To anyone who actually cares about XP vs Vista (Joe Consumer is probably just going to take Vista or whatever, and doesn't care), don't you already have tons of copies of XP already around?
1. Joe Consumer wants XP. I recently directed a "Joe Consumer" friend of mine through the steps needed to get a laptop with XP on it, because that's what he wanted.
2. I don't have "tons of copies" of XP around. Just Windows 2000. I've already been through this with XP, and still haven't seen a compelling reason to upgrade other than "Microsoft wants to force me to". Unfortunately it looks like my next Wintendo is going to be a choice between XP and Vista, thanks to drivers that refuse to install on Windows 2000.
3. Yes, I absolutely have no problem rewarding Microsoft by paying four times as much for retail XP Pro because they think DRM is a really nifty idea (that's sarcasm, by the way, if you're American or otherwise obsessively literal minded).
Vista is about as big of a leap as going from virgin XP to XP SP2.
Vista is in many ways a bigger leap than going from NT3 to NT4 or Windows 2000 to XP.
It's got a whole new set of user interface controls that are unarguably worse than what they replaced, and you can't go back. There's no "go back to menus" option: you can bring them back, sort of, in some applications... but not all. Windows hasn't had that happen since... hmm. Microsoft hasn't tried to remove a fundamental user interface control from Windows ever, so far as I can recall. And that's just on the surface... the deep changes are even bigger and nastier (and completely inappropriate for a professional OS, too).
I still haven't made the leap from 2000 to XP at home. The only reason I'd do that would be if the alternative was Vista. There's no reason not to stick with XP indefinitely other than "Microsoft is forcing us to switch".
Yeh, I know the Apple fan "conventional wisdom"... but desktops without expansion slots don't sell, all-in-one desktops don't sell, and I've had people knock back my suggestion that they buy a Mac because Apple doesn't make what they want. Even knowing the problems they have with Windows, and even though they openly envy what I get from my Mac, it's not compelling enough for them to buy hardware that is that radically different from what they already have. If you look at the PC market as a whole, all-in-one boxes and minimalist PCs are a fringe market, and the conventional desktop with expansion slots is mainstream.
I don't think it matters *why* no other company but Apple seems to have maintained a line similar to the iMac or Mac mini for more than a couple of product cycles. I can talk about slots being insurance, about the fact that they already have a decent monitor, or because they don't want to risk losing their computer just because the monitor has failed, and I've been given all of these arguments, but they oooh and aaah over my Mac then go down to Best Buy and pick up a mini-tower.
It's not software any more. They're not risking being locked out of their Windows applications. It's simply that they see the whole Mac hardware line as being "not for them".
In the current market, the people who are willing to make do with what Apple is selling are the fringe.
And that's not even starting on the fact that even with boot camp a gamer isn't going to buy a computer that they can't upgrade the video in. And if you tell me that the driving force behind the personal computer market for the past 30 years is "fringe" I'm going to have to laugh at you. Really. It's in the unwritten Slashdot rules.
That still has nothing to do with the article. This is about spam coming from GMail. To the rest of the world. Via Google's outgoing SMTP servers.
I know it's probably against the unwritten Slashdot rules to Read The Fine Article (as someone just pointed out in another thread) but in this case it really is worthwhile.
Why can't a company create a product for the market they want?
They can. But if there's unmet demand (for example, for a conventional desktop Mac) people will meet it.
I have more custom built Linux systems in my home and in my place of employment than I do Mac or Windows systems.
And I'm one of the original 386BSD patchkit developers, and was a FreeBSD committer for many years, and I'm working on Linux-based software in my day job, so I've learned how to code and I can make the OS something I like... but I still want a conventional desktop Mac. Apple hasn't made one of those since around 1997, and I stretched my "beige G4" out as long as I could before finally settling for a Mac mini.
Look... people don't buy computers to run operating systems, they buy them to run applications, and I'm no exception, and no matter what I do to FreeBSD or Linux it's not going to get Windows developers to write their applications for UNIX. I've fought that battle one way or another since I was doing code monkey scripting for 4BSD at Berkeley, and contributing ports of UNIX libraries to Dr Dobbs Journal, and moderating Usenet sources groups... and after almost 30 years even hardcore open source guys can figure that one out.
