For those who want to experiment with "real" ramen, look for "Yakisoba Noodles" in the deli case if you can't find the fresh ramen kits that some Japanese companies make. As far as broth goes, if you want it easy, get a can of Swanson's Chicken Broth and use that. If you want to get a more authentic effect, make some bone-in pork roast or roast a chicken, then make broth with the bones. You cook the noodles at the last minute, in plain boiling water for about 30 seconds before draining and adding to the bowl. Pour the broth over that. Add cooked veggies and your choice of meat. Oishii oishii.
If you are lucky enough to live in LA, here's a few good places to get a prepared bowl of Ramen: Koraku, Little Tokyo and Sherman Oaks; Ramen Nippon, Reseda; Kyushu Ramen, Van Nuys; Tampopo at Mitsuwa Market, Mar Vista
Koraku in Sherman Oaks just opened up. The Little Tokyo branch is an institution that's been up and running since the '50s. The new place looks like a little out-of-the-way Showa-era restaurant in Japan, complete with replicas of Occupation-era advertising signs. Koraku in Little Tokyo is open until 3am, and was a place to go to after seeing bands at Al's Bar back in the day or The Smell or The Cocaine Club now.
Ramen Nippon in Reseda is a favorite of Japanese students at Cal State Northridge. Good healthy Japanese food.
Kyushu Ramen is open late and not only has good noodles but good Japanese "Family Restaurant" kind of food. They also have a separate menu in Japanese which has some good authentic stuff you don't find at most LA Japanese restaurants. They're happy to explain if you don't read Japanese.
Tampopo is a branch of a South Bay restaurant. The movie "Tampopo" is about the quest for the perfect bowl of Ramen, and similarly Tampopo the restaurant is about serious Ramen. The little satellite stand in the West LA Mitsuwa is almost as good as the South Bay version.
One important note about the Ramen you get at these restaurants: they are served in HUGE bowls. Most Gaijin can share a bowl happily. However, somehow or another Japanese folks manage to polish off the entire thing by themselves. Including petite little female Japanese college students from CSUN.
Make the fresh kind for yourself and you will never go back to Cup Noodles.
...light rail is working in Los Angeles. What's the fastest way to get Downtown? The Red Line. 30 minutes from NoHo to Union Station. Un-freaking-believable.
This is why when the price of gas went up, and people actually tried the Red Line and Metrolink and other parts of our old/new (most of the right-of-ways are old Pacific Electric right-of-ways) light rail infrastructure, people started talking about how nice it would be to have the Wilshire spur of the Red Line finally take its intended trip to Santa Monica. The Expo Line between USC and Culver City (with an extension to Venice on the drawing board) is being built now. It links with the oldest of our light rail lines, the Blue Line, which goes down the Alameda corridor through some of the nastiest neighborhoods in LA. And yet: the Blue Line gets a lot of use. Why? It's the easiest way to get to Long Beach.
We have our ill-advised lines too: the Green Line which boneheadedly does not go all the way to LAX, and the Gold Line which is a good route into Pasadena from Downtown but is slowed to a crawl by nervous NIMBYs who don't have the good sense to tell their kids to GIVE RAILROAD RIGHT-OF-WAYS A WIDE BERTH. "Oh, those Blue Line trains go so fast and we see lots of people killed on the 6:00 news...oh please, City Councilperson, make 'em run the trains at 15 miles per hour in our neighborhood!" Dumbasses. You can't outrun a train, either on foot or in your freaking car. Grow a freaking brain.
We need light rail. It made sense when they put the Pacific Electric in back in the day, and it makes even more sense now. With Peak Oil on the horizon it's time. When gasoline hits $5 a gallon maybe even the NIMBYs will have a nice warm cup of STFU and get on board.
Reboot Trek so that the Evil Parallel Universe is the REAL universe, the Federation is running around looking for planets to put under its thumb, and Vulcans have goatees! Sweet!
...I refuse to watch this unless they are kept well away from it. They were responsible for running this franchise into the ground.
Oh yeah: please, no more Euro-American captains. I'd like to see a Captain Ali Iskander. Or a Captain Janata Ashok. Or a Captain Matsumoto Hiro. Or a Captain Tan Chen-yu. There have been token characters that weren't white-bread. However, if you look at who's been in the captain's chair, unless you count Sisko they've all been white, and there has been exactly one woman, Captain Janeway. It's time for an ethnic captain. The '60s are over.
My Stats prof will not accept paper submissions. It's all about the environment with him. "Paper is wasteful." One of my Psych profs wants to be able to use the comment feature in Word to add their comments. Which leaves one prof who still takes papers on paper. I think this is a trend, unfortunately.
