If OS X actually does scare away a smart guy like you, why not buy the Mac mini and then load Linux on it.
Seriously. If a Linux box is what you want, and you want it as small and quiet as the mini, than a mini running Debian or YDL is hands-down the cheapest way to do it.
However, before you reformat and pull out those Debian disks, I suggest you give OS X a brief trial.
- It's pre-loaded with the only browser that compares favorably with Mozila's offerings, and Mozila runs fine in OS X if that's your preference.
-Bring up the terminal window and you have access to a bash prompt.
- It has a remarkably simple e-mail app with thread tracking and spam filtering, but feel free to run command-prompt mail programs if you are a hard-core Linux/BSD CLI guy.
- It comes with Apache pre-installed. Launching httpd is as simple as clicking a box in the network preferences.
- The remote desktop tool works great, and also comes pre-installed. ssh is loaded up and ready if you prefer.
- The developer disk (which is not pre-loaded, but ships with every copy of OS X) contains an outstanding set of programming tools.
- Aqua is a more consistent and functional GUI than anything the free *nix world has ever offered. The Finder window in 10.3 or later alone is worth the price of admission.
- BBEdit, the preferred text editor of most Mac users who do dev work in text-based environments, is fairly cheap and far in advance of TextPad (the best inexpensive Windows-based text editor I've seen to date.) If you are a text-based programmer, start using BBEdit and you just might turn into a raving Mac Bigot. Plus, if you really love *nix tools, you can just run Emacs or vi.
My suspicion is that we will not see a "mini-killer" from the PC world for about six months to a year, if at all.
Apple thinks they are discovering a new market with the mini. If it turns out they are right, the Windows world will certainly rush to come up with something that reaches that market. Let's see what they could do:
The mini looks very similar to the eMac mobo, or possibly more like the G4 mobo with a single DIMM slot replacing the two SO-DIMM slots. The idea is, it's a laptop-class system in an ultra-small desktop box.
Now, Intel has been trying to find a way to compete with the lower heat and longer battery life of the iBook/Powerbook line for a long time, with very limited success, but they've recently gained a lot of traction with the new "Centrino" line of mobile processors.
Now suppose TI or Intel or some other company who has the capacity to do motherboard design comes out with a 5" x 5" Centrino mobo which uses standard-size memory.
They will probably use integrated video to save a few bucks, rather than patching on an ATI Mobility card the way Apple does, but nobody will care... this isn't a 1337 game system, it's an attempt at a mini killer. Integrated sound would also be likely.
It would probably support USB2 and VGA, and even hang on to PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, but scrap the parallel port and all but one serial port. Since they preserved the PS/2 Bus, it would cost almost nothing to bundle a keyboard and two-button mouse with it.
It would probably work with a standard Targus laptop power supply, and probably ship with a generic version of the same thing.
Instead of the laptop drive, make it a half-inch taller and put in a full-sized ATA HD.
Total cost to buy one of these units from HP, eMachines, or some other low-end company would be $349 and include a default installation of Windows XP Home Edition.
The problem is, hard-core PC users will have spent the better part of a year convincing themselves that such a design is strictly for those gay-ass Mac-heads, and spend their money on a conventional tower system.
The lack of DVI would make it less suitable for the entertainment system (most of your better projectors and HDTV systems now support DVI inputs), and the lack of Firewire or 802.11g/Bluetooth antennas makes it actually harder to expand than the mini, which (let's face it) is not a particularly flexible machine by PC user standards.
If they are really smart, they will spend the extra money to preserve that other staple of PC laptops: The PCMCIA slot. This will present the opportunity to add Firewire, wireless networking, and a few other things which mini users will already be taking for granted.
But like I said, nothing like this is likely to happen until after the industry witnesses the Mac mini selling like hotcakes, and then they will need a couple months of R&D to react.
There's actually a chance that the mini will turn out to be the "Mac cube" of 2005, in which case nobody will bother to copy it, and after it's discontinued used minis will sell for above the original retail price on eBay, just because it will become such a curious novelty of days gone by.
The average time it takes to download the "Critical" packages for Windows XP Professional on a typical DSL or Cable connection is currently longer than the average time it takes for hackers to own a box which becomes exposed to the Internet.
