Unless the world's basic economic problem -- resource scarcity -- has been resolved, there will always be room for The Next Big Thing. Of course, IBM's current business has little to do with these fundamental issues, so I guess I can understand his point from his perspective. But from a wider view, it's absurd.
You're a little big wrong.:-) The vast majority of Mac users work full-time in Administrator accounts. These are "below" the root account, so it's not as bad as in Windows XP, but it can still be an issue. Generally, items in/System cannot be modified without explicitly authenticating for root privileges. Items in/Library can be changed immediately by admins, and that's enough to cause all kinds of havoc. Not to mention that even a standard user can install items in their own ~/Library, which might be enough to do things like keystroke logging for that user's sessions.
You've totally missed the parent post's point. It's not unique that Apple has total control of the platform. It's unique that the CEO does. Jobs is not just being a business manager, giving general guidance to the product development groups. He's directly involved in choosing specifications, features, and even physical designs. If you can believe even a third of what's published about him in mainstream sources, he makes decisions about things which could be considered very small details. For example, when the G4-based flat-panel iMacs were designed, he insisted that a white sticker be placed over the manufacturer's label on the hard drives. Why? Because if you look down through the holes on top where the fan is, without the sticker the view wouldn't be "clean" enough.
You think Michael Eisner sat down with the script to, say, "Pocohontas" and made corrections?
I guess it's important for Slashdot to keep posting these stories. Someone needs to keep an eye on the RIAA And Friends. But whenever yet another initiative like this comes up, the answer is always the same. If you can't handle people being able to record and archive your "content", get out of the content business. There's really nothing else to be said.
Unfortunately, the product looks less like an Apple product and more like a laptop from a company that rhymes with "Hell".
Um... huh?! It looks exactly like the current aluminum PowerBooks, an original Apple design. The reason Dell and others are no making laptops with silver-ish plastic cases is because of Apple's stuff.
It's notable that the new MacBook doesn't have Firewire 800 (a single 400 port only). I'm not sure if this could be any indicator for future pro desktop models, but it does seem like Apple's backing away from it a bit.
It's only the authorized service providers who have an incentive to repair portables in-house. When an Apple store repairs your computer, it's just one division of Apple paying another. Most Apple stores have such busy tech shops that they're thrilled they can just mail portables away to be fixed.
$350 is roughly the maximum you would pay, for a high-end PowerBook. Repairs for a 12" should indeed cost a bit less.
Well, your language choice is poor, but I figure you could use more info. A "tiered repair" is separate from a flat rate repair. It's what you get when the problem with your portable was caused by accidental damage. Tier 1 should be under $500, but Tier 4 will be over $1200 for the larger-screen PowerBooks. The tiers generally correspond to the number of parts that are needed, though more expensive parts like a main logic board or display will automatically get you to tiers 3 or 4. So will a liquid spill.
I'm sorry if you don't believe me, but there's really no point in arguing. If you stop by a Genius Bar at an Apple store they probably won't be willing to give you quite this much detail, but they should generally confirm the difference between flat rate and tiered repairs. Like my original post said, it's not a secret; it's just that authorized service providers have a disincentive to tell you about it.
Have you actually talked to Apple phone support about your iBook, or gone to an Apple store? There's a semi-secret about repair options for out-of-warranty portables. The short version is that, except in cases of accidental damage like a liquid spill or drop, regardless of what the problem is it doesn't cost more than about $350 to get your portable repaired.
Here's how it works: there are two ways to repair an Apple portable. It can be done on-site at an authorized service provider, or it can be shipped to a repair depot. For on-site repairs, you get charged parts + labor. This is irrelevant if you're in warranty or AppleCare. If you're out of warranty, things get extremely expensive. Like all computer manufacturers Apple charges high prices for parts, and service providers add a big mark-up.
On the other hand, for mail-in repairs Apple charges a flat fee (again, assuming accidental damage is not the cause). That's right -- a flat fee, no matter which parts need replacing. This ranges from about $275 to $350, depending on which computer model you have. So there is absolutely no way you lost $1600. For =$350 you can get the laptop repaired (iBooks are at the cheap end of the range), and you can buy a better iPod for $300.
The reason you might not have heard about this before is when you take an out-of-warranty portable to an authorized service provider, they have an enormous incentive not to tell you about it. The service provider gets a tiny reimbursement from Apple for facilitating a mail-in repair on your behalf. It's not worth their time, because they have to provide a basic diagnosis and do basic troubleshooting before sending it in (otherwise they lose the reimbursement). If they do the repair in-house they actually can make some money.
So call Apple! Since you don't have AppleCare, they will probably charge you $50 to open a support case. However, I believe that if the support case ends with a paid repair the $50 is refunded.
If a major ISP ever did this, I don't think it would take long for popular sites to start filtering for their IP space and redirecting to an informative page about the lousy ISP.
