physical second button? No. Would it turn off Apple purists? Not really. Does the lack of a physical button make the computer obsolete or non-functional? Hell no.
When we bought our current iMac online, my wife was configuring it online under my account and she actually ended up odering the 24" one by accident ;-) (I sent it back though for the 20", and now my wife doesn't get to buy anything using my account, heh).
As a long time Mac user, I've lived through 20 years of doubt and misrepresentation about the supposed limitation of Mac OS. The "no-right" click one easily is the biggest bs argument of them all, right ahead of "no software". I've been using multiple button mice with Mac OS since the early/mid 90s, with just a little bit of system tweaking (at first), and none at all now.
Fair enough story...(and too frequent, unfortunately). One thing I've noticed is that novice computer users from the PC side make horrible Mac converts. Since this type of person doesn't really care to take the time to learn about computers when they were a PC user, they will be even MORE frustrated when having to relearn a few things on the Mac. Now granted, there isn't anything show-stoppingly different between the two computers, and it always amazes me that intelligent people can't figure things out on a computer, some people STILL don't give an effort, for whatever reason (they don't care, don't want too, don't have the time/patience, whatever). These people don't see the advantages of OS X, because frankly, these people don't care. As easy and intuitive Mac OS X is to use, "easy" is still a relative term. A full-fledged OS X computer is nowhere as easy to figure out as the iPhone (no technical instructions anywhere, just started using it, still haven't read any instructions on how to use it) or an iPod, but given the alternative of dorking around in Windows for hours on end, I'll take the OS X and no-manual and take my chances.
Apple products are engineered to use standard parts much better than many other major players. Apple puts thoughts into things like mag-safe adapters, latchless laptop screens, CD-Rom slots that have a darker bezel on the side of the computer so you don't have to look to see where the slot is. They have to make engineering trade-offs, just like every other company, but tend to make their tradeoffs favor the consumer's experience, instead of the stockholders' interests. Are they perfect? No. Things like not being able to adjust the height of the iMac, all the connetions on the back of the iMac, or perfectly square keyboards on the MacBooks are obviously form-over-function choices, but it's not like these small things are preventing the computer from working well. There is a tradeoff in looks vs. performance, and in my book, Apple has made the right choices.
I wouldn't expect Apple to try and appease the 1% of users in the world who run iTunes and don't have a mouse.