I'm not going to go out and make a Hackintosh or buy a computer from a company like Psystar, but I understand why people do, and until Apple figures it out it's going to keep on happening.
I'm not talking about the battle Apple's fighting with competitors like Dell or HP.
I'm not talking about the battle Apple's fighting with Psystar.
I'm talking about the battle Apple's fighting with their own customers and potential customers.
And that one's never profitable. The only way to advance is to swallow your words (Jobs: no ugly monitors on nice Macs) and meet your customers needs (Jobs: BYODKM). The Mac mini was a strategic retreat that is clearly a victory in retrospect, but events have shown that they haven't gone nearly far enough.
Re:It's a big problem for gmail users!
on
Spammers Choose GMail
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What problems do you see with outgoing mail being filtered?
False positives. Even if you never send anything that's remotely spammy, you can still be caught by filters... I dig legitimate mail, including mail that doesn't look at all spammy to me, out of my google *incoming* filters on a regular basis.
I often think the biggest cost of spam has been the decreased reliability of email caused by spam filters making mistakes like that.
This has nothing to do with spam *to* GMail users, it's about spam *from* GMail users.
Real summary: spammers have cracked the CAPTCHA
on
Spammers Choose GMail
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· Score: 4, Informative
The summary implies that there's something wrong with the GMail spam filters. Actually, the problem is with the GMail spammer filters... the CAPTCHA.
Also, both Google and spammers are being overly complacent about people blocking GMail:
spammers also find Google attractive because of their strong reputation, which makes it highly unlikely the gmail.com domain would ever be blacklisted.
Actually, several sites have blocked Google SMTP hosts that show large spam outflow (it seems to be specific hosts, as if specific accounts are allocated to specific servers or clusters of servers). Including, and I know the irony is thick enough to cut with a knife, MSN Hotmail. There have even been a number of posts to Google's help forums complaining about mail not being sent because Google servers are being blacklisted.
It's a big problem for gmail users!
on
Spammers Choose GMail
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It's the outgoing spam from Gmail that's the problem, not the incoming spam, and there's been messages on the Gmail forums about Gmail servers being blocked for spam. If Google doesn't do something about it, then Gmail accounts will end up "read only".
And having Google themselves impose outgoing spam filtering is something else to worry about, if you're a Gmail user.
Other than AIM, I guess, I don't know offhand of anything that AOL owns that's worthwhile. Mapquest, maybe... I can't see anything else off their home page that's really compelling...
Clear your history, religiously, or... even better... lock your computer, religiously. If you're concerned about this, there's probably other things in your browser history (or elsewhere in your computer) that you might not want to share.
McCreevey's most compelling argument for the extension is that, in his view, "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance, at least during his lifetime."
So if I'm a landscape gardner, and I work on your garden, I should be able to control your flowerbeds for the rest of my life?
Well then, it sounds like Obama's site reflects the world as it actually exists: there has been a significant reduction in US casualties in the past month.
I won't speculate about why some people might find the idea that a politician might actually pay attention to the world outside his own head disturbing.
The iMac is a conventional desktop as far as Apple is concerned.
I understand that. The point of this discussion though has nothing to do with whether Apple is "right" or "wrong", or what should be conventional, I am simply answering the OP's question: "where is the demand for things like the Psystar box coming from?". And one of the sources is the disconnect between what Apple supplies and what the market demands. There really is a huge demand for what actually is conventional (as opposed to what Apple believes should be conventional), and Apple isn't filling it. If Apple doesn't want to fight this battle over and over again, then they can only win by surrendering.
All Macs are expandable, although some require a bit of work.
The Mac mini and Macbook have crippled GPUs, these can not be replaced or upgraded. The Macbook Pro does not have any user accessible internal expansion other than the memory (no, it does not have a swappable hard drive, let alone a swappable optical drive bay).
iMac + Radeon HD 2600 PRO = 1337.
iMac is not a compact Mac, nor a conventional desktop. The only conventional desktop Apple has is the Mac mini, and it's crippled.
