It is not physically impossible to exit a spinning aircraft. Get rid of the canopy first, unstrap, push away. G-force loads are to the side, it might be difficult but you should be able to do something like roll out. I've never done it, but then neither have you.
CFI-G here. In the United States, parachutes are required when doing aerobatics (if anyone other than "required flight crew members" (i.e. the pilot) is on board). In addition, in most glider contests, pilots are required to use parachutes (by contest rules, not Federal Regulations).
The PW-5, a Polish glider, has a requirement in the operating manual that a parachute be worn. The Experimental Type Certificate that it was on in the United States required adherence to the operating manual, thus wearing a parachute is required while flying a PW-5. As far as we can tell, getting it re-certified with a Standard Airworthiness Certificate doesn't change the situation.
Other than that, we never use parachutes (I'm not sure most people would fit in a 2-33 wearing even a chair-style parachute), and of the few other glider operations I've visited, they didn't use parachutes either. It is likely that if you're asked to put on a parachute for a glider ride, they're going to be doing aerobatics.
I don't think that, even if the contract can be properly read to have required IBM to turn over copyright to SCO of any modifications made to SysV, that it would make a difference in whether Linux infringes. If there is no ORIGINAL SysV code in Linux, only code that IBM was contractually obligated to turn over to SCO, then there is no infringement because IBM gave permission by releasing it under the GPL. As IBM had the copyright, they had the right to do so. Until the copyright is turned over to SCO with a WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT, the copyright still belongs to IBM. A contractual obligation to make that assignment doesn't change anything until IBM complies with that obligation. They may be liable for damages, for having damaged the value of the copyrights they were supposed to assign, but it's too late to try to "undo" the release of code already properly released under the GPL. Or at least, that's what I'd think if I was a lawyer, which I'm not.
The biggest problem he seemed to have was that he wanted to make sure everyone would get paid the appropriate royalties for each little bit. Click a link to a commentary about a paragraph, you pay micro-cents to the person who wrote the original paragraph, the person who wrote the commentary, and the person who created the link that you used to get there. Without all that, the system would have already been done by now.
With true immortality, Darwinian selection will occur without the need for reproduction. Those people who choose to not live forever will soon die out.
Unless you only have one video source, you probably want to do that anyway. Even if you have multiple video inputs on the display, you want the sound to follow the video. So either you connect the audio/video from each device to the amp, and send the video to the display (and do the switching in the amp), or send the audio/video to the display and send the audio to the amp.
My preference is for a straight monitor that does nothing but display a video signal. All the processing/switching is done in the receiver, including a TV tuner (which would do any closed captioning, for instance). No speaker in the "TV", it is JUST a monitor. Sending everything to the receiver first also means I can route stuff out to other devices besides the TV - e.g. copy from Replay to VCR.
But then HDCP comes along and screws all of that up. You can't copy from one thing to another (my understanding is that limited recording will probably be allowed, but only if played back on the same device, and no copying of that signal will be allowed at all). So the idea of a central hub becomes much less useful. Send everything to the TV, which sends audio to the receiver (if you want to) (but only using an HDCP-protected link, i.e. HDMI, which means you're totally wasting it as there's no need for the video signal - going the other way there's no need for the audio signal).
For content that is sent encrypted under HDCP, you are required to route the audio and video to only HDCP-compliant devices (if you want to stay with high-quality digital). For re-sending audio as digital signals using other formats, the HDCP standard requires that it be no better than CD quality. There are a variety of digital standards that are allowed in the license agreement. Of interest is that IEC-958/60958 (S/PDIF) is not allowed to be supported for DVD-Audio (it isn't clear if that includes IEC-61937) in equipment manufactured after July of this year. Analog quality is not restricted by the HDCP standard for "Presentation Devices", but I think that means the quality sent to the screen or speakers, as there are all sorts of requirements that the analog signals inside the device not be easily useable. I'm not sure if that means that an HDCP-compliant receiver can only send audio to HDCP-compliant speakers. There are also several odd requirements that audio may not be presented at more than 1.5 times speed unless it is pitch-corrected (differs for different source material, e.g. Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, etc). I don't know if that's to try to prevent high-speed dubbing or what.
What I find particularly obnoxious is the requirement that all material sent on digital outputs effectively has to have the "never copy" flag set in the SCMS info, even if it is coming from something that says "copy always", although there are various exceptions. The whole document is fairly confusing with lots of special cases and apparently conflicting requirements.
They've locked it up pretty tight, with interlocking agreements on manufacturers of components, resellers of components, manufacturers of systems, and content producers. Transmitting components are relatively unrestricted, but receiver components are strictly controlled. Software has to be obfuscated and protected against attacks using ICE and debuggers and the like.
