This seems a lot better than Divx to me. I mean, you don't have to "subscribe" to this, and have your DVD player connected to a phone line 24/7. You don't have to worry about "upgrading" your disc so that you can view it over and over, since it's not an option. I think this eliminates a lot of "temptation" that Divx users might have had to pay and re-view a movie, and I think this is a good thing. I don't know that I would ever buy any of these (I don't even have a DVD player, for one thing), but at least this will play in standard DVD players, as well as, I assume, computers. I think it's not a bad idea since the privacy issue (ie, Divx could track what you watch and sell that info to whomever would want it) is moot.
This could be a new form of copy protection for DVD-ROMs, as well. Install a program and the disc self-destructs... that's not so good.
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
My girlfriend was accepted to Columbia's Teacher's College. She told me there was no way she would attend if she did not get housing (else she would have to make a 4 hour commute from eastern long island to class) and now that she HAS housing, she has found out that the building she will be living in may not have Ethernet. That, she has told me, will be the deciding factor in whether or not she accepts housing. What is the point of a dorm, she asks, if it doesn't have a fat pipe running through it? And I wholeheartedly agree. The ONLY advantage I see of living on-campus is the Bandwidth. Well, also financial aid can cover the cost of on-campus housing, so those are two things. But I would much rather live off-campus, in a private apartment. But the price of xDSL/Cable/ISDN/other-high-bandwidth is so prohibitive... and the ethernet (sadly, only 10mbps in my dorm... then again I think the entire school here only has 2 T1s en total) is so addictive. Pages often load faster from remote servers than they do from my hard drive, defeating the purpose of the hd cache!
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I don't want to post a "me too," but this is exactly what I was thinking. Gates will be able to lead the best submicrosoft. Ballmer would have been CEO of the other one anyway, so this just seems like almost a publicity stunt. Maybe this is the first step in some MS settlement strategy? Maybe if they break MS up the way THEY want they can head off the government splitting them up the way THEY want.
I love the "Breaking up this company is such a terrible idea!!" comments from Ballmer.
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Nevermind violence. Sex is the true enemy of Western Society. This is so painfully obvious that it is, in fact, nauseating. And it is so immensely hypocritical.
McCain seems to be nothing more than a staunchly conservative Republican with fantastically backward-looking ideas. And for that, he will never have my vote.
Does he even know what he is talking about? I can assume the answer to that question just by the way he acts. "Oh, kids can see porn? Well, let's stop that right now. How do we stop it? Well, there is a computer program that stops it... Well then, we must simply require that all schools install this software on their computers. What? The software does not work as expected? Oh well, it looks good to the voters."
He seems to do things that must know are wrong, but does them just because they make him look more conservative. I guess Bush is trying to become more moderate so McCain is trying to be more conservative.
But the underlying hypocrisy of porn being the worst evil of them all, spouted by all conservatives as well as supposed "family" organizations, is one of the most disgusting facets of our culture. Let's consider a porn movie. Two adults having sex. Let's forget oral, anal, or any bizarre sex acts. Just two people having sex. Now, how can that be illegal when everybody does it?? And how can it be illegal when many of us look at what is being done in the movie and hope that one day our children will be lucky enough to partake in this activity? But still, despite all the hype that would lead one to think otherwise, we have movies, tv shows, and movies on tv that show people getting shot, beat up, drowned, whatever. An activity in which we hope none of us or our children ever partake. It's so hypocritical.
Violence in the media, Porn, these are just the buzzwords of today. The South Park movie was one of the best political statements I have ever seen. A movie can be shown on TV where a guy stands in the center of town and picks people off, one by one, with an uzi, and nobody cares. But I say Shit, piss, cocksucker, cunt, motherfucker, fuck, or tits, and I get a huge fine. Or I show an erect penis or a vagina, one of which at least 99.99999% of the world's population has, and I get a huge fine.
These taboos make no sense. And nobody wants to even consider attempting to change society's views towards these things. Rather, we should keep these horrible ideas (i.e. sex) bottled up, kept behind the closed doors of our bedrooms. Wouldn't want anybody to know what a vagina looks like, for god's sake.
