My iBook is currently at Apple's repair center. But my story starts much earlier. I ordered my dual-USB iBook 500 the day after Steve announced them, in March of 2001. It took until early-June to receive it. I didn't want to finance the cost of AppleCare, so I figured I would buy it later. In October, I joined the ranks of the dot-com unemployed, effectively destroying my plans to order AppleCare that month. I wasn't particularly worried, though, as I had experienced no problems.
Fast forward to late April of 2002. I'm living at home, in my parents' basement piggybacking off their T1 (no shit), paying down debt via a combination of frugal rent-free living, unemployment checks and the odd freelance gig thrown my way. I'd sold my Win(D'OH!)s machine awhile back. I started getting mild electrical shocks from the metal rings around the footpads on the iBook, and the screen was flickering like mad and wouldn't go to full brightness. I needed to wrap things up on a freelance gig, so I called Apple, still well in warranty and got them to send me a box. It gets to be June 1st or so and I send it in. They repair it and I have it back in-hand less than 48 hours later, functioning perfectly. Life is good...up to a point. A choad at the Apple Store in the Mall of America tells me that I have 30 days in which to make a warranty claim if the repairs go bad.
~45 days after the repair, I'm out of my main warranty by a long shot, and I think I'm out of the repair service warranty. Problems begin to recur. Basically, I think I'm fucked, so I kinda decide to put off repairs until I absolutely have to. I'm back at work full-time and kicking ass on my bills, so I should be able to cover it. Well, about 120 days after the repair work was done, I'm in the Apple Store, looking at the toys, and I overhear mention that service work has a 90-day coverage. When I talk to the clerk about it, he tells me it's always been 90 days, and that he's sorry the other guy was wrong, but that there's nothing he or I can do about it.
So I stewed for awhile. Fast forward to 12/30/2003. In a fit of boredom at work, I drop an email to sjobs@apple.com, explaining the above...not asking for anything. I just want him to be aware of the communications disconnect in the store and expressed disappointment in the quality of the product.
I come home on 1/5/2004 and there's a message on my answering machine from someone at Apple that wants to discuss the email I sent to Steve. I think "practical joke" and then realize that I didn't tell anyone about the email. The guy and I finally make contact with each other last Thursday. He wants to hear the story, so I go into detail about it, again, and we talk for a bit. Then he says, "Well, we want to make this right. We'll cover it outside of warranty this one time. And you'll still get the 90 days of coverage on the repair work."
My jaw literally dropped. He hooked me up with the tech group, filed a repair ticket for me, and had a box sent Airborne Express overnight to me. I talked to the tech, and he told me that the work order ticket basically covered anything wrong with the laptop, including cosmetic damage. I nearly shit. So we went over the problems, and that was that.
I shipped the iBook out this Tuesday morning (1/13/2004). I spoke with the people at Apple today and they informed me that they had replaced the entire upper shell (cosmetic damage), several parts of the power subassembly, the little rubber footpads (god, how that warms my heart), and went down a laundry list of other items. They said it might get back onto a truck tonight to come home.
This isn't the first time that Apple has come through for me, I'm sure it won't be the last, but they've cemented me as a Customer For Life.
I don't climb with mine...but I'm not sure an 8-foot drop would be good for it. I mean, I've dropped mine onto a concrete floor from 3-4 feet and it never missed a beat... But bouldering? I suppose it might be alright, as long as you didn't land on it.
Heh. It kicks ass for workout purposes, be it cardio (running, etc.) or on the weights. Pretty much the only thing you wouldn't want to do is swim with it.
Check this out. I've got the same bag that I've been using for about two months now and it's the best laptop case I've 0wn3d thus far. Durable thus far, and has a top-handle, stowable backpack straps, and a shoulder strap. Lots of pockets and plenty of room for stuff. Current contents: 15" Powerbook, typography book, 3 O'Reilly's pocket references, assorted array of pencils and pens, Gameboy Advance SP, iPod, 20oz. Mt. Dew in side pocket, USB Bluetooth plug, power adapters, and a pair of sketchpads. With room to spare.