By Mac mini Pro, you're pretty much imagining a Cube
Except without being more than twice as expensive as a comparable wintel box. The cube was drastically overpriced, costing more than a G4 tower, and apparently was supposed to succeed purely on its looks because it was far less computer than the G4.
Also, the MacBook Air will probably take advantage of Atom and up it's specs to better compete with the ThinkPad
The kind of Thinkpad I'm talking about costs less than the Macbook (non pro, non air), but has a real GPU, a better keyboard than any Apple laptop, two (actual, usable) buttons on the trackpad, a trackpoint mouse, an optical ultrabay (so you can swap out the optical drive, or replace it with a hard drive caddy or an extra battery), a docking port[1], and a physically more rigid case. Oh, and it doesn't have that stupid 'magsafe' connector that keeps pulling out of my Macbook Pro when I'm using it as an actual laptop.
You ask for a conventional, average-specced desktop, then you ask for, essentially, a tiny Mac Pro.
Um, that would be "no, that's not what I'm asking for". A Mac Pro is an 8 core ultra-high-end workstation. I'm talking about a 2 core desktop, comparable to the kind of box you can get (except for Mac OS X, of course) for $300-$400 from anyone but Apple[2]. I'm not sure where you get 'a tiny Mac pro' from that.
[1] Of course a docking station is not available for any Mac laptop, and no the "bookendz" monstrosity doesn't count. [2] With Apple's 40% markup that would still be cheaper than the Mac mini.
But still, what would be the point in having Mac clones ?
Well, let's see... people looking for something that Apple doesn't currently produce could get a computer with OS X on it that fit those requirements.
Like... a conventional desktop with expansion slots.
Like... a laptop with a two-button trackpad and a decent keyboard.
Like... a laptop with a swappable drive bay. Or multiple hard drives.
Like... a compact Mac with a high performance hard drive and a real GPU.
Or, Apple could just quit being so damn insistent on making everything subservient to "style", and cut the market out from under the would-be clone makers by adding a couple of products to their product line... a "Mac mini Pro" for the desktop (it could even be cubical!) and a Thinkpad-equivalent laptop.
Why, there are many "professional" uses for a video capture device.
Indeed, and if you're one of the small number of professionals who need one you're probably not going to want Windows Server, but for most people that's hardly relevant.
It's not like people are going to do this routinely for home computers, anyway, given the price of Windows Server.
Add your little sister who breaks in your room wanting to chat with her friends [...]
My little brother has his own Vista PC... I know, because I helped him select it... and lives halfway around the world from me. My daughter has her own Mac mini... and her own apartment.
Not trying to distract you from your main point about simultaneous inventions, but there's a bit of apparent confusion in your opening sentence. Perhaps you understand this point and were merely simplifying, in which case I apologize, but as written this propagates an unfortunate misunderstanding:
I think I understand the thinking behind having patents - as a way to prevent others from profiting from a patent owner's hard work on researching and implementing a solution to some problem merely by seeing their solution and copying it.
The patent system is not there to reward hard work. That's the mechanism it uses, but it's not its purpose.
The purpose of the patent system is to promote innovation. It does this two ways: by creating an incentive to reward innovation, and to ensure the publication of the innovation so that others can build on it. These means are often confused with the end, but it is the end that justifies them... if the goal is no longer met, there's no reason for retaining the mechanisms created to allow its attainment.
THERE IS A REASON WHY SO MANY PEOPLE USE WINDOWS XP!
Yeh, it's because Microsoft charged too much for Windows 2000. There's damn little difference between XP and 2000 under the hood: XP is more like "Windows 2000 Plus Pack".
The only reason for XP was marketing. Calling it a new OS and bundling an ugly theme and some third party software let them sell a lower priced "home" version with crippled networking and stronger copy protection.
The server line, 2003 and 2008, seem have less of the Windows XP taint, let alone the Vista infestation.
paying 30% over the odds for an Apple Mac purely because it looks pretty.
Life's too short for dual-booting. I'd rather have the UNIX operating system and consumer applications at the same time, thanks. Paying 40% more is cheaper than paying 100% more for a second computer.
Slashdot Mirror
To anyone who actually cares about XP vs Vista (Joe Consumer is probably just going to take Vista or whatever, and doesn't care), don't you already have tons of copies of XP already around?
