> So it really dumbfounds and amuses me at the same time when people can sit with a straight face and claim Microsoft is some evil Monopoly.
Perhaps this exampe will cause understanding: Microsoft Windows Vista. If they can produce a product which is universally known for being terrible in multiple ways and still make bank, you should be able to see this is a hint that something is wrong. In other words, bad or even just _mediocre_ products usually have negative financial implications for businesses in a fair and balanced environment.
Exhibit A: Microsoft's game division produces the Xbox 360 which is marginally better than the original Xbox and started out with hardware problems. Without arguing the value of the Xbox 360, competition was able to produce more innovative products and since Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in the video game industry, the normal (and good) response occurred being that they lost money. Apply this to the OS business: we don't need to argue the apparent failings of Vista because the fact is it doesn't meet consumer expectations to put it lightly. Would you expect any business to underperform or fail to meet consumer needs with one of their products and still continue to make a lot of money on that product? I don't think you would, and the reason Microsoft is able to do this is simply because the playing field isn't level (i.e. they do have a monopoly, and they're using it).
> 2. You HAVE to install Quicktime if you want to use iTunes
Yeah, that is annoying. They toyed around with the idea of making Quicktime optional, but they didn't like the idea of iTunes not being able to do kind of important stuff once it's installed like, I dunno... play music?
I don't think you'll get moderated poorly for anything you said, however it is quite ignorant. Look at what you said.
> People still use quicktime? >... > Every website that has a quicktime video, I just...
So apparently you answered your own question. Yes, people still use Quicktime. A lot of people, actually. You may not, but many many still do because it has been and still is a good format.
Which is exactly the point. Nobody is arguing whether this is legal or not; the point (which you have just proven) is if it were anyone but Apple they would be severely scorned at. Seeing as how it is Apple, they are somehow excused. The moderation of my original post is further proof. Good, you found the beef all on your own.
PS- I shouldn't have to say this because it shouldn't matter, but I've been a user of Apple products since the Quadra 650 which had the Motorola chips. I'm still a Mac user, and one of the few who seems to still be able to remain rational when Apple gets in the news in a more negative light. It isn't treason to find some faults with Apple and still love using their products. I know, what a shocking revelation this is! Enjoy it.
> MacNN has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, > you can't reinstall Boot Camp because it is no longer available to OS X 10.4 Tiger users.
That's a nice way to treat your beta testers. After the beta period, simply render the machine unbootable making them reformat so there's no way for them to continue using the software they've been testing for you for the past year. That's really good, well done.
> I don't think anyone reasonable here would defend copyright infringement on any level.
Neither did I say reasonable people would defend copyright infringement. It would be the "unreasonable" people I was referring to, probably including abusive moderators; it is Slashdot after all.
I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!
Few tout capitalism as a perfect system. Most of us are aware of its shortcomings, including a more uneven distribution of wealth. But when it comes to alternatives like socialism, capitalism has proven to be more stable and progressive at once time and time again.
By the way, the ability for bigger companies to take advantage of their size to steal business is not capitalism. Capitalism is competition, and this would obviously be anti-competitive. In the U.S. we have laws against this which are rarely enforced. For this reason, many people get it into their heads that capitalism is broken and socialism is better, when in fact the real problem and solution is simply to enforce the laws. Socialism would merely retard our progress which it has proven to do repeatedly. If you bring up China as a counter-example, note that China's power and influence has risen in the world as it has accepted capitalism.
In short, capitalism is good when the laws work to ensure good competition. Unfortunately, right now we have a government in the U.S. full of people who don't really listen to what the people say (specifically Congress), but writing your representatives would traditionally have been a good idea. The only thing to do now is elect better people next time.
> Told you that the root cause of global warming is mankind.
I know you're trying to be funny, but for the record let it be made clear that mankind is not the root cause of "global warming." Nature is, and we play our small (and it is small) part inasmuch as we are a part of nature on this planet. The bottom line is that the climate changes, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. These "solutions" are strange considered alone, but they're even more ridiculous given that they are being designed to solve a problem that doesn't even exist.