"Now, with new and improved Watermarking Technology to enhance your entertainment experience". Warning labels don't always say "Warning": "Plays For Sure"; "Intel Inside" (note: HDCP is an Intel proprietary standard - gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that the FCC is requiring that all television set manufacturers pay a royalty to Intel, and the content producer cartels are going to require that all HD-DVD players pay a royalty to Intel. Which means, I'm going to be required to pay a royalty to Intel if I want to buy anything new in 5 years time or so. Plus a couple pennies for each title for the right to have it turn on the Copy Prevention bit to activate the HDCP in the equipment I no longer seem to own, even if I paid for it. All for a lame copy prevention scheme that is slightly more effective than transmitting a flag that says "don't copy me", but of course, that probably couldn't be patented so how could Intel make money off of it then?)
I wish these guys would figure out whether they're worried about low-resolution copying (hand-held camera in a movie theater == penalty worse than for many violent crimes), or high-resolution copying ("digital == perfect"). Nobody who would buy a shaky-cam recording made in a theater, instead of going to the theater or buying the DVD when it comes out, is going to be stopped by a shaky-cam of a TV screen instead. Does anyone honestly think that someone who WOULD have bought the DVD eventually is going to not do so because of a camcorder version (except for the case where they realize the movie is garbage, so lose interest)? But then they turn around and say that it's OK to have low-res analog outputs, they're not worried about THAT, just the perfect digital copying because there's no generational loss. Except that there's no generational loss once you convert that low-res analog into digital.
Which means either this whole exercise is wasting everyone's time and money, making inconvenient or impossible all sorts of harmless activities ( = doesn't take money away from what the studios would have earned), or they have to go to the next step which is to control all forms of analog-to-digital equipment, digital-to-analog equipment, and finally all digital equipment. "Can I see your programming license, please? Is that a soldering iron? Up against the wall!"
Isn't it a nice bonus for the big content creators that, in the name of Protecting Intellectual Property they can eliminate all the wonderful tools that are finally available to allow just about anybody to create music and films? Or is that the true agenda all along?
Why do the content owners think they have a right to all the advantages of "publishing" (that is, making it public) without all of the disadvantages that go along with it? Copyright is a tradeoff, we give certain monopoly rights because we believe that overall it will make more things available to everyone than if we didn't (and by "more things", I include a "goodness" factor). The tradeoff is that you no longer control it in many ways, and eventually (where the value of "eventually" is increasing lately) not at all. Trying to warp everything so that they can retain more control is not only bad for the copyright tradeoff, it is also screwing up everything else.
As long as you're going to upgrade the hard drive, you might as well go with the faster processor for $50 more. $675 for the faster Mac Mini with 512MB RAM and 80GB hard drive. Don't forget that Apple has free shipping...
Must be why Microsoft's "Office Test Drive" for Mac OSX requires that you have admin privileges to run it... and then, it will only run for the first login ID to run it! They must have figured that with all those programs making Windows look bad, they should do the same to the Mac.
If you're going to troll, at least get the figures right.
Upgrade to 80GB HD and 512MB RAM: $125
Keyboard and mouse: $58
Bluetooth + upgrade to wireless keyboard and mouse: $91 (i.e. $149 TOTAL for Bluetooth, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse).
You can get a monitor anywhere. As big or as small as you want. DVI or analog. You can even use your TV, with a $19 adapter (resolution sucks, of course, but you can play DVDs on it).
"very straightforward" "easy to undo" "hasn't reached the bloat stage" "simple" "costs nothing" makes it "sound even worse"? So the perfect program for you would be difficult to use even for the simplest thing, impossible to undo (because you never make mistakes and offering an undo feature is an insult to your manhood?), bloated with thousands of features you'll never use, needlessly complex and costs half your annual salary? Now that's a small-niche market if I there ever was one!
Isn't it amazing? People have been complaining forever that Apple only has a 1-button mouse, why can't they sell a Mac with the option of not buying their mouse so you can use your own 2- or 3-button mouse. Apple does so, and now those same people complain that Apple isn't selling them a mouse!
One big point of this machine is that many, many people have a perfectly good USB keyboard and/or mouse sitting around, along with a display. Apple is finally giving people the choice of not buying any of those. When you buy one of those RealCheap Dell machines, do you get the option of not getting a keyboard and mouse? I didn't think so. You get a $45 credit for not getting a display (from Dell, anyway)...but you do get WordPerfect included!
So the memory upgrade option is slightly more expensive - to go cheaper, you have to find a way to sell the one that comes with it, and even then you're only saving a little bit.
Also, note that Apple has free shipping on it (at least, right now)!
After looking around at Dell and Gateway, this thing is a good deal. Not stunningly great, but good enough that people who can afford an iMac G5 or a PowerMac G5 are still going to have good reasons to get one of those instead. But good enough that they might even get one in addition. Can you build-your-own for less? Of course you can. Can most people build-their-own for any amount? Do most people want to buy a no-name box built by Joe Random at the local computer shop? No, and no.
If you really want to go cheap, Sam's Club has a $157 box with no hard drive, no monitor and it comes with a Linux install CD. Still has a keyboard and mouse, though.
