The FairTax would instantly make the US the world's tax haven.
I agree. The tax code as it stands now is a nightmare. I found out about FairTax when I came across The FairTax Book at the bookstore. I read the whole book in one sitting. Seriously! A book about taxes, and I couldn't put it down. The arguments made in the book seem well thought out and make sense. The general feeling I got was that if this ever became law, the whole world would be abuzz about it and businesses would rush back to America. I would certainly appreciate being able to put my extra money in savings, to get taxed only at such time that I decide to make a purchase, and not having to deal with April 15th. I don't care if FairTax saved me nothing in taxes, it would definitely save hours of clerical work on my part and on my employer's part, and that money would be available to fuel the economy instead. I totally agree with you. Now if only we could get Washington to agree.
It is very dangerous when rulings like this come about. Who is to define when bundling of one product with another constitutes antitrust violation? When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? When you install a text editor and syntax highlighting files for a bunch of languages are "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? What about Solitaire? Can that be bundled? Why the emphasis on the browser? Because Opera feels it inconvenient that Windows already comes with a browser?
Let me tell you something. I found out about Opera when it was in version 3. Back then, you could use it for 30 days (if you didn't use it during a day, it didn't count against your 30 days), and if you liked it, you had to pay. Shareware. Their marketing message at the time was something along the lines that, we're so sure you'll like the speed of our browser, here are the links to download Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Try and compare. And they were absolutely right. Their browser was faster in every respect, leaner, smaller, tighter. When you clicked a file to download it, it immediately began to download, while you were selecting the destination. Contrast that with IE and Netscape of the time, which waited until you took half an hour to navigate to where you wanted the file before they even started. Page rendering was faster. The interface was uncluttered, simple, quick, easy to use. It was a wonderful product. I continued upgrading through versions 4, 5, 6, and 7. At some point in there, it stopped being shareware and became free software. And at some point, I stopped using it and moved on to Firefox. The reason was simple. The browser grew and began to include all kinds of bells and whistles. The interface became cluttered. Too much junk in my opinion. I am sure that some people like that, but for me, the very reason to use Opera was that it was the opposite of these other bloated browsers. It became IMHO what I was trying to get away from. Don't get me wrong. In the 5 or 6 or 7 years that I used Opera, it was a lifesaver. It was a joy to use, much, much, much better than the alternative (which at some point between the demise of Netscape and the first release of Firefox, was only IE or very crippled browsers). I just think they should have concentrated on having the tiniest yet fully featured browser, lightning fast, low memory usage, etc. So they could keep linking to the IE download page, because they could be so sure and correct that their browser kicks the pants off the competition. Unfortunately they chose the legal route, which is always a bad thing.
Back to Microsoft. If due to some court case, Microsoft is not allowed to bundle anything together, then soon nobody will be allowed to bundle anything together. This will be horrible! Besides, if you buy computer with Windows OS and there is no browser bundled with it, how in the hell are you supposed to download a different browser? 99.9% of computer users will NOT know how to download a browser without first having one with which to download one. In fact, even if you were going to compile wget from sources, you'd still need a browser to get the sources and the compiler. This is an example of courts, companies, lawyers, who have no clue about computers (and think the monitor is the computer) just trying to play the lawsuit lottery against Microsoft. Face it. They no longer have a monopoly. Apple is nearly at 10% of the market. Linux has some share. The *BSDs have some share. People DO have a choice now. If they don't buy an Apple (which is dead simple to use and doesn't cost more than a comparable "PC" machine), and if they don't want to learn Linux (or won't or can't) then it is their choice to use Windows. And there is no monopoly in the browser area either. With IE, Konquerer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, shit the list goes on and on. What monopoly? This is not antitrust. This is bullshit. Sorry. I LOVE Opera. Opera 3 especially. It has come a long way since then, many improvements, but the fact is that when all was darkness around and Opera shone some light on the Internet by making it actually bearable to use rather than the horror that was IE or Netscape, but I am no fan of this lawsuit.
