So, yes, it is not only possible, but known and proved that people can only do so much mental work per day and still be productive. You can write a lot, your reading needs some work, though. I didn't say people didn't have a mental work capacity/limit. I said that it's impossible *that we are at that limit right now*.
By analogy, our cars have a maximum distance they can travel per day (under their own power), but it's impossible that we are at that maximum. Cars just sitting in a parking space is like people sitting in front of the TV.
It's absolutely *absurd* to claim that we are at maximum mental utilization. It's also absolutely *absurd* to pretend that TV isn't a major contributor to our mental utilization deficit.
2. It's also a matter of interests. You're the most productive for the things that keep you at least a bit interested and maybe even entertained....
Most of the people just don't develop enough of an interest in anything to really further human knowledge. Even if you could un-invent TV overnight, they'd go to the pub instead, not start studying some science. And if you forced them at gun-point to do science in their free time, they'd take it as a chore and do a half-arsed job that doesn't really benefit anyone. So there are social "write-offs" in the population. That doesn't change the fact that there are many people who are *not* write-offs, who *would* be engaging in more productive activities if they weren't watching TV. Who cares if that activity is scientifically-oriented or not? They might put their free time into artistic or creative endeavors, or they might put them into the social welfare of their families, neighborhoods, etc.
Hell, even if all they did was go to the pub, or join a softball league, they'd be doing something more useful to those around them than they are when watching TV.
Take this lame-ass discussion we're having. It's not going to change the world. At best, it might give a handful of people a different perspective on something, or maybe encourage them to do some small thing they wouldn't have otherwise done.
But even that little bit is better than what would have happened had we both just spend this time in front of the television.
Singling out TV is freaking stupid. Why? TV is the opiate de jour. Should he have picked on the gladiator games at the colosseum? That wouldn't make any sense. TV is a target that is actually *currently* addressable.
Second, TV is unique in that, unlike previous pastimes, it's overwhelmingly a waste of time, it's completely passive, and once you have a TV and cable service, there's no barrier to participation. No other pastime is available 24/7 and requiring no preparation or skill.
How, precisely, is the average Mac price higher than the average PC price, without Macs being more expensive than similar PCs? What?
The spectrum of computers Apple sells start in the mid-range, and extend to the extreme high-end. When you chop of the low-end from your product line, your average price rises, without necessarily affecting your price competitiveness of the remaining models.
That thing is that you need to have hardware which works with your OS if you want it to work. Right. But when you switch to a Mac, you're guaranteed every piece of hardware in your computer will be supported. No homework required. No surprises. It just works.
With Linux, you either have to deliberately buy Linux-compatible hardware or roll the dice, and try and use what you already have. Linux-compatible hardware research involves determining which hardware works with Linux, and even further, determining whether that hardware uses open source drivers, or closed binary drivers, as well as (for example, with video cards) looking into which 3d cards perform well, and which don't.
With the Mac, you don't have to do *any* of that. *That's* why Macs *always* "just work" and Linux most certainly do not "just work" consistently enough to earn that description.
You can't say Linux "just works", if it's very common for it to most certainly *not* "just work".
Just because those "sub-fiftypercenters" aren't making wikipedias does not mean their contributions to society are any less valuable, nor does it take away from the point that time spent watching TV is time spent *not* being productive.
It's possible that people simply have a finite amount of thought available per unit time and that this thought is already being completely expended. No, that's not possible at all, aside from the pedantic (and useless) sense that "even one in a trillion trillion trillion means it's *possible*".
That mental effort is interchangeable. That's not what he's saying at all. He's not saying that there would be X more wikipedias, or anything else *specific*, just that there would be X more *somethings* of roughly a "wikipedia amount of effort".
Now, overall I think that the guy's talk has a good point and tells a lot of truth. But it goes too far when talking about mental effort as if it were fungible, and there's no way that any of his conclusions are proven at all, much less by the mere existence of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just an example. The point is, though, that time spent watching television is pretty much universally unproductive.
So if you replace the time spent watching TV with time spent being productive, how can you *not* conclude that the overall productivity of that society will improve? You'd have to assume either people have spent all of their productivity already (which is absurd) or that they are replacing the unproductive time spent watching TV solely with some other unproductive activity, or a sufficiently un-gainful mix of productive activity and actively *counter-productive* time (i.e., they'd have to be actively *destroying* more than they are creating).