Thanks for attempting to visit our site! BellSouth, your internet service provider, is attempting to extort money from web sites like this one in exchange for not slowing down your access to it. Consequently, we have blocked access to our site from BellSouth's network. If you want BellSouth to play fair, call...
Picturing the bedlam in the call center is making me smile.
At first I was horrified that such an absurdly bad movie was chosen for this "honor." But then I thought about the current market for this stuff: geeky guys. I suppose it makes sense, but they probably could do better with porn.
This is a story about a representative of the Roman Catholic Church. My impression is that most of the really rabid ID-ers in the US are Protestant Evangelicals. They couldn't care less what some Vatican official thinks. So while it's nice to see some rational thinking from the Catholic Church, it doesn't seem to bear much relevance to the current political issue.
Most of the heavily religious people in the US are Christians with fairly fundamentalist, or at least evangelical, views. These people are not particularly interested in the physical world, because their religion teaches them that whatever they do here is merely preparation for an afterlife that will be much much better. If your primary concern is going to heaven when you die, why would you care about physics?
There's also the simple matter that learning about critical thinking in general and science in particular makes it hard to swallow religious dogma. Science isn't incompatible with spirituality, but it's totally in opposition to biblical literalism and other fundamentalist practices. It's very much in the interests of these kinds of religious groups to denigrate science, as doing so makes it easier to spread their beliefs. (And, for people whose faith isn't enough, easier to justify their beliefs.)
What's "regular"? I make blog entries maybe 3 times a week. They're usually 500 words or a little less, and I probably spend an hour doing the actual writing. Having a blog doesn't mean you're spewing the lame chronicles of your daily existence.
The availability of this information also lets the public identify jurisdictions/courts where changes are needed.
The larger issue is that the availability of information provides the most benefit to those with the time/resources to deal with it. This is why focused interest groups are doing so well in political advocacy. The average voter can only really be concerned with so many issues; lobbying groups can easily fly under the public's radar to push in a direction that, if they had time to think about it, the public wouldn't like.
Mac OS X 10.4 is capable of rendering the entire interface using the GPU (they call it Quartz Extreme). The system delivers some incredibly cool visual effects (see Core Image), and it does it on systems with as little as 64 MB of VRAM on the graphics card. So what the hell is Vista going to do where 256 will be optimal?
This is the first known legal action by Apple regarding the hacked version of OS X and calls into doubt the future of other news sites, similar to the OSx86 Project.
Given how fast Apple's legal department is capable of acting, it's a little odd that it took this long. I was speculating with a friend that Apple probably wants to make sure that the hype has time to take hold before it cracks down. It's interesting how they have to do a balancing act between being too heavy-handed and making sure that people keep talking about their products.
It would have been relatively simple for Apple to personalize each copy of OS X Intel that it sent out to developers. I find it pretty strange that we haven't heard about legal action against whomever distributed their copy. Perhaps Apple purposely didn't watermark the installers so the balance could tilt towards hype without them having to sue a developer.
That's an excellent argument for why the economic costs of health care need to be evenly distributed across the population. Putting the burden in specific places -- employers, for example -- creates huge incentives to minimize and avoid providing care. If we treat health care as a basic service that all people should have reasonable access to (like electricity), the dilemmas you explore are moot.
That's a term that's not fashionable anymore, but it's still no joke. Defense contracting is enormously big business. The contractors employ people in as many states as possible, so that they can go to as many Representatives and Senators as possible and say, "if you push for X, there will be more jobs for your constituents." So Congress approves tons of defense projects, which further enriches the contractors so they can keep the cycle going. Also, tons of military officers "retire" (at an early age -- the military lets you do that) and go straight into the contractor side of the industry, so there's a ton of cronyism and friends pushing contracts for each other's benefit.
Don't listen to anyone's arguments about the necessity for space-based weapons unless they don't have a personal financial stake in a "space race". Defense contractors would LOVE to have another cold-war-ish Reagan-style flood of money into the industry, and a "space race" sounds like a great way to do that.
Have you ever been to a meeting? Unless the meeting leader is good at keeping things organized, or it's a small group that's all willing to stay organized, you could make the same point. Most people are fairly poor communicators, and it only gets worse in a group.
The same rules apply in IM environments. Be clear (i.e. type correctly), be efficient (typing slowly is liking repeatedly pausing in the middle of a spoken sentence), and wait for someone else to finish their thought before speaking/typing.
Most of the problems I had with IM were solved by the indicator that shows the other person is typing. When that appears, I know the person isn't finished and I wait to see what they'll say.