Wow! I can spend hours beating my head against a computer screen trying to turn a Wintel box loaded with Linux and extra NICs into a router...OR I could do the cost-effective thing and go buy a cheap-assed LinkSys router for $40 ($60-$80 if I want wireless), and get everything up and running in 1/10th the time.
Note: I'm not trying to bash on Linux...I'm just trying to point out that there are better ways to skin a cat.
"Go figure... The Hubble.... oops, we didn't check the f*cking thing would *work* before we sent it up. The last Mars probe "well, sh*t, metric, imperial what's the difference". The Shuttle "Lets design a complicated brick that if it gets a tiny nick, it burns up on reentry".
I'd agree with you on Hubble -- that was just stupidity. Regarding the metric/imperial -- who the fuck knows how that happened? But that's not bad engineering, that's bad project planning. As for the Shuttle, bear two things in mind: 1.) a crack in the leading edge of the wing is not a nick, and 2.) you're also looking at a design that's almost 30 years old.
Anyway, I predict that within 2 years, unless Apple moves into the phone market, the iPod will be dead. It won't be long until Nokia or Sony brings out a phone with gigabyte MP3 storage...
Jesus Christ, let it fucking go. Just because you have a hard-on for the all-in-one uber-gadget doesn't mean the rest of us do. I *like* having my cellphone separate from my PDA, MP3 player, Gameboy Advance SP, etc. Why? Because I can leave it at home and not have the ass-clowns from the office calling me while I'm on the bus home trying to decompress while listening to some Bad Religion and playing Advance Wars 2.
If you want an all-in-one device, buy a fucking laptop. There's no need for a combo-PDA-MP3 player-phone-dildo.
And furthermore, please stop predicting the death of Apple and/or it's products. It's so fucking tired.
You can get the entire plot of the movie with all the deep thoughts and ambiguity by watching the short trailers as opposed to sitting through the whole movie where everything gets ruined by the script.
And suckage is easier to deal with in small doses.
Declare war on your former job. Drop a nuke on the office park where it currently resides. It will evaporate and come back here..........Maybe not instantly, but eventually.
That's still not running...that's a fast walk with both feet leaving the ground occasionally. Olympics cover 84 meters in a bit less than 8.4 seconds (10 seconds/100 meters), I can cover it in probably 30-50% more than that, being in good shape. So let's call QRIO capable of "jogging", then -- it can't outrun Joe Average, but it can outrun someone who's morbidly obese.
Since when is 14 meters per minute considered "running"? Christ, even a grossly out-of-shape human can cover that distance in a few seconds. Bad translation of the Japanese? Should we factor scale into it? Did I miss something?
I can sum it up for you: there's lots of neat special effects there to obscure the fact that George Lucas's dialogue is so poorly written that you'll find yourself hunting for car keys -- so you can rupture your eardrums. There will be one or two scenes where the CG is fantastic, but the rest will be ho-hum. John Williams will write another fantastic movie score that one person will buy and everyone will download. You won't care about Anakin falling in the lava and becoming Darth Vader -- you'll be happy to be rid of the whiny little fucker. You won't care about the death of Padme, the birth of Luke/Leia, or Obi Wan having to go off into hiding on Tatooine -- because you already knew these things would happen. Basically, there's no surprises and nothing that will make this movie worth watching. After the letdowns of Episode I and II, I am no longer going to bother trying to get to see Ep. III in the theatre. Why bother? It'll just be another Muppet-Tragic Shakespearean-CG-Cliff Notes-B Grade Dialogue Shitstorm that will leave you wondering, "Did I just spend $8 for a ticket and another $8 for food, just to see that uninspiring piece of shit?"
Consider it spoiled. Not by your weak will, however.
Oh yeah. Hand shape never changes. Right. Hi, my name is Dan. I have broken each of my fingers at least three times in the last ten years. My fingers have noticeably changed shape over that stretch of time.
And what happens if I develop rheumatoid arthritis? Am I no longer myself?