The next thing you know, they'll make up a screen scraper in JavaScript. There are several things to learn from this. For the users, one, that you should completely clear your browser (Clear Private Data or similar) before going to a banking website, two that you should NEVER open other websites (or have them open) while you're signed in to a banking website, third that when you've finished banking, you should completely clear your browser again. For the browser makers (Firefox devs reading this?), third party cookies should be disabled by default, the option to turn them on should come with stern warnings, and each website can ONLY read cookies previously set by itself. Further when an encrypted page is opened, its memory should be such that other pages cannot access any part of it. In other words, the same sandboxing approach taken to deal with other security issues, within the browser for encrypted pages.
Are you sure this is the "can't fix stupid" demographic? For us 1337 h4x0rz computers are simple. But in reality, they are complicated. If you don't understand that, here's an example for you. I work in a machine shop. Truing a bar in four-jaw chuck is dead simple, even a monkey could do it. Yet if I asked you to, could you?
Something else about Verizon. There's a phone # to call to check inet outage info. At least there used to be. At the end of the recorded message, they tell you (or at least did) to visit their www site for more info. How the F#$% am I supposed to do that if it's an outage?!
Never, ever, fill out a registration for any F/OSS program. You should explain this to people. Free software means you don't have to register in the same way as with scam software. Explain to download OOo but warn that they must get it from www.openoffice.org and without filling out any registration. The registration for this good software package is optional and happens either during the installation or during the first run, I can't remember which.
There just need to be more point-to-point routes between major cities and across country borders. Yes, it is also a good idea to run cables underwater, but the more routes exist, the more likely it is that when a cable is cut somewhere (whether deliberately, accidentally, or due to an act of God), the traffic will automatically be routed around the damaged area.
Let's see if I understand you correctly on the email thing, putting aside the 100 minutes of regular Internet access. The way it sounds, you can send and receive an unlimited amount of email messages, so long as each message is under one megabyte in size. It also sounds like this is probably not a web-based email, because if it were, you could access the rest of the web. So this is what you should do if you have some time available to you prior to the commencement of this voyage. You should hack up a tun device that sends each packet as a single email message to a specified email address, or converts an email message received from this address back into a packet. Then you run OpenVPN and have it use this hacked tun device. You set up a computer at your or someone's home and in addition to running this tun device and OpenVPN on it, you also install packet forwarding rules that NAT the "normal" interface over to the tun interface. You set up OpenVPN accordingly on your laptop. It will probably be very slow, but the advantages are that you will have an unlimited amount of access through this system, and you will be able to access any part of the Internet through this system that you would be able to access from your home. And if it works, it would make a good magazine article for Linux Journal, too.
What a horrible bunch of hogwash. Please, someone, tell me why:
1. In the 1970's, hysteria swept the globe because CO2 emissions would cause global freezing? 2. In the mid 90's and early 2000's, hysteria swept the globe because CO2 emissions would cause global warming? 3. In the last five years, the term "global warming" has been replaced by "climate change"? 4. Isn't the climate, by definition, something that changes over time, from day to day, from week to week, from season to season, from year to year, and over longer periods of time? 5. If there are no SUVs, no Google computers, and no factories on Mars, why has the temperature there been shown to change proportionally to the temperature here on Earth?
In other words, what I really want to know is this: has anyone actually shown with certainty that CO2 emissions has anything to do with the temperature outside? Or is this all just a meaningless political issue, right alongside Social Security and abortion, designed to focus people's attention away from what our politicians are really doing? I say this is a bunch of hogwash. Climate change. Such a general and vague term could mean anything. Hey, the temperature is different today than it was yesterday. See! Proof of climate change.