That means that, unless you have a rock-solid firewall already up and running on a separate box, you have basically no chance of connecting to the Internet with a new XP computer installation without being "pwnx0r3d" on the very first day.
How the fuck does anybody tolerate this shit?
My dad recently called me (again) this week about his (yet more) hardware configuration problems on his home-office PC. He's not trying to do anything fancy... Just basic word processing, finances, photo management, and a few small media files, yet I hear from him about twice a month about the computer causing some bullshit problem which would never happen on a Macintosh.
I told him I know of a $499 solution to his problems.
Kindly provide the link to where I can get a 1GB stick of quality PC2700 DDR 333 (or better) memory for $100.
Seriously. I'm not just "calling bullshit" here. If you know of a good source, I'm all ears. Everyplace I've checked wants about $250.
Scanning Pricewatch didn't do much better. Their "1 GB" section is crammed with el-cheapo, sub-spec memory which only works with certain proprietary motherboards, or "1 GB Kit" offerings which are really two 512 sticks bundled into a plastic retail case. By the time you sift through the cruft to something that will actually work as advertised, you are back to well over $200 again.
I'm replying to you on a G4 iBook which was given to me for free, simply because the folks at Apple decided that my old G3 700 iBook (the one with the notorious video problem) had to go in for repairs one time too many.
I didn't ask, I simply pointed out that it came back from repair with problems. I loathed the idea of having it leave my hands for another week to go into the shop, but I just wanted it fixed properly. They decided that my situation was unacceptable, and loaded a new iBook with an Airport Extreme card (since it was replacing one with the old Airport card) and sent me on my merry way.
They made an Apple customer for life that day.
I decided to buy three years of AppleCare on the spot for the new replacement book. Just last week, I placed an order for a new mini to replace several functions which had previously been performed by my old Linux server, and become the centerpiece of my new media room. They've probably already made their money back for going the extra distance to keep me happy.
Other companies could learn something from Apple's product support. Nothing breeds customer loyalty like standing behind your products.
Nevertheless, a lot of big guilds did purposely decide to join the same servers.
Because only about one server in 20 is flagged as a "roleplay" server.
People with MMORPG experience know that your chances of finding yourself in the company of grown-ups improve dramatically if you stick to the servers where roleplay is emphasized, so most guilds of people who like RPG (including mine) crammed themselves onto servers like Silverhand.
On a serious topic, are there any fan made short films like the star wars series inspired?
Fun as it is to be a Lucas "hayta", there's no denying that his media empire is far more forgiving about use of his intelectual property than Paramount is about Star Trek.
In fact, they probably think I should be paying a license fee for printing the name "Star Trek" in the above line of this post.
You will rarely, if ever, see indie films based on the Trek universe, and the ones that do exist are parodies or other types of protected speech. Making a movie with so much as a "klingon" in it is an request to be sued.
Everybody likes to bash Rick Berman, but people conveniently forget just how week TNG was until Berman pried it from Roddenberry's cold, dead fingers.
Season 1 of The Next Generation was beyond awful.
Season 2 was almost good.
Season 3 was when it became worth watching, when Dr. Crusher was brought back (in spite of Roddenberry's strong objections), and more and more control of the show was being passed to Rick Berman.
He's also one of the guys behind the stealing of B5's ideas to create DS9, which was probably the best of all five Trek shows.
Sure, everything he's touched since then has been terrible, but the franchise he destroyed is one which he helped build.
By that, I mean that I didn't actively hate it. I simply mostly ignored it. When I stumbled upon an episode of Enterprise, I actually watched a few minutes and thought, "eh... not much there, but it's okay I guess," instead of "wow, what a pile of horse crap!"
In short, Voyager was bad enough to make me hate Star Trek, and Enterprise was not quite good enough to make me like it again.
So now it's cancelled. Oh well. Wake me up when the Firefly movie comes out.
What if $15 a month isn't enough to gaurantee that level of service? What if the level of hardware/support required to have five 9's uptime would require a $25 a month fee? Would you pay it? Would other customers pay it?
Five nines, maybe not, but other games (CoH, DaoC, etc.) have managed to be far more reliable with only rare (and pre-scheduled) downtime during non-peak hours, sometimes for even less that $15/month.