> Form the tests that the developers have been running, most of the memory leaks in Firefox itself seem to be fixed...
The memory leak issues in Firefox have really surprised me. Yeah, so C++ doesn't come with automatic garbage collection. That doesn't make memory handling too much harder since the one of the first systems a team of programmers (who aren't idiots) will lay down is the system to handle the allocation and deallocation of memory, be it garbage collection of smart pointers or whatever. Or, if the original base code was such a mess that it's taken this long to implement fixes for these issues, perhaps the Firefox hype got misplaced. I remember people were somewhat surprised that Apple adopted khtml rather than gecko for WebKit, but they clearly knew what they were doing.
So you're right. I like Firefox and it's my default browser because I have a lot of RAM on my system, but perhaps I have become a little bit disenchanted, and perhaps my confidence in the mozilla developers to manage the code and fix issues has waned. Not to say they're bad coders, because I think the code itself is the biggest problem.
>...so it may just be that they didn't anticipate early demand.
Unlikely. Anyone who's taken an entry-level business class knows this is a common strategy. It's what Nintendo did with the original launch of the GameBoy. You don't aim production to meet or exceed demand. Instead, you actually aim to not meet demand. As a result, supplies run out and the news picks it up, causing even more demand. This Slashdot article is exactly what they want. The fact that Amazon hasn't released numbers is a dead give-away that this is what's happening. Nintendo has used this strategy effectively with other products, too.
I'm not saying anything about the product or this strategy, but you can be sure Amazon marketing dept. didn't mess up on demand estimations.
His "criticisms" were light, if existent. If he's a troll, what does that make the hundreds of "Free software" promoters who bash Microsoft at every turn?
It's fine to have your favorites, but you don't need to play into the double standard.
> Macbooks can boot into Leopard in about 30 seconds, and we can start our 7 year old Linux boxes at work in less than a minute....
For what it's worth, on "new" computers, Vista boots in about 30 seconds as well. It seems the problem is with older hardware, but it's less of a problem since most users of Vista will get it along with a new computer anyway. I know this because I built a computer a few months ago to go along with my Quicksilver G4 for development purposes. I was just going to go for an iMac which I could obviously also use for Windows development, but I tabulated the costs and this computer cost me less than half as much for a faster machine than was and still is available on reasonably priced Macs (i.e. iMac). It turns out it was a good choice considering the stability issues faced by owners of the new aluminum iMac.
But anway, my new machine boots Vista in about 20 seconds. You have a point though, considering my 6 or 7-year-old G4 can still boot Tiger in about that time or perhaps a little bit longer.
On an different note, although I can be considered no fan of Microsoft, I will say that all the anti-Vista hype is largley overstated. I still have several gripes about Vista (stupid taskbar won't stay the size I set it at!! argh!!!), and I still enjoy using my Quicksilver, but altogether I payed a lot less for this new computer and Vista Basic (which I got for 30 bucks at Amazon) than you can get for a comparable Mac. In the end, there's no doubt I love OS X the most and gentoo 2nd, but when it comes to Windows I'm going to have to walk against the crowd and say that I think Vista is a better OS than XP. That's all.
> Android fills a void in Java Mobile applications by providing API to build richer applications...
Yes, good. Richer applications. Probably the only thing like it (technically) is the iPhone SDK which isn't available to 3rd parties yet. Personally, I prefer Objective-C to Java anyway, and we've already seen some great 3rd party apps on that platform. The obvious problem is Apple hardly seems to want to support an open API on its own phone, let alone make it available to other phones. It's not too late, but it doesn't seem like this is something Apple would pursue. But IMO, this is or would have been a great opportunity for Apple to get a piece of this pie.
Apple is interesting. Some things they do make you smack your head and wonder what on earth they are thinking, but then you look at their amazing financial statements and you wonder how they do it. I guess one thing you can say is they know their customers well, meaning casual consumer top interests are not necessarily our own here at Slashdot. Anyway, now I'm off-topic. 'Night.