You know, I love how people talk about the situation in Israel as if it were about two equal parties, equally responsible for the situation. That is not the case. On the one hand you have a legitimate state doing what it must to protect its people. On the other, you have a huge mafia of terrorists whose favorite pastimes are blowing themselves up in cafes and shooting rockets from school rooftops toward people's homes. Unfortunately, the terrorists have turned propaganda and the act of generating horrible PR for Israel into an art form. They launch rockets from schools and dense neighborhoods because they know two things. First, Israel won't shoot back because of the risk of hitting innocents, so the terrorists are safe. Second, if Israel does shoot back, innocents may get hit and the terrorists can show the whole world how Israel is violent. Everyone knows this but still blames Israel. True, many of the people living in Gaza are innocent and want no part of this terrorism. They cannot speak or help the authorities because they know they will be killed. They're up shit creek without a paddle. So they sit back silently in fear of their lives. And true also that in rooting out the terrorists, Israel sometimes hits an innocent bystander. So Israel is between a rock and a hard place. What do you suggest, pulling out of Gaza, allowing the terrorists time to regroup and rearm? Leaving them alone and watching the rockets continue to rain down? Israel is extremely careful to avoid killing innocent bystanders, even when it means putting their own soldiers at higher risk. Contrast this with the terrorists, whose goal in life is to kill innocent bystanders. If Israel succeeds in rooting out the terrorists, life will be much better for the innocent people living in Gaza. Remember, they are terrorized at least as much by the terrorists as are the people in Israel whose homes are in the direct line of rocket fire.
I hope they plan to charge the spam recipient a nominal fee of $10 for each such spam, with no daily limit on spams and with no way to opt out. Why? Because I own stock in GM.
Replying to my own post: ten googolplexes of yottabytes per Planck unit of time??? What the hell is that, 10^4840^100 bytes per second? (Did I do my math right?)
Yeah obvious that we get LESS than the speed we pay for. I've asked the ISP about that once. They guarantee "UP TO" whatever speed I'm paying for, so if I get less, it falls within the guarantee. I should become an ISP and guarantee speeds UP TO ten googolplexes of yottabytes per Planck unit of time. In the fine print it would explain the guarantee as follows: "We promise your speed will never be greater than the above mentioned speed, or your money back. In other words, the guarantee is NOT that you'll get super fast Internet. Rather, it is a promise that your speed will never be greater than the maximum stated speed. In order to make sure we are well under that limit, the actual speed may vary, will always be less than the maximum as guaranteed, and will probably be so slow that Google's home page will take 999 quadrillion millennia to load."
I write this as chairs are being thrown in another part of the world: Kudos to Vietnam! I hope that more governments and businesses around the world will realize the savings that can be had because when costs are cut at these types of organizations, it means higher efficiency and lower prices. Software is a great area to cut costs, and the free software packages that Vietnam will adopt are mature, stable codebases.
It will be impossible to duplicate Steve Jobs. Therefore, I think the top people at Apple need to spend some serious time figuring out who will replace Jobs when he eventually leaves and how that person can continue pushing Apple forward in his own way. In other words, he won't mimic Jobs because that would result in a poor imitation. He won't simply use marketing buzz at an attempt to produce the same feeling towards Apple, because it will, again, feel like a poor imitation. He'll have to gain the "feel" for what Apple has done right in the past and what to keep doing right in the future. I've heard that everything in the end must be cleared by Jobs, including the radius of the corners on the edges of the screens. Whoever replaces him will have to have the same sort of incredible drive to produce absolutely the best product, meaning not taking "it can't be done" as an answer, pushing the people to perform beyond what they themselves imagine they can, sensing what kind of products that nobody ever thought they'd need will, once seen, become a must-have, and having the understanding of psychology that it takes to make those products work the way they should. See, that's the crazy thing about Macs, iPhones, and iPods. When you pick one up, you immediately figure out how to use it and it all just seems to flow in a way that makes sense. They also look amazing. Place an Apple product next to any competitor's product and it's a difference of 100 years. It's something you'd see in Star Trek versus something you'd find in Office Depot. There is this whole feel that someone will have to have, but it must be done in such a way that it is not an imitation of Jobs, that it does bring in the talent, thoughts, creativity, and style of the new person, but in a way that does not turn Apple, the shining star that it is now, back into what it was in the 90's when the company almost disappeared from the Earth. Yes, with the momentum they have now, they can just glide ahead with a CEO who doesn't have "it", whatever "it" is, but if that happens, it will eventually be like Microsoft with Vista. Eventually that momentum will run out, they'll run out of airspeed and altitude, and it will be the Apple of the 90's, before Jobs' return. That would be sad because say what you will about fanboys, Apple has done and is doing some really amazing thing. They've turned computer and OS design into an art form.