Aside from entering a coma, it's difficult to think of anything one can do that's less productive than watching TV. Therefore, the conclusion that TV time is taking away from potential productivity is completely reasonable.
apple is not an independent party here. the company has a vested interest in making itself look better and its competitors worse. moreover, apple would be able to steal personal information of install a kill switch and it may be in their interest to do so However, they have done neither. Saying "it may be in their interest to do so" is meaningless unless it *is* in their interest to do so.
if they did, i would have no way of knowing. Sure you would. You'd notice strange packets sent to apple.com (or some other unknown address). As for the kill switch, your computer suddenly dying on you would be a major clue. Additionally, a large portion of OS X is open source--in fact, the very place you'd expect to find a kill switch is open source. You can check for one yourself, as you have apparently done with Linux.
in fact i have absolutely no reason to trust apple and trust is earned, as they say. Exactly. Trust is earned by reputation and one's actions. What actions has Apple taken, and what reputation does Apple have, that indicate you can't trust that they haven't infested OS X with spyware and kill switches?
As for what positive reasons to trust that they won't do those things, there are legal implications if they are caught, and their reputation would suffer. Both are things which would cost Apple dearly.
Additionally, if you consider other situations where Apple could have acted like Microsoft and locked things down or mined your private information, they almost universally have chosen to respect the user's privacy, and have avoided remote control over a user's PC.
Please, "usability"? Do we really have to start making up terms here to say "I don't like using Linux because it's unfamiliar."? And like OSX is very windows-friendly... Single-menubar anyone? Funny. The term "usability" pre-dates the existence of Linux.
Why would I go out, spend hundreds or thousands of dollars upgrading my office to macs, when I can just install Linux on the current hardware? I'm pretty sure my 400$ desktop+LCD from Dell is a lot cheaper than the 599$ headless mac mini or 1200$ iMac. Sounds like *you* wouldn't, but far more people *are* doing just that instead of switching to Linux, so you can't pretend like the notion is absurd.
There has to be *some* reason people are buying Macs, and usability is most certainly one of them.
You are cherry picking. You only chose the 15.4" Inspiron because it's cheaper than Dell's 13.3" notebook. Be honest and spec the Dell that *most closely matches* the specs of a MacBook. Also, don't leave out the features you can pretend some market segment won't want.
Your cherry picking demonstrates your lack of integrity.
Picking the Dell that most closely matches the mid-range MacBook, the Dell costs $1,408 - $50 instant savings for: $1,358. The MacBook costs $1,299. I chose the mid-range because Dell doesn't offer a 2.1GHz Core2Duo with 3MB cache.
Speccing the closest Dell to the low-end MacBook: Dell - $1,283 - $50 = $1,233 Apple - $1,199
For the MacBook, I had to add 1GB of RAM to match the Dell, and that leaves us with a Dell that has a slower CPU, but better optical drive (I could not match those to components exactly).
Unlike you, I chose the Dell that most closely matched the Mac in question, then I even increased the specs (and price) of the Mac in question, as necessary, to most closely match the Dell, and lo and behold, the Mac was actually *cheaper*.
Linux actually does not have ANY more problem in this area than Vista Nice that you based a whole paragraph on pretending to correct me on something I already stated. From the post you replied to "Switching to Linux is more like upgrading to Vista. Because your computer isn't guaranteed to be Vista/Linux compatible, it might "just work", or it might not".
Does that mean that OSX has less problem than Linux? Shit no. Having to buy a whole new computer rather than just some hardware does NOT repeat NOT make the problem less arduous. It makes the problem *impossible*.
Low-end Macs are substantially more expensive than the competition No, they are not. The Mac mini is significantly more powerful, and significantly less expensive, than other computers of similar form-factor (actually, I have to use a very loose definition of "similar" here, because the competition is usually at least three times the size).
But you're trying to say that if you want to switch a Mac, you have to buy a whole new computer. Granted. You're saying that the Macs are more expensive than similar PCs. Not granted. You're saying that the average Mac price is higher than the average PC price. Granted. Interestingly, even though Macs are generally expensive, more people are buying them than are switching to Linux, so the price isn't as much of a problem as you seem to think it is.