I wish folks would complain about the issues that Blizzard could reasonably improve rather than the ones that may be theoretical impossibilities
People complain because we know that they could be doing much better. Furthermore, they must start doing better, or many of us will be moving on.
If this is true, then you need to spend $1000 for a Mac Mini with 1 Gb of RAM?
No, you need to spend $499 for the mini, $250 for the RAM, twenty bucks to have a dealer install it if you are a total chickenshit about warranties, and sell of the 256 stick for $50. Total cost, $699. Not bad.
Just imagine the PC you can build yourself with a thousand bucks.
Well, let's see. The Mac mini is two inches tall, and 6.5 on each side, perfect for my media console. It also operates at 22 db when the fan kicks in. Again, perfect for the living room.
1 MB of RAM, as I said before, is $250. Now, that leaves $750 to build a kick-ass media-room computer with.
If I'm looking for something as small and quiet as the mini, while still being able to drive all the media apps I want, $750 in the PC world buys me... let's see... add shipping costs... carry the three...
Oh. Jack shit, that's what.
I guess it's just remotely possible that the mini might be the right computer for some people. You know, people who want quality. Those sorts of folks. But hey, enjoy watching video files at full volume to overcome the massive rushing sound of the fans on your AMD shitbox. I'm sure you're much happier than I will be when I hook up my mini to the projection system via DVI cable.
No kidding. For the Star Wars and (especially) Empire, people wanting to see one of the first few showings had to camp out for tickets, but Jedi opened on plenty enough screens, and the entire new trilogy has been in an age when you can call ahead with a credit card (either directly to a theater or to a service like TicketMaster or Fandango) and buy your tickets far in advance from home or the office!
Anybody sleeping out for one of the new movies is a poser and a sad joke.
Nothing would amuse me more than to hear that this guy failed to get in and see the movie because all the tickets at the theater he chose were pre-sold before the box office opened.
in-store at an Apple Store or an Apple authorized reseller != at home by yourself.
Right and you can (not "must) have memory installed at an Apple authorized reseller.
Nothing whatsoever said about the warranty being voided by opening it yourself, because it's not. Official Apple reps have confirmed as much, why are you trying to pretend this is still even an issue?
Being a typical male, I will never forget Bound. Ahh, Corky...
The movie will prominently feature a marginalized group, like homosexuals or people of color... Based on the material in V for Vendetta, the Wachowskis may also bring some politics into the mix.
You obviously never read the final three issues of V for Vendetta. Alan Moore already brought politics into the story by turning it into a rant featuring about a marginalized group. Not people of color. The other group you just mentioned.
There's no need for them to change the story much to make it into the kind of film they like to make.
Re-reading "Dark Knight" and "V", I can't help but wonder if Frank Miller and Alan Moore are a little embarrased about how completely wrong they were.
Reagan and "The Iron Lady" stayed in charge of the US and UK for many years after those books were published, and we managed to not lock away all the gays, blow up the world, or anything else that they were wringing their hands over at the time.
Personally, I don't think that many of Alan Moore's better works are really very adaptable to film. His greatest strength, in his prime, was how well he took advantage of the medium to tell stories which really could not be told any other way. Any film based on his work is obviously going to lose those elements which made Watchmen and V special. I think I'll pass on any of the three versions you mentioned.
So there will be Calvinist overtones divided into three parts, the first of which will be revolutionary and mind-blowing. The second will be an advancement, more action, have lots of confusing theology, and twins (albino). The third part of the movie will suck...but have the longest "die already!!!" scene ever.
Actually, that's perfect.
Alan Moore wrote 7 issues of V for Vendetta which started really strong bust started to lose focus, then left it on the shelf, unfinished, for a while, then finally emerged with a very rushed and tacked-on 3-issue ending in which he transformed his subtle story adressing universal themes of the competing forces of oppression and anarchy into an obvious and blunt gay-rights screed.
If he wasn't inspired to make a specific political statement, I'm not sure he ever would have gone back and finished it at all, so I'm glad the story was given an ending... but it was not an especially good one.
