I'm sorry, but In My Opinion (hear that, moderators?) SG1 was a great series, but has gotten horrible in the past 2 years.
With a series premise like that, if you can't hold onto a geek's attention for more than 10 minutes, you suck. That show is honestly so damn boring now, they've completely killed it.
Of course I really like Enterprise, but I think the four seasons they've had have been good. It isn't like it's getting cancelled after only one season. To me, however, this season has been pretty weak.
Oh yeah, I liked the season with the time-travelling alien nazi's. Every episode kept us watching throughout the entire season. "Us" includes both me and my wife (that's a helluva feat considering that sci-fi bores the crap out of her), our 12 year-old boy, 5 year-old boy, and even the 3 year-old boy.
No, he mentioned a $130 TV TUNER as the only alternative for composite video-input. The original poster (now marked "Troll -1") said:
But what if you want to get composite video in and out of the machine?
So, the point is that there are cheap alternatives for composite video input -- USB.
Why don't you tell us exactly what you need to do with a PCI slot that you cannot do with a USB peripheral? Links to ATI's website won't cut it, you need to make your argument yourself.
Clock speed doesn't matter to most people. Most people want to buy a computer to do certain things, and until the Mac Mini comes out, the cool looking Mac option is out of the question.
I have 5 kids (3 of my own plus 2 step-kids), and when it comes to buying a computer for one of them, I'm not spending over $700 unless I personally have a use for it.
Go out to a store like Best Buy, Fry's, or Microcenter and actually look at the computers you can get for less than $700. They generally are nowhere near as nice or compact as the Mac Mini. The fact that you can get one for $499 is a huge advantage for parents because a basic PC that does what you want will cost $699. You don't need a 2.8GHz P4 for word processing, web surfing, and chatting? Too bad, because you can't get anything slower/cheaper than that unless you get a Sempron PC with minimal capabilities, and even that costs $550 with a decent non-shared-memory video card!
I went shopping for exactly what I'm talking about over Christmas. I ended up scrounging up a used P-II because it was good enough and I didn't want to spend $550+. If I could've bought a Mac Mini for $499 plus tax, I would've bought it.
Look at Dell's website today. Their entry-level desktop is $499 (after a $60 rebate). At that price, you get 256mb RAM (like the Mac Mini), WinXP Home (come on, you have to admit Mac OS X is better than XP Home!), 40gb drive (like the Mac Mini), 17 inch.27dp CRT (better than the nothing you get with the Mac Mini, but.27dp is nearly like a TV), and CD-RW OR DVD-ROM (the Mac Mini comes with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo which is better).
If you remove the Dell CRT, which is crappy anyway, you get a $45 rebate, but if you add the CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive you add $53, so the net cost is $563 (minus the $56 rebate). So, basically Dell's entry level PC is a huge standard PC desktop for the same price as the Mac Mini which is the size of a fat CD case, both with comparable features.
The only thing you could argue is that the 2.8GHz P4 is actually faster than a 1.25GHz G4, and that your kids actually need it. I won't get into that because I know from personal use that the performance of my 1.25GHz iMac is comparable to my 2.8GHz P4, and only a lunatic would really believe they could see some tiny performance difference.
In my case, either computer is more than enough for kids who have cheap PS2 and XBox for playing games. So, the question is which one will more easily fit into my living room or in my kids crowded bedroom desk? The Mac Mini will.
To me, the Mac Mini makes perfect sense for parents who either are tired of dealing with problems with existing home PC's (like me), and/or who want a cheap high-quality computer that will fit anywhere. The clock-speed is really inconsequential, so the Mac Mini makes Apple competitive in low-end computer sales. The fact that you get it in such a tiny package will often be the deal-maker, especially for parents with crowded homes.
The Mac Mini is really a smack in the face of the computer world. Got a PC acting up every week and giving you grief??? Just buy a Mac Mini for $499 and make it all go away. The PC, that is.
I'm still waiting to see the vaporous WinXP capuccino PC's. Oh shoot, with the same specs as the $499 Mac Mini, it costs $799!!! And for that price, you get CRAPPY shared memory video that can't be upgraded to decent video like on the Mac Mini. No wonder I didn't buy it. Check it out if you actually want to pay a premium for a Windows PC, but don't expect to see it at local stores:
I'm sure you're happy to be corrected, but I had to do it because I'm really sick of people mis-pronouncing (let alone mis-spelling) "asterisk".
So, just for the record:
asterisk PPronunciation Key(st-rsk) n. A star-shaped figure (*) used chiefly to indicate an omission, a reference to a footnote, or an unattested word, sound, or affix.
I think when it comes to this kind of crap, we have to be "in it for the species". Whether we're talking about a city of 100,000 or a city of 10,000,000, it's still just a drop in the bucket of 8-10 billion.
If we could come up with a way to stop these things, how often would we NEED to, and how much would it cost?
We need to pick and choose where we spend our money. I'm all for spending much, much more on scientific endeavors, but I'd rather spend the LIMITED amount of money we have on scientific endeavors that will accomplish something.
Or maybe we could save more people (over the same time it takes to have one of these things hit a "city") by simply finding a way to stop wars?
That'd be a worthwhile cause in my book. Inventing a vaporous 21st century SDI system is not...
I'm 35, and I've never heard of a "bag phone". I've seen huge cell phones in cars or briefcases. Then in the past 15 years I saw the smaller, but still huge brick cell phones. But in any of those cases, people just called them "phones". And none of them were in "bags".
I'm guessing you're talking about people carrying around car phones or briefcase phones in a bag, but the closest I've ever seen to a "phone in a bag" was the phone in the briefcase.