When I first heard that 20 years ago, the specs given were for what would now be a not very remarkable system (something like 1 GB of main memory, 100GB of disk space, 1000 MIPS) - you know, not much more than an iPod.
"binary" doesn't mean "fixed length". Morse code is quite clearly a binary code, just as SDLC is, or a standard asynch serial connection (with start bits, stop bits, etc). It only depends on two signal levels, hence it is binary. That is also depends on timing of those signals is no different from any other binary communication protocol (which often have restrictions on the allowed bit patterns that can be sent, and can also be variable in number of bits sent - see SDLC, for example, with limits on the number of 1-bits that can be sent in a row, with zero-insertion/deletion when required to satisfy that constraint). Even the timing protocol of Morse is similar to self-clocking asynchronous protocols, with some redundancy built in to allow for a little slop in the "timing signal".
Funny, I think it would go the other way. If I put a lot of hard work into something, I'd be more pissed off if it got buried. I'd MUCH rather it be released either into Public Domain, or under a GPL-like license. Either way, I get it back and can build on it. I just don't see what there would be to be pissed about it being released, unless I had some sort of royalty agreement in place, and even then I STILL don't get anything out of it if it is buried.
That certainly would explain it, since most decent VCRs had no real problem with Macrovision. Yet Macrovision still got to keep their patent, even though the only reason it still works is because the law requires that it be made to work! Macrovision gets a small royalty for every DVD that is pressed that has the "enable Macrovision" bit set (which turns on the Macrovision circuit built in to the DVD player - which they also probably get a royalty on). DVD players are required by the DVD consortium to include Macrovision (else they won't license CSS keys to you, which means that if your player doesn't violate the DMCA, you can't play any encrypted disks, which is virtually all of them). Neat racket they got, huh? Get legislation passed to define that your patented invention "works", which sort of makes it the only one that can work.
Well, you might call BS, but it's part of the DMCA. A VCR must be susceptible to Macrovision, whether it's just by making the AGC dumb, or by putting in a circuit to specifically detect it and make sure the recording is degraded. However, it does NOT have to degrade a pass-through signal, only degrade it when it goes to tape.
What's the issue with AAC and Fairplay? Aren't those licensed from third parties by Apple? Can't other manufacturers license them as well? Or is the issue that the Apple files use Apple's keys, and Apple won't license those out?
Since the files are being distributed with the authorization of the copyright holder, and in fact required by the copyright holders to be protected, I don't think Apple has any obligation to provide the keys to anyone else. My understanding is that the monopoly rights of a copyright holder are close to absolute, and don't in themselves trigger anti-trust actions.
Since you can play iTMS songs on Macs, Windows PCs and iPods, and iTunes and iPods can play other formats besides Fairplay protected AAC, I don't see what the problem is. Requiring Apple to either license the ability to play iTMS songs to others, or requiring Apple to sell iTMS songs in other licensable formats, would be like requiring Microsoft to license Windows code to anyone, or requiring Microsoft to release all their software so it runs on other licensable platforms.
I don't see an option to make Bcc show up. I can set it to "always Bcc" ME (choice of Bcc or Cc), but not a way to enable Bcc to arbitrary addresses. Hmm, I just tried it and setting it to always Bcc me does allow you to delete your own address and add others - but a) that's annoying (to have to either enable that option only when you want to Bcc, OR have to ALWAYS delete your address from it when you don't want a copy sent to you, which for me is always; and b) VERY non-intuitive. But thanks for the tip, I'll have to let my dad know he can kludge it that way.
Save As Text may mangle some text pages, but his particular use for it was when using AOL Web mail, which apparently saved Ok for him. Since I have him now using Mail, it isn't as much of an issue, but it does point out an area where he couldn't do it the way he wanted. Of course, when I asked him WHY just saving it as HTML wasn't sufficient, he said "it takes too much space". "But dad, you have 160 freakin' GB of disk space, YOU DON'T CARE!". So some of the problem is that he wants to do it the same way he always has for reasons that are no longer relevant.
Being able to save from Safari in RTF the way you can save E-mail (HTML e-mail at that!) would allow you to EDIT it in TextEdit. TextEdit allows you to RENDER HTML, but the result is an image which can't be edited (or you can turn off HTML rendering and get raw HTML, but you can only do that by re-opening the file, and then not by using Open Recent or double-clicking on the icon).
The funny thing about the Office trial is that once you remove it and re-install it, it does restart the trial time period! The real problem is that some of the files are writeable by group admin, so require admin privileges, and some aren't - the ones that aren't are owned by the person who initialized it, so only they can run it. I spent a very short amount of time looking into it, to figure out which directory or file had the wrong permissions so I could change it, but it was easier to just delete the damned thing. The cool part would have been that I could have ssh-ed into both of their machines to do it myself instead of having to talk them through it over the phone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a die-hard Apple fan, I'm just trying to insert some reality into the idea that "Oh, it is so simple, it is so obvious, it is so intuitive!" It ain't, it is complex, and it is designed for the 80% of the things that 80% of the people using it want to do simply - as soon as you get past that, it isn't so simple any more. I'm not saying its easy, or even possible, to make it simple for everyone to do everything - complex things are going to be complex.