> I don't think I've come across any product defect or design flaw in an Apple > product that hasn't had at least one Apple apologist step up and blame the customer.
Duh. It's not that hard to get "at least one" of anything, and to be sure you can find at least one apologist for anything in this world. Your statement is meaningless.
Ironically, you're in the same boat as he is: He may believe that every Apple product is perfect, but based on what he says, you believe that everyone who purchases Apple products have the same opinion. Therefore you logically display the same level of ignorance as he whom you belittle.
Hmm. You probably miss the point. It means that the spy in question is not some kind of savior of the world how some slashdotters are suggesting since he didn't even prevent the U.S. from being the sole steward of atomic bombs. The fact that we did not continue this dominance is irrelevant since at that time we had the power to assert that we would be the only ones with this power, but we chose not to. That's the point.
> How long do you really think that would have kept up?
It wouldn't (or more accurately didn't) hold up at all because we chose not to enforce U.S. dominance using atomic weapons, the cost of which would have meant much bloodshed.
> Remember, the US was involved in several wars after WW2, and one the the big reasons it > refrained from using nukes, or even fully committing to those wars for that matter was > the threat of nuclear retaliation from the USSR if they pushed too hard.
Again, this is a power the USSR had only because the U.S. let atomic bombs exist in other countries rather than blowing them up and preserving U.S. dominance; it has much less to do with Soviet spies. The point is, we had atomic dominance for years and _chose_ not to use these weapons to retain that dominance. It's interesting that many people will not enjoy considering this since liberal education in most of our public schools has ironically become predominantly anti-American, but it's true..
> I maintain my stance DRM has no right to exist...
Lost your credibility at this point. You can't argue for the perceived loss of your own rights and ignore or dispute the rights of content providers. You may not like the restrictions of DRM (neither do I), but they certainly have the right to distribute their content in whatever way they want.
If DRM concerns you, then there are steps you can take to try to convince providers of your point of view. Saying they have no right, however, would not go very far.
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
> even if it is a longshot. It is one cent per year per individual.
Now come on... let's not play the scale game. Yeah, it may be only a cent a year for each person, but the fact is that the total is 3 million bucks a year! Now keep this in a useful context. The question is, could we use that 3 million dollars elsewhere for a better purpose, and the answer is yes, we probably could.
And he gets modded insightful for it? That's funny.
In reply to GP, before I can list any improvements we have seen in the past seven years, these are your allegations so it is _your_ responsibility to put forth your list of transgressions made by the administration. To say "Boo hoo, I don't like this President" without giving reasons isn't insightful in my book. To me, it's just a rant. What exactly are you unsatisfied with?
By the way, I also have complaints about the administration, mostly having to do with how they are [not] dealing with illegal immigration and things of a domestic nature, but I'll try not to karma whore the liberal extremists by ranting and raving.
On the other hand, if my karma goes to hell, so be it.
> Pelosi did our republic a great disservice when she said that "Impeachment > is off the table." Impeachment isn't a matter of convenience or political > expediency, it is a matter of congressional Duty. Now, I realize that the > 2/3 Senate vote to remove either Bush or Cheney from office will never be > reached.
So you're suggesting our Congress waste more time trying to achieve what they have chance of achieving? I suggest to you that this is perhaps _the_ reason why Congress has such low approval ratings: They're wasting time, going against the desires of the majority, and haven't really accomplished anything while they've been in power. Seeing as how they still have lower approval ratings than even the Bush administration, perhaps a few of our Congress men and women themselves should be more likely candidates for impeachment?
Slashdot Mirror
> So it really dumbfounds and amuses me at the same time when people can sit with a straight face and claim Microsoft is some evil Monopoly.
Perhaps this exampe will cause understanding: Microsoft Windows Vista. If they can produce a product which is universally known for being terrible in multiple ways and still make bank, you should be able to see this is a hint that something is wrong. In other words, bad or even just _mediocre_ products usually have negative financial implications for businesses in a fair and balanced environment.