Maybe it's a regional thing, not just an age thing...
This brings up a good point -- the never-ending debate over tracksticks versus trackpads.
I'm the head of I.T. in a company with about 250 people (don't get the wrong idea, I actually talk to most of those 250 people). This is always a debate, and has always divided users about 50-50 in the past 14 years I've been doing my work. But, in the past 3-5 years, the percentage of people who prefer trackpads and the number of laptops that feature a trackpad with or without a trackstick has increased dramatically.
I would even go as far as to say that more than 80% of the people working for us hate those little tracksticks. The most common question I'm asked by a new employee or a person receiving a laptop replacement for a desktop is, "It doesn't have one of those little eraser-head mouses, does it?" The most common comment is, "At my last job, I had to carry an external mouse with me everywhere, and I hated that!"
IBM never offered laptops with anything other than a trackstick, compared to Dell who offered BOTH the trackpad and trackstick on every laptop. Recently, IBM finally gave in and started including both on at least some of their laptops. I think that signalled a nearing of the end to the great trackstick-trackpad debate.
From my experience, people who have used laptops for more than a few months (or more than an hour a day) prefer the trackpad. Years ago when tracksticks were more popular than they are today, it was much more common for people to dock their laptops in their office where they did most of their work. Consequently, they didn't spend that much time actually trying to use the built-in trackstick/trackpad, so using the trackstick was the quickest to use because it had the shortest learning curve.
No, no, no. You're looking at it in the wrong scale.
What we're talking about here is like everyone in a neighborhood going to the house of their local Jehovah's witness or door-to-door salesman and constantly knocking on their doors to try to sell THEM something.
Or an even closer equivalent would be a screensaver that would call telemarketers over and over and over again to "inform" THEM that you don't want anything they want to try to sell you.
It's an disruptive, pre-emptive attack against people who do the same thing to all of us every day. To equate either act to murder or arson is insane!
Um, I think everyone is forgetting here that the California government is CONSIDERING this. It's far from even being a bill that we'd vote on -- if this was just passed without our consent, everyone in the state government knows that HEADS WOULD ROLL. I think that was one lesson they learned from Gray Davis' recall and Schwarzenegger's election.
This is the kind of sensationalist crap you see on Slashdot -- WAY blown out of proportion.
From working in a gas station before, I can tell you how much of the price of gas is government tax -- about HALF. I've seen the invoices that gas stations pay for gas. So, I would seriously have to look at exactly how this kind of tax would compare to the gas tax we already have.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "gas tax" both Federal and State? So, this driving distance tax would only eliminate part of the current gas tax.
Of course, in my position this kind of change may be just fine for me because we tend to stay very close to home (within 50 miles) because we have a young family.
This kind of change would probably hit commuters the most because of the high cost of housing in the urban areas. Remember, even if this would encourage people to move to the urban areas in California, that doesn't mean they would. They still have to have a job that would support buying a $600k-$900k+ house. A large percentage of people I work with just could not afford it, and companies like ours faced with losing employees or handing out raises would simply leave California.
This kind of tax change would make the exodus from California go through the roof and in the end probably decrease the total amount of taxes the state collects. The governator isn't going to let that happen.
So, it probably won't happen, but it's nice to "entertain" it...
What would be even cooler would be a REAL Unix on Apple hardware running the Apple OS X GUI.:-)
Ooops, already got it.
Really, I don't see the point of having Solaris running on Apple hardware unless you want a more unstable Unix. Mac OS X is Unix through and through. The only thing that isn't is the standard GUI Aqua, but Solaris has its own GUI, too.
If I'm going to install an alternative Unix on my Mac, it'll be something like Linux using a more standard GUI like KDE or Gnome.
-- Scripted or not, you will see the TWO significant candidates' opposing point of views presented by the candidates themselves.
-- You will see which team has their shit together the most in a really fucking scary public display. If you somehow don't believe the debates scare the crap out of presidential candidates, you haven't been there. In 2000, Gore lost to Bush in a major way on this alone (I supported Gore before the debates).
-- This is an important way for the candidates to address truly important issues (issues important to the majority of Americans) without resorting to the name-calling and mud-slinging of ad campaigns. I do care about who lied about what and when, but eventually we have to get down to the important issues depending on this election.
The bottom line is if you watch Bush or Kerry and pay more attention to Bush's "vacant eyes" or Kerry's "botox-injected face", these debates will never matter to you, and I along with most other Americans hope you don't cast your ignorant vote...
"Joe" CTO??? Are you kidding? You mean "Joe" CEO, right?
I'm sorry, but if you're a CTO or CIO, and you don't see the line between the e-commerce application server and the OS itself, you aren't qualified for the job and/or the company you work for isn't qualified to exist.
Wow, you're willing to pay a whole extra $30 for a 10gb MP3 player like the one on Tiger Direct except "good quality"??? I'll get right on it!!!
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, I didn't see any 10gb MP3 player on Tiger Direct for $129. I did, however, see a 1.5gb MP3 player for $179. I'm guessing that if you didn't misread something somewhere, a 10gb MP3 player that costs $129 is actually a huge pile of crap. $30 won't even come close to making it "good quality".
I honestly can't find a 10gb MP3 player anywhere on the Internet for less than $250. That's for a new one -- you can get a refurbished Archos 10gb for $125-$150 at Amazon.com, but that thing is a piece of crap (take it from my personal experience).
I do agree with the stupidity of MP3 players that hold 128-256mb of songs because that's maybe 20-40 songs. If you can't pop in another 20 songs like you can with a CD (and do it at a reasonable price), it's worse than a standard portable CD player.