Now, mass murder, that's another story. We can talk and show that ad nauseum. We'll pay violence lip service but really, we don't care about guns in movies. In fact, guns are good! We love guns! And all the money we get from the gunmakers! Yes, guns are nice! But violence, nonono, badbadbad. But guns, great! Sex? nononono. Except for my mistress here. And my stack of Hustlers. And my porno tape collection. And all my goods from adulttoys.com...
Ahh, hypocrisy. But who am I to talk.
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I've been reading all over the place that "If AOL doesn't devise a broadband strategy soon, it's going to fail," or things to that effect. Well, here it is. Time Warner's Road Runner Cable Modem service (which will surely soon become AOL Road Runner, or something else like it). I guess this isn't groundbreaking news, but people have been whining for months that AOL didn't have a "broadband strategy," and now we can see that they had far greater plans indeed...
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I already stated my "fear" in another post, but having more time to think about it caused me to realize just how much control this new company will have.
Let's say, for example (and, yes, I know this is super-far-fetched), that Steve Case gets a little power-happy and wants to scare the American People. AOL's Welcome Screen, CNN, all of AOL/TW's Media outlets proclaim "China Launches Nukes," citing anonymous sources. Seeing these reports in numerous media outlets, other non-AOL media, the Times, the Globe, the WSJ, etc., all begin reporting that CNN and AOL are reporting nukes, etc. Panic ensues.
Like I said, I realize this is extremely far-fetched. But what if enemies of the United States were somehow able to gain influence over this new conglomeration, which has such an incredible pull on what we, the American public, know? Selective reporting and editing can influence the masses in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While I don't think Steve Case or the TW guy has any plans to destroy America, I don't think it's healthy having all the media controlled by a single entity. The whole idea behind the Internet was to have things decentralized so that if a part were ever to shut down the rest could continue. What happens if all of AOL goes down?
It just seems scary to have to rely on the good will of a small group of people for the entire information distribution system of the nation.
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I know this won't add much to the discussion, but... holy shit! After picking my jaw off the ground I thought about it and I have to side with Roblimo. This is going to be one huge, scary company. I think at this point AOL owns about 20% of the sites in my bookmarks, including CNN.com. You know what they say about controlling the media...
It doesn't really seem too horrible, but who knows.
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Having never seen a DTV or HDTV or anything other than my 13 inch sony basically, can anyone comment on how much better DTV and its cohorts are than standard TV? I mean, the picture on my tv seems fine to me. Is there a compelling reason to switch to the new thing? I mean, for all the TV I watch I'd be content with a 3 inch watchman.
Just give me my Star Trek reruns, VH1's Rock Show and Behind the Music, and I'm pretty much set...
Also, is this difference something you can see from 10 - 20 feet away, or do you have to be sitting right in front of it to bask in its digital superiority?
______________________________________ um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I don't understand the obsession governments have with regulating the speed of everybody's cars. If I am a good driver, why can't I go 80 miles per hour on an interstate? Of course I realize the need to keep everyone from zooming around school zones and residential neighborhoods, but do these people have any clue how *slow* 20 mph is, especially when you're slowing down from 40 or 50?
And what about the utter hypocrisy of speed limits? I've never seen a cop on the road who obeyed the speed limit, whatever it may have been. Local, County, State cops. All of them speed whenever they want and then park their cars on the median, pull out the lidar, and nab anybody doing 62 in a 55. What I love is the signs all over the LIE that say "State Speed Limit: 55" but then when I went up the NYS Thruway a couple of years ago, there were signs that read: "Speed Limit: 65." So the absolute maximum speed limit for the state is 55, unless it's not.