The standard model is pretty well fucked anyway. It's not a revolution, it's a kick in the ass that's going to force us to re-examine a large amount of our basic assumptions/research done in the Standard Model.
The currently Apple 20" flatscreen goes for $1299. You're paying $2199 for that attached to a 1.25GHz iMac... So in 3 years when the iMac is obsolete and the monitor is running fine, you can't attach that 20" flatscreen to anything. Hmm. Not good.
If I wanted to ride a Barcalounger I'd stay home and do it in front of the TV. I mean, God. You're less visible to traffic, you're slower than hell on the uphill...and to top it off you look more retarded than if you're out in pubic with a wearable computer on. But it's all good. You're riding, anyway.:-)
I have a acceptance/hate relationship with recumbent bikes. Can you tell?:-)
1) Tires that don't go flat! Or, rather, I should say... tires that don't go flat and only cost two or three minimum wage units. $15 US. Yes there are Kevlar tires that are as thin as your thumb and cost $200, hold 100 PSI air pressure, and rarely go flat, but they don't count.
My budget road tires (100PSI 700c x 23...ie.: a thick as your thumb) run $15 each. My racing tires (also 700c x 23) are Continental GP 3000's -- $55 each if I go to my local shop, $45 each if I buy online. So let's not overhype the prices.
2) Something to keep the rain and road dirt from putting a big skunk stripe up our backs when riding in wet climates. There are fenders, but they don't work well.
Fenders work fine if you buy a quality pair and install them properly.
3) The ability to fold the frame so that it can fit in the back of a small car or on the bus.
Already exists. Breezer makes a few, and if those aren't your speed, Independent Fabrication will build you a nice custom steel or titanium bike that has break-down points on it so you can disassemble the frame for transport.
4) Brakes that work in the rain.
They're called disc brakes. They're getting more and more inexpensive, to the point where they're showing up on $400-$500 mountain bikes, now. They work great. Invest in a pair.
5) Tires that don't go flat. So important, I'm saying it twice.
Okay, fine. Make sure your rim tape is the good cloth stuff (about $4 to do both wheels) instead of a cheap rubber strip over the heads of the spoke nipples, get a tire liner to prevent stuff that punctures the casing of the tire from getting to your innertube. Put Slime in the tube in case stuff does get past the liner, and keep your tires inflated to the recommended PSI on the sidewall to prevent snakebite and/or pinch flats, and make sure you're not bombing off curbs or anything stupid like that that's going to create flat sections in your rim. Or go out and invest 59 cents in a patch kit, 2 dollars on a cheap pair of tire irons, and learn to patch a tube like the rest of us. It's not that tough.
In fact, I HATE bicycle helmets. Their sole purpose is to show all the people driving around that the person on the bike is middle class, has a car at home, can afford a $100 helmet...
Well, perhaps you should invest in a cheap $30 helmet. They're plentiful and JUST AS GOOD as the $100-$150 the racers like myself wear (we go for as much ventilation/aerodynamics as possible). Thirty dollar is a lot cheap than most E.R. co-pays on your insurance, and is a HELL of a lot cheaper than a lifetime of assisted living because your prejudices turned you into a vegetable. And don't tell me they don't work -- on three separate occasions, I've been saved from serious brain injury by a bike helmet.
You know, I've only spent 4 years in the bike biz...spinning wrench and doing some light sales work...and I see people like you all the time. You have the same whiny arguments no matter how good or how inexpensive technology gets, you have the constant "more for less" chant. If you don't like the performance of the equipment or the prices that it comes at, find a different sport.
As a guy who part-times at bike shops as a wrench, and who plans on getting out of IT and opening his own shop in the near future, I feel the need to reply to this. (You can also refer to my letter from Wired 8.06, if you want the short version.
Bicycle technology has remained largely the same because it works and works well. The bike, in its current form, is one of the best most effecient devices for turning human work into motion. Bicycle racing has been a professional sport for over a century, and in that time, we've seen a wide range of experimental drivetrains, wheels, frames -- hell, you name the component, someone's tried to build a better one.