Dude I feel your pain but keep a few things in mind: o Sarge was released. o Apple did go Intel. o Pigs can be flown. If we follow this logic, it is clear that two more things will happen Real Soon Now (tm): o Duke Nukem Forever will be released. o Perl 6 will be released.
I always say if these people are so damn skilled that they can figure out ingenious ways to illegally gain illegal gains, then why don't they put those incredible skills into something legitimate and make billions? Instead they do illegal things and take the risk of ending up inside the slammer. Some people are just so shortsighted.
If a black hole with a positive electric charge comes near another black hole with a positive electric charge, the two will, IMHO, repel each other because the electrostatic forces are larger even than the gravitational forces that can pull everything up to and including light into the black hole. However, if there are other black holes around with negative electric charges, those black holes in combination with the positively charged ones will form a giant unit which will be held together in a sort of cosmic-sized ionic bond. That would be cool.
I believe I read somewhere that there are, at any given moment, 60,000 people in the air over the United States alone. That's a tremendous amount of information and more accumulates every day, so much that I cannot imagine how anybody or any software could sift through all of it effectively.
This is totally retarded! How in the hell are you supposed to type anything with this nightmare? 45 minutes to type an email and only 20 minutes of battery life?! And the most ridiculous thing is when all your files are in alphabetical order like that, so you have to sift through the whole computer to find it. The guy even admitted that you have to make a few hundred clicks to reach the file you want! This must be some sort of ploy to get people to run out and buy all the remaining MacBooks BEFORE this ridiculous change is implemented. I for one am NOT going to get one of those stupid "wheel" MacBooks. If they came up with an Apple n*tbook that used a wheel, maybe that would be kind of weird and cool, but there is no way you can possibly do any serious work with this.
Slashdot Mirror
The FairTax would instantly make the US the world's tax haven.
I agree. The tax code as it stands now is a nightmare. I found out about FairTax when I came across The FairTax Book at the bookstore. I read the whole book in one sitting. Seriously! A book about taxes, and I couldn't put it down. The arguments made in the book seem well thought out and make sense. The general feeling I got was that if this ever became law, the whole world would be abuzz about it and businesses would rush back to America. I would certainly appreciate being able to put my extra money in savings, to get taxed only at such time that I decide to make a purchase, and not having to deal with April 15th. I don't care if FairTax saved me nothing in taxes, it would definitely save hours of clerical work on my part and on my employer's part, and that money would be available to fuel the economy instead. I totally agree with you. Now if only we could get Washington to agree.
It is very dangerous when rulings like this come about. Who is to define when bundling of one product with another constitutes antitrust violation? When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? When you install a text editor and syntax highlighting files for a bunch of languages are "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? What about Solitaire? Can that be bundled? Why the emphasis on the browser? Because Opera feels it inconvenient that Windows already comes with a browser?
Let me tell you something. I found out about Opera when it was in version 3. Back then, you could use it for 30 days (if you didn't use it during a day, it didn't count against your 30 days), and if you liked it, you had to pay. Shareware. Their marketing message at the time was something along the lines that, we're so sure you'll like the speed of our browser, here are the links to download Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Try and compare. And they were absolutely right. Their browser was faster in every respect, leaner, smaller, tighter. When you clicked a file to download it, it immediately began to download, while you were selecting the destination. Contrast that with IE and Netscape of the time, which waited until you took half an hour to navigate to where you wanted the file before they even started. Page rendering was faster. The interface was uncluttered, simple, quick, easy to use. It was a wonderful product. I continued upgrading through versions 4, 5, 6, and 7. At some point in there, it stopped being shareware and became free software. And at some point, I stopped using it and moved on to Firefox. The reason was simple. The browser grew and began to include all kinds of bells and whistles. The interface became cluttered. Too much junk in my opinion. I am sure that some people like that, but for me, the very reason to use Opera was that it was the opposite of these other bloated browsers. It became IMHO what I was trying to get away from. Don't get me wrong. In the 5 or 6 or 7 years that I used Opera, it was a lifesaver. It was a joy to use, much, much, much better than the alternative (which at some point between the demise of Netscape and the first release of Firefox, was only IE or very crippled browsers). I just think they should have concentrated on having the tiniest yet fully featured browser, lightning fast, low memory usage, etc. So they could keep linking to the IE download page, because they could be so sure and correct that their browser kicks the pants off the competition. Unfortunately they chose the legal route, which is always a bad thing.
