I wonder how much of this has to do with their setup. Dell is famous for custom computers, so it's easy for them to customize every box.
How streamlined is Apple in all this? Could the higher prices reflect the fact that they are noticeably less efficient than Dell at customizing individual boxes?
Just speculation. Maybe if their prices were more reasonable it would be a larger burden than the extra cash would make up for.
I like Apple. I've got my MacBook Pro next to me. At home we have another MBP, a MacBook, and an iMac. In the past we've owned numerous other Macs (all the way back to an LC II).
So let me say... duh. It is very well known that Apple does this. Read any thread on Macs here on/. Someone says Macs are great computers. Someone replies "but look what they charge for RAM!". The someone else says "well yeah, Apple is like that, buy the RAM separately."
This OLD. This is STALE. This is well known by anyone who watches this stuff. It's stupid, but Apple is allowed to price gouge if they want. This is just some "journalist" writing about a "discovery" to get page-views.
Just don't buy your upgrades from Apple.
And don't give this guy the hits he doesn't deserve.
So they finally decided to stop handing the Linux tweakable router market to Linksys/Cisco, huh? Let's see, how long did that take?
According to Wikipedia, Linksys cut hardware back on their routers and released the hackable WRT54GL in 2005. So they've done nothing but ignore this market for nearly 4 years.
Sprint has been trying to get Nextel customers to switch over. There are rumors they are going to try to spin Nextel back off now.
They are trying to get those customers, but what I wanted to point out was it Sprint kills what they touch. If they had left Nextel alone, they'd have still found a way to kill it. Sprint is going down, and doing anything they can to stay up. Grabbing at Nextel is part of that (although it didn't start out quite like that). Sprint would have driven you off either way.
At this point, I don't hold it against Sprint. I wouldn't if I were you either. They aren't mean, they're just rather incompetent. They are killing themselves. Their size is the only reason they've survived the last 2-3 years
Sprint isn't trying to kill Nextel, they're trying to kill themselves (and succeeding).
Re:this is how you can save yourselves, palm.
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What Happened To Palm?
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...but sprint is basically flusing nextel down the toilets. they're hoping to phase out the network and poach the users onto sprint.
As someone who has been watching Sprint for years I can tell you your assertion is patently false. Sprint is not trying to kill Nextel.
Sprint continues to do everything they can to shoot themselves in the foot. They acquired Nextel in large part to protect their foot (like a shield) and keep them afloat (cell phone company floaties and a mixed metaphor!).
Sprint isn't killing Nextel, they are going down themselves and Nextel is being dragged with them.
More on-topic, Palm's problem is clear. The OS today is clearly based on the original OS from ~1996. We owned one of those (with the US Robotics name and all). It was a nice device. But while everyone else moved on (and Windows CE/Mobile/PDA/whatever it is now) pushed many new capabilities into the devices. Palm continued to ignore everything (to the point that Handspring was formed) but still things haven't changed. The company ran themselves into the ground.
How do they fix it? No idea. They need a new OS. Not the one they've been promising for 5 years, something new, and good. But at this point, you have to beat Apple (ha!), Microsoft (plenty of investment), RIM (took what could have been Palm's market), plus every other cell phone company.
Frankly, I think they're gone. It's just time. I don't know if anyone could bring it back.
And Netflix has an extensive collection of Anime, Foreign, TV, obscure movies, etc. That's the reason I subscribe to them. If all I ever cared about was giant $200M grossing movies, I could have kept renting at Blockbuster (and just complained about their constant price raises).
The long tail exists in some areas. But if your store only exists to sell how-to knitting movies you're going to have to keep your costs REAL low to survive. Like... $0.
Just because the long tail lets customers find you (when a brick and mortar business couldn't support it's self with so few) doesn't mean you'll find enough to stay afloat.
This is where I am. There are tons of people suggesting VMWare. I know about it, but I don't need to do full new development much. It's not a common enough problem to bother buying another copy of Windows and VMWare or the like. I have Parallels on my Mac that I keep with me, so I could use that if I wanted to.
But as you pointed out, many of the people I develop for are currently stuck at IE 6 by company policy (which I fully understand). When they switch to 7, I can probably stop supporting 6.
In the mean time, 6 is the version we care about the most. Fixing things in IE 7 is a nice to have (unless it's really broken and unusable).
Since large bits of my job involve web interfaces to various systems, I have to make sure things still render right on IE 6. Since you can't run 6 and 7 on the same machine, I stay on 6. When I need to check 7 I ask a coworker who has upgraded to check it out.