1. Joe Consumer wants XP. I recently directed a "Joe Consumer" friend of mine through the steps needed to get a laptop with XP on it, because that's what he wanted.
2. I don't have "tons of copies" of XP around. Just Windows 2000. I've already been through this with XP, and still haven't seen a compelling reason to upgrade other than "Microsoft wants to force me to". Unfortunately it looks like my next Wintendo is going to be a choice between XP and Vista, thanks to drivers that refuse to install on Windows 2000.
3. Yes, I absolutely have no problem rewarding Microsoft by paying four times as much for retail XP Pro because they think DRM is a really nifty idea (that's sarcasm, by the way, if you're American or otherwise obsessively literal minded).
Vista is about as big of a leap as going from virgin XP to XP SP2.
Vista is in many ways a bigger leap than going from NT3 to NT4 or Windows 2000 to XP.
It's got a whole new set of user interface controls that are unarguably worse than what they replaced, and you can't go back. There's no "go back to menus" option: you can bring them back, sort of, in some applications... but not all. Windows hasn't had that happen since... hmm. Microsoft hasn't tried to remove a fundamental user interface control from Windows ever, so far as I can recall. And that's just on the surface... the deep changes are even bigger and nastier (and completely inappropriate for a professional OS, too).
I still haven't made the leap from 2000 to XP at home. The only reason I'd do that would be if the alternative was Vista. There's no reason not to stick with XP indefinitely other than "Microsoft is forcing us to switch".
Conventional desktops don't need expansion slots.
Yeh, I know the Apple fan "conventional wisdom"... but desktops without expansion slots don't sell, all-in-one desktops don't sell, and I've had people knock back my suggestion that they buy a Mac because Apple doesn't make what they want. Even knowing the problems they have with Windows, and even though they openly envy what I get from my Mac, it's not compelling enough for them to buy hardware that is that radically different from what they already have. If you look at the PC market as a whole, all-in-one boxes and minimalist PCs are a fringe market, and the conventional desktop with expansion slots is mainstream.
I don't think it matters *why* no other company but Apple seems to have maintained a line similar to the iMac or Mac mini for more than a couple of product cycles. I can talk about slots being insurance, about the fact that they already have a decent monitor, or because they don't want to risk losing their computer just because the monitor has failed, and I've been given all of these arguments, but they oooh and aaah over my Mac then go down to Best Buy and pick up a mini-tower.
It's not software any more. They're not risking being locked out of their Windows applications. It's simply that they see the whole Mac hardware line as being "not for them".
In the current market, the people who are willing to make do with what Apple is selling are the fringe.
And that's not even starting on the fact that even with boot camp a gamer isn't going to buy a computer that they can't upgrade the video in. And if you tell me that the driving force behind the personal computer market for the past 30 years is "fringe" I'm going to have to laugh at you. Really. It's in the unwritten Slashdot rules.
That still has nothing to do with the article. This is about spam coming from GMail. To the rest of the world. Via Google's outgoing SMTP servers.
I know it's probably against the unwritten Slashdot rules to Read The Fine Article (as someone just pointed out in another thread) but in this case it really is worthwhile.
*snort*
And I thought I'd seen every variant on the usual Slashdot in-jokes.
You win a gold star.
Why can't a company create a product for the market they want?
They can. But if there's unmet demand (for example, for a conventional desktop Mac) people will meet it.
I have more custom built Linux systems in my home and in my place of employment than I do Mac or Windows systems.
And I'm one of the original 386BSD patchkit developers, and was a FreeBSD committer for many years, and I'm working on Linux-based software in my day job, so I've learned how to code and I can make the OS something I like... but I still want a conventional desktop Mac. Apple hasn't made one of those since around 1997, and I stretched my "beige G4" out as long as I could before finally settling for a Mac mini.
Look... people don't buy computers to run operating systems, they buy them to run applications, and I'm no exception, and no matter what I do to FreeBSD or Linux it's not going to get Windows developers to write their applications for UNIX. I've fought that battle one way or another since I was doing code monkey scripting for 4BSD at Berkeley, and contributing ports of UNIX libraries to Dr Dobbs Journal, and moderating Usenet sources groups... and after almost 30 years even hardcore open source guys can figure that one out.