I think the driver's test should be modified to include some highway driving -- I don't think everybody is a good high-speed driver -- and the speed limit should be raised to 70 nationwide. Also, something has got to be done about the fines levied upon these heartless criminals who dare use their automobiles to their full potential. For example, When I came home from college this past September, I was stopped on I-95 in Connecticut in my mom's Volvo station wagon (loaded to the brim with bike, refrigerator, clothes, lamps, desktop computer, 17 inch monitor, tv, etc.). The officer said I was doing 77 (speed limit was 65). I tried explaining that I didn't think the car would go that fast, but he wrote the ticket anyway. I didn't look at it until I got home (Queens now) but when I did I was shocked. The officer was allowed to make up any fine he wanted, and he gave me a single ticket for $239. For going 77 in a 65, on an interstate. Well, I hit the roof, but I had to pay it.
The nation-wide, and, it seems, world-wide crackdown on speeders seems to me nothing more than government-sanctioned extortion. This, coupled with the hypocrisy of the police who so selectively enforce these laws, demonstrates the need for change. I don't really know what can change or be changed, I only know something must.
(I have nothing against police, mind you, I just think it's wrong for them to charge whatever they want of us [well, me, really] for a "crime" they commit several times a day.)
I understand that Slashdot is, technically, a "free forum," where people write things for others to read, but it clearly states down at the bottom of the page that "Comments are owned by the Poster."
So I really don't see how they can just take comments from Slashdot and make a news story out of them (from which both MSNBC and the author, Alan Boyle, are profiting) without first asking for the permission of the comments' authors.
Especially in a story such as the one on MSNBC, in which the comments are the story, I strongly feel that the posters' permission should be granted before the comments are mashed up and spit out in a for-profit form. And if Alan Boyle is making money from my comments, he should also be paying me.
I doubt the media will ever reimburse us for our comments, regardless of what we say, but is it so hard for them to ask permission first? I mean, people can get sued now for posting things to financial message boards, so maybe we can sue MSNBC for exploiting our comments. Well... maybe not.
PS - None of my comments were used in any of the stories.
"Hi Jim? This is Tom, over at Janes. That article you wrote on cyberterrorism?... Yeah, that one. Listen, we decided that it sucked so we're not going to run it after all....Well, in its place we're going to compile some articles from Slashdot.... Slashdot, you know, the website?... well the comments were much better than the article... Jim?"
Maybe this is a sign that Slashdot is what journalism will be like in the future.
Salon did the Dutch Auction / OpenIPO thing and their IPO was a rather dismal failure. Then again, they're not as big as Slashdot, and nowhere near as big as Andover, so maybe they will have better results.
When this whole lawsuit thing began, or even before it, MS definitely had a monopoly. But that was so long ago. Now look at the changes that have occurred since the beginning of this craziness: Red Hat has become huge, AOL bought Netscape, Apple's stock practically doubled in the face of its new products (was the iMac introduced before or after this trial started?), and countless other changes have occurred.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't still have an unfair advantage, but I'm wondering what time frame this trial is supposed to be considering. Is the question, "Does Microsoft have a monopoly today?" or is it, "Did Microsoft have a monopoly in 1997 (or whenever this thing began)?" They are different questions, and I think we need to know which one is being asked (as does the judge) before making a decision.
Sony, the oft-forgotten codeveloper of IEEE 1394, markets its FireWire technology as iLink (since Apple owns the FireWire trademark). Most, if not all, Sony DV cams come with iLink, and most DV cams come with some form of 1394 capability. Check out 1394ta.org, Apple's FireWire Site, and Sony's site for more 1394 info and devices.
Remember, this is Sony we're talking about. They are far larger than Intel and I doubt they'll let a technology they helped develop just die. PSX2's going to have FireWire ports for external hard drives and stuff, I don't know about USB2. I doubt FireWire's going anywhere.
I see, you're in a bad mood, so you get to ruin everybody else's Slashdot experience. I'm sorry you didn't want to see people grieve over the death of someone they respected. Maybe when your mom dies or something you'll get some condolence cards describing how everybody wants to jizz on her face. Won't that be nice?
And I'm glad you've made some of the highest-ranked AC posts ever. That really makes you a good person. Or, more likely, you really know how to suckup to the moderators. Congratulations.
The PII and the PIII are the same chip, retard. That's why it was so easy.