Of course, I use FF for everything because IE 6 was so far behind. Seven has improvements, but I still find annoyances, and I'm happily used to FF.
Then again, I can't go to FF3 quite yet either. Needs to be a little bigger than 50% (at a tech heavy site). I'd like to see the numbers for Yahoo or Google.
That was what lead to my idea. I know that used to be common. The only gun I've ever touched personally was a pellet gun, and I never fired it.
That's the problem, we have all the guns of some other countries (doesn't Canada have higher gun ownership per capita?) and all the gun education of Japan (who, IIRC, completely bans them). It's that combination that I think is the problem.
I agree. I think that would be great. Then again, the draft used to serve that purpose (as well as civic duty, personal responsibility, discipline...). But I think we all know that having a gun safety class would drive a certain portion of the population nuts and would never get passed. I listed something I thought might server the purpose but would be more likely to be implementable.
What pieces of software that aren't working do you think are the most important to get working next? Have there been any programs that you never expected to have so many people request?
I agree. I think a big part of the problem is that we have tons of guns, and next to no education about them.
What most people know about guns is stuff they have picked up from video games and Hollywood movies. Most people have never touched one.
I wonder what more exposure would do. At some point lets take every kid to a police firing range. It can be part of a school field trip. I just want them to stand there, hear how incredibly loud a gunshot can be, and see it put a hole though a cinder block or something like that. Something to show kids first hand how powerful and dangerous guns can be. There is no respect taught. There are PSAs saying "keep your guns locked up" and people in things like DARE get told "don't ever touch a gun, it may be loaded", but it's all in the abstract. They never hold an empty gun. They never hear one shot. They never see the damage first hand.
I wonder if that little bit would change things much.
As for the decision, I'm glad it went this way. I'm worried it was only 5-4. Seems very clear to me that the framers of the constitution wanted the right to handguns to civilians could defend themselves should the government ever step out of control.
If you don't think we should have that right (it has been 200 years, after all) that's a fair argument. But you change that through a new amendment, not trying to re-read something new into a sentence.
OK. Someone really needs to get a few hundred large snails (~postage stamp sized shell sides), paint USPS logos on the shell sides, and drop them in front of about a dozen popular post offices some morning.
I would love to see that on the morning news.
I wonder if Improv Everywhere could source a few hundred giant snail outfits?
Re:Google Andriod is about to be hit by a steamrol
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Oh yeah. That will matter.
I'm not putting any bets on that. Nokia's name isn't meaningful (at least here in the US). The name Qt is completely meaningless to a consumer. I'm not going to pick a phone because it has Nokia software on it. I don't think most Americans would. Google is different. Google is a big brand here. People know Google. They like Google. That has sales power. Nokia may have more mindshare in Europe, but I'd imagine that Google still has a very strong brand there, so things may be more equal.
Of the two, I'd put far more stake in Google's effort. Is Nokia trying to get other cell phone companies on board?
Now I think the iPhone will kick both of them. I hope Google does good, but I frankly doubt it. The carriers are far too corrupt. Read the WSJ article that this story is based on. They talk about Sprint's problems integrating and branding all their stuff in, T-Mobile's problems, etc. In other words all the carriers are taking the software that exists and trying to turn it into their normal drivel that they sell. Apple stood up to that. The iPhone isn't covered in bad AT&T interface. Yet an Android phone will either be "Googly" or look quite a bit like any other Verizon phone.
Every story about the iPhone since first word last year has been "Wait for OpenMoko", "Wait for Qtopia", "Wait for Android". Apple is out there doing it. It may not be fully open, but it's there and it's rather open (in how easy it is to get an application up, compared to what you have to do with normal carriers and normal phones).
Google talks a nice game (and I trust them), but they are still up against the carriers who will have enough freedom to crush their ideals on every "Android" phone they release.
OpenMoko doesn't have the push either the iPhone or Android have. Qtopia may end up just another platform (like Symbian or Windows Mobile) that fails to take over the mobile phone world.
All in all, I don't care. I don't trust the phone companies. I love the iPhone interface (and will be buying the next version mostly because of it). But if the iPhone and others (like Android) can push the phone companies to better interfaces, I'm all for it. Just about every phone I've touched has a poor to horrid interface. The Samsung Instinct seems to have an improved interface, until you get to web surfing where it's just as bad as just about every phone released in the last couple of years.
There are TONS and TONS of ham radio kits. Everything from little baluns and small receivers or transmitters (like the Tuna Tins) to full radios (like the K2).