What I want is a big Dock with standard RCA out (if not optical audio), a remote control which mimics the scroll wheel, and a big enough display to see it from across the room. (A video signal to my AV-switching amp would be almost as good as a display, I suppose.)
Then using the iPod with my home stereo would be just like using any other component, except I dock the iPod instead of loading media into it.
I thought about building some of this once, but unless you are a company which is at least the size of Griffin or Monster, the people at Apple won't even sell you a schematic of the dock pin-outs, let alone tell you which is which.
Can someone explain why it costs $425 to upgrade to 1Gb RAM from apple?
Multiple reasons reasons:
1. Vendors hate keeping RAM in inventory, because prices fluctuate so madly.
2. You are paying them to install it.
3. They are trying to compell power users to just buy a beefier system.
4. Apple has always gouged the users on memory upgrades. It's good for their profit margins. Some people would rather pay too much for extra memory than install it themselves.
I'm upgrading mine myself. Warrenty, schmarrenty. I've broght hideously-tweaked boxes into the Apple Store before, and they've never so much as batted an eye about helping me with the part that's actually broken, so long as my mods are not likely to be what broke it.
Would have bought it anyway for my current Mac. Now I just get to run it faster.
Besides, Tiger will probably take at least until July. Still "long before Longhorn", but if you seriously believe they will have it shipping by mid-March, you are clearly a lot more deluded than I am.
I clearly swallowed more Flavorade than you did. I fought through the server problems, and managed to get my order through after a couple hours.
I rationalized it this way: I was going to buy the new iLife suite anyway (for Garage Band 2), and it comes bundled with the new Mac mini, so that's 80 bucks off the cost right there!
Feel the warm glow of the Reality Distortion Field... Aahhhh...
Slashdot Mirror
If OS X actually does scare away a smart guy like you, why not buy the Mac mini and then load Linux on it.
Seriously. If a Linux box is what you want, and you want it as small and quiet as the mini, than a mini running Debian or YDL is hands-down the cheapest way to do it.
However, before you reformat and pull out those Debian disks, I suggest you give OS X a brief trial.
- It's pre-loaded with the only browser that compares favorably with Mozila's offerings, and Mozila runs fine in OS X if that's your preference.
-Bring up the terminal window and you have access to a bash prompt.
- It has a remarkably simple e-mail app with thread tracking and spam filtering, but feel free to run command-prompt mail programs if you are a hard-core Linux/BSD CLI guy.
- It comes with Apache pre-installed. Launching httpd is as simple as clicking a box in the network preferences.
- The remote desktop tool works great, and also comes pre-installed. ssh is loaded up and ready if you prefer.
- The developer disk (which is not pre-loaded, but ships with every copy of OS X) contains an outstanding set of programming tools.
- Aqua is a more consistent and functional GUI than anything the free *nix world has ever offered. The Finder window in 10.3 or later alone is worth the price of admission.
- BBEdit, the preferred text editor of most Mac users who do dev work in text-based environments, is fairly cheap and far in advance of TextPad (the best inexpensive Windows-based text editor I've seen to date.) If you are a text-based programmer, start using BBEdit and you just might turn into a raving Mac Bigot. Plus, if you really love *nix tools, you can just run Emacs or vi.
My suspicion is that we will not see a "mini-killer" from the PC world for about six months to a year, if at all.
Apple thinks they are discovering a new market with the mini. If it turns out they are right, the Windows world will certainly rush to come up with something that reaches that market. Let's see what they could do:
The mini looks very similar to the eMac mobo, or possibly more like the G4 mobo with a single DIMM slot replacing the two SO-DIMM slots. The idea is, it's a laptop-class system in an ultra-small desktop box.
Now, Intel has been trying to find a way to compete with the lower heat and longer battery life of the iBook/Powerbook line for a long time, with very limited success, but they've recently gained a lot of traction with the new "Centrino" line of mobile processors.
Now suppose TI or Intel or some other company who has the capacity to do motherboard design comes out with a 5" x 5" Centrino mobo which uses standard-size memory.
They will probably use integrated video to save a few bucks, rather than patching on an ATI Mobility card the way Apple does, but nobody will care... this isn't a 1337 game system, it's an attempt at a mini killer. Integrated sound would also be likely.