This whole sub-thread started, however, when someone else stated that WiFi "just works" on Linux, which it most certainly *does not*. Complaining that Macs are expensive to you does not change this fact.
this means that with apple i have to trust one company which is trying its best to sell its own product, whereas with free software i can check myself or i can trust thousands of people Exactly.
You act as though you can fully trust Linux, but you cannot trust Apple at all. All you've done, however, is stated why you *can* trust Linux (because the code is included), but not stated why you cannot trust Apple. What has Apple ever done that makes you not trust them?
don't you think that if redhat started collecting information or had a remote kill switch, apple and microsoft would make sure you knew about it I doubt either Apple or Microsoft would say a word (for very different reasons--Apple because they just don't talk about Linux, and Microsoft because they include a kill switch, and collect information themselves).
It still doesn't change the fact that, unless you personally check it yourself, you have to rely on *trust* that your Linux system isn't up to something funny.
A kill switch on Linux doesn't make any sense. On Mac OS X, it doesn't exist, and on Windows it exists. Going hypothetical is interesting, but it doesn't alter reality. Similarly, OS X and Linux are fairly similar when it comes to collecting data (basically, only standard web-type info when accessing network resources), and Windows most certainly does collect data (but, probably nothing personally identifiable). Again, why pontificate about theory when we already know the answers?
The question isn't about what we've personally proven about the honesty of our respective systems, but it's whether we can trust the people involved. Apple has shown no reason to not trust them. MS has shown reason not to trust them fully.
Linux is quite unique. There are far more people involved, which increases the access to trouble-makers, but it also has many more people keeping an eye on things, which makes trouble-making more difficult. Still, it doesn't alter the fact that you must place your trust in others, or verify each and every program on your computer, whether you run Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.
XP and Vista have "kill switches" integrated into the OS. There's no indication that there's any such switch in Mac OS X.
As for information collection, Windows definitely collects information, but all indications are it's not personal, and is used primarily in-house by MS. There's no indication that Mac OS X collects any information beyond that which is voluntarily provided during product registration.
Now, you might say, "but with Linux, you can prove, whereas with Windows and Mac OS X, you have to trust." And that's true, to some extent. However, even though you can theoretically prove Linux secure (ignoring the whole "what if the compiler has a backdoor?" paranoia exercise), it's not something that is practical for any single user, so ultimately it comes down to a matter of trust. You have to trust the programmers of the various projects included in the distro and you have to trust the distro makers.
Conversely, although you pretty much have to trust MS and Apple, you can usually get a fair idea of whether or not they are doing what they say they are doing (or not doing).
Could the year of desktop linux be the year of OSX + 1 Probably not, given that every year since at least 2002 (with the release of version 10.2) has been an actual "year of OS X on the desktop".
However, your overall point isn't far off. Once people switch to the Mac en masse (if you consider US consumer market, which is where "the desktop" is most important, this has already begun), they will no longer look at Windows as being a necessity.
The thing that is keeping Linux from being the "year of OS X + 1" is that there's no compelling reason for most people to switch to Linux. OS X beats it on usability and compatibility, and the arena where it excels, which is being free and being very technologically accessible, just isn't that important.
But for the cost of a mac, you could get a higher spec Dell which is guaranteed to be compatible with you SuSe And when you phone up Novell with a bug, your phoning people that will fix the bug and send you a patch, not some generic mac help desk. Macs are generally *very* cost-competitive.
Actually, let's break this down:
But for the cost of a mac, you could get a higher spec Dell Covered above.
which is guaranteed to be compatible with you SuSe And Macs are guaranteed to be compatible with Mac OS X.
And when you phone up Novell with a bug, your phoning people that will fix the bug and send you a patch And Apple will fix the bug, and even replace your computer if the problem is in hardware.
not some generic mac help desk. Not sure what that even means. When you call Novell, you get through directly to the developers? That seems fairly inefficient. On the other hand, you can take your Mac into an Apple Store and a Mac Genius will take care of you right there, hardware or software. Will Novell do that?