I'm not an avid music listener, but I think the bare minimum size for an MP3 player so you can take a variety of your favorite music with you is about 1gb or 1.5gb.
Would you pay $150 for an iPod-sized MP3 player with 10gb of storage? The smallest 2.5" drive I can find currently in production is a 20gb Seagate -- I can't find any 10gb 2.5" drives in production. So, that drive costs about $100; in quantity, it won't be much less.
Who's going to make a "good quality" MP3 player for essentially $50 each, minus the labor, R&D, distribution mark-up, etc.???
This Diva Gem 4000 is a 256mb MP3 player (far less than 1-1.5gb I mentioned above), and it's going for $329 MSRP, $249 USD on Technipeal.com:
http://www.technipeal.com/product.asp?3=34
Also, I love bluetooth, but I won't be touching this thing -- here's a little fine print I'm sure many haven't seen yet:
"A free firmware update in August 2004 will also allow wireless file transfers with Bluetooth enabled computers."
From my Archos experience, I am very wary of buying any tech device partly based on a promise from the manufacturer that they'll be releasing a firmware update to let it do an important thing. Bluetooth file transfers from an MP3 player to a computer is pretty damn important to me -- what are you going to do, hook it up via USB until you hope they come out with the firmware update?
On the whole idea of using it as a handsfree headset for a cell phone, it seems to me to be a ridiculous idea to answer your cell phone with a separate device that's the same SIZE as the cell phone. What advantage does that give you? It allows me to listen to music like I listen to my cell phone? Sorry, but I've talked on a cell phone for 1-2 hours straight, and I don't want to do the same thing with my portable music player!!
I'm sorry, but this device looks like a hack job, and a pretty expensive one at that.
On paying $200+ for a 10+gb MP3 player, deal with it until we have a breakthrough in technology. Nobody is going to hire slave labor so you can save $100-$150 on your portable music-playing device...
And, what's really funny is if you were a real Apple fanboy, you'd know that all the Apple products you mentioned were far from perfect on their first revisions:
iPod -- bad battery life, hacked battery, crappy physical interface, no USB interface, etc.
Macintosh -- crippled by non-upgradable 128k memory, BLACK & WHITE screen (I had an Amiga at the time), internals are "no-touchy" for users, single-tasking OS, etc.
Mac OS X -- slow/bloated, incompatible, Objective C (!!) only, barely more than OpenStep on PowerPC, etc.
Do I own an iPod today? Hell yes! However, I did not buy the first or second revs, I bought the most recent one, and I do think it's perfect.
Do I own a Macintosh today? Damn right! I never bought a B&W Mac -- my first one was the IIvx from around 1994, then I have a beige PowerMac G3 tower, then an original iMac, then an original iBook, then an iMac 17", then a PowerBook G4 12". And, I have a PC laptop and a PC desktop, too, that I use Windows and Linux on, so I'm no Mac zealot or "fanboy".
Do I use Mac OS X today? Oh yeah! I used NeXTStep since 1993 which was like heaven, but I used Linux/Windows on PC's in the early years of Mac OS X because it sucked so bad. Today, Mac OS X is good enough to pull me back to the Mac from using Linux on my PC's.
The bottom line is that I don't remember a single Apple product that was anywhere near perfect in the first revision. I may hold off buying this device for that very reason, but at $129 it's hard to justify not buying one at least for testing...
Obviously, most of the people here at Slashdot are in no way close to being average users, but:
To me, this seems like the perfect living room accessory for the average home user. Most home users I know who are on a budget, have the family computer in the living room or very nearby. Most of those users have the primary phone and TV in that room so they could easily plug their cable or DSL Internet connection into this device.
At the same time, the stereo is right there so it encourages storing music on the home computer instead of CD's. Let's face it, most average budget-minded home users don't store their music collection on their computer because it's not easily accessible or playable. Most of those people won't spend the money to get a really good sound card that outputs digital audio, then take the time to install/troubleshoot it, then take the time to run the cable to the stereo. Just to replace the process of putting a CD into the stereo and hitting play? For the most part, only a true geek would do that.
Just buy this thing for $129, download iTunes for free, start storing your music in iTunes, then turn on "Party Shuffle", and let it stream constantly to your stereo. Sounds like a simple way to get the vast majority of the market that DOESN'T store their music in a computer already -- forget about all the audiophiles with steep requirements, just get the masses into your product(s) and the rest will follow.
I'm not necessarily budget-minded, especially when it comes to gadgets. So, for people like me who have a family room, an office/computer room, kid's rooms that are out of range of most access points, and maybe a back yard where we spend a lot of time, we'll buy several of these.
-- I'll be buying one for my family room so it can host Internet access and streaming audio for our primary stereo.
-- I'll buy another for my office/computer room as an Internet access repeater and as a host for our only printer, which will allow me to move it away from our family computer in the family room.
-- I'll buy another for the kid's room upstairs that's the farthest away from the family room for Internet access and possibly a printer later.
-- I may even buy one for my bedroom to plug my bedroom stereo into and to reinforce the weak wireless access I have there.
I think, like the iPod Mini, this product is just about right and just about good enough for the market(s) it's targetted...
All I can say is that I've purchased from iTunes since it first came out partially because the price-point was RIGHT. They did what was needed to get me as a customer. Since then, I've purchased over 300 songs -- that's $300 in the past year, which is more than I've EVER, I repeat, EVER spent on CD's in any year in my entire 34 year-old life.
If they raise the price, even only by 25-50 cents per song, not only will I stop buying music from iTunes, I'm not going to go out and buy any music CD's either, regardless of whether it's cheaper or not. They need to get it through their thick heads that we aren't going to buy our music on physical media any more, we want to own that digital music, and we want it at a reasonable price-point.