I think what you're observing is the difference between a "libertarian" and a "civil libertarian". Civil libertarians (a la the American Civil Liberties Union) recognize the value of organization in a society, but seek a balance that provides for as much individual freedom as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the world's basic economic problem -- resource scarcity -- has been resolved, there will always be room for The Next Big Thing. Of course, IBM's current business has little to do with these fundamental issues, so I guess I can understand his point from his perspective. But from a wider view, it's absurd.
The book's correct title is "The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography". (See title at Amazon.)
I'm a little surprised we're seeing a review of it only now; it's 5 or 6 years old. I have it, and greatly enjoyed it.
You're a little big wrong. :-) The vast majority of Mac users work full-time in Administrator accounts. These are "below" the root account, so it's not as bad as in Windows XP, but it can still be an issue. Generally, items in /System cannot be modified without explicitly authenticating for root privileges. Items in /Library can be changed immediately by admins, and that's enough to cause all kinds of havoc. Not to mention that even a standard user can install items in their own ~/Library, which might be enough to do things like keystroke logging for that user's sessions.
You've totally missed the parent post's point. It's not unique that Apple has total control of the platform. It's unique that the CEO does. Jobs is not just being a business manager, giving general guidance to the product development groups. He's directly involved in choosing specifications, features, and even physical designs. If you can believe even a third of what's published about him in mainstream sources, he makes decisions about things which could be considered very small details. For example, when the G4-based flat-panel iMacs were designed, he insisted that a white sticker be placed over the manufacturer's label on the hard drives. Why? Because if you look down through the holes on top where the fan is, without the sticker the view wouldn't be "clean" enough.
You think Michael Eisner sat down with the script to, say, "Pocohontas" and made corrections?
The article quotes the executive editor of the paper's website:
I'm sorry, you must be new here. Reasoned debate?!?!
I guess it's important for Slashdot to keep posting these stories. Someone needs to keep an eye on the RIAA And Friends. But whenever yet another initiative like this comes up, the answer is always the same. If you can't handle people being able to record and archive your "content", get out of the content business. There's really nothing else to be said.
Um... huh?! It looks exactly like the current aluminum PowerBooks, an original Apple design. The reason Dell and others are no making laptops with silver-ish plastic cases is because of Apple's stuff.
It's notable that the new MacBook doesn't have Firewire 800 (a single 400 port only). I'm not sure if this could be any indicator for future pro desktop models, but it does seem like Apple's backing away from it a bit.
It's only the authorized service providers who have an incentive to repair portables in-house. When an Apple store repairs your computer, it's just one division of Apple paying another. Most Apple stores have such busy tech shops that they're thrilled they can just mail portables away to be fixed.
$350 is roughly the maximum you would pay, for a high-end PowerBook. Repairs for a 12" should indeed cost a bit less.
Well, your language choice is poor, but I figure you could use more info. A "tiered repair" is separate from a flat rate repair. It's what you get when the problem with your portable was caused by accidental damage. Tier 1 should be under $500, but Tier 4 will be over $1200 for the larger-screen PowerBooks. The tiers generally correspond to the number of parts that are needed, though more expensive parts like a main logic board or display will automatically get you to tiers 3 or 4. So will a liquid spill.
I'm sorry if you don't believe me, but there's really no point in arguing. If you stop by a Genius Bar at an Apple store they probably won't be willing to give you quite this much detail, but they should generally confirm the difference between flat rate and tiered repairs. Like my original post said, it's not a secret; it's just that authorized service providers have a disincentive to tell you about it.
Have you actually talked to Apple phone support about your iBook, or gone to an Apple store? There's a semi-secret about repair options for out-of-warranty portables. The short version is that, except in cases of accidental damage like a liquid spill or drop, regardless of what the problem is it doesn't cost more than about $350 to get your portable repaired.
Here's how it works: there are two ways to repair an Apple portable. It can be done on-site at an authorized service provider, or it can be shipped to a repair depot. For on-site repairs, you get charged parts + labor. This is irrelevant if you're in warranty or AppleCare. If you're out of warranty, things get extremely expensive. Like all computer manufacturers Apple charges high prices for parts, and service providers add a big mark-up.
On the other hand, for mail-in repairs Apple charges a flat fee (again, assuming accidental damage is not the cause). That's right -- a flat fee, no matter which parts need replacing. This ranges from about $275 to $350, depending on which computer model you have. So there is absolutely no way you lost $1600. For =$350 you can get the laptop repaired (iBooks are at the cheap end of the range), and you can buy a better iPod for $300.
The reason you might not have heard about this before is when you take an out-of-warranty portable to an authorized service provider, they have an enormous incentive not to tell you about it. The service provider gets a tiny reimbursement from Apple for facilitating a mail-in repair on your behalf. It's not worth their time, because they have to provide a basic diagnosis and do basic troubleshooting before sending it in (otherwise they lose the reimbursement). If they do the repair in-house they actually can make some money.