Oh, all you have to do is get a new Motherboard and CPU??? Gee, isn't that basically like getting a new computer? All you have to do to upgrade from G3 to G4 is get a G4 motherboard, then, which apparently IBM has released.
Just out of curiosity, how much $ IS a quality PIII motherboard?
Uh, no. Why would I keep my computer on that long?
It never ceases to amaze me how Linux people find pleasure in bragging about how long their computer has been on. Unless you're running a web server or something mission critical, I have no idea why you would want to leave your computer on all day; especially with a terrible (I'm talking about energy saving here, people) OS like Linux. My computer goes to sleep after an hour and the screen shuts off after 15 minutes. Today's computers use so much power, I find it disgusting that people would waste that much energy and then have the nerve to brag about it.
So, no, I haven't had the computer on the entire time, but I've used it intensively (i.e. Photoshop, Netscape, GoLive, IE, Word, Acrobat, MacAmp all open at the same time) for 12+ hours at a time and STILL have never had a crash.
Anyway, I only mentioned that point to head off the losers who start coming down on MacOS when they realize that the hardware is superior.
"Copyright Begins With the Author at Creation At the time an original work is created in fixed form, copy-right is automatically secured. At that moment, all the rights in that copyright belong to the author of the work. Those rights remain with the author unless the author specifically transfers them, in writing, to someone else. Ownership of the rights can change, but the author of the work remains the same regardless of who subsequently owns the rights."
Do you think Intel is going to make it possible to upgrade your Pentium XVI to a Merced or a McKinley? Unless Apple specifically said that the computer would be upgradable to a G4, they have done nothing wrong. Sure, it sucks for the G3 owners. But Apples' upgradability isn't one of the more touted features. It has been known for a while by those "in the know" that the B&W G3s were not upgradable to G4. If anybody wanted a G4 that bad, they would have waited. I don't think anybody said "let me buy this G3 so that I can upgrade to a G4 later."
I'm not trying to say Apple can do no wrong, I'm saying that all the hypocrites out there need to go take a jump. The recurring theme I see on any Apple story posted to Slashdot is this inbred hatred of anything Apple does, with those who hate Apple saying "One more reason not to buy Apple's crap" or, my personal favorite, "When will Apple die?"
Y'all just can't cope with the fact that the system you were sure would die and were taught to hate from such a young age is now simply better. That's right, it's BETTER, and you can't deal with that fact. Say whatever you want about the OS; I've had my PowerBook for over a month and it hasn't crashed yet. But in the hardware arena, you simply can't beat Apple. Maybe you gamers who need voodoo whatever graphics cards will poo-poo that, but for serious work, the design of the system as a whole is much better than, say, Dell. And while I'm not a fan of the new plastics for the G3s, They look infinitely better than the disgusting Dell boxes.
Face it; Apple is here to stay. They may not make the right choices sometimes (see floppy drive, iMac mouse, etc.) but they're not going anywhere.
Wasn't this the plot of some (bad) horror movie recently released -- they genetically increased the intelligence of some sharks and the sharks all became Einsteins and killed everyone?
The iBook has a feature called "Save and shut down," or something to that effect, where the ram is saved as a file at the time of shutdown and thus can be started instantly in the exact state it was shut down. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Since the iBook isn't shipping yet, who knows.
Slashdot Mirror
This could be a new form of copy protection for DVD-ROMs, as well. Install a program and the disc self-destructs... that's not so good.
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um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I love the "Breaking up this company is such a terrible idea!!" comments from Ballmer.
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um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
McCain seems to be nothing more than a staunchly conservative Republican with fantastically backward-looking ideas. And for that, he will never have my vote.
Does he even know what he is talking about? I can assume the answer to that question just by the way he acts. "Oh, kids can see porn? Well, let's stop that right now. How do we stop it? Well, there is a computer program that stops it... Well then, we must simply require that all schools install this software on their computers. What? The software does not work as expected? Oh well, it looks good to the voters."
He seems to do things that must know are wrong, but does them just because they make him look more conservative. I guess Bush is trying to become more moderate so McCain is trying to be more conservative.