I'm not going to go out and make a Hackintosh or buy a computer from a company like Psystar, but I understand why people do, and until Apple figures it out it's going to keep on happening.
It's a rather profitable battle to fight.
I'm not talking about the battle Apple's fighting with competitors like Dell or HP.
I'm not talking about the battle Apple's fighting with Psystar.
I'm talking about the battle Apple's fighting with their own customers and potential customers.
And that one's never profitable. The only way to advance is to swallow your words (Jobs: no ugly monitors on nice Macs) and meet your customers needs (Jobs: BYODKM). The Mac mini was a strategic retreat that is clearly a victory in retrospect, but events have shown that they haven't gone nearly far enough.
What problems do you see with outgoing mail being filtered?
False positives. Even if you never send anything that's remotely spammy, you can still be caught by filters... I dig legitimate mail, including mail that doesn't look at all spammy to me, out of my google *incoming* filters on a regular basis.
I often think the biggest cost of spam has been the decreased reliability of email caused by spam filters making mistakes like that.
Most of the comments on this page are about *incoming* spam to google, when the article itself is about *outgoing* spam from google.
This has nothing to do with spam *to* GMail users, it's about spam *from* GMail users.
The summary implies that there's something wrong with the GMail spam filters. Actually, the problem is with the GMail spammer filters... the CAPTCHA.
Also, both Google and spammers are being overly complacent about people blocking GMail:
Actually, several sites have blocked Google SMTP hosts that show large spam outflow (it seems to be specific hosts, as if specific accounts are allocated to specific servers or clusters of servers). Including, and I know the irony is thick enough to cut with a knife, MSN Hotmail. There have even been a number of posts to Google's help forums complaining about mail not being sent because Google servers are being blacklisted.
It's the outgoing spam from Gmail that's the problem, not the incoming spam, and there's been messages on the Gmail forums about Gmail servers being blocked for spam. If Google doesn't do something about it, then Gmail accounts will end up "read only".
And having Google themselves impose outgoing spam filtering is something else to worry about, if you're a Gmail user.
Other than AIM, I guess, I don't know offhand of anything that AOL owns that's worthwhile. Mapquest, maybe... I can't see anything else off their home page that's really compelling...
Clear your history, religiously, or... even better... lock your computer, religiously. If you're concerned about this, there's probably other things in your browser history (or elsewhere in your computer) that you might not want to share.
McCreevey's most compelling argument for the extension is that, in his view, "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance, at least during his lifetime."
So if I'm a landscape gardner, and I work on your garden, I should be able to control your flowerbeds for the rest of my life?
Hell yes. Gotta get Cuba hooked on Youtube ASAP.
Well then, it sounds like Obama's site reflects the world as it actually exists: there has been a significant reduction in US casualties in the past month.
I won't speculate about why some people might find the idea that a politician might actually pay attention to the world outside his own head disturbing.
The iMac is a conventional desktop as far as Apple is concerned.
I understand that. The point of this discussion though has nothing to do with whether Apple is "right" or "wrong", or what should be conventional, I am simply answering the OP's question: "where is the demand for things like the Psystar box coming from?". And one of the sources is the disconnect between what Apple supplies and what the market demands. There really is a huge demand for what actually is conventional (as opposed to what Apple believes should be conventional), and Apple isn't filling it. If Apple doesn't want to fight this battle over and over again, then they can only win by surrendering.
All Macs are expandable, although some require a bit of work.
The Mac mini and Macbook have crippled GPUs, these can not be replaced or upgraded. The Macbook Pro does not have any user accessible internal expansion other than the memory (no, it does not have a swappable hard drive, let alone a swappable optical drive bay).
iMac + Radeon HD 2600 PRO = 1337.
iMac is not a compact Mac, nor a conventional desktop. The only conventional desktop Apple has is the Mac mini, and it's crippled.
By Mac mini Pro, you're pretty much imagining a Cube
Except without being more than twice as expensive as a comparable wintel box. The cube was drastically overpriced, costing more than a G4 tower, and apparently was supposed to succeed purely on its looks because it was far less computer than the G4.