So call Apple! Since you don't have AppleCare, they will probably charge you $50 to open a support case. However, I believe that if the support case ends with a paid repair the $50 is refunded.
If a major ISP ever did this, I don't think it would take long for popular sites to start filtering for their IP space and redirecting to an informative page about the lousy ISP.
Picturing the bedlam in the call center is making me smile.
At first I was horrified that such an absurdly bad movie was chosen for this "honor." But then I thought about the current market for this stuff: geeky guys. I suppose it makes sense, but they probably could do better with porn.
This is a story about a representative of the Roman Catholic Church. My impression is that most of the really rabid ID-ers in the US are Protestant Evangelicals. They couldn't care less what some Vatican official thinks. So while it's nice to see some rational thinking from the Catholic Church, it doesn't seem to bear much relevance to the current political issue.
Or Kelvin? ;-)
Most of the heavily religious people in the US are Christians with fairly fundamentalist, or at least evangelical, views. These people are not particularly interested in the physical world, because their religion teaches them that whatever they do here is merely preparation for an afterlife that will be much much better. If your primary concern is going to heaven when you die, why would you care about physics?
There's also the simple matter that learning about critical thinking in general and science in particular makes it hard to swallow religious dogma. Science isn't incompatible with spirituality, but it's totally in opposition to biblical literalism and other fundamentalist practices. It's very much in the interests of these kinds of religious groups to denigrate science, as doing so makes it easier to spread their beliefs. (And, for people whose faith isn't enough, easier to justify their beliefs.)
What's "regular"? I make blog entries maybe 3 times a week. They're usually 500 words or a little less, and I probably spend an hour doing the actual writing. Having a blog doesn't mean you're spewing the lame chronicles of your daily existence.
The availability of this information also lets the public identify jurisdictions/courts where changes are needed.
The larger issue is that the availability of information provides the most benefit to those with the time/resources to deal with it. This is why focused interest groups are doing so well in political advocacy. The average voter can only really be concerned with so many issues; lobbying groups can easily fly under the public's radar to push in a direction that, if they had time to think about it, the public wouldn't like.
Mac OS X 10.4 is capable of rendering the entire interface using the GPU (they call it Quartz Extreme). The system delivers some incredibly cool visual effects (see Core Image), and it does it on systems with as little as 64 MB of VRAM on the graphics card. So what the hell is Vista going to do where 256 will be optimal?
Given how fast Apple's legal department is capable of acting, it's a little odd that it took this long. I was speculating with a friend that Apple probably wants to make sure that the hype has time to take hold before it cracks down. It's interesting how they have to do a balancing act between being too heavy-handed and making sure that people keep talking about their products.
It would have been relatively simple for Apple to personalize each copy of OS X Intel that it sent out to developers. I find it pretty strange that we haven't heard about legal action against whomever distributed their copy. Perhaps Apple purposely didn't watermark the installers so the balance could tilt towards hype without them having to sue a developer.
That's an excellent argument for why the economic costs of health care need to be evenly distributed across the population. Putting the burden in specific places -- employers, for example -- creates huge incentives to minimize and avoid providing care. If we treat health care as a basic service that all people should have reasonable access to (like electricity), the dilemmas you explore are moot.
That's a term that's not fashionable anymore, but it's still no joke. Defense contracting is enormously big business. The contractors employ people in as many states as possible, so that they can go to as many Representatives and Senators as possible and say, "if you push for X, there will be more jobs for your constituents." So Congress approves tons of defense projects, which further enriches the contractors so they can keep the cycle going. Also, tons of military officers "retire" (at an early age -- the military lets you do that) and go straight into the contractor side of the industry, so there's a ton of cronyism and friends pushing contracts for each other's benefit.
Don't listen to anyone's arguments about the necessity for space-based weapons unless they don't have a personal financial stake in a "space race". Defense contractors would LOVE to have another cold-war-ish Reagan-style flood of money into the industry, and a "space race" sounds like a great way to do that.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050804/ts_nm/space_sh uttle_dc
NASA already decided no further spacewalks are needed.
Have you ever been to a meeting? Unless the meeting leader is good at keeping things organized, or it's a small group that's all willing to stay organized, you could make the same point. Most people are fairly poor communicators, and it only gets worse in a group. The same rules apply in IM environments. Be clear (i.e. type correctly), be efficient (typing slowly is liking repeatedly pausing in the middle of a spoken sentence), and wait for someone else to finish their thought before speaking/typing. Most of the problems I had with IM were solved by the indicator that shows the other person is typing. When that appears, I know the person isn't finished and I wait to see what they'll say.
I think what you're observing is the difference between a "libertarian" and a "civil libertarian". Civil libertarians (a la the American Civil Liberties Union) recognize the value of organization in a society, but seek a balance that provides for as much individual freedom as possible.