Another vote for T-Mobile. And you don't have to pay that $100 all at once, either...you can build up to it depending on how much you use. Then after you pay that first $100 you don't have to sweat the minutes expiring.
Now if only the network that T-Mobile and Cingular share out here in SoCal wasn't so spotty the places I really need it to be reliable...Burbank, where my college is, and my undisclosed location in the San Fernando Valley. Both are under "dead zones." However, the rest of the LA area is pretty damn good for coverage.
Really freaking super BAD timing, man. Thanks one hell of a lot, MicroShaft.
And there is a POLICY here where you absolutely, positively, HAVE TO have MS Office and USE IT here at Woodbury University. I was using OO.o on Linux for the longest time and sending things out as PDF to profs, but one of my profs wanted to COMMENT ON MY DOCUMENTS so no using OpenOffice and getting by.
Unfortunately I don't think ANY of my profs are going to accept the "zero-day Word exploit, sorry, no paper for you" excuse.
Umm...have you used a ThinkPad lately? Notice the craptastic quality? Have you used any of the Lenovo-branded atrocities out there? The fears of IBM fanboys and fangirls with regard to what Lenovo would do with the ThinkPad brand have come brutally true. The new stuff SUCKS.
The last ThinkPad I would advise anyone purchasing would be the T42. Stuff designed by IBM but executed at Lenovo, including the T43, is OK but not great. Once you get into Lenovo designed/built models, however...whoa nelly. This is not your daddy's ThinkPad. This is a machine that deserves the title StinkPad now.:P
Yes, Apple has had some issues with their hardware. However, they tend to make good on those issues. Lenovo? Not so much. The same can be said about Dell, HP and other PC makers in that tier. The only makes other than Apple that I would recommend would be Toshiba, Fujitsu and Panasonic. The ToughBook is the last of a dying breed. I coddle my MacBook because I have my doubts about its sturdiness. I don't coddle my Thinkpad 600x so much. It's a freaking Tank. Same with the iBook 300MHz Blueberry Clamshell I have. Built for K-12 and it shows. It's a bear to upgrade, unlike my MacBook here.
You could do worse than to buy MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Especially since Boot Camp allows dual-booting with XP SP2 now and will allow dual-booting with Vista later. And even better: Parallels and an upcoming VMWare will allow hosting guest OSes under Mac OS X. You can create a security cocoon around Windows. You can prevent it from phoning home. You can prevent it from using the Internet at all. That's about where my comfort level with the fine products of MS is right now. Keep it in its cocoon. Keep it in the Happy Box. Mac OS X is a great OS...it's like Linux or FreeBSD except everything "just works." I want to run Linux on this machine "because I can" but really I am finding all my xNIXy goodness needs well-met by Mac OS X.
There is an option where you can put two fingers on the trackpad and click, and it's equivalent to a right click. It's sweet. But trackpads drive me nuts usually, and it's easier just to plug in a USB Logitech Marble Mouse (God's own pointing device!) and right click 'til the cows come home.
If you haven't used Mac OS X lately, or not at all, give it a spin. It's been good since Panther, Tiger is nice, and Leopard will make the new MacIntels fly thanks to more native IA64 code. It's like Linux only more things work out of the box than Linux and you have to fiddle with it less. Oh yeah, the Terminal's used BASH for a while now. Just like Linux.
Re:And who own iPods and listens to ColdPlay.
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Apples Are For Grannies?
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I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
Oh bullshit, Satanic Puppy. See those cute little rectangular slot-like things on the side of my MacBook? They're USB2 ports. See the one right next to it that looks like an elongated capital D? That's a FireWire port. See how you can plug all kinds of goodies into them? Like this 320GB hard drive here? Or this card reader?
And when it comes to doing stuff like adding more RAM or a bigger, badder Hard Drive, did you know that if you do it yourself, you don't void the warranty? Apple is getting smarter about geeks who like to tinker. They sell "DIY Kits" for things like RAM and HD upgrades now. The MacBook maxes out at 2GB of RAM, though. Then again most computers do nowadays, except the ultra-leet MacPro. 16 GB/2 TB is the max there if I remember correctly.
Hell, if you want a Mac you can tinker with endlessly, the MacPro is the ultimate dream machine for that. Twin Core 2 Duo Xeons, baby. 4 cores. Right now that's the Bull Goose Badass Mac. And it's 100% open, and you won't have to call Apple and ask "mother may I" if you change more than three things on it. Don't like the video card? Change it.
As far as this MacBook goes, $1,300 is pretty modest coin for a lightweight, widescreen Core 2 Duo notebook with 1GB RAM standard. That's how much it cost. And I got a $200 student discount. Three words: eat my cyberdust.