The K2 is about the biggest kit I've come across (especially with all the expansions) yet it's performance is quite comparable (or often better) than equivalent commercial boxes. It also happens to be the box I own and built so it was something I could comment on.
Kits are why I got into ham radio, as I said. I just didn't think it out enough. Just like Legos, I tend to find the fun in building them. Once that's done, I lose interest.
There are people who sell their construction services for these kits (Elecraft keeps lists of them) but building the same three things (no matter how complicated) would get old after just a few tries.
Some posters have said "make your own projects" and I totally agree. That's always what it came down to for me, but I never put the time into it. I'd just like a large kit to build now and then. After building a K2 I'm not sure I'll ever find another kit that intricate. Even if I go out of the electronics realm, I'd have to start looking at "build your own car/buggy/scooter/whatever" type kits to start to get some of that complexity level back. I mean, how do you beat thousands of dollars worth of high end analog radio equipment?
That allegation may explain why there are very few books published (and nearly none in recent years) about security for the Mac.
I don't think that's it at all. It's there is very little market for OS X security books at this point. Most people don't care. Let me explain.
On the home end of things, Macs are great and relatively secure. They do fine. That said, how many people buy books on Windows Security for those home computers? I'm going to say very few. Most people don't care or don't know they should do something to increase security.
The other front is businesses. Most businesses don't use Macs, by a large margin. Macs have a smaller enterprise market share than overall market share. If you are asked to secure a server or desktop, chances are it will be Windows or Linux.
These kind of books are, for the most part, targeted at administrators, businesses, etc. Since that market (administrators of Macs) is so small (compared to administrators of Windows boxes) there are very few books written.
This is compounded by the most important boxes to secure: web facing boxes (like servers). OS X Server's market share is very tiny compared Windows and Linux.
The books aren't there because the demand for them isn't very big, not because Mac users are think they are invulnerable from arrogance.
I totally sympathize with you. I'm always looking for stuff to build but there really isn't much complex out there. I would love a little 16 bit computer or something. Something like the replica 1 only more complicated.
Of what I've built, there is one and only one answer. The ultimate kit, the best out there, the Elecraft K2. I've built that, the KPA100 power amplifier, the KAT100 tuner, and a few little modules for it. It took me weeks to build it all. It was amazing.
Kit building is why I got into Ham Radio. The only problem is... I don't seem to care about the rest of ham radio. I haven't operated much. I keep meaning to do more to see if I like it better, but I don't seem to care enough to get around to it. I'm thinking of selling my K2 since it's just sitting around.
Other than that there are a few kits out there. A Nixie tube clock, while not too complicated, looks interesting. I ran across an all transistor clock kit the other day. It looks quite neat.
While there are some half-decent arguments (reactionist people taking tests then making up their own "treatment" plan for their 1% chance of developing condition X), I agree this is for doctors.
These kind of rubber stamp things (since I assume most doctors would just say "yes" to simplify their lives) just raise health care costs. By requiring this signature you take up the doctor's time and it's harder for you to compare and get things done.
This seems like regulation for the sake of regulation to me.
For one thing it would make the implementation of Time Machine much simpler. No more directory tree full of hard links and such. If they put it on other boxes (like Time Capsule) they could unify the format (it uses a different storage method). Then you could pull the Time Capsule drive, stick it in your Mac, and be all set.
For servers, it has all the standard ZFS benefits (easy storage adding, redundancy, performance, etc).
For home users, it would let you simply plug a new drive in your Mac, press a button, and have it just add space to your main drive. You wouldn't need to specifically setup a RAID. No resizing. No "external drive" if you don't want it that way. Just buy a drive, plug it in, and it's all handled for you.
You don't like Bush. I get it. But if he is impeached no action will occur until after he is out of office, so he'll be able to "continue to trash the Constitution until he leaves office." Impeaching him won't get us out of Iraq, stop illegal wiretaps, suspend torture, or anything else.
Of course, Congress could stop any of that today if they actually wanted to.
We still have a system of checks and balances. Congress could have stopped just about everything he did at any point. They have rattled sabers a few times, but they have never had the guts to step up and say "stop that".
I'm always amazed that Congress gets so little flack for all the things people complain about Bush doing in the last 8 years. They (haven't) played a part.
Cedega and the other products weren't available (or very reliable) when I first got my Intel based Mac. By the time they came around I'm pretty sure I was already using Windows to play.
It's nice to know the games are ready, but I would still be very weary due to Steam. I'd be worried about performance too. It's all nice when you have a late generation GeForce 12 or whatever, but I'm on a laptop with a 1.5-2 year old graphics chip. To run at high resolutions with playable framerates (~30 most of the time) I may have to cut the resolution quite a bit.