Basically, your position is predicated on wanting a Dell computer and SUSE Linux. Since Dell is fairly popular (although their hardware is rarely, if ever, considered more desirable than Apple hardware), we'll assume wanting a Dell isn't that uncommon. Wanting SUSE Linux, however, is nowhere near as common as wanting Mac OS X, so I don't see how it's a strong counter-argument to buying a Mac, and running Mac OS X, Windows, *and* Linux. But if you are in the small set of people who want to run SUSE Linux on a Dell, your solution is quite viable.
If you want you can any flavor of Window, or Linux all running in a VM under Any OS. Fixed that for you, if your going to be using free UNIX programs why pay loads for hardware? Why not pay "loads" for the hardware? Two good reasons to pay loads is you get loads more computer (speed, screen size, form-factor, etc.) and if you put that "loads" into a Mac, you also get Mac OS X and Mac software which, while it seems you may not value it, is definitely worth the price for an ever increasing number of people (as supported by, among other things, the article this story is centered on).
Oh, WiFi works for you, so I guess it's universal?
The fact is, unless you make efforts to choose hardware that Linux specifically supports, you run the risk of various components not working. WiFi has gotten better, but it most certainly doesn't "just work" consistently enough to earn that description.
And this is one of the situations where Linux has an uphill battle. When people switch from Windows to a Mac, you have to buy a whole new computer, and the new computer really does "just work". Switching to Linux is more like upgrading to Vista. Because your computer isn't guaranteed to be Vista/Linux compatible, it might "just work", or it might not, and if it doesn't, the solution is not terribly likely to be easy, and it's quite common for there to be *no* solution, other than replacing the offending hardware.
With the nascent market for Linux-specific computers (like the Eee PC), switching to Linux can be similar to switching to a Mac, and LiveCD's should be able to eliminate any surprises. But that's not going to be enough to eliminate the problem Linux has with non-supported hardware.
Free is just a feature. When I choose a computer or operating system, I weigh all the features, in proportion to their importance to me.
Free is nice, but I'd rather have a system that works well, and is compatible with the hardware and software I most care about.
as for the technical difference, well that is something you can of course never know, seeing as you can only know what free software technically is. Aside from specific technical requirements for such assurance, what does it matter, in practice? Should I worry that I can't prove that Photoshop isn't setting the blur radius to 2.1 when I request 2.0? Is it important that I can't prove that iTunes isn't shuffling the songs randomly?
Do you realize that Asus alone, sells more Linux laptops than Apple sells Macs? Citation?
In 2007, ASUS sold about 300 *thousand* Eee PCs, only 1/3 of which run Linux. In 2008, they plan to sell 5 million Eee PCs, which amounts to 1.666 Linux Eee PCs. Apple sold 2.3 million Macs last quarter.
irradiation for people who think they aren't in the beam. I don't see why this would be a problem. They can just make use of the irradiation. For example, they could shine the irradiation beam around Chernobyl and sop up all the radiation with the irradiation.
The energy in question is coming from the sun, and was going to enter the biosphere anyway.
To a certain extent, the effect will be the exact opposite of what you are thinking, as the sunlight would have most assuredly heated the land, sea and air, but beamed down to the electrical grid, it will be stored in other forms, such as the potential energy of a high-rise building, or in places where the increased warming isn't terribly important, like the area immediately around a ski lift.
I guess it costs a lot of money to infect tracks with DRM... Not really.
It's clear you are starting with the conclusion (Apple loves DRM and uses it to lock people into iPods), and adjusting your theory at each stage, while keeping the conclusion the same.
For some perspective, the average iPod owner has something like 20 songs from the iTunes store (I'll even assume all 20 have DRM, even though perhaps a third are DRM-free). If people were really locked into the iPod, that would mean they would rather *not* buy an iPod, but they're more or less forced into it. Given that statistic above, the average "iPod-locked consumer" would only have to spend an extra $20 to leave the iPod for some other player (that's assuming they really want each of those 20 songs enough to re-buy them). They can even move away for free by burning those 20 songs to CD and re-ripping.
Given the ease with which people can leave the iPod, Apple's whole-hearted move away from music DRM, and the fact that Apple sold over 10 million iPods last quarter, I don't think it's even remotely fair to say that Apple is using the iTunes DRM to lock people into the iPod.
Are there any cases of the same track being available in both formats? Do they still cost the same to the end-user? Any music that's available in iTunes Plus format (the non-DRM, 256kbps format) is not available in the original format (FairPlay, 128kbps).