The InkaVote machines used in LA County are similar, but designed around a paradigm that is familiar to voters in our county. An InkaVote marking device is just like the punchcard device it replaced, but instead of a stylus punching out a hole on a punch card there is a little ink pen. You have to push the little cuss HARD to make a mark on the ballot, but once you do the mark is there for good.
The ballot IS the vote in LA County. The InkaVote reader machines are technically able to count as well as read, but our local statutes state that the actual cardstock ballot is the vote, and the readers don't count the votes. The only place where DRE machines are used is at "early voting centers." And now that Debra Bowen is California's Secretary of State, those DRE machines are going bye-bye.
BTW in the polling place I worked, the InkaVote readers didn't work, and their replacements (three in all) didn't work either. We did the voting old-school...just drop the ballot into the slot in the box. Problem solved.
Bill Gates might argue with you about MS Bob being a spectacular flameout because after all, he met his wife because of MS Bob. She was project manager for that project.
OK, you got me. I'm of an age above what you mentioned. However, I have a reason for not liking all-in-one devices. Single point of failure. I would rather have a separate still digital camera that works like I like it, separate mobile phone, separate camcorder, separate PDA, etc. etc. If one fails I can replace it and still have the rest of the stuff working while I look for the right replacement.
If your super mega awesome Razr dies, you lose your camera, your camcorder, your mp3 player, and your mobile phone all in one swell foop. I'd say that's a fucked situation.
There is one good point in all this concatenation of digital devices in small packages: if someone gets the crap beaten out of them by a cop there's a good chance someone will be around to shoot video and then either get it to the Media or to YouTube, whichever is the fastest. If the police know that there's a good chance someone will be watching and recording them they will be likely to behave themselves and treat people professionally.
T10 rocked the house. Solid, good reception, flip thingy covering the keyboard because sometimes keylock fails. My first mobile. Mine was black, actually. Reminded me of Star Trek: The Original Series. Beam me up, Death Star.
My husband and I now have r520m phones, running on the T-Mobile network. These were 2000 models, and they are still solid 6 years on. Batteries have ridiculous amounts of talk time and standby time.
Eventually I am going to have to move into the Modern Era and so will my husband. My husband hates having a mobile in general, and hates learning anything about his in particular, so I am going to have to get him a clamshell phone because he refuses to learn how to lock his. I'm actually looking at another SonyEricsson even though I really hate freaking Sony because Ericsson still knows how to make a solid phone that can take punishment. The T-10 could get beaten from pillar to post and still work. My r520m has withstood tons of punishment.
Bluetooth is a must. Gotta have that Bluetooth now that I have a MacBook. For my hubby, not so much. Yeah, that's another thing that's cool about the r520m...they have Bluetooth, and the Bluetooth works even though it's the most primitive iteration of the protocol.
I still want basic. Basic is good. I have a video camera. I have a digital still camera. I don't need that crap on my phone. Give me a phone that is a phone first. MP3 play would be nice, but I just want a freaking phone that will work. Phone plus GPRS, thank you very much. No cameras. No capes.
Anime fandom has changed the sex ratio at conventions permanently. Anime fans are pretty much half and half male/female (or is it Otaku/Otome?) ratio. Over the past few years I've seen more and more women and girls at San Diego Comic-Con. Anime Los Angeles reflects this half and half ratio almost perfectly. And of course, Yaoicon in San Francisco is something like 85% women, 5% gay males, and 10% either men in tow (spouses and significant others) or single guys looking to pick up Otome chicks. (The latter is really hard to separate out.)
Gaming is still very y-chromosome oriented. However, I was once a girl RPG gamer, and I had lots of fun with it. If it wasn't such a time sink, I'd be more into it. However, this time when I'm in college I want to actually get an education. ^_^
No, this is directed at people running Parallels on Mac OS X. It's unmistakeable. They want to kill Parallels. They also want to kill whatever virtualization solution is being built by Apple for a future Mac OS X.
Microsoft is feeling the heat from one of their oldest enemies. Leopard is a Vista-killer, and now that a large slice of the Macintosh population is MacIntel they are fearful that MacIntel will poach more customers from their base.
I dunno about other parts of the US but here in SoCal both Verizon and AT&T are offering some sort of $15 DSL package. Sure, it's not leet and speedy but it's better than dialup. And considering that dialup costs $10 to $20 and up, it's worth it.
The only problem is distance to the Central Office. Not everyone is within range of their Central Office. And cable modem, unlike DSL, is not priced reasonably. Hopefully someone will lick the problem of DSL and central office proximity. If someone manages that, cable modem is toast. DSL might not be faster than cable, but it's more reliable, more secure out of the box, and most importantly CHEAPER. I get DSLExtreme DSL (remarketer of Verizon with more clueful support) for the low-end Verizon price. They do DHCP instead of PPPoE and it is rock-solid.