Of course, most of this is Valve's fault for using DirectX and not OpenGL. Everything would be faster with OpenGL since things wouldn't need as much translating.
Now as I remember, people have been calling for Bush to be impeached since his first 6 months of office. It died down for a little bit during the "we are one" period after 9/11, but then came back.
Now to impeach him then would have meant something. Doing it in '04 would have meant something. Doing it in '06 would have meant something.
It's July '08. It's too late. You can't impeach him and have something useful happen.
Let's just assume that you could get the impeachment passed in under a month. That's impossible thanks to the grandstanding that will happen in this election year. Having both major candidates be Senators won't help. They'll stretch it on as long as they can. Then there is the impeachment trial. That will last months and months and months.
By the time the whole thing is over (assuming he is impeached and convicted) he will have been out of office for... months. Congratulations, you've accomplished nothing.
This is pure theater. Whenever some of the Dems want an anti-republican issue they bring this one up. The hard-core left pipes up about it for a while and gets a little air time. The fact that the leadership doesn't even support it shows how far it's going to go in reality.
A quick look at Wikipedia seems to show that he isn't running again. He has nothing to lose, he can grandstand like this with no repercussions in the next election.
Congress did (next to) nothing to control Bush (both sides). They had plenty of chances. Congress changed hands with a bunch of people coming in or being reelected on promises of changing things, and we all know what happened then: nothing. It is up to history at this point to judge Bush. Whether some of his policies turn out for the best, he is the worst president in history, or just a footnote as "the guy who got us in Iraq." Various policies may be changed by the next administration to undo/fix things Bush has done "wrong", but it's too late now to kick him out. He's already gone, and has been out of political capital for at least months.
So, does all this matter that much? It's too late to change things.
If I had an Intel Mac, I'd just put Windows on a partition.
I know you think that. We all think that. It's not reality.
Gaming was one of the things I wanted to do when I got my MacBook Pro. I tried doing some gaming through Parallels. Even with it's 3D support, it can't do much. I'm not sure how well it would run Half-Life (not 2... the first). If you want to play Bejeweled, Chuzzle, NetHack, or other relativly simple games you're fine. If you want to run some special Windows only program you're golden. If you want to play Mass Effect you're dead.
So I have a Windows partition. I have used it for three things at this point. Half-Life 2, Sam & Max, and Team Fortress 2.
I play TF2 quite a bit. That said, I'd play it at least twice as often if I didn't have to reboot to Windows. I ran into the same problem (but stronger) with HL2 and Sam & Max.
So I have to quit any open applications, save my progress in all of them, no matter how small, close all windows, whatever. Then I have to reboot. Then I have to hold down Option, then select Windows. Then I wait for Windows to boot. Then I wait for Windows to finish loading. Then I wait for the game to load. Then I wait to get into a server.
The whole process (complicated a tiny bit by the fact I use an external drive because my Windows partition is small) means it takes a good 10-15 minutes of my time to get into and out of Windows.
That's bad enough. What if I want to stop what I'm doing, play a game for a while, then go back to what I'm doing? I have to go through all that. I have to re-open everything. It takes a ton of time.
If I want to quit the game, check my email, and go back I have to use webmail because it would take so long to get over to OS X and back to Windows. I have to basically plan when I want to play a game that needs Windows. I have to really want to play. It just takes enough time that I can't drop what I'm doing for a half-hour session, because I'll lose a large chunk of that to rebooting and such.
It's a testament to how much I wanted to play HL2, Sam & Max, and how much I continue to want to play TF2 that I continue to bother. Those people who say "Boot Camp will kill Mac gaming" obviously aren't trying to use Boot Camp for gaming much. I like it much much better than nothing (I wouldn't try HL2/TF2 on a console), but it's no substitute for native gaming.
While not as good as native, being able to use something like Cinega is a huge plus for me. I would gladly use it if I thought I could get good performance out of the game I want to play (and I didn't think I might get kicked for cheating due to Valve Anti-Cheat).
I would gladly purchase all of Orange Box again just to get TF2 native for Mac if they offered it.
You're right about the price for the base plan. I guess I saw the 450 minutes and the $40 price and copied one on top of the other in my mind.
Where do you see that you get 200 SMS messages with the iPhone 3G plan? I'm having trouble finding that. I read through a few pages of Google results. Most sources don't mention it at all, the one or two I found said they "think" the message count will remain the same (but aren't clear on the point).
I really hate the AT&T site. I've never had an easy time with it.