It's interesting to note that for the same price, you not only get rid of the DRM, but also double the bit rate.
You do realize that Microsoft might actually be trying to demonstrate that DRM is indeed a tool of evil. That's absurd. MS is the world's biggest proponent of DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
By analogy, our cars have a maximum distance they can travel per day (under their own power), but it's impossible that we are at that maximum. Cars just sitting in a parking space is like people sitting in front of the TV.
It's absolutely *absurd* to claim that we are at maximum mental utilization. It's also absolutely *absurd* to pretend that TV isn't a major contributor to our mental utilization deficit. 2. It's also a matter of interests. You're the most productive for the things that keep you at least a bit interested and maybe even entertained.
Most of the people just don't develop enough of an interest in anything to really further human knowledge. Even if you could un-invent TV overnight, they'd go to the pub instead, not start studying some science. And if you forced them at gun-point to do science in their free time, they'd take it as a chore and do a half-arsed job that doesn't really benefit anyone. So there are social "write-offs" in the population. That doesn't change the fact that there are many people who are *not* write-offs, who *would* be engaging in more productive activities if they weren't watching TV. Who cares if that activity is scientifically-oriented or not? They might put their free time into artistic or creative endeavors, or they might put them into the social welfare of their families, neighborhoods, etc.
Hell, even if all they did was go to the pub, or join a softball league, they'd be doing something more useful to those around them than they are when watching TV.
Take this lame-ass discussion we're having. It's not going to change the world. At best, it might give a handful of people a different perspective on something, or maybe encourage them to do some small thing they wouldn't have otherwise done.
But even that little bit is better than what would have happened had we both just spend this time in front of the television. Singling out TV is freaking stupid. Why? TV is the opiate de jour. Should he have picked on the gladiator games at the colosseum? That wouldn't make any sense. TV is a target that is actually *currently* addressable.
Second, TV is unique in that, unlike previous pastimes, it's overwhelmingly a waste of time, it's completely passive, and once you have a TV and cable service, there's no barrier to participation. No other pastime is available 24/7 and requiring no preparation or skill.
Technically, you get bonus chips regardless of whether the dealer catches you.
And also, what?
How, precisely, is the average Mac price higher than the average PC price, without Macs being more expensive than similar PCs? What?
The spectrum of computers Apple sells start in the mid-range, and extend to the extreme high-end. When you chop of the low-end from your product line, your average price rises, without necessarily affecting your price competitiveness of the remaining models. That thing is that you need to have hardware which works with your OS if you want it to work. Right. But when you switch to a Mac, you're guaranteed every piece of hardware in your computer will be supported. No homework required. No surprises. It just works.
With Linux, you either have to deliberately buy Linux-compatible hardware or roll the dice, and try and use what you already have. Linux-compatible hardware research involves determining which hardware works with Linux, and even further, determining whether that hardware uses open source drivers, or closed binary drivers, as well as (for example, with video cards) looking into which 3d cards perform well, and which don't.
With the Mac, you don't have to do *any* of that. *That's* why Macs *always* "just work" and Linux most certainly do not "just work" consistently enough to earn that description.
You can't say Linux "just works", if it's very common for it to most certainly *not* "just work".
Just because those "sub-fiftypercenters" aren't making wikipedias does not mean their contributions to society are any less valuable, nor does it take away from the point that time spent watching TV is time spent *not* being productive.
So if you replace the time spent watching TV with time spent being productive, how can you *not* conclude that the overall productivity of that society will improve? You'd have to assume either people have spent all of their productivity already (which is absurd) or that they are replacing the unproductive time spent watching TV solely with some other unproductive activity, or a sufficiently un-gainful mix of productive activity and actively *counter-productive* time (i.e., they'd have to be actively *destroying* more than they are creating).
Aside from entering a coma, it's difficult to think of anything one can do that's less productive than watching TV. Therefore, the conclusion that TV time is taking away from potential productivity is completely reasonable.
As for what positive reasons to trust that they won't do those things, there are legal implications if they are caught, and their reputation would suffer. Both are things which would cost Apple dearly.
Additionally, if you consider other situations where Apple could have acted like Microsoft and locked things down or mined your private information, they almost universally have chosen to respect the user's privacy, and have avoided remote control over a user's PC.