Working with them in person would certainly be a lot easier, for instance I could tell him that no, that's NOT the control key, even though I said "control key" 5 times and you say "that's what I'm pressing" 5 times - until he says "every time I click it goes on and off" - "dad, that's the Command key, the one with the Apple and the cloverleaf, right?" "Oh, yeah, I guess so". Or try explaining over the phone how to open a.dmg file, then how to close it when you're not sure how their desktop or sidebars are set up. Which then devolves into explaining how to set those preferences, and how they interact with the File dialog boxes, and how the File dialog boxes have little triangles, etc. etc. etc. So many options, so many complex interactions between them, and yet some things are left out to make it "simple".
The command-click thing has been around for a long long time in the form of being able to move windows around without bringing them to the front - command-click-drag the title bar of the window. I hadn't realized they had generalized it until a few weeks ago.
What's new in Mac OSX is that you can have windows from other applications in front of windows in the active application. It is still more application-centric than Windows, but that's ok, I think it works better that way. Command-TAB combined with Command-` is so much easier to use than Windows 25-long list of active windows you can switch to. I also have always found it nice to be able to have an application running but without an open window (which requires the Mac-style universal menu bar instead of window-oriented menu bar); it always infuriated me in Windows to close the last window of a web browser or telnet program and have the program quit.
I've had the fun of introducing Mac OSX to 3 different people over the last year or two. One had never used a computer before, my mom has used Macs and PCs for a long time (she had a Mac XL, and a Kaypro CP/M machine, has managed to figure out how to use database programs in DOS to keep stats for her school, etc. She is what I'd consider a fairly typical home user, although with a lot more experience - but still basically clueless when it comes to understanding what's really going on). Then there's my dad, who has used DOS and Windows machines. Both my mom and dad use AOL, although my mom now has cable internet access. Both of them now have 20" iMac G5 machines, the other person (who had never had a computer before) has an iMac G4.
I myself have used Macs since my first computer - a Lisa, just before they stopped selling them and converted the remainder to Mac XL. The first program I wrote for it to run under MacWorks still runs in Classic mode (though Apple Menu desk accessories don't work quite right, and it doesn't end up closing the serial port quite right anymore).
Mac OSX is anything but "intuitive". Yes, the stuff mostly "just works", but defaults are all set wrong (not blocking pop-ups in Safari, firewall not turned on, default user set to auto-login as an administrator, e-mail downloads linked images), some things can't be set or overridden (no Bcc in Email, and my dad was complaining bitterly that he couldn't get it to NOT fill in the person's name when sending e-mail - he just wanted the e-mail address, NOT the name added on. I asked him why he wanted it that way, his response was "why should it matter, it's how I want it to be", and he has a point).
Safari has no "save as text" option, all you can do is save the html. You can open that html in TextEdit, and it will render it, but then it acts as a big image (and relative images are missing). There's no way to save a web page "complete", such as the way Mozilla lets you do it. You could print to a PDF, but then you lose all the links.
Mail, on the other hand, let's you save as Rich Text (with attached images, even, using a directory bundle approach), or you can choose plain text or raw message source. Yet, it won't let you save an unsent new message except as a "draft" (which means in the draft mailbox, either locally or on the server depending on how you configured it).
The Microsoft Office Test Drive made my mom want to return it (illogically, but even so). I set her up to be a non-admin as her normal account, and created an admin account as well. I showed her how to authenticate when necessary. So she tried running Test Drive. I believe what it did was request she authenticate as an admin, then got only so far and complained that it had to be run as an administrator. Ok, so change her to be an administrator. Run it again. It complains that it is "installed on a volume that doesn't have write privileges." It is now locked to the administrator account, apparently.
She downloaded Test Drive two times from Microsoft's web site while trying to follow directions. Didn't understand the whole disk image thing. Finally got so frustrated she went to use the Windows machine, which then kept crashing on her. So she blamed it all on the Mac and wanted to return it!
The whole reason we got her the Mac was that she was trying to upgrade her old Win95 machine to be able to do USB so she could plug in her printer and scanner; a friend got her a couple-year old machine running Win98 which had USB, but it didn't have Word. She was trying to install Word from the upgrade diskettes she had bought for her old machine - but the upgrade refused, since she didn't have any appropriate version to upgrade. Her earlier machine had come bundled with something, but of course she couldn't install that on the new machine. She was getting all muddled up with instructions telling her she had to de-install it on the old machine, etc. She had also bought an upgrade CD for the Mac version of Word or Office - but aga
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It is not physically impossible to exit a spinning aircraft. Get rid of the canopy first, unstrap, push away. G-force loads are to the side, it might be difficult but you should be able to do something like roll out. I've never done it, but then neither have you.