But that's still $70. Kinda annoying. Since I will need more text messages (stupid Nagios), I'll have to upgrade that bit of the plan either way (and I would have with the old plan).
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I wonder how much of this has to do with their setup. Dell is famous for custom computers, so it's easy for them to customize every box.
How streamlined is Apple in all this? Could the higher prices reflect the fact that they are noticeably less efficient than Dell at customizing individual boxes?
Just speculation. Maybe if their prices were more reasonable it would be a larger burden than the extra cash would make up for.
I like Apple. I've got my MacBook Pro next to me. At home we have another MBP, a MacBook, and an iMac. In the past we've owned numerous other Macs (all the way back to an LC II).
So let me say... duh. It is very well known that Apple does this. Read any thread on Macs here on /. Someone says Macs are great computers. Someone replies "but look what they charge for RAM!". The someone else says "well yeah, Apple is like that, buy the RAM separately."
This OLD. This is STALE. This is well known by anyone who watches this stuff. It's stupid, but Apple is allowed to price gouge if they want. This is just some "journalist" writing about a "discovery" to get page-views.
Just don't buy your upgrades from Apple.
And don't give this guy the hits he doesn't deserve.
So they finally decided to stop handing the Linux tweakable router market to Linksys/Cisco, huh? Let's see, how long did that take?
According to Wikipedia, Linksys cut hardware back on their routers and released the hackable WRT54GL in 2005. So they've done nothing but ignore this market for nearly 4 years.
Took someone else long enough.
Sprint has been trying to get Nextel customers to switch over. There are rumors they are going to try to spin Nextel back off now.
They are trying to get those customers, but what I wanted to point out was it Sprint kills what they touch. If they had left Nextel alone, they'd have still found a way to kill it. Sprint is going down, and doing anything they can to stay up. Grabbing at Nextel is part of that (although it didn't start out quite like that). Sprint would have driven you off either way.
At this point, I don't hold it against Sprint. I wouldn't if I were you either. They aren't mean, they're just rather incompetent. They are killing themselves. Their size is the only reason they've survived the last 2-3 years
Sprint isn't trying to kill Nextel, they're trying to kill themselves (and succeeding).
As someone who has been watching Sprint for years I can tell you your assertion is patently false. Sprint is not trying to kill Nextel.
Sprint continues to do everything they can to shoot themselves in the foot. They acquired Nextel in large part to protect their foot (like a shield) and keep them afloat (cell phone company floaties and a mixed metaphor!).
Sprint isn't killing Nextel, they are going down themselves and Nextel is being dragged with them.
More on-topic, Palm's problem is clear. The OS today is clearly based on the original OS from ~1996. We owned one of those (with the US Robotics name and all). It was a nice device. But while everyone else moved on (and Windows CE/Mobile/PDA/whatever it is now) pushed many new capabilities into the devices. Palm continued to ignore everything (to the point that Handspring was formed) but still things haven't changed. The company ran themselves into the ground.
How do they fix it? No idea. They need a new OS. Not the one they've been promising for 5 years, something new, and good. But at this point, you have to beat Apple (ha!), Microsoft (plenty of investment), RIM (took what could have been Palm's market), plus every other cell phone company.
Frankly, I think they're gone. It's just time. I don't know if anyone could bring it back.
And Netflix has an extensive collection of Anime, Foreign, TV, obscure movies, etc. That's the reason I subscribe to them. If all I ever cared about was giant $200M grossing movies, I could have kept renting at Blockbuster (and just complained about their constant price raises).
The long tail exists in some areas. But if your store only exists to sell how-to knitting movies you're going to have to keep your costs REAL low to survive. Like... $0.
Just because the long tail lets customers find you (when a brick and mortar business couldn't support it's self with so few) doesn't mean you'll find enough to stay afloat.
This is where I am. There are tons of people suggesting VMWare. I know about it, but I don't need to do full new development much. It's not a common enough problem to bother buying another copy of Windows and VMWare or the like. I have Parallels on my Mac that I keep with me, so I could use that if I wanted to.
But as you pointed out, many of the people I develop for are currently stuck at IE 6 by company policy (which I fully understand). When they switch to 7, I can probably stop supporting 6.
In the mean time, 6 is the version we care about the most. Fixing things in IE 7 is a nice to have (unless it's really broken and unusable).
I can't upgrade IE.
Since large bits of my job involve web interfaces to various systems, I have to make sure things still render right on IE 6. Since you can't run 6 and 7 on the same machine, I stay on 6. When I need to check 7 I ask a coworker who has upgraded to check it out.