There has to be *some* reason people are buying Macs, and usability is most certainly one of them.
You are cherry picking. You only chose the 15.4" Inspiron because it's cheaper than Dell's 13.3" notebook. Be honest and spec the Dell that *most closely matches* the specs of a MacBook. Also, don't leave out the features you can pretend some market segment won't want.
Your cherry picking demonstrates your lack of integrity.
Picking the Dell that most closely matches the mid-range MacBook, the Dell costs $1,408 - $50 instant savings for: $1,358. The MacBook costs $1,299. I chose the mid-range because Dell doesn't offer a 2.1GHz Core2Duo with 3MB cache.
Speccing the closest Dell to the low-end MacBook:
Dell - $1,283 - $50 = $1,233
Apple - $1,199
For the MacBook, I had to add 1GB of RAM to match the Dell, and that leaves us with a Dell that has a slower CPU, but better optical drive (I could not match those to components exactly).
Unlike you, I chose the Dell that most closely matched the Mac in question, then I even increased the specs (and price) of the Mac in question, as necessary, to most closely match the Dell, and lo and behold, the Mac was actually *cheaper*.
But you're trying to say that if you want to switch a Mac, you have to buy a whole new computer. Granted. You're saying that the Macs are more expensive than similar PCs. Not granted. You're saying that the average Mac price is higher than the average PC price. Granted. Interestingly, even though Macs are generally expensive, more people are buying them than are switching to Linux, so the price isn't as much of a problem as you seem to think it is.
This whole sub-thread started, however, when someone else stated that WiFi "just works" on Linux, which it most certainly *does not*. Complaining that Macs are expensive to you does not change this fact.
You act as though you can fully trust Linux, but you cannot trust Apple at all. All you've done, however, is stated why you *can* trust Linux (because the code is included), but not stated why you cannot trust Apple. What has Apple ever done that makes you not trust them?
It still doesn't change the fact that, unless you personally check it yourself, you have to rely on *trust* that your Linux system isn't up to something funny.
A kill switch on Linux doesn't make any sense. On Mac OS X, it doesn't exist, and on Windows it exists. Going hypothetical is interesting, but it doesn't alter reality. Similarly, OS X and Linux are fairly similar when it comes to collecting data (basically, only standard web-type info when accessing network resources), and Windows most certainly does collect data (but, probably nothing personally identifiable). Again, why pontificate about theory when we already know the answers?
The question isn't about what we've personally proven about the honesty of our respective systems, but it's whether we can trust the people involved. Apple has shown no reason to not trust them. MS has shown reason not to trust them fully.
Linux is quite unique. There are far more people involved, which increases the access to trouble-makers, but it also has many more people keeping an eye on things, which makes trouble-making more difficult. Still, it doesn't alter the fact that you must place your trust in others, or verify each and every program on your computer, whether you run Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.
XP and Vista have "kill switches" integrated into the OS. There's no indication that there's any such switch in Mac OS X.
As for information collection, Windows definitely collects information, but all indications are it's not personal, and is used primarily in-house by MS. There's no indication that Mac OS X collects any information beyond that which is voluntarily provided during product registration.
Now, you might say, "but with Linux, you can prove, whereas with Windows and Mac OS X, you have to trust." And that's true, to some extent. However, even though you can theoretically prove Linux secure (ignoring the whole "what if the compiler has a backdoor?" paranoia exercise), it's not something that is practical for any single user, so ultimately it comes down to a matter of trust. You have to trust the programmers of the various projects included in the distro and you have to trust the distro makers.
Conversely, although you pretty much have to trust MS and Apple, you can usually get a fair idea of whether or not they are doing what they say they are doing (or not doing).
However, your overall point isn't far off. Once people switch to the Mac en masse (if you consider US consumer market, which is where "the desktop" is most important, this has already begun), they will no longer look at Windows as being a necessity.
The thing that is keeping Linux from being the "year of OS X + 1" is that there's no compelling reason for most people to switch to Linux. OS X beats it on usability and compatibility, and the arena where it excels, which is being free and being very technologically accessible, just isn't that important.
To be fair, you are howling mad, Howie.