CFI-G here. In the United States, parachutes are required when doing aerobatics (if anyone other than "required flight crew members" (i.e. the pilot) is on board). In addition, in most glider contests, pilots are required to use parachutes (by contest rules, not Federal Regulations).
The PW-5, a Polish glider, has a requirement in the operating manual that a parachute be worn. The Experimental Type Certificate that it was on in the United States required adherence to the operating manual, thus wearing a parachute is required while flying a PW-5. As far as we can tell, getting it re-certified with a Standard Airworthiness Certificate doesn't change the situation.
Other than that, we never use parachutes (I'm not sure most people would fit in a 2-33 wearing even a chair-style parachute), and of the few other glider operations I've visited, they didn't use parachutes either. It is likely that if you're asked to put on a parachute for a glider ride, they're going to be doing aerobatics.
I don't think that, even if the contract can be properly read to have required IBM to turn over copyright to SCO of any modifications made to SysV, that it would make a difference in whether Linux infringes. If there is no ORIGINAL SysV code in Linux, only code that IBM was contractually obligated to turn over to SCO, then there is no infringement because IBM gave permission by releasing it under the GPL. As IBM had the copyright, they had the right to do so. Until the copyright is turned over to SCO with a WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT, the copyright still belongs to IBM. A contractual obligation to make that assignment doesn't change anything until IBM complies with that obligation. They may be liable for damages, for having damaged the value of the copyrights they were supposed to assign, but it's too late to try to "undo" the release of code already properly released under the GPL. Or at least, that's what I'd think if I was a lawyer, which I'm not.
The biggest problem he seemed to have was that he wanted to make sure everyone would get paid the appropriate royalties for each little bit. Click a link to a commentary about a paragraph, you pay micro-cents to the person who wrote the original paragraph, the person who wrote the commentary, and the person who created the link that you used to get there. Without all that, the system would have already been done by now.
Fix it, or bypass it. Do you really think that will be a problem in 100 years (probably much less)?
With true immortality, Darwinian selection will occur without the need for reproduction. Those people who choose to not live forever will soon die out.
Unless you only have one video source, you probably want to do that anyway. Even if you have multiple video inputs on the display, you want the sound to follow the video. So either you connect the audio/video from each device to the amp, and send the video to the display (and do the switching in the amp), or send the audio/video to the display and send the audio to the amp.
My preference is for a straight monitor that does nothing but display a video signal. All the processing/switching is done in the receiver, including a TV tuner (which would do any closed captioning, for instance). No speaker in the "TV", it is JUST a monitor. Sending everything to the receiver first also means I can route stuff out to other devices besides the TV - e.g. copy from Replay to VCR.
But then HDCP comes along and screws all of that up. You can't copy from one thing to another (my understanding is that limited recording will probably be allowed, but only if played back on the same device, and no copying of that signal will be allowed at all). So the idea of a central hub becomes much less useful. Send everything to the TV, which sends audio to the receiver (if you want to) (but only using an HDCP-protected link, i.e. HDMI, which means you're totally wasting it as there's no need for the video signal - going the other way there's no need for the audio signal).
For content that is sent encrypted under HDCP, you are required to route the audio and video to only HDCP-compliant devices (if you want to stay with high-quality digital). For re-sending audio as digital signals using other formats, the HDCP standard requires that it be no better than CD quality. There are a variety of digital standards that are allowed in the license agreement. Of interest is that IEC-958/60958 (S/PDIF) is not allowed to be supported for DVD-Audio (it isn't clear if that includes IEC-61937) in equipment manufactured after July of this year. Analog quality is not restricted by the HDCP standard for "Presentation Devices", but I think that means the quality sent to the screen or speakers, as there are all sorts of requirements that the analog signals inside the device not be easily useable. I'm not sure if that means that an HDCP-compliant receiver can only send audio to HDCP-compliant speakers. There are also several odd requirements that audio may not be presented at more than 1.5 times speed unless it is pitch-corrected (differs for different source material, e.g. Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, etc). I don't know if that's to try to prevent high-speed dubbing or what.
What I find particularly obnoxious is the requirement that all material sent on digital outputs effectively has to have the "never copy" flag set in the SCMS info, even if it is coming from something that says "copy always", although there are various exceptions. The whole document is fairly confusing with lots of special cases and apparently conflicting requirements.
They've locked it up pretty tight, with interlocking agreements on manufacturers of components, resellers of components, manufacturers of systems, and content producers. Transmitting components are relatively unrestricted, but receiver components are strictly controlled. Software has to be obfuscated and protected against attacks using ICE and debuggers and the like.