The point is, very few of these things manage to exceed the quality/performance of the items they're trying to replace. In fact, the only thing I can think of in the last ten years that's been a "radical departure" from the norm, is paired-spoke wheels, and even those are not a "radical departure", as someone just looked at the lacing/drilling pattern of the spokes and how they go from the hub to the rim.
There's a few other factors involved, too -- 1.) price -- cycling is a painfully expensive sport (ask me about the $6500 bike I want to build this year) and these new attempts at technology have to come cheap, or no one will buy them. This is why you don't see a lot of bikes with automatic transmissions on them -- the Bianchi AutoMilano is one of these, but it costs $300 more than a Milano with grip-shifters. And has fewer gears. Where's the price benefit in that?
2.) Can the home mechanic work on it easily? No hardcore cyclist will buy a bike that's a total pain in the ass to work on. I want to be able to come home from my ride, throw my bike up in the workstand and tweak the shifting across my range of gears without having to use more than a phillips-head screwdriver. A gearing system inside the bottom bracket (what they're describing) doesn't allow for that. And it's right out.
3.) The shop factor. No bike shop wants to invest in unproven or "fringe" technologies because of the inventory issue. A local shop a few years ago invested heavily in Softride bikes, which are popular in the triathalon circuit, and had a few converts on mountain bikes -- mostly people who had bad backs or couldn't afford a true rear-suspension bike. He bought tons of these things, starting in 1996. That shop closed up recently and had a huge closeout sale. Tons of Softride bikes, some as old as 1996.
We're not Luddites in the bike world, though. My current bike (1999-2000) is nothing like my bike of 1989 -- the primary changes have been materials science changes. And my bike of 2009 will nothing like my bike of 1999.
I understand what you're going through. As an individual, I went through this back in 2001, when the market tanked and I lost my cushy dot-com gig. A lot of companies went through what you're going through, but most of them had the common decency to go quietly and with dignity, rather than hiring lawyers and trying to take a Scorched Earth approach in a last valiant effort to save themselves. Here's a hint: you're not the Soviet Army and Utah isn't Stalingrad.
Let's face it -- your goose is cooked. In an attempt to fill your coffers, you have succeeded in the most perfect execution of Operation: Footbullet since the dying gasps of the dot-coms in 2000-2001. Even if you win, you lose -- you have alienated the one group that you needed to hold on to any sort of market share: the geeks. If, by some stroke of magical luck, bought judge, planetary alignment, or guiding hand of Microsoft, you manage to actually pull this off and have the GPL declared null-and-void and you and your puppeteer, Bill Gates (no doubt, elbow deep in your asses, playing ventriloquist), manage to clean house registering patents and copyrights on works you didn't create, you will have only succeeded in enraging those who are responsible for creating those works. Those creators are people who have a say in what gets purchased at their offices, and I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't be SCO or M$ (should their complicity in this fiasco be shown to be true and not just educated guesswork).
That said, I'd encourage you to call off the attack dogs. We'll all have a good laugh at your "clever ruse" and share a beer together. Twenty years from now, SCO will be long-gone and irrelevant. God willing, M$ will be gone then, too. And you'll wonder to yourself: what the fuck was I thinking back then?
Think it over. There's more of us than there are of you, ultimately, we, the consumers, control the future of your business. Do you really want to taunt that 800-lb. gorilla? Do you?
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My iBook is currently at Apple's repair center. But my story starts much earlier. I ordered my dual-USB iBook 500 the day after Steve announced them, in March of 2001. It took until early-June to receive it. I didn't want to finance the cost of AppleCare, so I figured I would buy it later. In October, I joined the ranks of the dot-com unemployed, effectively destroying my plans to order AppleCare that month. I wasn't particularly worried, though, as I had experienced no problems.