Of course, I use FF for everything because IE 6 was so far behind. Seven has improvements, but I still find annoyances, and I'm happily used to FF.
Then again, I can't go to FF3 quite yet either. Needs to be a little bigger than 50% (at a tech heavy site). I'd like to see the numbers for Yahoo or Google.
That was what lead to my idea. I know that used to be common. The only gun I've ever touched personally was a pellet gun, and I never fired it.
That's the problem, we have all the guns of some other countries (doesn't Canada have higher gun ownership per capita?) and all the gun education of Japan (who, IIRC, completely bans them). It's that combination that I think is the problem.
I agree. I think that would be great. Then again, the draft used to serve that purpose (as well as civic duty, personal responsibility, discipline...). But I think we all know that having a gun safety class would drive a certain portion of the population nuts and would never get passed. I listed something I thought might server the purpose but would be more likely to be implementable.
What pieces of software that aren't working do you think are the most important to get working next? Have there been any programs that you never expected to have so many people request?
I agree. I think a big part of the problem is that we have tons of guns, and next to no education about them.
What most people know about guns is stuff they have picked up from video games and Hollywood movies. Most people have never touched one.
I wonder what more exposure would do. At some point lets take every kid to a police firing range. It can be part of a school field trip. I just want them to stand there, hear how incredibly loud a gunshot can be, and see it put a hole though a cinder block or something like that. Something to show kids first hand how powerful and dangerous guns can be. There is no respect taught. There are PSAs saying "keep your guns locked up" and people in things like DARE get told "don't ever touch a gun, it may be loaded", but it's all in the abstract. They never hold an empty gun. They never hear one shot. They never see the damage first hand.
I wonder if that little bit would change things much.
As for the decision, I'm glad it went this way. I'm worried it was only 5-4. Seems very clear to me that the framers of the constitution wanted the right to handguns to civilians could defend themselves should the government ever step out of control.
If you don't think we should have that right (it has been 200 years, after all) that's a fair argument. But you change that through a new amendment, not trying to re-read something new into a sentence.
OK. Someone really needs to get a few hundred large snails (~postage stamp sized shell sides), paint USPS logos on the shell sides, and drop them in front of about a dozen popular post offices some morning.
I would love to see that on the morning news.
I wonder if Improv Everywhere could source a few hundred giant snail outfits?
Oh yeah. That will matter.
I'm not putting any bets on that. Nokia's name isn't meaningful (at least here in the US). The name Qt is completely meaningless to a consumer. I'm not going to pick a phone because it has Nokia software on it. I don't think most Americans would. Google is different. Google is a big brand here. People know Google. They like Google. That has sales power. Nokia may have more mindshare in Europe, but I'd imagine that Google still has a very strong brand there, so things may be more equal.
Of the two, I'd put far more stake in Google's effort. Is Nokia trying to get other cell phone companies on board?
Now I think the iPhone will kick both of them. I hope Google does good, but I frankly doubt it. The carriers are far too corrupt. Read the WSJ article that this story is based on. They talk about Sprint's problems integrating and branding all their stuff in, T-Mobile's problems, etc. In other words all the carriers are taking the software that exists and trying to turn it into their normal drivel that they sell. Apple stood up to that. The iPhone isn't covered in bad AT&T interface. Yet an Android phone will either be "Googly" or look quite a bit like any other Verizon phone.
Every story about the iPhone since first word last year has been "Wait for OpenMoko", "Wait for Qtopia", "Wait for Android". Apple is out there doing it. It may not be fully open, but it's there and it's rather open (in how easy it is to get an application up, compared to what you have to do with normal carriers and normal phones).
Google talks a nice game (and I trust them), but they are still up against the carriers who will have enough freedom to crush their ideals on every "Android" phone they release.
OpenMoko doesn't have the push either the iPhone or Android have. Qtopia may end up just another platform (like Symbian or Windows Mobile) that fails to take over the mobile phone world.
All in all, I don't care. I don't trust the phone companies. I love the iPhone interface (and will be buying the next version mostly because of it). But if the iPhone and others (like Android) can push the phone companies to better interfaces, I'm all for it. Just about every phone I've touched has a poor to horrid interface. The Samsung Instinct seems to have an improved interface, until you get to web surfing where it's just as bad as just about every phone released in the last couple of years.
There are TONS and TONS of ham radio kits. Everything from little baluns and small receivers or transmitters (like the Tuna Tins) to full radios (like the K2).
The K2 is about the biggest kit I've come across (especially with all the expansions) yet it's performance is quite comparable (or often better) than equivalent commercial boxes. It also happens to be the box I own and built so it was something I could comment on.