But the underlying hypocrisy of porn being the worst evil of them all, spouted by all conservatives as well as supposed "family" organizations, is one of the most disgusting facets of our culture. Let's consider a porn movie. Two adults having sex. Let's forget oral, anal, or any bizarre sex acts. Just two people having sex. Now, how can that be illegal when everybody does it?? And how can it be illegal when many of us look at what is being done in the movie and hope that one day our children will be lucky enough to partake in this activity? But still, despite all the hype that would lead one to think otherwise, we have movies, tv shows, and movies on tv that show people getting shot, beat up, drowned, whatever. An activity in which we hope none of us or our children ever partake. It's so hypocritical.
Violence in the media, Porn, these are just the buzzwords of today. The South Park movie was one of the best political statements I have ever seen. A movie can be shown on TV where a guy stands in the center of town and picks people off, one by one, with an uzi, and nobody cares. But I say Shit, piss, cocksucker, cunt, motherfucker, fuck, or tits, and I get a huge fine. Or I show an erect penis or a vagina, one of which at least 99.99999% of the world's population has, and I get a huge fine.
These taboos make no sense. And nobody wants to even consider attempting to change society's views towards these things. Rather, we should keep these horrible ideas (i.e. sex) bottled up, kept behind the closed doors of our bedrooms. Wouldn't want anybody to know what a vagina looks like, for god's sake.
Now, mass murder, that's another story. We can talk and show that ad nauseum. We'll pay violence lip service but really, we don't care about guns in movies. In fact, guns are good! We love guns! And all the money we get from the gunmakers! Yes, guns are nice! But violence, nonono, badbadbad. But guns, great! Sex? nononono. Except for my mistress here. And my stack of Hustlers. And my porno tape collection. And all my goods from adulttoys.com...
Ahh, hypocrisy. But who am I to talk.
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Let's say, for example (and, yes, I know this is super-far-fetched), that Steve Case gets a little power-happy and wants to scare the American People. AOL's Welcome Screen, CNN, all of AOL/TW's Media outlets proclaim "China Launches Nukes," citing anonymous sources. Seeing these reports in numerous media outlets, other non-AOL media, the Times, the Globe, the WSJ, etc., all begin reporting that CNN and AOL are reporting nukes, etc. Panic ensues.
Like I said, I realize this is extremely far-fetched. But what if enemies of the United States were somehow able to gain influence over this new conglomeration, which has such an incredible pull on what we, the American public, know? Selective reporting and editing can influence the masses in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. While I don't think Steve Case or the TW guy has any plans to destroy America, I don't think it's healthy having all the media controlled by a single entity. The whole idea behind the Internet was to have things decentralized so that if a part were ever to shut down the rest could continue. What happens if all of AOL goes down?
It just seems scary to have to rely on the good will of a small group of people for the entire information distribution system of the nation.
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
It doesn't really seem too horrible, but who knows.
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Just give me my Star Trek reruns, VH1's Rock Show and Behind the Music, and I'm pretty much set...
Also, is this difference something you can see from 10 - 20 feet away, or do you have to be sitting right in front of it to bask in its digital superiority?
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
Is this for real???
______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?
I don't understand the obsession governments have with regulating the speed of everybody's cars. If I am a good driver, why can't I go 80 miles per hour on an interstate? Of course I realize the need to keep everyone from zooming around school zones and residential neighborhoods, but do these people have any clue how *slow* 20 mph is, especially when you're slowing down from 40 or 50?
And what about the utter hypocrisy of speed limits? I've never seen a cop on the road who obeyed the speed limit, whatever it may have been. Local, County, State cops. All of them speed whenever they want and then park their cars on the median, pull out the lidar, and nab anybody doing 62 in a 55. What I love is the signs all over the LIE that say "State Speed Limit: 55" but then when I went up the NYS Thruway a couple of years ago, there were signs that read: "Speed Limit: 65." So the absolute maximum speed limit for the state is 55, unless it's not.