Fast forward to late April of 2002. I'm living at home, in my parents' basement piggybacking off their T1 (no shit), paying down debt via a combination of frugal rent-free living, unemployment checks and the odd freelance gig thrown my way. I'd sold my Win(D'OH!)s machine awhile back. I started getting mild electrical shocks from the metal rings around the footpads on the iBook, and the screen was flickering like mad and wouldn't go to full brightness. I needed to wrap things up on a freelance gig, so I called Apple, still well in warranty and got them to send me a box. It gets to be June 1st or so and I send it in. They repair it and I have it back in-hand less than 48 hours later, functioning perfectly. Life is good...up to a point. A choad at the Apple Store in the Mall of America tells me that I have 30 days in which to make a warranty claim if the repairs go bad.
~45 days after the repair, I'm out of my main warranty by a long shot, and I think I'm out of the repair service warranty. Problems begin to recur. Basically, I think I'm fucked, so I kinda decide to put off repairs until I absolutely have to. I'm back at work full-time and kicking ass on my bills, so I should be able to cover it. Well, about 120 days after the repair work was done, I'm in the Apple Store, looking at the toys, and I overhear mention that service work has a 90-day coverage. When I talk to the clerk about it, he tells me it's always been 90 days, and that he's sorry the other guy was wrong, but that there's nothing he or I can do about it.
So I stewed for awhile. Fast forward to 12/30/2003. In a fit of boredom at work, I drop an email to sjobs@apple.com, explaining the above...not asking for anything. I just want him to be aware of the communications disconnect in the store and expressed disappointment in the quality of the product.
I come home on 1/5/2004 and there's a message on my answering machine from someone at Apple that wants to discuss the email I sent to Steve. I think "practical joke" and then realize that I didn't tell anyone about the email. The guy and I finally make contact with each other last Thursday. He wants to hear the story, so I go into detail about it, again, and we talk for a bit. Then he says, "Well, we want to make this right. We'll cover it outside of warranty this one time. And you'll still get the 90 days of coverage on the repair work."
My jaw literally dropped. He hooked me up with the tech group, filed a repair ticket for me, and had a box sent Airborne Express overnight to me. I talked to the tech, and he told me that the work order ticket basically covered anything wrong with the laptop, including cosmetic damage. I nearly shit. So we went over the problems, and that was that.
I shipped the iBook out this Tuesday morning (1/13/2004). I spoke with the people at Apple today and they informed me that they had replaced the entire upper shell (cosmetic damage), several parts of the power subassembly, the little rubber footpads (god, how that warms my heart), and went down a laundry list of other items. They said it might get back onto a truck tonight to come home.
This isn't the first time that Apple has come through for me, I'm sure it won't be the last, but they've cemented me as a Customer For Life.
No it doesn't. And don't expect it to. Whether you like it or not, admit it or not, .OGG is not a mainstream format, and unlikely to ever be one.
I don't climb with mine...but I'm not sure an 8-foot drop would be good for it. I mean, I've dropped mine onto a concrete floor from 3-4 feet and it never missed a beat... But bouldering? I suppose it might be alright, as long as you didn't land on it.
Heh. It kicks ass for workout purposes, be it cardio (running, etc.) or on the weights. Pretty much the only thing you wouldn't want to do is swim with it.
Check this out. I've got the same bag that I've been using for about two months now and it's the best laptop case I've 0wn3d thus far. Durable thus far, and has a top-handle, stowable backpack straps, and a shoulder strap. Lots of pockets and plenty of room for stuff. Current contents: 15" Powerbook, typography book, 3 O'Reilly's pocket references, assorted array of pencils and pens, Gameboy Advance SP, iPod, 20oz. Mt. Dew in side pocket, USB Bluetooth plug, power adapters, and a pair of sketchpads. With room to spare.
Wow! I can spend hours beating my head against a computer screen trying to turn a Wintel box loaded with Linux and extra NICs into a router...OR I could do the cost-effective thing and go buy a cheap-assed LinkSys router for $40 ($60-$80 if I want wireless), and get everything up and running in 1/10th the time.
Note: I'm not trying to bash on Linux...I'm just trying to point out that there are better ways to skin a cat.
"Go figure... The Hubble.... oops, we didn't check the f*cking thing would *work* before we sent it up. The last Mars probe "well, sh*t, metric, imperial what's the difference". The Shuttle "Lets design a complicated brick that if it gets a tiny nick, it burns up on reentry".