"Now, with new and improved Watermarking Technology to enhance your entertainment experience". Warning labels don't always say "Warning": "Plays For Sure"; "Intel Inside" (note: HDCP is an Intel proprietary standard - gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that the FCC is requiring that all television set manufacturers pay a royalty to Intel, and the content producer cartels are going to require that all HD-DVD players pay a royalty to Intel. Which means, I'm going to be required to pay a royalty to Intel if I want to buy anything new in 5 years time or so. Plus a couple pennies for each title for the right to have it turn on the Copy Prevention bit to activate the HDCP in the equipment I no longer seem to own, even if I paid for it. All for a lame copy prevention scheme that is slightly more effective than transmitting a flag that says "don't copy me", but of course, that probably couldn't be patented so how could Intel make money off of it then?)
I wish these guys would figure out whether they're worried about low-resolution copying (hand-held camera in a movie theater == penalty worse than for many violent crimes), or high-resolution copying ("digital == perfect"). Nobody who would buy a shaky-cam recording made in a theater, instead of going to the theater or buying the DVD when it comes out, is going to be stopped by a shaky-cam of a TV screen instead. Does anyone honestly think that someone who WOULD have bought the DVD eventually is going to not do so because of a camcorder version (except for the case where they realize the movie is garbage, so lose interest)? But then they turn around and say that it's OK to have low-res analog outputs, they're not worried about THAT, just the perfect digital copying because there's no generational loss. Except that there's no generational loss once you convert that low-res analog into digital.
Which means either this whole exercise is wasting everyone's time and money, making inconvenient or impossible all sorts of harmless activities ( = doesn't take money away from what the studios would have earned), or they have to go to the next step which is to control all forms of analog-to-digital equipment, digital-to-analog equipment, and finally all digital equipment. "Can I see your programming license, please? Is that a soldering iron? Up against the wall!"
Isn't it a nice bonus for the big content creators that, in the name of Protecting Intellectual Property they can eliminate all the wonderful tools that are finally available to allow just about anybody to create music and films? Or is that the true agenda all along?
Why do the content owners think they have a right to all the advantages of "publishing" (that is, making it public) without all of the disadvantages that go along with it? Copyright is a tradeoff, we give certain monopoly rights because we believe that overall it will make more things available to everyone than if we didn't (and by "more things", I include a "goodness" factor). The tradeoff is that you no longer control it in many ways, and eventually (where the value of "eventually" is increasing lately) not at all. Trying to warp everything so that they can retain more control is not only bad for the copyright tradeoff, it is also screwing up everything else.
As long as you're going to upgrade the hard drive, you might as well go with the faster processor for $50 more. $675 for the faster Mac Mini with 512MB RAM and 80GB hard drive. Don't forget that Apple has free shipping...
Must be why Microsoft's "Office Test Drive" for Mac OSX requires that you have admin privileges to run it... and then, it will only run for the first login ID to run it! They must have figured that with all those programs making Windows look bad, they should do the same to the Mac.
If you're going to troll, at least get the figures right.
Upgrade to 80GB HD and 512MB RAM: $125
Keyboard and mouse: $58
Bluetooth + upgrade to wireless keyboard and mouse: $91 (i.e. $149 TOTAL for Bluetooth, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse).
You can get a monitor anywhere. As big or as small as you want. DVI or analog. You can even use your TV, with a $19 adapter (resolution sucks, of course, but you can play DVDs on it).
"very straightforward" "easy to undo" "hasn't reached the bloat stage" "simple" "costs nothing" makes it "sound even worse"? So the perfect program for you would be difficult to use even for the simplest thing, impossible to undo (because you never make mistakes and offering an undo feature is an insult to your manhood?), bloated with thousands of features you'll never use, needlessly complex and costs half your annual salary? Now that's a small-niche market if I there ever was one!
Isn't it amazing? People have been complaining forever that Apple only has a 1-button mouse, why can't they sell a Mac with the option of not buying their mouse so you can use your own 2- or 3-button mouse. Apple does so, and now those same people complain that Apple isn't selling them a mouse!
One big point of this machine is that many, many people have a perfectly good USB keyboard and/or mouse sitting around, along with a display. Apple is finally giving people the choice of not buying any of those. When you buy one of those RealCheap Dell machines, do you get the option of not getting a keyboard and mouse? I didn't think so. You get a $45 credit for not getting a display (from Dell, anyway)...but you do get WordPerfect included!
So the memory upgrade option is slightly more expensive - to go cheaper, you have to find a way to sell the one that comes with it, and even then you're only saving a little bit.
Also, note that Apple has free shipping on it (at least, right now)!
After looking around at Dell and Gateway, this thing is a good deal. Not stunningly great, but good enough that people who can afford an iMac G5 or a PowerMac G5 are still going to have good reasons to get one of those instead. But good enough that they might even get one in addition. Can you build-your-own for less? Of course you can. Can most people build-their-own for any amount? Do most people want to buy a no-name box built by Joe Random at the local computer shop? No, and no.
If you really want to go cheap, Sam's Club has a $157 box with no hard drive, no monitor and it comes with a Linux install CD. Still has a keyboard and mouse, though.