I remember when you couldn't touch DSL for less than $50/month. That wasn't too long ago.
I got my MacBook yesterday, and yeah, Tiger has no serials either.
And considering that between Google and AOHell I have just about everything.Mac users have FOR FREE, I gave.Mac the upraised middle finger. Oh yeah, Apple Store employees shamelessly pimp.Mac too. "No thanks" is effective against this as well.
Kewl machine. First time I've run a modern computer since 1999.
Another thing is that Apple tends to only use just enough DRM to placate the Big Media companies, no more, no less. FairPlay is quite mild and is only used with music you buy from iTunes. Panther and below do not use serials, period. I think that (correct me if I am wrong, I don't have Tiger yet but will when I get my MacBook this weekend) Tiger requires you enter a serial at first boot or during the install process. Tiger does NOT have activation, however.
Yes, the current Macintel computers do have all the hardware on the mobo, including the TPM, to where if Apple wanted to enforce heavy Digital Rights Manglement they could. However, Apple gets it. People buy Macs because they want *easy*. (Well, 98% of all Mac users, anyway. 2% are hackish types who want to play with a badass Intel Core 2 Duo platform, and Mac Pro with two 3GHz Core 2 Xeons is right now the baddest boy on the block.)
And full-on Digital Rights Manglement is going to make PCs running Windows Vista very *hard* computers to work with. Think of all the people who are getting false alarms with Windows Genuine Advantage NOW. Imagine Windows Genuine Advantage had the power to lock you out of your computer. Period. End of story. You won't have to imagine with Vista.
What the F/OSS community needs to do is unite in the pursuit of one very important task for Linux: MAKE IT EASY. Make it almost as easy as Mac OS X. It doesn't have to be AS easy, just easy enough to where it doesn't do things like require you to call up and play "mother may I?" with an operator at Microsoft if you have changed more than 3 things with your computer. This is something XP has been doing since 2001. Vista is going to be even more of a bear about stuff like that.
If the F/OSS community comes up with a truly EASY Linux, one that does all the things consumers expect it to do, expect a tipping point to arrive which will marginalize Vista. I suspect that Mac OS X Leopard and its future "kittens" will be what logically benefits from a marginalized Vista. People will be buying Macs instead of sweating Vista's DRM. The clueful will probably also run old versions of Windows on Parallels for the little things you can't run on Mac OS X. I predict a new bidding war for Windows 2000 installer disks on eBay, because that's the last version of Windows without the accursed "activation" scheme.
Fearless prediction: In 5 years, the MCP-esque hegemony of Microsoft will be broken. Microsoft will basically be a company making desktop operating systems for enterprises and will have lost its stranglehold on the consumer market. Apple, by being cautious and consumer-focused with regard to DRM, will be on top. Linux will be in the position Mac OS X is now: a niche player with a significant niche. The niche will be different, of course: you'll see Linux on low-end Chinese and Taiwanese hardware. Think the Fry's Electronics "Great Quality" (heh) 200 buck Chuck computers. Expect Apple to license Mac OS X sparingly to big players like Dell and HP that want to keep in the consumer market, on their high-end stuff. Dell and HP's low-end stuff will be on Linux.
And Luke Skywalker and the rest of the New Jedi Order have absolutely no idea how midichlorians operate, so they couldn't possibly use the Force? Sh'yeahRIGHT...
Midichlorians are the main reason I detest the Prequels. II has the big Jedi Battle Royale and III has the battle between Anakin/Vader and Obi-Wan and the confrontation between Darth Sidious and Mace Windu and his posse. So there are some redeeming qualities to those two movies. Episode I...well...that's pure crap. As much as I thought that Qui-Gon Jinn had potential as a character, and as much as I like Mace Windu and wished they had more of him in the prequels, there is NOTHING in Episode I worth watching.
My tips for watching Star Wars: Episode IV original theatrical version. Episode V original theatrical version. Episode VI original theatrical version. Watch Episode I at 4x fast forward speed. Watch Episode II at normal speed, but keep your hand on the fast forward button to escape the sappy love story BS. Watch Episode III at normal speed, and maybe just have the remote in your lap so that when the love story stuff comes up you have the option of fast forwarding if the treacle gets to be too much. Set the remote aside after Darth Sidious gives the command to Execute Order 66. It's depressing as hell but the last hour or so of the movie is done quite well. Except for how Padme dies. Mace Windu didn't go out like a punk, but Padme sure did. Oh well. She got short shrift in the movie except in the costuming department.
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...no need for the dried-and-fried crap.