I'd agree with you on Hubble -- that was just stupidity. Regarding the metric/imperial -- who the fuck knows how that happened? But that's not bad engineering, that's bad project planning. As for the Shuttle, bear two things in mind: 1.) a crack in the leading edge of the wing is not a nick, and 2.) you're also looking at a design that's almost 30 years old.
Anyway, I predict that within 2 years, unless Apple moves into the phone market, the iPod will be dead. It won't be long until Nokia or Sony brings out a phone with gigabyte MP3 storage...
Jesus Christ, let it fucking go. Just because you have a hard-on for the all-in-one uber-gadget doesn't mean the rest of us do. I *like* having my cellphone separate from my PDA, MP3 player, Gameboy Advance SP, etc. Why? Because I can leave it at home and not have the ass-clowns from the office calling me while I'm on the bus home trying to decompress while listening to some Bad Religion and playing Advance Wars 2.
If you want an all-in-one device, buy a fucking laptop. There's no need for a combo-PDA-MP3 player-phone-dildo.
And furthermore, please stop predicting the death of Apple and/or it's products. It's so fucking tired.
You can get the entire plot of the movie with all the deep thoughts and ambiguity by watching the short trailers as opposed to sitting through the whole movie where everything gets ruined by the script.
And suckage is easier to deal with in small doses.
Declare war on your former job. Drop a nuke on the office park where it currently resides. It will evaporate and come back here. .........Maybe not instantly, but eventually.
Best: Return of the King, Bubba Ho-Tep, Big Fish, Bruce Almighty
Worst: Matrix Reloaded, The Hulk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
That's still not running...that's a fast walk with both feet leaving the ground occasionally. Olympics cover 84 meters in a bit less than 8.4 seconds (10 seconds/100 meters), I can cover it in probably 30-50% more than that, being in good shape. So let's call QRIO capable of "jogging", then -- it can't outrun Joe Average, but it can outrun someone who's morbidly obese.
Since when is 14 meters per minute considered "running"? Christ, even a grossly out-of-shape human can cover that distance in a few seconds. Bad translation of the Japanese? Should we factor scale into it? Did I miss something?
I'm sorry...was I supposed to keep my Panther install media? Shit. Oh well, 10.4 will probably be out years before I'd need to re-install, anyway.
I can sum it up for you: there's lots of neat special effects there to obscure the fact that George Lucas's dialogue is so poorly written that you'll find yourself hunting for car keys -- so you can rupture your eardrums. There will be one or two scenes where the CG is fantastic, but the rest will be ho-hum. John Williams will write another fantastic movie score that one person will buy and everyone will download. You won't care about Anakin falling in the lava and becoming Darth Vader -- you'll be happy to be rid of the whiny little fucker. You won't care about the death of Padme, the birth of Luke/Leia, or Obi Wan having to go off into hiding on Tatooine -- because you already knew these things would happen. Basically, there's no surprises and nothing that will make this movie worth watching. After the letdowns of Episode I and II, I am no longer going to bother trying to get to see Ep. III in the theatre. Why bother? It'll just be another Muppet-Tragic Shakespearean-CG-Cliff Notes-B Grade Dialogue Shitstorm that will leave you wondering, "Did I just spend $8 for a ticket and another $8 for food, just to see that uninspiring piece of shit?"
Consider it spoiled. Not by your weak will, however.
Oh yeah. Hand shape never changes. Right. Hi, my name is Dan. I have broken each of my fingers at least three times in the last ten years. My fingers have noticeably changed shape over that stretch of time.
And what happens if I develop rheumatoid arthritis? Am I no longer myself?
And what Sophisticated Lady wouldn't be overjoyed at unwrapping a genuine Swarovski crystal accessory?
Howabout the one that no longer has PC PS2 connectors on their computer? (RTFA)
My girlfriend is fairly sophisticated, but if I gave her that, she'd probably question my sexuality.