If they raise the price of downloaded music on iTunes, they'll send a bunch of customers back to Kazaa trading -- but if that happens, maybe it's time for you guys reading this to go to another alternative, AllOfMP3.com. Yes, it's legal, and, yes, they are a Russian website, but they have an English version. I heard about it from a British coworker, and it looks good -- features:
-- Music or Music Video (!) downloads
-- Music codecs offered include MP3, WMA, OGG, MPC & MP4-AAC! The encoding is also on-the-fly and offered encoded from 128 kbps to 384kbps.
-- American and European music, including all the music I've purchased on iTunes.
-- $0.01/megabyte for music files, $0.02/megabyte for AllofMP3.com-exclusive files (this changed recently, but I think it's correct).
-- It's LEGALLY LICENSED and legal to buy from them.
Uum, wasn't it just 4-5 years ago that at least one article was published saying Apple should just give up, liquidate everything, and return as much money as possible to its investors???
Also, wasn't it around 1997-2001 that rumors kept popping up that Sun was in talks with Apple to buy them??? And, a lot of journalists publicly said that was the best-case scenario for Apple???
My, how things have changed. I think, based on history alone, that I'll choose to ignore any journalist who calls for any major company to just fold up shop and go home. In fact, I'll choose to purposely ignore any other articles from any such journalist (John C. Dvorak?) as Howard-Stern-like behavior...
Re:Green scientists create actual facts
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 1
The "U.N. Environment Programme Grid" is a "right-wing" source?!? What, do you think nobody is clicking these links?
You, SEWilco, are a PERFECT example of the worst kind of liberal environmentalist -- the kind that refuses to acknowledge the possibility that he is WRONG. You know, it IS possible, right?
I would rather talk to or debate with anyone who has an open mind than to someone like you, because you make it obvious that your mind is perfectly closed.
BTW, I'm an I.T. Director who could hire you, but definitely won't because your logic is pretty pathetic, which is BAD in our field...
My brother has been a mechanic for over 20 years. I'm a degreed computer scientist and have an I.T. guy working for me who was a mechanic for 10 years up until 2-3 years ago when he changed careers.
They understand both "how" and "why" all the parts of any particular car engine work. You absolutely CANNOT repair a car *efficiently* without knowing why things work the way they do.
You are making things black and white when they quite simply are not.
I'm not saying that a mechanical engineer or a computer scientist does not understand *more* about why various systems work, but I have to strongly object to your apparent black-and-white assumption that a mechanic or I.T. person knows nothing about "why" things work.
You could say a poor mechanic or I.T. person knows little to nothing about "why" things work, but you can't say that about all of them.
Like it or not, there's a big gray area between computer scientists and I.T. people. I've known some computer scientists who knew less about why computer systems work than some I.T. people I've known...
It almost sounds like it's going to be used to distribute printed materials for a subscription. Depending on the pricing and whether I could use the eBook to carry my own documents, I'd snap up one of these in a microsecond...
The reason Dish fights to keep their rates down is:
they know they are the bottom-of-the-barrel provider and can't compete if they have to charge even close to DirecTV's rates. The only people who buy Dish are CHEAP PEOPLE.
Bottom line:
DirecTV sells on quality of content/service.
Dish sells on low price.
They knew they would lose huge numbers of customers if they raised their rates a dollar, so they fought Viacom on it.
"I assume that many Slashdot readers must serve as the IT staff for their parents."
Many of us are the IT staff for our kids! And I don't mean 4 year olds, I'm talking teenagers. Not all teenagers are as computer literate as we'd like to think -- my older step-kids, 11 and 15, have been exposed to tons of computer technology over the past 9 years, but still have much less knowledge than I did at age 10 (1980). I know 60 year old men who know more than young "geeks" that work for me in IT
I think a lot of it has to do with personal interest and motivation. For most average users, they just want to do what they need to do and don't care about Windows or Mac OS X. A computer that needs constant attention from an IT guy is a less useful computer
I'm not trying to push buying a Mac, but this is exactly why I switched to an iMac for home a year ago. It was comparable in price to an equivalent PC from several other manufacturers (HP, Sony, Dell, etc.), but I haven't had nearly the OS problems that I've had with the same kids using a PC. I just got sick of spending 8+ hours per month at home fixing the same I.T. problems we see at work.
My kids generally get my old machines, too. My Mom doesn't just because she's not that interested in it.
It's honestly easier to guide their use of the iMac because I'm home, so if I gave another family member (Mom, brothers, sisters, etc.) a computer, it probably wouldn't be a Mac. The biggest problem is when you look for software and the vast majority of the software is not compatible with the Mac at all. It's too easy for a newbie to buy a quickie piece of software at Walgreens and never realize it's not Mac compatible -- then they get mad at the fact that they have a Mac.
With my kids, I just steer them in the right direction when we're shopping for software. We've been able to do all of our home stuff on our Macs (iMac and PowerBook G4), and about 85% of my I.T. stuff on my Macs (some I.T. things are easier in UNIX/Linux than on Windows, which is nice).
Protection of the innocent is a non-issue on a Mac because I'm a dedicated parent. I don't need filter software, I just know what they're doing and control access times. The rest of the crap we deal with on Windows every day is non-existent in the Mac world.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but In My Opinion (hear that, moderators?) SG1 was a great series, but has gotten horrible in the past 2 years.
With a series premise like that, if you can't hold onto a geek's attention for more than 10 minutes, you suck. That show is honestly so damn boring now, they've completely killed it.