It "keeping its value" means you can re-sell it, making your replacement less expensive. With a PC, you have to pay someone to recycle it.
When I first heard that 20 years ago, the specs given were for what would now be a not very remarkable system (something like 1 GB of main memory, 100GB of disk space, 1000 MIPS) - you know, not much more than an iPod.
"binary" doesn't mean "fixed length". Morse code is quite clearly a binary code, just as SDLC is, or a standard asynch serial connection (with start bits, stop bits, etc). It only depends on two signal levels, hence it is binary. That is also depends on timing of those signals is no different from any other binary communication protocol (which often have restrictions on the allowed bit patterns that can be sent, and can also be variable in number of bits sent - see SDLC, for example, with limits on the number of 1-bits that can be sent in a row, with zero-insertion/deletion when required to satisfy that constraint). Even the timing protocol of Morse is similar to self-clocking asynchronous protocols, with some redundancy built in to allow for a little slop in the "timing signal".
Funny, I think it would go the other way. If I put a lot of hard work into something, I'd be more pissed off if it got buried. I'd MUCH rather it be released either into Public Domain, or under a GPL-like license. Either way, I get it back and can build on it. I just don't see what there would be to be pissed about it being released, unless I had some sort of royalty agreement in place, and even then I STILL don't get anything out of it if it is buried.
That certainly would explain it, since most decent VCRs had no real problem with Macrovision. Yet Macrovision still got to keep their patent, even though the only reason it still works is because the law requires that it be made to work! Macrovision gets a small royalty for every DVD that is pressed that has the "enable Macrovision" bit set (which turns on the Macrovision circuit built in to the DVD player - which they also probably get a royalty on). DVD players are required by the DVD consortium to include Macrovision (else they won't license CSS keys to you, which means that if your player doesn't violate the DMCA, you can't play any encrypted disks, which is virtually all of them). Neat racket they got, huh? Get legislation passed to define that your patented invention "works", which sort of makes it the only one that can work.
Well, you might call BS, but it's part of the DMCA. A VCR must be susceptible to Macrovision, whether it's just by making the AGC dumb, or by putting in a circuit to specifically detect it and make sure the recording is degraded. However, it does NOT have to degrade a pass-through signal, only degrade it when it goes to tape.
What's the issue with AAC and Fairplay? Aren't those licensed from third parties by Apple? Can't other manufacturers license them as well? Or is the issue that the Apple files use Apple's keys, and Apple won't license those out?
Since the files are being distributed with the authorization of the copyright holder, and in fact required by the copyright holders to be protected, I don't think Apple has any obligation to provide the keys to anyone else. My understanding is that the monopoly rights of a copyright holder are close to absolute, and don't in themselves trigger anti-trust actions.
Since you can play iTMS songs on Macs, Windows PCs and iPods, and iTunes and iPods can play other formats besides Fairplay protected AAC, I don't see what the problem is. Requiring Apple to either license the ability to play iTMS songs to others, or requiring Apple to sell iTMS songs in other licensable formats, would be like requiring Microsoft to license Windows code to anyone, or requiring Microsoft to release all their software so it runs on other licensable platforms.
I don't see an option to make Bcc show up. I can set it to "always Bcc" ME (choice of Bcc or Cc), but not a way to enable Bcc to arbitrary addresses. Hmm, I just tried it and setting it to always Bcc me does allow you to delete your own address and add others - but a) that's annoying (to have to either enable that option only when you want to Bcc, OR have to ALWAYS delete your address from it when you don't want a copy sent to you, which for me is always; and b) VERY non-intuitive. But thanks for the tip, I'll have to let my dad know he can kludge it that way.
Save As Text may mangle some text pages, but his particular use for it was when using AOL Web mail, which apparently saved Ok for him. Since I have him now using Mail, it isn't as much of an issue, but it does point out an area where he couldn't do it the way he wanted. Of course, when I asked him WHY just saving it as HTML wasn't sufficient, he said "it takes too much space". "But dad, you have 160 freakin' GB of disk space, YOU DON'T CARE!". So some of the problem is that he wants to do it the same way he always has for reasons that are no longer relevant.
Being able to save from Safari in RTF the way you can save E-mail (HTML e-mail at that!) would allow you to EDIT it in TextEdit. TextEdit allows you to RENDER HTML, but the result is an image which can't be edited (or you can turn off HTML rendering and get raw HTML, but you can only do that by re-opening the file, and then not by using Open Recent or double-clicking on the icon).
The funny thing about the Office trial is that once you remove it and re-install it, it does restart the trial time period! The real problem is that some of the files are writeable by group admin, so require admin privileges, and some aren't - the ones that aren't are owned by the person who initialized it, so only they can run it. I spent a very short amount of time looking into it, to figure out which directory or file had the wrong permissions so I could change it, but it was easier to just delete the damned thing. The cool part would have been that I could have ssh-ed into both of their machines to do it myself instead of having to talk them through it over the phone.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a die-hard Apple fan, I'm just trying to insert some reality into the idea that "Oh, it is so simple, it is so obvious, it is so intuitive!" It ain't, it is complex, and it is designed for the 80% of the things that 80% of the people using it want to do simply - as soon as you get past that, it isn't so simple any more. I'm not saying its easy, or even possible, to make it simple for everyone to do everything - complex things are going to be complex.