I think the driver's test should be modified to include some highway driving -- I don't think everybody is a good high-speed driver -- and the speed limit should be raised to 70 nationwide. Also, something has got to be done about the fines levied upon these heartless criminals who dare use their automobiles to their full potential. For example, When I came home from college this past September, I was stopped on I-95 in Connecticut in my mom's Volvo station wagon (loaded to the brim with bike, refrigerator, clothes, lamps, desktop computer, 17 inch monitor, tv, etc.). The officer said I was doing 77 (speed limit was 65). I tried explaining that I didn't think the car would go that fast, but he wrote the ticket anyway. I didn't look at it until I got home (Queens now) but when I did I was shocked. The officer was allowed to make up any fine he wanted, and he gave me a single ticket for $239. For going 77 in a 65, on an interstate. Well, I hit the roof, but I had to pay it.
The nation-wide, and, it seems, world-wide crackdown on speeders seems to me nothing more than government-sanctioned extortion. This, coupled with the hypocrisy of the police who so selectively enforce these laws, demonstrates the need for change. I don't really know what can change or be changed, I only know something must.
(I have nothing against police, mind you, I just think it's wrong for them to charge whatever they want of us [well, me, really] for a "crime" they commit several times a day.)
This, in a Jon Katz article!
(cheap shot, I know, but I couldn't resist)
__________________________________________________ ___
I understand that Slashdot is, technically, a "free forum," where people write things for others to read, but it clearly states down at the bottom of the page that "Comments are owned by the Poster."
So I really don't see how they can just take comments from Slashdot and make a news story out of them (from which both MSNBC and the author, Alan Boyle, are profiting) without first asking for the permission of the comments' authors.
Especially in a story such as the one on MSNBC, in which the comments are the story, I strongly feel that the posters' permission should be granted before the comments are mashed up and spit out in a for-profit form. And if Alan Boyle is making money from my comments, he should also be paying me.
I doubt the media will ever reimburse us for our comments, regardless of what we say, but is it so hard for them to ask permission first? I mean, people can get sued now for posting things to financial message boards, so maybe we can sue MSNBC for exploiting our comments. Well... maybe not.
PS - None of my comments were used in any of the stories.
"Hi Jim? This is Tom, over at Janes. That article you wrote on cyberterrorism? ... Yeah, that one. Listen, we decided that it sucked so we're not going to run it after all. ...Well, in its place we're going to compile some articles from Slashdot. ... Slashdot, you know, the website? ... well the comments were much better than the article... Jim?"
Maybe this is a sign that Slashdot is what journalism will be like in the future.
Salon did the Dutch Auction / OpenIPO thing and their IPO was a rather dismal failure. Then again, they're not as big as Slashdot, and nowhere near as big as Andover, so maybe they will have better results.
When this whole lawsuit thing began, or even before it, MS definitely had a monopoly. But that was so long ago. Now look at the changes that have occurred since the beginning of this craziness: Red Hat has become huge, AOL bought Netscape, Apple's stock practically doubled in the face of its new products (was the iMac introduced before or after this trial started?), and countless other changes have occurred.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't still have an unfair advantage, but I'm wondering what time frame this trial is supposed to be considering. Is the question, "Does Microsoft have a monopoly today?" or is it, "Did Microsoft have a monopoly in 1997 (or whenever this thing began)?" They are different questions, and I think we need to know which one is being asked (as does the judge) before making a decision.
Yeah, that was from the Ottowa Linux Symposium of 8/15/99. This is the Slashdot story that linked to the collection originally.
Sony, the oft-forgotten codeveloper of IEEE 1394, markets its FireWire technology as iLink (since Apple owns the FireWire trademark). Most, if not all, Sony DV cams come with iLink, and most DV cams come with some form of 1394 capability. Check out 1394ta.org, Apple's FireWire Site, and Sony's site for more 1394 info and devices.
Remember, this is Sony we're talking about. They are far larger than Intel and I doubt they'll let a technology they helped develop just die. PSX2's going to have FireWire ports for external hard drives and stuff, I don't know about USB2. I doubt FireWire's going anywhere.