Actually, let's break this down: But for the cost of a mac, you could get a higher spec Dell Covered above. which is guaranteed to be compatible with you SuSe And Macs are guaranteed to be compatible with Mac OS X. And when you phone up Novell with a bug, your phoning people that will fix the bug and send you a patch And Apple will fix the bug, and even replace your computer if the problem is in hardware. not some generic mac help desk. Not sure what that even means. When you call Novell, you get through directly to the developers? That seems fairly inefficient. On the other hand, you can take your Mac into an Apple Store and a Mac Genius will take care of you right there, hardware or software. Will Novell do that?
Basically, your position is predicated on wanting a Dell computer and SUSE Linux. Since Dell is fairly popular (although their hardware is rarely, if ever, considered more desirable than Apple hardware), we'll assume wanting a Dell isn't that uncommon. Wanting SUSE Linux, however, is nowhere near as common as wanting Mac OS X, so I don't see how it's a strong counter-argument to buying a Mac, and running Mac OS X, Windows, *and* Linux. But if you are in the small set of people who want to run SUSE Linux on a Dell, your solution is quite viable.
Oh, WiFi works for you, so I guess it's universal?
The fact is, unless you make efforts to choose hardware that Linux specifically supports, you run the risk of various components not working. WiFi has gotten better, but it most certainly doesn't "just work" consistently enough to earn that description.
And this is one of the situations where Linux has an uphill battle. When people switch from Windows to a Mac, you have to buy a whole new computer, and the new computer really does "just work". Switching to Linux is more like upgrading to Vista. Because your computer isn't guaranteed to be Vista/Linux compatible, it might "just work", or it might not, and if it doesn't, the solution is not terribly likely to be easy, and it's quite common for there to be *no* solution, other than replacing the offending hardware.
With the nascent market for Linux-specific computers (like the Eee PC), switching to Linux can be similar to switching to a Mac, and LiveCD's should be able to eliminate any surprises. But that's not going to be enough to eliminate the problem Linux has with non-supported hardware.
Free is nice, but I'd rather have a system that works well, and is compatible with the hardware and software I most care about. as for the technical difference, well that is something you can of course never know, seeing as you can only know what free software technically is. Aside from specific technical requirements for such assurance, what does it matter, in practice? Should I worry that I can't prove that Photoshop isn't setting the blur radius to 2.1 when I request 2.0? Is it important that I can't prove that iTunes isn't shuffling the songs randomly?
In 2007, ASUS sold about 300 *thousand* Eee PCs, only 1/3 of which run Linux. In 2008, they plan to sell 5 million Eee PCs, which amounts to 1.666 Linux Eee PCs. Apple sold 2.3 million Macs last quarter.
The energy in question is coming from the sun, and was going to enter the biosphere anyway.
To a certain extent, the effect will be the exact opposite of what you are thinking, as the sunlight would have most assuredly heated the land, sea and air, but beamed down to the electrical grid, it will be stored in other forms, such as the potential energy of a high-rise building, or in places where the increased warming isn't terribly important, like the area immediately around a ski lift.
It's clear you are starting with the conclusion (Apple loves DRM and uses it to lock people into iPods), and adjusting your theory at each stage, while keeping the conclusion the same.
For some perspective, the average iPod owner has something like 20 songs from the iTunes store (I'll even assume all 20 have DRM, even though perhaps a third are DRM-free). If people were really locked into the iPod, that would mean they would rather *not* buy an iPod, but they're more or less forced into it. Given that statistic above, the average "iPod-locked consumer" would only have to spend an extra $20 to leave the iPod for some other player (that's assuming they really want each of those 20 songs enough to re-buy them). They can even move away for free by burning those 20 songs to CD and re-ripping.
Given the ease with which people can leave the iPod, Apple's whole-hearted move away from music DRM, and the fact that Apple sold over 10 million iPods last quarter, I don't think it's even remotely fair to say that Apple is using the iTunes DRM to lock people into the iPod.
Are there any cases of the same track being available in both formats? Do they still cost the same to the end-user? Any music that's available in iTunes Plus format (the non-DRM, 256kbps format) is not available in the original format (FairPlay, 128kbps).
It's interesting to note that for the same price, you not only get rid of the DRM, but also double the bit rate.
DRM-free music on iTunes costs the same as DRM'd music.