Of course I really like Enterprise, but I think the four seasons they've had have been good. It isn't like it's getting cancelled after only one season. To me, however, this season has been pretty weak.
Oh yeah, I liked the season with the time-travelling alien nazi's. Every episode kept us watching throughout the entire season. "Us" includes both me and my wife (that's a helluva feat considering that sci-fi bores the crap out of her), our 12 year-old boy, 5 year-old boy, and even the 3 year-old boy.
No, he mentioned a $130 TV TUNER as the only alternative for composite video-input. The original poster (now marked "Troll -1") said:
But what if you want to get composite video in and out of the machine?
So, the point is that there are cheap alternatives for composite video input -- USB.
Why don't you tell us exactly what you need to do with a PCI slot that you cannot do with a USB peripheral? Links to ATI's website won't cut it, you need to make your argument yourself.
Clock speed doesn't matter to most people. Most people want to buy a computer to do certain things, and until the Mac Mini comes out, the cool looking Mac option is out of the question.
.27dp CRT (better than the nothing you get with the Mac Mini, but .27dp is nearly like a TV), and CD-RW OR DVD-ROM (the Mac Mini comes with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo which is better).
I have 5 kids (3 of my own plus 2 step-kids), and when it comes to buying a computer for one of them, I'm not spending over $700 unless I personally have a use for it.
Go out to a store like Best Buy, Fry's, or Microcenter and actually look at the computers you can get for less than $700. They generally are nowhere near as nice or compact as the Mac Mini. The fact that you can get one for $499 is a huge advantage for parents because a basic PC that does what you want will cost $699. You don't need a 2.8GHz P4 for word processing, web surfing, and chatting? Too bad, because you can't get anything slower/cheaper than that unless you get a Sempron PC with minimal capabilities, and even that costs $550 with a decent non-shared-memory video card!
I went shopping for exactly what I'm talking about over Christmas. I ended up scrounging up a used P-II because it was good enough and I didn't want to spend $550+. If I could've bought a Mac Mini for $499 plus tax, I would've bought it.
Look at Dell's website today. Their entry-level desktop is $499 (after a $60 rebate). At that price, you get 256mb RAM (like the Mac Mini), WinXP Home (come on, you have to admit Mac OS X is better than XP Home!), 40gb drive (like the Mac Mini), 17 inch
If you remove the Dell CRT, which is crappy anyway, you get a $45 rebate, but if you add the CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive you add $53, so the net cost is $563 (minus the $56 rebate). So, basically Dell's entry level PC is a huge standard PC desktop for the same price as the Mac Mini which is the size of a fat CD case, both with comparable features.
The only thing you could argue is that the 2.8GHz P4 is actually faster than a 1.25GHz G4, and that your kids actually need it. I won't get into that because I know from personal use that the performance of my 1.25GHz iMac is comparable to my 2.8GHz P4, and only a lunatic would really believe they could see some tiny performance difference.
In my case, either computer is more than enough for kids who have cheap PS2 and XBox for playing games. So, the question is which one will more easily fit into my living room or in my kids crowded bedroom desk? The Mac Mini will.
To me, the Mac Mini makes perfect sense for parents who either are tired of dealing with problems with existing home PC's (like me), and/or who want a cheap high-quality computer that will fit anywhere. The clock-speed is really inconsequential, so the Mac Mini makes Apple competitive in low-end computer sales. The fact that you get it in such a tiny package will often be the deal-maker, especially for parents with crowded homes.
The Mac Mini is really a smack in the face of the computer world. Got a PC acting up every week and giving you grief??? Just buy a Mac Mini for $499 and make it all go away. The PC, that is.
I'm still waiting to see the vaporous WinXP capuccino PC's. Oh shoot, with the same specs as the $499 Mac Mini, it costs $799!!! And for that price, you get CRAPPY shared memory video that can't be upgraded to decent video like on the Mac Mini. No wonder I didn't buy it. Check it out if you actually want to pay a premium for a Windows PC, but don't expect to see it at local stores:
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/
I'm sure you're happy to be corrected, but I had to do it because I'm really sick of people mis-pronouncing (let alone mis-spelling) "asterisk".
So, just for the record:
asterisk PPronunciation Key(st-rsk) n.
A star-shaped figure (*) used chiefly to indicate an omission, a reference to a footnote, or an unattested word, sound, or affix.
I think when it comes to this kind of crap, we have to be "in it for the species". Whether we're talking about a city of 100,000 or a city of 10,000,000, it's still just a drop in the bucket of 8-10 billion.
If we could come up with a way to stop these things, how often would we NEED to, and how much would it cost?
We need to pick and choose where we spend our money. I'm all for spending much, much more on scientific endeavors, but I'd rather spend the LIMITED amount of money we have on scientific endeavors that will accomplish something.
Or maybe we could save more people (over the same time it takes to have one of these things hit a "city") by simply finding a way to stop wars?
That'd be a worthwhile cause in my book. Inventing a vaporous 21st century SDI system is not...
If by young, you mean under the age of 40.
I'm 35, and I've never heard of a "bag phone". I've seen huge cell phones in cars or briefcases. Then in the past 15 years I saw the smaller, but still huge brick cell phones. But in any of those cases, people just called them "phones". And none of them were in "bags".
I'm guessing you're talking about people carrying around car phones or briefcase phones in a bag, but the closest I've ever seen to a "phone in a bag" was the phone in the briefcase.
Maybe it's a regional thing, not just an age thing...
This brings up a good point -- the never-ending debate over tracksticks versus trackpads.