It would probably support USB2 and VGA, and even hang on to PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, but scrap the parallel port and all but one serial port. Since they preserved the PS/2 Bus, it would cost almost nothing to bundle a keyboard and two-button mouse with it.
It would probably work with a standard Targus laptop power supply, and probably ship with a generic version of the same thing.
Instead of the laptop drive, make it a half-inch taller and put in a full-sized ATA HD.
Total cost to buy one of these units from HP, eMachines, or some other low-end company would be $349 and include a default installation of Windows XP Home Edition.
The problem is, hard-core PC users will have spent the better part of a year convincing themselves that such a design is strictly for those gay-ass Mac-heads, and spend their money on a conventional tower system.
The lack of DVI would make it less suitable for the entertainment system (most of your better projectors and HDTV systems now support DVI inputs), and the lack of Firewire or 802.11g/Bluetooth antennas makes it actually harder to expand than the mini, which (let's face it) is not a particularly flexible machine by PC user standards.
If they are really smart, they will spend the extra money to preserve that other staple of PC laptops: The PCMCIA slot. This will present the opportunity to add Firewire, wireless networking, and a few other things which mini users will already be taking for granted.
But like I said, nothing like this is likely to happen until after the industry witnesses the Mac mini selling like hotcakes, and then they will need a couple months of R&D to react.
There's actually a chance that the mini will turn out to be the "Mac cube" of 2005, in which case nobody will bother to copy it, and after it's discontinued used minis will sell for above the original retail price on eBay, just because it will become such a curious novelty of days gone by.
The average time it takes to download the "Critical" packages for Windows XP Professional on a typical DSL or Cable connection is currently longer than the average time it takes for hackers to own a box which becomes exposed to the Internet.
That means that, unless you have a rock-solid firewall already up and running on a separate box, you have basically no chance of connecting to the Internet with a new XP computer installation without being "pwnx0r3d" on the very first day.
How the fuck does anybody tolerate this shit?
My dad recently called me (again) this week about his (yet more) hardware configuration problems on his home-office PC. He's not trying to do anything fancy... Just basic word processing, finances, photo management, and a few small media files, yet I hear from him about twice a month about the computer causing some bullshit problem which would never happen on a Macintosh.
I told him I know of a $499 solution to his problems.
Kindly provide the link to where I can get a 1GB stick of quality PC2700 DDR 333 (or better) memory for $100.
Seriously. I'm not just "calling bullshit" here. If you know of a good source, I'm all ears. Everyplace I've checked wants about $250.
Scanning Pricewatch didn't do much better. Their "1 GB" section is crammed with el-cheapo, sub-spec memory which only works with certain proprietary motherboards, or "1 GB Kit" offerings which are really two 512 sticks bundled into a plastic retail case. By the time you sift through the cruft to something that will actually work as advertised, you are back to well over $200 again.
I'm replying to you on a G4 iBook which was given to me for free, simply because the folks at Apple decided that my old G3 700 iBook (the one with the notorious video problem) had to go in for repairs one time too many.
I didn't ask, I simply pointed out that it came back from repair with problems. I loathed the idea of having it leave my hands for another week to go into the shop, but I just wanted it fixed properly. They decided that my situation was unacceptable, and loaded a new iBook with an Airport Extreme card (since it was replacing one with the old Airport card) and sent me on my merry way.
They made an Apple customer for life that day.
I decided to buy three years of AppleCare on the spot for the new replacement book. Just last week, I placed an order for a new mini to replace several functions which had previously been performed by my old Linux server, and become the centerpiece of my new media room. They've probably already made their money back for going the extra distance to keep me happy.
Other companies could learn something from Apple's product support. Nothing breeds customer loyalty like standing behind your products.
I bought the EyeTV 500 from Elgato's web site directly.
$299. No tax, free shipping.
Nevertheless, a lot of big guilds did purposely decide to join the same servers.
Because only about one server in 20 is flagged as a "roleplay" server.
People with MMORPG experience know that your chances of finding yourself in the company of grown-ups improve dramatically if you stick to the servers where roleplay is emphasized, so most guilds of people who like RPG (including mine) crammed themselves onto servers like Silverhand.
I mostly agree, except Voyager managed to be even crappier for its entire run.