Kits are why I got into ham radio, as I said. I just didn't think it out enough. Just like Legos, I tend to find the fun in building them. Once that's done, I lose interest.
There are people who sell their construction services for these kits (Elecraft keeps lists of them) but building the same three things (no matter how complicated) would get old after just a few tries.
Some posters have said "make your own projects" and I totally agree. That's always what it came down to for me, but I never put the time into it. I'd just like a large kit to build now and then. After building a K2 I'm not sure I'll ever find another kit that intricate. Even if I go out of the electronics realm, I'd have to start looking at "build your own car/buggy/scooter/whatever" type kits to start to get some of that complexity level back. I mean, how do you beat thousands of dollars worth of high end analog radio equipment?
I don't think that's it at all. It's there is very little market for OS X security books at this point. Most people don't care. Let me explain.
On the home end of things, Macs are great and relatively secure. They do fine. That said, how many people buy books on Windows Security for those home computers? I'm going to say very few. Most people don't care or don't know they should do something to increase security.
The other front is businesses. Most businesses don't use Macs, by a large margin. Macs have a smaller enterprise market share than overall market share. If you are asked to secure a server or desktop, chances are it will be Windows or Linux.
These kind of books are, for the most part, targeted at administrators, businesses, etc. Since that market (administrators of Macs) is so small (compared to administrators of Windows boxes) there are very few books written.
This is compounded by the most important boxes to secure: web facing boxes (like servers). OS X Server's market share is very tiny compared Windows and Linux.
The books aren't there because the demand for them isn't very big, not because Mac users are think they are invulnerable from arrogance.
I totally sympathize with you. I'm always looking for stuff to build but there really isn't much complex out there. I would love a little 16 bit computer or something. Something like the replica 1 only more complicated.
Of what I've built, there is one and only one answer. The ultimate kit, the best out there, the Elecraft K2. I've built that, the KPA100 power amplifier, the KAT100 tuner, and a few little modules for it. It took me weeks to build it all. It was amazing.
Kit building is why I got into Ham Radio. The only problem is... I don't seem to care about the rest of ham radio. I haven't operated much. I keep meaning to do more to see if I like it better, but I don't seem to care enough to get around to it. I'm thinking of selling my K2 since it's just sitting around.
Other than that there are a few kits out there. A Nixie tube clock, while not too complicated, looks interesting. I ran across an all transistor clock kit the other day. It looks quite neat.
While there are some half-decent arguments (reactionist people taking tests then making up their own "treatment" plan for their 1% chance of developing condition X), I agree this is for doctors.
These kind of rubber stamp things (since I assume most doctors would just say "yes" to simplify their lives) just raise health care costs. By requiring this signature you take up the doctor's time and it's harder for you to compare and get things done.
This seems like regulation for the sake of regulation to me.
For one thing it would make the implementation of Time Machine much simpler. No more directory tree full of hard links and such. If they put it on other boxes (like Time Capsule) they could unify the format (it uses a different storage method). Then you could pull the Time Capsule drive, stick it in your Mac, and be all set.
For servers, it has all the standard ZFS benefits (easy storage adding, redundancy, performance, etc).
For home users, it would let you simply plug a new drive in your Mac, press a button, and have it just add space to your main drive. You wouldn't need to specifically setup a RAID. No resizing. No "external drive" if you don't want it that way. Just buy a drive, plug it in, and it's all handled for you.
You don't like Bush. I get it. But if he is impeached no action will occur until after he is out of office, so he'll be able to "continue to trash the Constitution until he leaves office." Impeaching him won't get us out of Iraq, stop illegal wiretaps, suspend torture, or anything else.
Of course, Congress could stop any of that today if they actually wanted to.
We still have a system of checks and balances. Congress could have stopped just about everything he did at any point. They have rattled sabers a few times, but they have never had the guts to step up and say "stop that".
I'm always amazed that Congress gets so little flack for all the things people complain about Bush doing in the last 8 years. They (haven't) played a part.
Cedega and the other products weren't available (or very reliable) when I first got my Intel based Mac. By the time they came around I'm pretty sure I was already using Windows to play.
It's nice to know the games are ready, but I would still be very weary due to Steam. I'd be worried about performance too. It's all nice when you have a late generation GeForce 12 or whatever, but I'm on a laptop with a 1.5-2 year old graphics chip. To run at high resolutions with playable framerates (~30 most of the time) I may have to cut the resolution quite a bit.