The standard model is pretty well fucked anyway. It's not a revolution, it's a kick in the ass that's going to force us to re-examine a large amount of our basic assumptions/research done in the Standard Model.
Already outstanding issues include pentaquarks (5-quark exotic baryons), the inability to find the Higgs boson (not so much finding it, but having the found mass be correct), muon g-factor anomalies, and kaon decay, to name but a few.
I guess what I'm saying is: it's going to be a long time. Don't hold your breath.
The currently Apple 20" flatscreen goes for $1299. You're paying $2199 for that attached to a 1.25GHz iMac... So in 3 years when the iMac is obsolete and the monitor is running fine, you can't attach that 20" flatscreen to anything. Hmm. Not good.
If I wanted to ride a Barcalounger I'd stay home and do it in front of the TV. I mean, God. You're less visible to traffic, you're slower than hell on the uphill...and to top it off you look more retarded than if you're out in pubic with a wearable computer on. But it's all good. You're riding, anyway. :-)
:-)
I have a acceptance/hate relationship with recumbent bikes. Can you tell?
1) Tires that don't go flat! Or, rather, I should say... tires that don't go flat and only cost two or three minimum wage units. $15 US. Yes there are Kevlar tires that are as thin as your thumb and cost $200, hold 100 PSI air pressure, and rarely go flat, but they don't count.
My budget road tires (100PSI 700c x 23...ie.: a thick as your thumb) run $15 each. My racing tires (also 700c x 23) are Continental GP 3000's -- $55 each if I go to my local shop, $45 each if I buy online. So let's not overhype the prices.
2) Something to keep the rain and road dirt from putting a big skunk stripe up our backs when riding in wet climates. There are fenders, but they don't work well.
Fenders work fine if you buy a quality pair and install them properly.
3) The ability to fold the frame so that it can fit in the back of a small car or on the bus.
Already exists. Breezer makes a few, and if those aren't your speed, Independent Fabrication will build you a nice custom steel or titanium bike that has break-down points on it so you can disassemble the frame for transport.
4) Brakes that work in the rain.
They're called disc brakes. They're getting more and more inexpensive, to the point where they're showing up on $400-$500 mountain bikes, now. They work great. Invest in a pair.
5) Tires that don't go flat. So important, I'm saying it twice.
Okay, fine. Make sure your rim tape is the good cloth stuff (about $4 to do both wheels) instead of a cheap rubber strip over the heads of the spoke nipples, get a tire liner to prevent stuff that punctures the casing of the tire from getting to your innertube. Put Slime in the tube in case stuff does get past the liner, and keep your tires inflated to the recommended PSI on the sidewall to prevent snakebite and/or pinch flats, and make sure you're not bombing off curbs or anything stupid like that that's going to create flat sections in your rim. Or go out and invest 59 cents in a patch kit, 2 dollars on a cheap pair of tire irons, and learn to patch a tube like the rest of us. It's not that tough.
In fact, I HATE bicycle helmets. Their sole purpose is to show all the people driving around that the person on the bike is middle class, has a car at home, can afford a $100 helmet...
Well, perhaps you should invest in a cheap $30 helmet. They're plentiful and JUST AS GOOD as the $100-$150 the racers like myself wear (we go for as much ventilation/aerodynamics as possible). Thirty dollar is a lot cheap than most E.R. co-pays on your insurance, and is a HELL of a lot cheaper than a lifetime of assisted living because your prejudices turned you into a vegetable. And don't tell me they don't work -- on three separate occasions, I've been saved from serious brain injury by a bike helmet.
You know, I've only spent 4 years in the bike biz...spinning wrench and doing some light sales work...and I see people like you all the time. You have the same whiny arguments no matter how good or how inexpensive technology gets, you have the constant "more for less" chant. If you don't like the performance of the equipment or the prices that it comes at, find a different sport.
As a guy who part-times at bike shops as a wrench, and who plans on getting out of IT and opening his own shop in the near future, I feel the need to reply to this. (You can also refer to my letter from Wired 8.06, if you want the short version.