For those who want to experiment with "real" ramen, look for "Yakisoba Noodles" in the deli case if you can't find the fresh ramen kits that some Japanese companies make. As far as broth goes, if you want it easy, get a can of Swanson's Chicken Broth and use that. If you want to get a more authentic effect, make some bone-in pork roast or roast a chicken, then make broth with the bones. You cook the noodles at the last minute, in plain boiling water for about 30 seconds before draining and adding to the bowl. Pour the broth over that. Add cooked veggies and your choice of meat. Oishii oishii.
If you are lucky enough to live in LA, here's a few good places to get a prepared bowl of Ramen:
Koraku, Little Tokyo and Sherman Oaks;
Ramen Nippon, Reseda;
Kyushu Ramen, Van Nuys;
Tampopo at Mitsuwa Market, Mar Vista
Koraku in Sherman Oaks just opened up. The Little Tokyo branch is an institution that's been up and running since the '50s. The new place looks like a little out-of-the-way Showa-era restaurant in Japan, complete with replicas of Occupation-era advertising signs. Koraku in Little Tokyo is open until 3am, and was a place to go to after seeing bands at Al's Bar back in the day or The Smell or The Cocaine Club now.
Ramen Nippon in Reseda is a favorite of Japanese students at Cal State Northridge. Good healthy Japanese food.
Kyushu Ramen is open late and not only has good noodles but good Japanese "Family Restaurant" kind of food. They also have a separate menu in Japanese which has some good authentic stuff you don't find at most LA Japanese restaurants. They're happy to explain if you don't read Japanese.
Tampopo is a branch of a South Bay restaurant. The movie "Tampopo" is about the quest for the perfect bowl of Ramen, and similarly Tampopo the restaurant is about serious Ramen. The little satellite stand in the West LA Mitsuwa is almost as good as the South Bay version.
One important note about the Ramen you get at these restaurants: they are served in HUGE bowls. Most Gaijin can share a bowl happily. However, somehow or another Japanese folks manage to polish off the entire thing by themselves. Including petite little female Japanese college students from CSUN.
Make the fresh kind for yourself and you will never go back to Cup Noodles.
...light rail is working in Los Angeles. What's the fastest way to get Downtown? The Red Line. 30 minutes from NoHo to Union Station. Un-freaking-believable.
This is why when the price of gas went up, and people actually tried the Red Line and Metrolink and other parts of our old/new (most of the right-of-ways are old Pacific Electric right-of-ways) light rail infrastructure, people started talking about how nice it would be to have the Wilshire spur of the Red Line finally take its intended trip to Santa Monica. The Expo Line between USC and Culver City (with an extension to Venice on the drawing board) is being built now. It links with the oldest of our light rail lines, the Blue Line, which goes down the Alameda corridor through some of the nastiest neighborhoods in LA. And yet: the Blue Line gets a lot of use. Why? It's the easiest way to get to Long Beach.
We have our ill-advised lines too: the Green Line which boneheadedly does not go all the way to LAX, and the Gold Line which is a good route into Pasadena from Downtown but is slowed to a crawl by nervous NIMBYs who don't have the good sense to tell their kids to GIVE RAILROAD RIGHT-OF-WAYS A WIDE BERTH. "Oh, those Blue Line trains go so fast and we see lots of people killed on the 6:00 news...oh please, City Councilperson, make 'em run the trains at 15 miles per hour in our neighborhood!" Dumbasses. You can't outrun a train, either on foot or in your freaking car. Grow a freaking brain.
We need light rail. It made sense when they put the Pacific Electric in back in the day, and it makes even more sense now. With Peak Oil on the horizon it's time. When gasoline hits $5 a gallon maybe even the NIMBYs will have a nice warm cup of STFU and get on board.
Media Access Control fangirl or Macintosh fangirl? The world waits for your reply.
What happened to the Bell Telephone Company?
Meet the 'new' AT&T. We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.
...my homie Luke Ski.
Reboot Trek so that the Evil Parallel Universe is the REAL universe, the Federation is running around looking for planets to put under its thumb, and Vulcans have goatees! Sweet!
...I refuse to watch this unless they are kept well away from it. They were responsible for running this franchise into the ground.
Oh yeah: please, no more Euro-American captains. I'd like to see a Captain Ali Iskander. Or a Captain Janata Ashok. Or a Captain Matsumoto Hiro. Or a Captain Tan Chen-yu. There have been token characters that weren't white-bread. However, if you look at who's been in the captain's chair, unless you count Sisko they've all been white, and there has been exactly one woman, Captain Janeway. It's time for an ethnic captain. The '60s are over.
My Stats prof will not accept paper submissions. It's all about the environment with him. "Paper is wasteful." One of my Psych profs wants to be able to use the comment feature in Word to add their comments. Which leaves one prof who still takes papers on paper. I think this is a trend, unfortunately.