Back to Microsoft. If due to some court case, Microsoft is not allowed to bundle anything together, then soon nobody will be allowed to bundle anything together. This will be horrible! Besides, if you buy computer with Windows OS and there is no browser bundled with it, how in the hell are you supposed to download a different browser? 99.9% of computer users will NOT know how to download a browser without first having one with which to download one. In fact, even if you were going to compile wget from sources, you'd still need a browser to get the sources and the compiler. This is an example of courts, companies, lawyers, who have no clue about computers (and think the monitor is the computer) just trying to play the lawsuit lottery against Microsoft. Face it. They no longer have a monopoly. Apple is nearly at 10% of the market. Linux has some share. The *BSDs have some share. People DO have a choice now. If they don't buy an Apple (which is dead simple to use and doesn't cost more than a comparable "PC" machine), and if they don't want to learn Linux (or won't or can't) then it is their choice to use Windows. And there is no monopoly in the browser area either. With IE, Konquerer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, shit the list goes on and on. What monopoly? This is not antitrust. This is bullshit. Sorry. I LOVE Opera. Opera 3 especially. It has come a long way since then, many improvements, but the fact is that when all was darkness around and Opera shone some light on the Internet by making it actually bearable to use rather than the horror that was IE or Netscape, but I am no fan of this lawsuit.
That's awesome. I'm glad it's not just geeks chained to desks here on /. I stand corrected. :)
The next thing you know, they'll make up a screen scraper in JavaScript. There are several things to learn from this. For the users, one, that you should completely clear your browser (Clear Private Data or similar) before going to a banking website, two that you should NEVER open other websites (or have them open) while you're signed in to a banking website, third that when you've finished banking, you should completely clear your browser again. For the browser makers (Firefox devs reading this?), third party cookies should be disabled by default, the option to turn them on should come with stern warnings, and each website can ONLY read cookies previously set by itself. Further when an encrypted page is opened, its memory should be such that other pages cannot access any part of it. In other words, the same sandboxing approach taken to deal with other security issues, within the browser for encrypted pages.
Are you sure this is the "can't fix stupid" demographic? For us 1337 h4x0rz computers are simple. But in reality, they are complicated. If you don't understand that, here's an example for you. I work in a machine shop. Truing a bar in four-jaw chuck is dead simple, even a monkey could do it. Yet if I asked you to, could you?
Something else about Verizon. There's a phone # to call to check inet outage info. At least there used to be. At the end of the recorded message, they tell you (or at least did) to visit their www site for more info. How the F#$% am I supposed to do that if it's an outage?!
Never, ever, fill out a registration for any F/OSS program. You should explain this to people. Free software means you don't have to register in the same way as with scam software. Explain to download OOo but warn that they must get it from www.openoffice.org and without filling out any registration. The registration for this good software package is optional and happens either during the installation or during the first run, I can't remember which.
There just need to be more point-to-point routes between major cities and across country borders. Yes, it is also a good idea to run cables underwater, but the more routes exist, the more likely it is that when a cable is cut somewhere (whether deliberately, accidentally, or due to an act of God), the traffic will automatically be routed around the damaged area.
Wow, all this encrypting, threading, random names, registry keys... sounds like really exciting software. Where do I download it?