Bicycle technology has remained largely the same because it works and works well. The bike, in its current form, is one of the best most effecient devices for turning human work into motion. Bicycle racing has been a professional sport for over a century, and in that time, we've seen a wide range of experimental drivetrains, wheels, frames -- hell, you name the component, someone's tried to build a better one.
The point is, very few of these things manage to exceed the quality/performance of the items they're trying to replace. In fact, the only thing I can think of in the last ten years that's been a "radical departure" from the norm, is paired-spoke wheels, and even those are not a "radical departure", as someone just looked at the lacing/drilling pattern of the spokes and how they go from the hub to the rim.
There's a few other factors involved, too -- 1.) price -- cycling is a painfully expensive sport (ask me about the $6500 bike I want to build this year) and these new attempts at technology have to come cheap, or no one will buy them. This is why you don't see a lot of bikes with automatic transmissions on them -- the Bianchi AutoMilano is one of these, but it costs $300 more than a Milano with grip-shifters. And has fewer gears. Where's the price benefit in that?
2.) Can the home mechanic work on it easily? No hardcore cyclist will buy a bike that's a total pain in the ass to work on. I want to be able to come home from my ride, throw my bike up in the workstand and tweak the shifting across my range of gears without having to use more than a phillips-head screwdriver. A gearing system inside the bottom bracket (what they're describing) doesn't allow for that. And it's right out.
3.) The shop factor. No bike shop wants to invest in unproven or "fringe" technologies because of the inventory issue. A local shop a few years ago invested heavily in Softride bikes, which are popular in the triathalon circuit, and had a few converts on mountain bikes -- mostly people who had bad backs or couldn't afford a true rear-suspension bike. He bought tons of these things, starting in 1996. That shop closed up recently and had a huge closeout sale. Tons of Softride bikes, some as old as 1996.
We're not Luddites in the bike world, though. My current bike (1999-2000) is nothing like my bike of 1989 -- the primary changes have been materials science changes. And my bike of 2009 will nothing like my bike of 1999.
Dear SCO & Friends,
I understand what you're going through. As an individual, I went through this back in 2001, when the market tanked and I lost my cushy dot-com gig. A lot of companies went through what you're going through, but most of them had the common decency to go quietly and with dignity, rather than hiring lawyers and trying to take a Scorched Earth approach in a last valiant effort to save themselves. Here's a hint: you're not the Soviet Army and Utah isn't Stalingrad.
Let's face it -- your goose is cooked. In an attempt to fill your coffers, you have succeeded in the most perfect execution of Operation: Footbullet since the dying gasps of the dot-coms in 2000-2001. Even if you win, you lose -- you have alienated the one group that you needed to hold on to any sort of market share: the geeks. If, by some stroke of magical luck, bought judge, planetary alignment, or guiding hand of Microsoft, you manage to actually pull this off and have the GPL declared null-and-void and you and your puppeteer, Bill Gates (no doubt, elbow deep in your asses, playing ventriloquist), manage to clean house registering patents and copyrights on works you didn't create, you will have only succeeded in enraging those who are responsible for creating those works. Those creators are people who have a say in what gets purchased at their offices, and I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't be SCO or M$ (should their complicity in this fiasco be shown to be true and not just educated guesswork).
That said, I'd encourage you to call off the attack dogs. We'll all have a good laugh at your "clever ruse" and share a beer together. Twenty years from now, SCO will be long-gone and irrelevant. God willing, M$ will be gone then, too. And you'll wonder to yourself: what the fuck was I thinking back then?
Think it over. There's more of us than there are of you, ultimately, we, the consumers, control the future of your business. Do you really want to taunt that 800-lb. gorilla? Do you?
Holy shit! RMS talked to a member of the press and DIDN'T come off looking like a smug, reality-disconnected jackass!
He did apparently convince the reporter that Linux was the kernel and the greater operating system was "GNU/Linux".
Here's the format: tiny, DRM-able, and easy-to-lose, meaning you'll need to buy a new copy.
At least, that's what they're probably thinking. I find it interesting that they're still insisting on physical media.