Of course, most of this is Valve's fault for using DirectX and not OpenGL. Everything would be faster with OpenGL since things wouldn't need as much translating.
Does this really matter?
Now as I remember, people have been calling for Bush to be impeached since his first 6 months of office. It died down for a little bit during the "we are one" period after 9/11, but then came back.
Now to impeach him then would have meant something. Doing it in '04 would have meant something. Doing it in '06 would have meant something.
It's July '08. It's too late. You can't impeach him and have something useful happen.
Let's just assume that you could get the impeachment passed in under a month. That's impossible thanks to the grandstanding that will happen in this election year. Having both major candidates be Senators won't help. They'll stretch it on as long as they can. Then there is the impeachment trial. That will last months and months and months.
By the time the whole thing is over (assuming he is impeached and convicted) he will have been out of office for... months. Congratulations, you've accomplished nothing.
This is pure theater. Whenever some of the Dems want an anti-republican issue they bring this one up. The hard-core left pipes up about it for a while and gets a little air time. The fact that the leadership doesn't even support it shows how far it's going to go in reality.
A quick look at Wikipedia seems to show that he isn't running again. He has nothing to lose, he can grandstand like this with no repercussions in the next election.
Congress did (next to) nothing to control Bush (both sides). They had plenty of chances. Congress changed hands with a bunch of people coming in or being reelected on promises of changing things, and we all know what happened then: nothing. It is up to history at this point to judge Bush. Whether some of his policies turn out for the best, he is the worst president in history, or just a footnote as "the guy who got us in Iraq." Various policies may be changed by the next administration to undo/fix things Bush has done "wrong", but it's too late now to kick him out. He's already gone, and has been out of political capital for at least months.
So, does all this matter that much? It's too late to change things.
I know you think that. We all think that. It's not reality.
Gaming was one of the things I wanted to do when I got my MacBook Pro. I tried doing some gaming through Parallels. Even with it's 3D support, it can't do much. I'm not sure how well it would run Half-Life (not 2... the first). If you want to play Bejeweled, Chuzzle, NetHack, or other relativly simple games you're fine. If you want to run some special Windows only program you're golden. If you want to play Mass Effect you're dead.
So I have a Windows partition. I have used it for three things at this point. Half-Life 2, Sam & Max, and Team Fortress 2.
I play TF2 quite a bit. That said, I'd play it at least twice as often if I didn't have to reboot to Windows. I ran into the same problem (but stronger) with HL2 and Sam & Max.
So I have to quit any open applications, save my progress in all of them, no matter how small, close all windows, whatever. Then I have to reboot. Then I have to hold down Option, then select Windows. Then I wait for Windows to boot. Then I wait for Windows to finish loading. Then I wait for the game to load. Then I wait to get into a server.
The whole process (complicated a tiny bit by the fact I use an external drive because my Windows partition is small) means it takes a good 10-15 minutes of my time to get into and out of Windows.
That's bad enough. What if I want to stop what I'm doing, play a game for a while, then go back to what I'm doing? I have to go through all that. I have to re-open everything. It takes a ton of time.
If I want to quit the game, check my email, and go back I have to use webmail because it would take so long to get over to OS X and back to Windows. I have to basically plan when I want to play a game that needs Windows. I have to really want to play. It just takes enough time that I can't drop what I'm doing for a half-hour session, because I'll lose a large chunk of that to rebooting and such.
It's a testament to how much I wanted to play HL2, Sam & Max, and how much I continue to want to play TF2 that I continue to bother. Those people who say "Boot Camp will kill Mac gaming" obviously aren't trying to use Boot Camp for gaming much. I like it much much better than nothing (I wouldn't try HL2/TF2 on a console), but it's no substitute for native gaming.
While not as good as native, being able to use something like Cinega is a huge plus for me. I would gladly use it if I thought I could get good performance out of the game I want to play (and I didn't think I might get kicked for cheating due to Valve Anti-Cheat).
I would gladly purchase all of Orange Box again just to get TF2 native for Mac if they offered it.
You're right about the price for the base plan. I guess I saw the 450 minutes and the $40 price and copied one on top of the other in my mind.
Where do you see that you get 200 SMS messages with the iPhone 3G plan? I'm having trouble finding that. I read through a few pages of Google results. Most sources don't mention it at all, the one or two I found said they "think" the message count will remain the same (but aren't clear on the point).
I really hate the AT&T site. I've never had an easy time with it.
But that's still $70. Kinda annoying. Since I will need more text messages (stupid Nagios), I'll have to upgrade that bit of the plan either way (and I would have with the old plan).