Of course, once Jeri Ryan joined the cast, it was a pretty good show to watch with the sound turned off.
On a serious topic, are there any fan made short films like the star wars series inspired?
Fun as it is to be a Lucas "hayta", there's no denying that his media empire is far more forgiving about use of his intelectual property than Paramount is about Star Trek.
In fact, they probably think I should be paying a license fee for printing the name "Star Trek" in the above line of this post.
You will rarely, if ever, see indie films based on the Trek universe, and the ones that do exist are parodies or other types of protected speech. Making a movie with so much as a "klingon" in it is an request to be sued.
Everybody likes to bash Rick Berman, but people conveniently forget just how week TNG was until Berman pried it from Roddenberry's cold, dead fingers.
Season 1 of The Next Generation was beyond awful.
Season 2 was almost good.
Season 3 was when it became worth watching, when Dr. Crusher was brought back (in spite of Roddenberry's strong objections), and more and more control of the show was being passed to Rick Berman.
He's also one of the guys behind the stealing of B5's ideas to create DS9, which was probably the best of all five Trek shows.
Sure, everything he's touched since then has been terrible, but the franchise he destroyed is one which he helped build.
Credit where credit's due, that's all I'm sayin'.
This season was easily the best Trek since DS9
I completely agree.
Enterprise was a better show than Voyager.
By that, I mean that I didn't actively hate it. I simply mostly ignored it. When I stumbled upon an episode of Enterprise, I actually watched a few minutes and thought, "eh... not much there, but it's okay I guess," instead of "wow, what a pile of horse crap!"
In short, Voyager was bad enough to make me hate Star Trek, and Enterprise was not quite good enough to make me like it again.
So now it's cancelled. Oh well. Wake me up when the Firefly movie comes out.
What if $15 a month isn't enough to gaurantee that level of service? What if the level of hardware/support required to have five 9's uptime would require a $25 a month fee? Would you pay it? Would other customers pay it?
Five nines, maybe not, but other games (CoH, DaoC, etc.) have managed to be far more reliable with only rare (and pre-scheduled) downtime during non-peak hours, sometimes for even less that $15/month.
I wish folks would complain about the issues that Blizzard could reasonably improve rather than the ones that may be theoretical impossibilities
People complain because we know that they could be doing much better. Furthermore, they must start doing better, or many of us will be moving on.
If this is true, then you need to spend $1000 for a Mac Mini with 1 Gb of RAM?
No, you need to spend $499 for the mini, $250 for the RAM, twenty bucks to have a dealer install it if you are a total chickenshit about warranties, and sell of the 256 stick for $50. Total cost, $699. Not bad.
Just imagine the PC you can build yourself with a thousand bucks.
Well, let's see. The Mac mini is two inches tall, and 6.5 on each side, perfect for my media console. It also operates at 22 db when the fan kicks in. Again, perfect for the living room.
1 MB of RAM, as I said before, is $250. Now, that leaves $750 to build a kick-ass media-room computer with.
If I'm looking for something as small and quiet as the mini, while still being able to drive all the media apps I want, $750 in the PC world buys me... let's see... add shipping costs... carry the three...
Oh. Jack shit, that's what.
I guess it's just remotely possible that the mini might be the right computer for some people. You know, people who want quality. Those sorts of folks. But hey, enjoy watching video files at full volume to overcome the massive rushing sound of the fans on your AMD shitbox. I'm sure you're much happier than I will be when I hook up my mini to the projection system via DVI cable.
I humbly submit the following brief free-verse poem:
Good grief
Episode II was a shitty film
Where did I leave my keys?
No kidding. For the Star Wars and (especially) Empire, people wanting to see one of the first few showings had to camp out for tickets, but Jedi opened on plenty enough screens, and the entire new trilogy has been in an age when you can call ahead with a credit card (either directly to a theater or to a service like TicketMaster or Fandango) and buy your tickets far in advance from home or the office!
Anybody sleeping out for one of the new movies is a poser and a sad joke.
Nothing would amuse me more than to hear that this guy failed to get in and see the movie because all the tickets at the theater he chose were pre-sold before the box office opened.
in-store at an Apple Store or an Apple authorized reseller != at home by yourself.