Exhibit A: Microsoft's game division produces the Xbox 360 which is marginally better than the original Xbox and started out with hardware problems. Without arguing the value of the Xbox 360, competition was able to produce more innovative products and since Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in the video game industry, the normal (and good) response occurred being that they lost money. Apply this to the OS business: we don't need to argue the apparent failings of Vista because the fact is it doesn't meet consumer expectations to put it lightly. Would you expect any business to underperform or fail to meet consumer needs with one of their products and still continue to make a lot of money on that product? I don't think you would, and the reason Microsoft is able to do this is simply because the playing field isn't level (i.e. they do have a monopoly, and they're using it).
> 2. You HAVE to install Quicktime if you want to use iTunes
Yeah, that is annoying. They toyed around with the idea of making Quicktime optional, but they didn't like the idea of iTunes not being able to do kind of important stuff once it's installed like, I dunno... play music?
Weird huh?
I don't think you'll get moderated poorly for anything you said, however it is quite ignorant. Look at what you said.
...
> People still use quicktime?
>
> Every website that has a quicktime video, I just...
So apparently you answered your own question. Yes, people still use Quicktime. A lot of people, actually. You may not, but many many still do because it has been and still is a good format.
> Shady business tactic? Maybe.
Which is exactly the point. Nobody is arguing whether this is legal or not; the point (which you have just proven) is if it were anyone but Apple they would be severely scorned at. Seeing as how it is Apple, they are somehow excused. The moderation of my original post is further proof. Good, you found the beef all on your own.
PS- I shouldn't have to say this because it shouldn't matter, but I've been a user of Apple products since the Quadra 650 which had the Motorola chips. I'm still a Mac user, and one of the few who seems to still be able to remain rational when Apple gets in the news in a more negative light. It isn't treason to find some faults with Apple and still love using their products. I know, what a shocking revelation this is! Enjoy it.
> MacNN has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk,
> you can't reinstall Boot Camp because it is no longer available to OS X 10.4 Tiger users.
That's a nice way to treat your beta testers. After the beta period, simply render the machine unbootable making them reformat so there's no way for them to continue using the software they've been testing for you for the past year. That's really good, well done.
If it was anyone but Apple....
> I don't think anyone reasonable here would defend copyright infringement on any level.
Neither did I say reasonable people would defend copyright infringement. It would be the "unreasonable" people I was referring to, probably including abusive moderators; it is Slashdot after all.
Moderators: Flamebait != DontAgree, although if you really thought about it you'd realize what I said was true.
I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!
Few tout capitalism as a perfect system. Most of us are aware of its shortcomings, including a more uneven distribution of wealth. But when it comes to alternatives like socialism, capitalism has proven to be more stable and progressive at once time and time again.
By the way, the ability for bigger companies to take advantage of their size to steal business is not capitalism. Capitalism is competition, and this would obviously be anti-competitive. In the U.S. we have laws against this which are rarely enforced. For this reason, many people get it into their heads that capitalism is broken and socialism is better, when in fact the real problem and solution is simply to enforce the laws. Socialism would merely retard our progress which it has proven to do repeatedly. If you bring up China as a counter-example, note that China's power and influence has risen in the world as it has accepted capitalism.
In short, capitalism is good when the laws work to ensure good competition. Unfortunately, right now we have a government in the U.S. full of people who don't really listen to what the people say (specifically Congress), but writing your representatives would traditionally have been a good idea. The only thing to do now is elect better people next time.
> Told you that the root cause of global warming is mankind. I know you're trying to be funny, but for the record let it be made clear that mankind is not the root cause of "global warming." Nature is, and we play our small (and it is small) part inasmuch as we are a part of nature on this planet. The bottom line is that the climate changes, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. These "solutions" are strange considered alone, but they're even more ridiculous given that they are being designed to solve a problem that doesn't even exist.