Let's see if I understand you correctly on the email thing, putting aside the 100 minutes of regular Internet access. The way it sounds, you can send and receive an unlimited amount of email messages, so long as each message is under one megabyte in size. It also sounds like this is probably not a web-based email, because if it were, you could access the rest of the web. So this is what you should do if you have some time available to you prior to the commencement of this voyage. You should hack up a tun device that sends each packet as a single email message to a specified email address, or converts an email message received from this address back into a packet. Then you run OpenVPN and have it use this hacked tun device. You set up a computer at your or someone's home and in addition to running this tun device and OpenVPN on it, you also install packet forwarding rules that NAT the "normal" interface over to the tun interface. You set up OpenVPN accordingly on your laptop. It will probably be very slow, but the advantages are that you will have an unlimited amount of access through this system, and you will be able to access any part of the Internet through this system that you would be able to access from your home. And if it works, it would make a good magazine article for Linux Journal, too.
What a horrible bunch of hogwash. Please, someone, tell me why:
1. In the 1970's, hysteria swept the globe because CO2 emissions would cause global freezing?
2. In the mid 90's and early 2000's, hysteria swept the globe because CO2 emissions would cause global warming?
3. In the last five years, the term "global warming" has been replaced by "climate change"?
4. Isn't the climate, by definition, something that changes over time, from day to day, from week to week, from season to season, from year to year, and over longer periods of time?
5. If there are no SUVs, no Google computers, and no factories on Mars, why has the temperature there been shown to change proportionally to the temperature here on Earth?
In other words, what I really want to know is this: has anyone actually shown with certainty that CO2 emissions has anything to do with the temperature outside? Or is this all just a meaningless political issue, right alongside Social Security and abortion, designed to focus people's attention away from what our politicians are really doing? I say this is a bunch of hogwash. Climate change. Such a general and vague term could mean anything. Hey, the temperature is different today than it was yesterday. See! Proof of climate change.
You know, I love how people talk about the situation in Israel as if it were about two equal parties, equally responsible for the situation. That is not the case. On the one hand you have a legitimate state doing what it must to protect its people. On the other, you have a huge mafia of terrorists whose favorite pastimes are blowing themselves up in cafes and shooting rockets from school rooftops toward people's homes. Unfortunately, the terrorists have turned propaganda and the act of generating horrible PR for Israel into an art form. They launch rockets from schools and dense neighborhoods because they know two things. First, Israel won't shoot back because of the risk of hitting innocents, so the terrorists are safe. Second, if Israel does shoot back, innocents may get hit and the terrorists can show the whole world how Israel is violent. Everyone knows this but still blames Israel. True, many of the people living in Gaza are innocent and want no part of this terrorism. They cannot speak or help the authorities because they know they will be killed. They're up shit creek without a paddle. So they sit back silently in fear of their lives. And true also that in rooting out the terrorists, Israel sometimes hits an innocent bystander. So Israel is between a rock and a hard place. What do you suggest, pulling out of Gaza, allowing the terrorists time to regroup and rearm? Leaving them alone and watching the rockets continue to rain down? Israel is extremely careful to avoid killing innocent bystanders, even when it means putting their own soldiers at higher risk. Contrast this with the terrorists, whose goal in life is to kill innocent bystanders. If Israel succeeds in rooting out the terrorists, life will be much better for the innocent people living in Gaza. Remember, they are terrorized at least as much by the terrorists as are the people in Israel whose homes are in the direct line of rocket fire.
What, Windows is going FOSS?
Get Doom II. Start playing. Type idchoppers. Read carefully what it says. "Doesn't suck: GM." They got that right!
I hope they plan to charge the spam recipient a nominal fee of $10 for each such spam, with no daily limit on spams and with no way to opt out. Why? Because I own stock in GM.
Replying to my own post: ten googolplexes of yottabytes per Planck unit of time??? What the hell is that, 10^4840^100 bytes per second? (Did I do my math right?)
Yeah obvious that we get LESS than the speed we pay for. I've asked the ISP about that once. They guarantee "UP TO" whatever speed I'm paying for, so if I get less, it falls within the guarantee. I should become an ISP and guarantee speeds UP TO ten googolplexes of yottabytes per Planck unit of time. In the fine print it would explain the guarantee as follows: "We promise your speed will never be greater than the above mentioned speed, or your money back. In other words, the guarantee is NOT that you'll get super fast Internet. Rather, it is a promise that your speed will never be greater than the maximum stated speed. In order to make sure we are well under that limit, the actual speed may vary, will always be less than the maximum as guaranteed, and will probably be so slow that Google's home page will take 999 quadrillion millennia to load."