Working with them in person would certainly be a lot easier, for instance I could tell him that no, that's NOT the control key, even though I said "control key" 5 times and you say "that's what I'm pressing" 5 times - until he says "every time I click it goes on and off" - "dad, that's the Command key, the one with the Apple and the cloverleaf, right?" "Oh, yeah, I guess so". Or try explaining over the phone how to open a .dmg file, then how to close it when you're not sure how their desktop or sidebars are set up. Which then devolves into explaining how to set those preferences, and how they interact with the File dialog boxes, and how the File dialog boxes have little triangles, etc. etc. etc. So many options, so many complex interactions between them, and yet some things are left out to make it "simple".
The command-click thing has been around for a long long time in the form of being able to move windows around without bringing them to the front - command-click-drag the title bar of the window. I hadn't realized they had generalized it until a few weeks ago.
What's new in Mac OSX is that you can have windows from other applications in front of windows in the active application. It is still more application-centric than Windows, but that's ok, I think it works better that way. Command-TAB combined with Command-` is so much easier to use than Windows 25-long list of active windows you can switch to. I also have always found it nice to be able to have an application running but without an open window (which requires the Mac-style universal menu bar instead of window-oriented menu bar); it always infuriated me in Windows to close the last window of a web browser or telnet program and have the program quit.
I've had the fun of introducing Mac OSX to 3 different people over the last year or two. One had never used a computer before, my mom has used Macs and PCs for a long time (she had a Mac XL, and a Kaypro CP/M machine, has managed to figure out how to use database programs in DOS to keep stats for her school, etc. She is what I'd consider a fairly typical home user, although with a lot more experience - but still basically clueless when it comes to understanding what's really going on). Then there's my dad, who has used DOS and Windows machines. Both my mom and dad use AOL, although my mom now has cable internet access. Both of them now have 20" iMac G5 machines, the other person (who had never had a computer before) has an iMac G4.
I myself have used Macs since my first computer - a Lisa, just before they stopped selling them and converted the remainder to Mac XL. The first program I wrote for it to run under MacWorks still runs in Classic mode (though Apple Menu desk accessories don't work quite right, and it doesn't end up closing the serial port quite right anymore).
Mac OSX is anything but "intuitive". Yes, the stuff mostly "just works", but defaults are all set wrong (not blocking pop-ups in Safari, firewall not turned on, default user set to auto-login as an administrator, e-mail downloads linked images), some things can't be set or overridden (no Bcc in Email, and my dad was complaining bitterly that he couldn't get it to NOT fill in the person's name when sending e-mail - he just wanted the e-mail address, NOT the name added on. I asked him why he wanted it that way, his response was "why should it matter, it's how I want it to be", and he has a point).
Safari has no "save as text" option, all you can do is save the html. You can open that html in TextEdit, and it will render it, but then it acts as a big image (and relative images are missing). There's no way to save a web page "complete", such as the way Mozilla lets you do it. You could print to a PDF, but then you lose all the links.
Mail, on the other hand, let's you save as Rich Text (with attached images, even, using a directory bundle approach), or you can choose plain text or raw message source. Yet, it won't let you save an unsent new message except as a "draft" (which means in the draft mailbox, either locally or on the server depending on how you configured it).
The Microsoft Office Test Drive made my mom want to return it (illogically, but even so). I set her up to be a non-admin as her normal account, and created an admin account as well. I showed her how to authenticate when necessary. So she tried running Test Drive. I believe what it did was request she authenticate as an admin, then got only so far and complained that it had to be run as an administrator. Ok, so change her to be an administrator. Run it again. It complains that it is "installed on a volume that doesn't have write privileges." It is now locked to the administrator account, apparently.
She downloaded Test Drive two times from Microsoft's web site while trying to follow directions. Didn't understand the whole disk image thing. Finally got so frustrated she went to use the Windows machine, which then kept crashing on her. So she blamed it all on the Mac and wanted to return it!
The whole reason we got her the Mac was that she was trying to upgrade her old Win95 machine to be able to do USB so she could plug in her printer and scanner; a friend got her a couple-year old machine running Win98 which had USB, but it didn't have Word. She was trying to install Word from the upgrade diskettes she had bought for her old machine - but the upgrade refused, since she didn't have any appropriate version to upgrade. Her earlier machine had come bundled with something, but of course she couldn't install that on the new machine. She was getting all muddled up with instructions telling her she had to de-install it on the old machine, etc. She had also bought an upgrade CD for the Mac version of Word or Office - but aga