Another vote for T-Mobile. And you don't have to pay that $100 all at once, either...you can build up to it depending on how much you use. Then after you pay that first $100 you don't have to sweat the minutes expiring.
Now if only the network that T-Mobile and Cingular share out here in SoCal wasn't so spotty the places I really need it to be reliable...Burbank, where my college is, and my undisclosed location in the San Fernando Valley. Both are under "dead zones." However, the rest of the LA area is pretty damn good for coverage.
Really freaking super BAD timing, man. Thanks one hell of a lot, MicroShaft.
And there is a POLICY here where you absolutely, positively, HAVE TO have MS Office and USE IT here at Woodbury University. I was using OO.o on Linux for the longest time and sending things out as PDF to profs, but one of my profs wanted to COMMENT ON MY DOCUMENTS so no using OpenOffice and getting by.
Unfortunately I don't think ANY of my profs are going to accept the "zero-day Word exploit, sorry, no paper for you" excuse.
Umm...have you used a ThinkPad lately? Notice the craptastic quality? Have you used any of the Lenovo-branded atrocities out there? The fears of IBM fanboys and fangirls with regard to what Lenovo would do with the ThinkPad brand have come brutally true. The new stuff SUCKS.
:P
The last ThinkPad I would advise anyone purchasing would be the T42. Stuff designed by IBM but executed at Lenovo, including the T43, is OK but not great. Once you get into Lenovo designed/built models, however...whoa nelly. This is not your daddy's ThinkPad. This is a machine that deserves the title StinkPad now.
Yes, Apple has had some issues with their hardware. However, they tend to make good on those issues. Lenovo? Not so much. The same can be said about Dell, HP and other PC makers in that tier. The only makes other than Apple that I would recommend would be Toshiba, Fujitsu and Panasonic. The ToughBook is the last of a dying breed. I coddle my MacBook because I have my doubts about its sturdiness. I don't coddle my Thinkpad 600x so much. It's a freaking Tank. Same with the iBook 300MHz Blueberry Clamshell I have. Built for K-12 and it shows. It's a bear to upgrade, unlike my MacBook here.
You could do worse than to buy MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Especially since Boot Camp allows dual-booting with XP SP2 now and will allow dual-booting with Vista later. And even better: Parallels and an upcoming VMWare will allow hosting guest OSes under Mac OS X. You can create a security cocoon around Windows. You can prevent it from phoning home. You can prevent it from using the Internet at all. That's about where my comfort level with the fine products of MS is right now. Keep it in its cocoon. Keep it in the Happy Box. Mac OS X is a great OS...it's like Linux or FreeBSD except everything "just works." I want to run Linux on this machine "because I can" but really I am finding all my xNIXy goodness needs well-met by Mac OS X.
There is an option where you can put two fingers on the trackpad and click, and it's equivalent to a right click. It's sweet. But trackpads drive me nuts usually, and it's easier just to plug in a USB Logitech Marble Mouse (God's own pointing device!) and right click 'til the cows come home.
If you haven't used Mac OS X lately, or not at all, give it a spin. It's been good since Panther, Tiger is nice, and Leopard will make the new MacIntels fly thanks to more native IA64 code. It's like Linux only more things work out of the box than Linux and you have to fiddle with it less. Oh yeah, the Terminal's used BASH for a while now. Just like Linux.
I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
Oh bullshit, Satanic Puppy. See those cute little rectangular slot-like things on the side of my MacBook? They're USB2 ports. See the one right next to it that looks like an elongated capital D? That's a FireWire port. See how you can plug all kinds of goodies into them? Like this 320GB hard drive here? Or this card reader?
And when it comes to doing stuff like adding more RAM or a bigger, badder Hard Drive, did you know that if you do it yourself, you don't void the warranty? Apple is getting smarter about geeks who like to tinker. They sell "DIY Kits" for things like RAM and HD upgrades now. The MacBook maxes out at 2GB of RAM, though. Then again most computers do nowadays, except the ultra-leet MacPro. 16 GB/2 TB is the max there if I remember correctly.
Hell, if you want a Mac you can tinker with endlessly, the MacPro is the ultimate dream machine for that. Twin Core 2 Duo Xeons, baby. 4 cores. Right now that's the Bull Goose Badass Mac. And it's 100% open, and you won't have to call Apple and ask "mother may I" if you change more than three things on it. Don't like the video card? Change it.
As far as this MacBook goes, $1,300 is pretty modest coin for a lightweight, widescreen Core 2 Duo notebook with 1GB RAM standard. That's how much it cost. And I got a $200 student discount. Three words: eat my cyberdust.