I'm the head of I.T. in a company with about 250 people (don't get the wrong idea, I actually talk to most of those 250 people). This is always a debate, and has always divided users about 50-50 in the past 14 years I've been doing my work. But, in the past 3-5 years, the percentage of people who prefer trackpads and the number of laptops that feature a trackpad with or without a trackstick has increased dramatically.
I would even go as far as to say that more than 80% of the people working for us hate those little tracksticks. The most common question I'm asked by a new employee or a person receiving a laptop replacement for a desktop is, "It doesn't have one of those little eraser-head mouses, does it?" The most common comment is, "At my last job, I had to carry an external mouse with me everywhere, and I hated that!"
IBM never offered laptops with anything other than a trackstick, compared to Dell who offered BOTH the trackpad and trackstick on every laptop. Recently, IBM finally gave in and started including both on at least some of their laptops. I think that signalled a nearing of the end to the great trackstick-trackpad debate.
From my experience, people who have used laptops for more than a few months (or more than an hour a day) prefer the trackpad. Years ago when tracksticks were more popular than they are today, it was much more common for people to dock their laptops in their office where they did most of their work. Consequently, they didn't spend that much time actually trying to use the built-in trackstick/trackpad, so using the trackstick was the quickest to use because it had the shortest learning curve.
No, no, no. You're looking at it in the wrong scale.
What we're talking about here is like everyone in a neighborhood going to the house of their local Jehovah's witness or door-to-door salesman and constantly knocking on their doors to try to sell THEM something.
Or an even closer equivalent would be a screensaver that would call telemarketers over and over and over again to "inform" THEM that you don't want anything they want to try to sell you.
It's an disruptive, pre-emptive attack against people who do the same thing to all of us every day. To equate either act to murder or arson is insane!
Um, I think everyone is forgetting here that the California government is CONSIDERING this. It's far from even being a bill that we'd vote on -- if this was just passed without our consent, everyone in the state government knows that HEADS WOULD ROLL. I think that was one lesson they learned from Gray Davis' recall and Schwarzenegger's election.
This is the kind of sensationalist crap you see on Slashdot -- WAY blown out of proportion.
From working in a gas station before, I can tell you how much of the price of gas is government tax -- about HALF. I've seen the invoices that gas stations pay for gas. So, I would seriously have to look at exactly how this kind of tax would compare to the gas tax we already have.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "gas tax" both Federal and State? So, this driving distance tax would only eliminate part of the current gas tax.
Of course, in my position this kind of change may be just fine for me because we tend to stay very close to home (within 50 miles) because we have a young family.
This kind of change would probably hit commuters the most because of the high cost of housing in the urban areas. Remember, even if this would encourage people to move to the urban areas in California, that doesn't mean they would. They still have to have a job that would support buying a $600k-$900k+ house. A large percentage of people I work with just could not afford it, and companies like ours faced with losing employees or handing out raises would simply leave California.
This kind of tax change would make the exodus from California go through the roof and in the end probably decrease the total amount of taxes the state collects. The governator isn't going to let that happen.
So, it probably won't happen, but it's nice to "entertain" it...
What would be even cooler would be a REAL Unix on Apple hardware running the Apple OS X GUI. :-)
Ooops, already got it.
Really, I don't see the point of having Solaris running on Apple hardware unless you want a more unstable Unix. Mac OS X is Unix through and through. The only thing that isn't is the standard GUI Aqua, but Solaris has its own GUI, too.
If I'm going to install an alternative Unix on my Mac, it'll be something like Linux using a more standard GUI like KDE or Gnome.
The debates, even as they exist today, DO matter:
-- Scripted or not, you will see the TWO significant candidates' opposing point of views presented by the candidates themselves.
-- You will see which team has their shit together the most in a really fucking scary public display. If you somehow don't believe the debates scare the crap out of presidential candidates, you haven't been there. In 2000, Gore lost to Bush in a major way on this alone (I supported Gore before the debates).
-- This is an important way for the candidates to address truly important issues (issues important to the majority of Americans) without resorting to the name-calling and mud-slinging of ad campaigns. I do care about who lied about what and when, but eventually we have to get down to the important issues depending on this election.
The bottom line is if you watch Bush or Kerry and pay more attention to Bush's "vacant eyes" or Kerry's "botox-injected face", these debates will never matter to you, and I along with most other Americans hope you don't cast your ignorant vote...
"Joe" CTO??? Are you kidding? You mean "Joe" CEO, right?
I'm sorry, but if you're a CTO or CIO, and you don't see the line between the e-commerce application server and the OS itself, you aren't qualified for the job and/or the company you work for isn't qualified to exist.
Post your IP address, and let's see...
In other words, put your money where your mouth is!
Yeah, didn't think so...
[sarcasm]
Wow, you're willing to pay a whole extra $30 for a 10gb MP3 player like the one on Tiger Direct except "good quality"??? I'll get right on it!!!
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, I didn't see any 10gb MP3 player on Tiger Direct for $129. I did, however, see a 1.5gb MP3 player for $179. I'm guessing that if you didn't misread something somewhere, a 10gb MP3 player that costs $129 is actually a huge pile of crap. $30 won't even come close to making it "good quality".
I honestly can't find a 10gb MP3 player anywhere on the Internet for less than $250. That's for a new one -- you can get a refurbished Archos 10gb for $125-$150 at Amazon.com, but that thing is a piece of crap (take it from my personal experience).
I do agree with the stupidity of MP3 players that hold 128-256mb of songs because that's maybe 20-40 songs. If you can't pop in another 20 songs like you can with a CD (and do it at a reasonable price), it's worse than a standard portable CD player.
I'm not an avid music listener, but I think the bare minimum size for an MP3 player so you can take a variety of your favorite music with you is about 1gb or 1.5gb.