> Form the tests that the developers have been running, most of the memory leaks in Firefox itself seem to be fixed...
The memory leak issues in Firefox have really surprised me. Yeah, so C++ doesn't come with automatic garbage collection. That doesn't make memory handling too much harder since the one of the first systems a team of programmers (who aren't idiots) will lay down is the system to handle the allocation and deallocation of memory, be it garbage collection of smart pointers or whatever. Or, if the original base code was such a mess that it's taken this long to implement fixes for these issues, perhaps the Firefox hype got misplaced. I remember people were somewhat surprised that Apple adopted khtml rather than gecko for WebKit, but they clearly knew what they were doing.
So you're right. I like Firefox and it's my default browser because I have a lot of RAM on my system, but perhaps I have become a little bit disenchanted, and perhaps my confidence in the mozilla developers to manage the code and fix issues has waned. Not to say they're bad coders, because I think the code itself is the biggest problem.
> ...so it may just be that they didn't anticipate early demand.
Unlikely. Anyone who's taken an entry-level business class knows this is a common strategy. It's what Nintendo did with the original launch of the GameBoy. You don't aim production to meet or exceed demand. Instead, you actually aim to not meet demand. As a result, supplies run out and the news picks it up, causing even more demand. This Slashdot article is exactly what they want. The fact that Amazon hasn't released numbers is a dead give-away that this is what's happening. Nintendo has used this strategy effectively with other products, too.
I'm not saying anything about the product or this strategy, but you can be sure Amazon marketing dept. didn't mess up on demand estimations.
> Not that I like feeding trolls...
His "criticisms" were light, if existent. If he's a troll, what does that make the hundreds of "Free software" promoters who bash Microsoft at every turn?
It's fine to have your favorites, but you don't need to play into the double standard.
> Macbooks can boot into Leopard in about 30 seconds, and we can start our 7 year old Linux boxes at work in less than a minute....
For what it's worth, on "new" computers, Vista boots in about 30 seconds as well. It seems the problem is with older hardware, but it's less of a problem since most users of Vista will get it along with a new computer anyway. I know this because I built a computer a few months ago to go along with my Quicksilver G4 for development purposes. I was just going to go for an iMac which I could obviously also use for Windows development, but I tabulated the costs and this computer cost me less than half as much for a faster machine than was and still is available on reasonably priced Macs (i.e. iMac). It turns out it was a good choice considering the stability issues faced by owners of the new aluminum iMac.
But anway, my new machine boots Vista in about 20 seconds. You have a point though, considering my 6 or 7-year-old G4 can still boot Tiger in about that time or perhaps a little bit longer.
On an different note, although I can be considered no fan of Microsoft, I will say that all the anti-Vista hype is largley overstated. I still have several gripes about Vista (stupid taskbar won't stay the size I set it at!! argh!!!), and I still enjoy using my Quicksilver, but altogether I payed a lot less for this new computer and Vista Basic (which I got for 30 bucks at Amazon) than you can get for a comparable Mac. In the end, there's no doubt I love OS X the most and gentoo 2nd, but when it comes to Windows I'm going to have to walk against the crowd and say that I think Vista is a better OS than XP. That's all.
> Android fills a void in Java Mobile applications by providing API to build richer applications...
Yes, good. Richer applications. Probably the only thing like it (technically) is the iPhone SDK which isn't available to 3rd parties yet. Personally, I prefer Objective-C to Java anyway, and we've already seen some great 3rd party apps on that platform. The obvious problem is Apple hardly seems to want to support an open API on its own phone, let alone make it available to other phones. It's not too late, but it doesn't seem like this is something Apple would pursue. But IMO, this is or would have been a great opportunity for Apple to get a piece of this pie.
Apple is interesting. Some things they do make you smack your head and wonder what on earth they are thinking, but then you look at their amazing financial statements and you wonder how they do it. I guess one thing you can say is they know their customers well, meaning casual consumer top interests are not necessarily our own here at Slashdot. Anyway, now I'm off-topic. 'Night.