I see, you're in a bad mood, so you get to ruin everybody else's Slashdot experience. I'm sorry you didn't want to see people grieve over the death of someone they respected. Maybe when your mom dies or something you'll get some condolence cards describing how everybody wants to jizz on her face. Won't that be nice?
And I'm glad you've made some of the highest-ranked AC posts ever. That really makes you a good person. Or, more likely, you really know how to suckup to the moderators. Congratulations.
The PII and the PIII are the same chip, retard. That's why it was so easy.
Oh, all you have to do is get a new Motherboard and CPU??? Gee, isn't that basically like getting a new computer? All you have to do to upgrade from G3 to G4 is get a G4 motherboard, then, which apparently IBM has released.
Just out of curiosity, how much $ IS a quality PIII motherboard?
Uh, no. Why would I keep my computer on that long?
It never ceases to amaze me how Linux people find pleasure in bragging about how long their computer has been on. Unless you're running a web server or something mission critical, I have no idea why you would want to leave your computer on all day; especially with a terrible (I'm talking about energy saving here, people) OS like Linux. My computer goes to sleep after an hour and the screen shuts off after 15 minutes. Today's computers use so much power, I find it disgusting that people would waste that much energy and then have the nerve to brag about it.
So, no, I haven't had the computer on the entire time, but I've used it intensively (i.e. Photoshop, Netscape, GoLive, IE, Word, Acrobat, MacAmp all open at the same time) for 12+ hours at a time and STILL have never had a crash.
Anyway, I only mentioned that point to head off the losers who start coming down on MacOS when they realize that the hardware is superior.
"Copyright Begins With the Author at Creation
At the time an original work is created in fixed form, copy-right
is automatically secured. At that moment, all the rights
in that copyright belong to the author of the work. Those
rights remain with the author unless the author specifically
transfers them, in writing, to someone else. Ownership of
the rights can change, but the author of the work remains
the same regardless of who subsequently owns the rights."
Get the entire thing from this PDF.
I think the OpenContent License, mentioned above, is probably the best solution to this guy's problem.
Do you think Intel is going to make it possible to upgrade your Pentium XVI to a Merced or a McKinley? Unless Apple specifically said that the computer would be upgradable to a G4, they have done nothing wrong. Sure, it sucks for the G3 owners. But Apples' upgradability isn't one of the more touted features. It has been known for a while by those "in the know" that the B&W G3s were not upgradable to G4. If anybody wanted a G4 that bad, they would have waited. I don't think anybody said "let me buy this G3 so that I can upgrade to a G4 later."
I'm not trying to say Apple can do no wrong, I'm saying that all the hypocrites out there need to go take a jump. The recurring theme I see on any Apple story posted to Slashdot is this inbred hatred of anything Apple does, with those who hate Apple saying "One more reason not to buy Apple's crap" or, my personal favorite, "When will Apple die?"
Y'all just can't cope with the fact that the system you were sure would die and were taught to hate from such a young age is now simply better. That's right, it's BETTER, and you can't deal with that fact. Say whatever you want about the OS; I've had my PowerBook for over a month and it hasn't crashed yet. But in the hardware arena, you simply can't beat Apple. Maybe you gamers who need voodoo whatever graphics cards will poo-poo that, but for serious work, the design of the system as a whole is much better than, say, Dell. And while I'm not a fan of the new plastics for the G3s, They look infinitely better than the disgusting Dell boxes.
Face it; Apple is here to stay. They may not make the right choices sometimes (see floppy drive, iMac mouse, etc.) but they're not going anywhere.
Wasn't this the plot of some (bad) horror movie recently released -- they genetically increased the intelligence of some sharks and the sharks all became Einsteins and killed everyone?
When will we learn.
At least Wired listens to readers and admits when they're wrong... and they obviously read Slashdot.
The iBook has a feature called "Save and shut down," or something to that effect, where the ram is saved as a file at the time of shutdown and thus can be started instantly in the exact state it was shut down. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Since the iBook isn't shipping yet, who knows.