Would you pay $150 for an iPod-sized MP3 player with 10gb of storage? The smallest 2.5" drive I can find currently in production is a 20gb Seagate -- I can't find any 10gb 2.5" drives in production. So, that drive costs about $100; in quantity, it won't be much less.
Who's going to make a "good quality" MP3 player for essentially $50 each, minus the labor, R&D, distribution mark-up, etc.???
This Diva Gem 4000 is a 256mb MP3 player (far less than 1-1.5gb I mentioned above), and it's going for $329 MSRP, $249 USD on Technipeal.com:
http://www.technipeal.com/product.asp?3=34
Also, I love bluetooth, but I won't be touching this thing -- here's a little fine print I'm sure many haven't seen yet:
"A free firmware update in August 2004 will also allow wireless file transfers with Bluetooth enabled computers."
From my Archos experience, I am very wary of buying any tech device partly based on a promise from the manufacturer that they'll be releasing a firmware update to let it do an important thing. Bluetooth file transfers from an MP3 player to a computer is pretty damn important to me -- what are you going to do, hook it up via USB until you hope they come out with the firmware update?
On the whole idea of using it as a handsfree headset for a cell phone, it seems to me to be a ridiculous idea to answer your cell phone with a separate device that's the same SIZE as the cell phone. What advantage does that give you? It allows me to listen to music like I listen to my cell phone? Sorry, but I've talked on a cell phone for 1-2 hours straight, and I don't want to do the same thing with my portable music player!!
I'm sorry, but this device looks like a hack job, and a pretty expensive one at that.
On paying $200+ for a 10+gb MP3 player, deal with it until we have a breakthrough in technology. Nobody is going to hire slave labor so you can save $100-$150 on your portable music-playing device...
And, what's really funny is if you were a real Apple fanboy, you'd know that all the Apple products you mentioned were far from perfect on their first revisions:
iPod -- bad battery life, hacked battery, crappy physical interface, no USB interface, etc.
Macintosh -- crippled by non-upgradable 128k memory, BLACK & WHITE screen (I had an Amiga at the time), internals are "no-touchy" for users, single-tasking OS, etc.
Mac OS X -- slow/bloated, incompatible, Objective C (!!) only, barely more than OpenStep on PowerPC, etc.
Do I own an iPod today? Hell yes! However, I did not buy the first or second revs, I bought the most recent one, and I do think it's perfect.
Do I own a Macintosh today? Damn right! I never bought a B&W Mac -- my first one was the IIvx from around 1994, then I have a beige PowerMac G3 tower, then an original iMac, then an original iBook, then an iMac 17", then a PowerBook G4 12". And, I have a PC laptop and a PC desktop, too, that I use Windows and Linux on, so I'm no Mac zealot or "fanboy".
Do I use Mac OS X today? Oh yeah! I used NeXTStep since 1993 which was like heaven, but I used Linux/Windows on PC's in the early years of Mac OS X because it sucked so bad. Today, Mac OS X is good enough to pull me back to the Mac from using Linux on my PC's.
The bottom line is that I don't remember a single Apple product that was anywhere near perfect in the first revision. I may hold off buying this device for that very reason, but at $129 it's hard to justify not buying one at least for testing...
Obviously, most of the people here at Slashdot are in no way close to being average users, but:
To me, this seems like the perfect living room accessory for the average home user. Most home users I know who are on a budget, have the family computer in the living room or very nearby. Most of those users have the primary phone and TV in that room so they could easily plug their cable or DSL Internet connection into this device.
At the same time, the stereo is right there so it encourages storing music on the home computer instead of CD's. Let's face it, most average budget-minded home users don't store their music collection on their computer because it's not easily accessible or playable. Most of those people won't spend the money to get a really good sound card that outputs digital audio, then take the time to install/troubleshoot it, then take the time to run the cable to the stereo. Just to replace the process of putting a CD into the stereo and hitting play? For the most part, only a true geek would do that.
Just buy this thing for $129, download iTunes for free, start storing your music in iTunes, then turn on "Party Shuffle", and let it stream constantly to your stereo. Sounds like a simple way to get the vast majority of the market that DOESN'T store their music in a computer already -- forget about all the audiophiles with steep requirements, just get the masses into your product(s) and the rest will follow.
I'm not necessarily budget-minded, especially when it comes to gadgets. So, for people like me who have a family room, an office/computer room, kid's rooms that are out of range of most access points, and maybe a back yard where we spend a lot of time, we'll buy several of these.
-- I'll be buying one for my family room so it can host Internet access and streaming audio for our primary stereo.
-- I'll buy another for my office/computer room as an Internet access repeater and as a host for our only printer, which will allow me to move it away from our family computer in the family room.
-- I'll buy another for the kid's room upstairs that's the farthest away from the family room for Internet access and possibly a printer later.
-- I may even buy one for my bedroom to plug my bedroom stereo into and to reinforce the weak wireless access I have there.
I think, like the iPod Mini, this product is just about right and just about good enough for the market(s) it's targetted...
No, he means "1000":
0111=7
0001=1
0010=2
0011=3
0100=4
0101=5
0110=6
1000=8
Damn, you can't be a Slashdot geek if you can't do binary!
1010=10!
All I can say is that I've purchased from iTunes since it first came out partially because the price-point was RIGHT. They did what was needed to get me as a customer. Since then, I've purchased over 300 songs -- that's $300 in the past year, which is more than I've EVER, I repeat, EVER spent on CD's in any year in my entire 34 year-old life.