The InkaVote machines used in LA County are similar, but designed around a paradigm that is familiar to voters in our county. An InkaVote marking device is just like the punchcard device it replaced, but instead of a stylus punching out a hole on a punch card there is a little ink pen. You have to push the little cuss HARD to make a mark on the ballot, but once you do the mark is there for good.
The ballot IS the vote in LA County. The InkaVote reader machines are technically able to count as well as read, but our local statutes state that the actual cardstock ballot is the vote, and the readers don't count the votes. The only place where DRE machines are used is at "early voting centers." And now that Debra Bowen is California's Secretary of State, those DRE machines are going bye-bye.
BTW in the polling place I worked, the InkaVote readers didn't work, and their replacements (three in all) didn't work either. We did the voting old-school...just drop the ballot into the slot in the box. Problem solved.
Bill Gates might argue with you about MS Bob being a spectacular flameout because after all, he met his wife because of MS Bob. She was project manager for that project.
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PC Jr.
The Mac TV
The Performa 52xx/62xx series of Macs
Windows Millenium Edition, aka WindowsME
and...
Zune.
'Nuff said.
OK, you got me. I'm of an age above what you mentioned. However, I have a reason for not liking all-in-one devices. Single point of failure. I would rather have a separate still digital camera that works like I like it, separate mobile phone, separate camcorder, separate PDA, etc. etc. If one fails I can replace it and still have the rest of the stuff working while I look for the right replacement.
If your super mega awesome Razr dies, you lose your camera, your camcorder, your mp3 player, and your mobile phone all in one swell foop. I'd say that's a fucked situation.
There is one good point in all this concatenation of digital devices in small packages: if someone gets the crap beaten out of them by a cop there's a good chance someone will be around to shoot video and then either get it to the Media or to YouTube, whichever is the fastest. If the police know that there's a good chance someone will be watching and recording them they will be likely to behave themselves and treat people professionally.
T10 rocked the house. Solid, good reception, flip thingy covering the keyboard because sometimes keylock fails. My first mobile. Mine was black, actually. Reminded me of Star Trek: The Original Series. Beam me up, Death Star.
My husband and I now have r520m phones, running on the T-Mobile network. These were 2000 models, and they are still solid 6 years on. Batteries have ridiculous amounts of talk time and standby time.
Eventually I am going to have to move into the Modern Era and so will my husband. My husband hates having a mobile in general, and hates learning anything about his in particular, so I am going to have to get him a clamshell phone because he refuses to learn how to lock his. I'm actually looking at another SonyEricsson even though I really hate freaking Sony because Ericsson still knows how to make a solid phone that can take punishment. The T-10 could get beaten from pillar to post and still work. My r520m has withstood tons of punishment.
Bluetooth is a must. Gotta have that Bluetooth now that I have a MacBook. For my hubby, not so much. Yeah, that's another thing that's cool about the r520m...they have Bluetooth, and the Bluetooth works even though it's the most primitive iteration of the protocol.
I still want basic. Basic is good. I have a video camera. I have a digital still camera. I don't need that crap on my phone. Give me a phone that is a phone first. MP3 play would be nice, but I just want a freaking phone that will work. Phone plus GPRS, thank you very much. No cameras. No capes.
Anime fandom has changed the sex ratio at conventions permanently. Anime fans are pretty much half and half male/female (or is it Otaku/Otome?) ratio. Over the past few years I've seen more and more women and girls at San Diego Comic-Con. Anime Los Angeles reflects this half and half ratio almost perfectly. And of course, Yaoicon in San Francisco is something like 85% women, 5% gay males, and 10% either men in tow (spouses and significant others) or single guys looking to pick up Otome chicks. (The latter is really hard to separate out.)
Gaming is still very y-chromosome oriented. However, I was once a girl RPG gamer, and I had lots of fun with it. If it wasn't such a time sink, I'd be more into it. However, this time when I'm in college I want to actually get an education. ^_^
No, this is directed at people running Parallels on Mac OS X. It's unmistakeable. They want to kill Parallels. They also want to kill whatever virtualization solution is being built by Apple for a future Mac OS X.
Microsoft is feeling the heat from one of their oldest enemies. Leopard is a Vista-killer, and now that a large slice of the Macintosh population is MacIntel they are fearful that MacIntel will poach more customers from their base.
I dunno about other parts of the US but here in SoCal both Verizon and AT&T are offering some sort of $15 DSL package. Sure, it's not leet and speedy but it's better than dialup. And considering that dialup costs $10 to $20 and up, it's worth it.
The only problem is distance to the Central Office. Not everyone is within range of their Central Office. And cable modem, unlike DSL, is not priced reasonably. Hopefully someone will lick the problem of DSL and central office proximity. If someone manages that, cable modem is toast. DSL might not be faster than cable, but it's more reliable, more secure out of the box, and most importantly CHEAPER. I get DSLExtreme DSL (remarketer of Verizon with more clueful support) for the low-end Verizon price. They do DHCP instead of PPPoE and it is rock-solid.