> Well, except for BSD advocates... ;-)
Actually, I'm happy too.
Call or write your congressman or senator. Colleges should not be forced to play law enforcement. That's the government's and/or prosecutor's job.
I guess she's not satisfied with just being a billionaire. She needs to be a richer billionaire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires
> I don't think I've come across any product defect or design flaw in an Apple
> product that hasn't had at least one Apple apologist step up and blame the customer.
Duh. It's not that hard to get "at least one" of anything, and to be sure you can find at least one apologist for anything in this world. Your statement is meaningless.
Ironically, you're in the same boat as he is: He may believe that every Apple product is perfect, but based on what he says, you believe that everyone who purchases Apple products have the same opinion. Therefore you logically display the same level of ignorance as he whom you belittle.
> So what?
Hmm. You probably miss the point. It means that the spy in question is not some kind of savior of the world how some slashdotters are suggesting since he didn't even prevent the U.S. from being the sole steward of atomic bombs. The fact that we did not continue this dominance is irrelevant since at that time we had the power to assert that we would be the only ones with this power, but we chose not to. That's the point.
> How long do you really think that would have kept up?
It wouldn't (or more accurately didn't) hold up at all because we chose not to enforce U.S. dominance using atomic weapons, the cost of which would have meant much bloodshed.
> Remember, the US was involved in several wars after WW2, and one the the big reasons it
> refrained from using nukes, or even fully committing to those wars for that matter was
> the threat of nuclear retaliation from the USSR if they pushed too hard.
Again, this is a power the USSR had only because the U.S. let atomic bombs exist in other countries rather than blowing them up and preserving U.S. dominance; it has much less to do with Soviet spies. The point is, we had atomic dominance for years and _chose_ not to use these weapons to retain that dominance. It's interesting that many people will not enjoy considering this since liberal education in most of our public schools has ironically become predominantly anti-American, but it's true..
Wait... does this mean that we like Walmart now?
Just wondering...
> I maintain my stance DRM has no right to exist...
Lost your credibility at this point. You can't argue for the perceived loss of your own rights and ignore or dispute the rights of content providers. You may not like the restrictions of DRM (neither do I), but they certainly have the right to distribute their content in whatever way they want.
If DRM concerns you, then there are steps you can take to try to convince providers of your point of view. Saying they have no right, however, would not go very far.
> even if it is a longshot. It is one cent per year per individual.
Now come on... let's not play the scale game. Yeah, it may be only a cent a year for each person, but the fact is that the total is 3 million bucks a year! Now keep this in a useful context. The question is, could we use that 3 million dollars elsewhere for a better purpose, and the answer is yes, we probably could.
> Irony?
And he gets modded insightful for it? That's funny.
In reply to GP, before I can list any improvements we have seen in the past seven years, these are your allegations so it is _your_ responsibility to put forth your list of transgressions made by the administration. To say "Boo hoo, I don't like this President" without giving reasons isn't insightful in my book. To me, it's just a rant. What exactly are you unsatisfied with?
By the way, I also have complaints about the administration, mostly having to do with how they are [not] dealing with illegal immigration and things of a domestic nature, but I'll try not to karma whore the liberal extremists by ranting and raving.
On the other hand, if my karma goes to hell, so be it.
> Pelosi did our republic a great disservice when she said that "Impeachment
> is off the table." Impeachment isn't a matter of convenience or political
> expediency, it is a matter of congressional Duty. Now, I realize that the
> 2/3 Senate vote to remove either Bush or Cheney from office will never be
> reached.
So you're suggesting our Congress waste more time trying to achieve what they have chance of achieving? I suggest to you that this is perhaps _the_ reason why Congress has such low approval ratings: They're wasting time, going against the desires of the majority, and haven't really accomplished anything while they've been in power. Seeing as how they still have lower approval ratings than even the Bush administration, perhaps a few of our Congress men and women themselves should be more likely candidates for impeachment?