If they raise the price, even only by 25-50 cents per song, not only will I stop buying music from iTunes, I'm not going to go out and buy any music CD's either, regardless of whether it's cheaper or not. They need to get it through their thick heads that we aren't going to buy our music on physical media any more, we want to own that digital music, and we want it at a reasonable price-point.
If they raise the price of downloaded music on iTunes, they'll send a bunch of customers back to Kazaa trading -- but if that happens, maybe it's time for you guys reading this to go to another alternative, AllOfMP3.com. Yes, it's legal, and, yes, they are a Russian website, but they have an English version. I heard about it from a British coworker, and it looks good -- features:
-- Music or Music Video (!) downloads
-- Music codecs offered include MP3, WMA, OGG, MPC & MP4-AAC! The encoding is also on-the-fly and offered encoded from 128 kbps to 384kbps.
-- American and European music, including all the music I've purchased on iTunes.
-- $0.01/megabyte for music files, $0.02/megabyte for AllofMP3.com-exclusive files (this changed recently, but I think it's correct).
-- It's LEGALLY LICENSED and legal to buy from them.
What's really interesting, though, is his LAST job was at Sega!
Uum, wasn't it just 4-5 years ago that at least one article was published saying Apple should just give up, liquidate everything, and return as much money as possible to its investors???
Also, wasn't it around 1997-2001 that rumors kept popping up that Sun was in talks with Apple to buy them??? And, a lot of journalists publicly said that was the best-case scenario for Apple???
My, how things have changed. I think, based on history alone, that I'll choose to ignore any journalist who calls for any major company to just fold up shop and go home. In fact, I'll choose to purposely ignore any other articles from any such journalist (John C. Dvorak?) as Howard-Stern-like behavior...
The "U.N. Environment Programme Grid" is a "right-wing" source?!? What, do you think nobody is clicking these links?
You, SEWilco, are a PERFECT example of the worst kind of liberal environmentalist -- the kind that refuses to acknowledge the possibility that he is WRONG. You know, it IS possible, right?
I would rather talk to or debate with anyone who has an open mind than to someone like you, because you make it obvious that your mind is perfectly closed.
BTW, I'm an I.T. Director who could hire you, but definitely won't because your logic is pretty pathetic, which is BAD in our field...
I'm sorry, but this is completely untrue.
My brother has been a mechanic for over 20 years. I'm a degreed computer scientist and have an I.T. guy working for me who was a mechanic for 10 years up until 2-3 years ago when he changed careers.
They understand both "how" and "why" all the parts of any particular car engine work. You absolutely CANNOT repair a car *efficiently* without knowing why things work the way they do.
You are making things black and white when they quite simply are not.
I'm not saying that a mechanical engineer or a computer scientist does not understand *more* about why various systems work, but I have to strongly object to your apparent black-and-white assumption that a mechanic or I.T. person knows nothing about "why" things work.
You could say a poor mechanic or I.T. person knows little to nothing about "why" things work, but you can't say that about all of them.
Like it or not, there's a big gray area between computer scientists and I.T. people. I've known some computer scientists who knew less about why computer systems work than some I.T. people I've known...
Apparently this device is to be used in a rental service there:
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20031114S0027
It almost sounds like it's going to be used to distribute printed materials for a subscription. Depending on the pricing and whether I could use the eBook to carry my own documents, I'd snap up one of these in a microsecond...
The reason Dish fights to keep their rates down is:
they know they are the bottom-of-the-barrel provider and can't compete if they have to charge even close to DirecTV's rates. The only people who buy Dish are CHEAP PEOPLE.
Bottom line:
DirecTV sells on quality of content/service.
Dish sells on low price.
They knew they would lose huge numbers of customers if they raised their rates a dollar, so they fought Viacom on it.
I had to laugh when I read the original post:
"I assume that many Slashdot readers must serve as the IT staff for their parents."
Many of us are the IT staff for our kids! And I don't mean 4 year olds, I'm talking teenagers. Not all teenagers are as computer literate as we'd like to think -- my older step-kids, 11 and 15, have been exposed to tons of computer technology over the past 9 years, but still have much less knowledge than I did at age 10 (1980). I know 60 year old men who know more than young "geeks" that work for me in IT
I think a lot of it has to do with personal interest and motivation. For most average users, they just want to do what they need to do and don't care about Windows or Mac OS X. A computer that needs constant attention from an IT guy is a less useful computer
I'm not trying to push buying a Mac, but this is exactly why I switched to an iMac for home a year ago. It was comparable in price to an equivalent PC from several other manufacturers (HP, Sony, Dell, etc.), but I haven't had nearly the OS problems that I've had with the same kids using a PC. I just got sick of spending 8+ hours per month at home fixing the same I.T. problems we see at work.
My kids generally get my old machines, too. My Mom doesn't just because she's not that interested in it.
It's honestly easier to guide their use of the iMac because I'm home, so if I gave another family member (Mom, brothers, sisters, etc.) a computer, it probably wouldn't be a Mac. The biggest problem is when you look for software and the vast majority of the software is not compatible with the Mac at all. It's too easy for a newbie to buy a quickie piece of software at Walgreens and never realize it's not Mac compatible -- then they get mad at the fact that they have a Mac.
With my kids, I just steer them in the right direction when we're shopping for software. We've been able to do all of our home stuff on our Macs (iMac and PowerBook G4), and about 85% of my I.T. stuff on my Macs (some I.T. things are easier in UNIX/Linux than on Windows, which is nice).
Protection of the innocent is a non-issue on a Mac because I'm a dedicated parent. I don't need filter software, I just know what they're doing and control access times. The rest of the crap we deal with on Windows every day is non-existent in the Mac world.
Yeah, it's nice being a Mac-owning parent...