I remember when you couldn't touch DSL for less than $50/month. That wasn't too long ago.
I got my MacBook yesterday, and yeah, Tiger has no serials either.
.Mac users have FOR FREE, I gave .Mac the upraised middle finger. Oh yeah, Apple Store employees shamelessly pimp .Mac too. "No thanks" is effective against this as well.
And considering that between Google and AOHell I have just about everything
Kewl machine. First time I've run a modern computer since 1999.
Another thing is that Apple tends to only use just enough DRM to placate the Big Media companies, no more, no less. FairPlay is quite mild and is only used with music you buy from iTunes. Panther and below do not use serials, period. I think that (correct me if I am wrong, I don't have Tiger yet but will when I get my MacBook this weekend) Tiger requires you enter a serial at first boot or during the install process. Tiger does NOT have activation, however.
Yes, the current Macintel computers do have all the hardware on the mobo, including the TPM, to where if Apple wanted to enforce heavy Digital Rights Manglement they could. However, Apple gets it. People buy Macs because they want *easy*. (Well, 98% of all Mac users, anyway. 2% are hackish types who want to play with a badass Intel Core 2 Duo platform, and Mac Pro with two 3GHz Core 2 Xeons is right now the baddest boy on the block.)
And full-on Digital Rights Manglement is going to make PCs running Windows Vista very *hard* computers to work with. Think of all the people who are getting false alarms with Windows Genuine Advantage NOW. Imagine Windows Genuine Advantage had the power to lock you out of your computer. Period. End of story. You won't have to imagine with Vista.
What the F/OSS community needs to do is unite in the pursuit of one very important task for Linux: MAKE IT EASY. Make it almost as easy as Mac OS X. It doesn't have to be AS easy, just easy enough to where it doesn't do things like require you to call up and play "mother may I?" with an operator at Microsoft if you have changed more than 3 things with your computer. This is something XP has been doing since 2001. Vista is going to be even more of a bear about stuff like that.
If the F/OSS community comes up with a truly EASY Linux, one that does all the things consumers expect it to do, expect a tipping point to arrive which will marginalize Vista. I suspect that Mac OS X Leopard and its future "kittens" will be what logically benefits from a marginalized Vista. People will be buying Macs instead of sweating Vista's DRM. The clueful will probably also run old versions of Windows on Parallels for the little things you can't run on Mac OS X. I predict a new bidding war for Windows 2000 installer disks on eBay, because that's the last version of Windows without the accursed "activation" scheme.
Fearless prediction:
In 5 years, the MCP-esque hegemony of Microsoft will be broken. Microsoft will basically be a company making desktop operating systems for enterprises and will have lost its stranglehold on the consumer market. Apple, by being cautious and consumer-focused with regard to DRM, will be on top. Linux will be in the position Mac OS X is now: a niche player with a significant niche. The niche will be different, of course: you'll see Linux on low-end Chinese and Taiwanese hardware. Think the Fry's Electronics "Great Quality" (heh) 200 buck Chuck computers. Expect Apple to license Mac OS X sparingly to big players like Dell and HP that want to keep in the consumer market, on their high-end stuff. Dell and HP's low-end stuff will be on Linux.
Hear Hear. "Clone Wars" is what brought me back into the fold after Episode I broke my heart.
And Luke Skywalker and the rest of the New Jedi Order have absolutely no idea how midichlorians operate, so they couldn't possibly use the Force? Sh'yeahRIGHT...
Midichlorians are the main reason I detest the Prequels. II has the big Jedi Battle Royale and III has the battle between Anakin/Vader and Obi-Wan and the confrontation between Darth Sidious and Mace Windu and his posse. So there are some redeeming qualities to those two movies. Episode I...well...that's pure crap. As much as I thought that Qui-Gon Jinn had potential as a character, and as much as I like Mace Windu and wished they had more of him in the prequels, there is NOTHING in Episode I worth watching.
My tips for watching Star Wars:
Episode IV original theatrical version. Episode V original theatrical version. Episode VI original theatrical version. Watch Episode I at 4x fast forward speed. Watch Episode II at normal speed, but keep your hand on the fast forward button to escape the sappy love story BS. Watch Episode III at normal speed, and maybe just have the remote in your lap so that when the love story stuff comes up you have the option of fast forwarding if the treacle gets to be too much. Set the remote aside after Darth Sidious gives the command to Execute Order 66. It's depressing as hell but the last hour or so of the movie is done quite well. Except for how Padme dies. Mace Windu didn't go out like a punk, but Padme sure did. Oh well. She got short shrift in the movie except in the costuming department.