Also, the MacBook Air will probably take advantage of Atom and up it's specs to better compete with the ThinkPad
The kind of Thinkpad I'm talking about costs less than the Macbook (non pro, non air), but has a real GPU, a better keyboard than any Apple laptop, two (actual, usable) buttons on the trackpad, a trackpoint mouse, an optical ultrabay (so you can swap out the optical drive, or replace it with a hard drive caddy or an extra battery), a docking port[1], and a physically more rigid case. Oh, and it doesn't have that stupid 'magsafe' connector that keeps pulling out of my Macbook Pro when I'm using it as an actual laptop.
You ask for a conventional, average-specced desktop, then you ask for, essentially, a tiny Mac Pro.
Um, that would be "no, that's not what I'm asking for". A Mac Pro is an 8 core ultra-high-end workstation. I'm talking about a 2 core desktop, comparable to the kind of box you can get (except for Mac OS X, of course) for $300-$400 from anyone but Apple[2]. I'm not sure where you get 'a tiny Mac pro' from that.
[1] Of course a docking station is not available for any Mac laptop, and no the "bookendz" monstrosity doesn't count.
[2] With Apple's 40% markup that would still be cheaper than the Mac mini.
But still, what would be the point in having Mac clones ?
Well, let's see... people looking for something that Apple doesn't currently produce could get a computer with OS X on it that fit those requirements.
Like... a conventional desktop with expansion slots.
Like... a laptop with a two-button trackpad and a decent keyboard.
Like... a laptop with a swappable drive bay. Or multiple hard drives.
Like... a compact Mac with a high performance hard drive and a real GPU.
Or, Apple could just quit being so damn insistent on making everything subservient to "style", and cut the market out from under the would-be clone makers by adding a couple of products to their product line... a "Mac mini Pro" for the desktop (it could even be cubical!) and a Thinkpad-equivalent laptop.
Why, there are many "professional" uses for a video capture device.
Indeed, and if you're one of the small number of professionals who need one you're probably not going to want Windows Server, but for most people that's hardly relevant.
It's not like people are going to do this routinely for home computers, anyway, given the price of Windows Server.
Add your little sister who breaks in your room wanting to chat with her friends [...]
My little brother has his own Vista PC... I know, because I helped him select it... and lives halfway around the world from me. My daughter has her own Mac mini... and her own apartment.
So, has there been news out of Iraq in the past couple of weeks that indicate a bigger reduction in violence? Does this change reflect reality or not?
Not trying to distract you from your main point about simultaneous inventions, but there's a bit of apparent confusion in your opening sentence. Perhaps you understand this point and were merely simplifying, in which case I apologize, but as written this propagates an unfortunate misunderstanding:
I think I understand the thinking behind having patents - as a way to prevent others from profiting from a patent owner's hard work on researching and implementing a solution to some problem merely by seeing their solution and copying it.
The patent system is not there to reward hard work. That's the mechanism it uses, but it's not its purpose.
The purpose of the patent system is to promote innovation. It does this two ways: by creating an incentive to reward innovation, and to ensure the publication of the innovation so that others can build on it. These means are often confused with the end, but it is the end that justifies them... if the goal is no longer met, there's no reason for retaining the mechanisms created to allow its attainment.
The word is "workstation", not "playstation". If you want a "wintendo" you're not on the same page.
THERE IS A REASON WHY SO MANY PEOPLE USE WINDOWS XP!
Yeh, it's because Microsoft charged too much for Windows 2000. There's damn little difference between XP and 2000 under the hood: XP is more like "Windows 2000 Plus Pack".
The only reason for XP was marketing. Calling it a new OS and bundling an ugly theme and some third party software let them sell a lower priced "home" version with crippled networking and stronger copy protection.
The server line, 2003 and 2008, seem have less of the Windows XP taint, let alone the Vista infestation.
paying 30% over the odds for an Apple Mac purely because it looks pretty.
Life's too short for dual-booting. I'd rather have the UNIX operating system and consumer applications at the same time, thanks. Paying 40% more is cheaper than paying 100% more for a second computer.