I write this as chairs are being thrown in another part of the world: Kudos to Vietnam! I hope that more governments and businesses around the world will realize the savings that can be had because when costs are cut at these types of organizations, it means higher efficiency and lower prices. Software is a great area to cut costs, and the free software packages that Vietnam will adopt are mature, stable codebases.
It will be impossible to duplicate Steve Jobs. Therefore, I think the top people at Apple need to spend some serious time figuring out who will replace Jobs when he eventually leaves and how that person can continue pushing Apple forward in his own way. In other words, he won't mimic Jobs because that would result in a poor imitation. He won't simply use marketing buzz at an attempt to produce the same feeling towards Apple, because it will, again, feel like a poor imitation. He'll have to gain the "feel" for what Apple has done right in the past and what to keep doing right in the future. I've heard that everything in the end must be cleared by Jobs, including the radius of the corners on the edges of the screens. Whoever replaces him will have to have the same sort of incredible drive to produce absolutely the best product, meaning not taking "it can't be done" as an answer, pushing the people to perform beyond what they themselves imagine they can, sensing what kind of products that nobody ever thought they'd need will, once seen, become a must-have, and having the understanding of psychology that it takes to make those products work the way they should. See, that's the crazy thing about Macs, iPhones, and iPods. When you pick one up, you immediately figure out how to use it and it all just seems to flow in a way that makes sense. They also look amazing. Place an Apple product next to any competitor's product and it's a difference of 100 years. It's something you'd see in Star Trek versus something you'd find in Office Depot. There is this whole feel that someone will have to have, but it must be done in such a way that it is not an imitation of Jobs, that it does bring in the talent, thoughts, creativity, and style of the new person, but in a way that does not turn Apple, the shining star that it is now, back into what it was in the 90's when the company almost disappeared from the Earth. Yes, with the momentum they have now, they can just glide ahead with a CEO who doesn't have "it", whatever "it" is, but if that happens, it will eventually be like Microsoft with Vista. Eventually that momentum will run out, they'll run out of airspeed and altitude, and it will be the Apple of the 90's, before Jobs' return. That would be sad because say what you will about fanboys, Apple has done and is doing some really amazing thing. They've turned computer and OS design into an art form.
Dude I feel your pain but keep a few things in mind:
o Sarge was released.
o Apple did go Intel.
o Pigs can be flown.
If we follow this logic, it is clear that two more things will happen Real Soon Now (tm):
o Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
o Perl 6 will be released.
It's just a matter of time.
How in the name of Cleanthe did you get that garbage past Slashdot's shit filter?
I always say if these people are so damn skilled that they can figure out ingenious ways to illegally gain illegal gains, then why don't they put those incredible skills into something legitimate and make billions? Instead they do illegal things and take the risk of ending up inside the slammer. Some people are just so shortsighted.
If a black hole with a positive electric charge comes near another black hole with a positive electric charge, the two will, IMHO, repel each other because the electrostatic forces are larger even than the gravitational forces that can pull everything up to and including light into the black hole. However, if there are other black holes around with negative electric charges, those black holes in combination with the positively charged ones will form a giant unit which will be held together in a sort of cosmic-sized ionic bond. That would be cool.
I believe I read somewhere that there are, at any given moment, 60,000 people in the air over the United States alone. That's a tremendous amount of information and more accumulates every day, so much that I cannot imagine how anybody or any software could sift through all of it effectively.
This is totally retarded! How in the hell are you supposed to type anything with this nightmare? 45 minutes to type an email and only 20 minutes of battery life?! And the most ridiculous thing is when all your files are in alphabetical order like that, so you have to sift through the whole computer to find it. The guy even admitted that you have to make a few hundred clicks to reach the file you want! This must be some sort of ploy to get people to run out and buy all the remaining MacBooks BEFORE this ridiculous change is implemented. I for one am NOT going to get one of those stupid "wheel" MacBooks. If they came up with an Apple n*tbook that used a wheel, maybe that would be kind of weird and cool, but there is no way you can possibly do any serious work with this.