Right and you can (not "must) have memory installed at an Apple authorized reseller.
Nothing whatsoever said about the warranty being voided by opening it yourself, because it's not. Official Apple reps have confirmed as much, why are you trying to pretend this is still even an issue?
Being a typical male, I will never forget Bound. Ahh, Corky...
The movie will prominently feature a marginalized group, like homosexuals or people of color... Based on the material in V for Vendetta, the Wachowskis may also bring some politics into the mix.
You obviously never read the final three issues of V for Vendetta. Alan Moore already brought politics into the story by turning it into a rant featuring about a marginalized group. Not people of color. The other group you just mentioned.
There's no need for them to change the story much to make it into the kind of film they like to make.
Re-reading "Dark Knight" and "V", I can't help but wonder if Frank Miller and Alan Moore are a little embarrased about how completely wrong they were.
Reagan and "The Iron Lady" stayed in charge of the US and UK for many years after those books were published, and we managed to not lock away all the gays, blow up the world, or anything else that they were wringing their hands over at the time.
Personally, I don't think that many of Alan Moore's better works are really very adaptable to film. His greatest strength, in his prime, was how well he took advantage of the medium to tell stories which really could not be told any other way. Any film based on his work is obviously going to lose those elements which made Watchmen and V special. I think I'll pass on any of the three versions you mentioned.
So there will be Calvinist overtones divided into three parts, the first of which will be revolutionary and mind-blowing. The second will be an advancement, more action, have lots of confusing theology, and twins (albino). The third part of the movie will suck...but have the longest "die already!!!" scene ever.
Actually, that's perfect.
Alan Moore wrote 7 issues of V for Vendetta which started really strong bust started to lose focus, then left it on the shelf, unfinished, for a while, then finally emerged with a very rushed and tacked-on 3-issue ending in which he transformed his subtle story adressing universal themes of the competing forces of oppression and anarchy into an obvious and blunt gay-rights screed.
If he wasn't inspired to make a specific political statement, I'm not sure he ever would have gone back and finished it at all, so I'm glad the story was given an ending... but it was not an especially good one.
Watchmen is a superior work by a longshot.
What I want is a big Dock with standard RCA out (if not optical audio), a remote control which mimics the scroll wheel, and a big enough display to see it from across the room. (A video signal to my AV-switching amp would be almost as good as a display, I suppose.)
Then using the iPod with my home stereo would be just like using any other component, except I dock the iPod instead of loading media into it.
I thought about building some of this once, but unless you are a company which is at least the size of Griffin or Monster, the people at Apple won't even sell you a schematic of the dock pin-outs, let alone tell you which is which.
Fedora is people!
You are my new hero.
You also owe me a keyboard, as I just sprayed my soda all over mine while reading that.
-Signed,
Yet Another Former Red Hat Linux User
Some of these options must be installed by Apple at the factory; the rest can be added in-store at an Apple Store or an Apple authorized reseller.
can != must
Nothing in the blurb you quoted about voiding warrenties.
Can someone explain why it costs $425 to upgrade to 1Gb RAM from apple?
Multiple reasons reasons:
1. Vendors hate keeping RAM in inventory, because prices fluctuate so madly.
2. You are paying them to install it.
3. They are trying to compell power users to just buy a beefier system.
4. Apple has always gouged the users on memory upgrades. It's good for their profit margins. Some people would rather pay too much for extra memory than install it themselves.
I'm upgrading mine myself. Warrenty, schmarrenty. I've broght hideously-tweaked boxes into the Apple Store before, and they've never so much as batted an eye about helping me with the part that's actually broken, so long as my mods are not likely to be what broke it.
Would have bought it anyway for my current Mac. Now I just get to run it faster.
Besides, Tiger will probably take at least until July. Still "long before Longhorn", but if you seriously believe they will have it shipping by mid-March, you are clearly a lot more deluded than I am.
I clearly swallowed more Flavorade than you did. I fought through the server problems, and managed to get my order through after a couple hours.
I rationalized it this way: I was going to buy the new iLife suite anyway (for Garage Band 2), and it comes bundled with the new Mac mini, so that's 80 bucks off the cost right there!
Feel the warm glow of the Reality Distortion Field... Aahhhh...