What's next from the People's Republic of California? Will they make it illegal to leave a light on when you're not in a room? How about making it illegal to keep your home warmer than 65 degrees in the winter, or cooler than 80 in the summer?
Perhaps it should be illegal to drive instead of use public transportation? Illegal to drive a car that gets less than 20 mpg, or carries only two people?
Perhaps they should ban CRT monitors and TVs, since flat-panels take up so much less power? Perhaps they should ban TV altogether, since it's a waste of electricity?
Maybe they'll start prosecuting people who take warm showers, or stay in the shower too long.
All you Democrats who complain about the administration's wiretapping, warrantless searches, and other invasions of our privacy, what do you think of this?
This is completely infeasible. There may be an CCFL equivalent for the 60W lamp in your living room - but what about the 100W halogen I have over my workbench? The spotlights that light up the outside of my house? The turn signal blinkers in my car? The bulb inside my microwave?
This guy is an idiot.
Besides, CCFL's suck. I like the warm yellow glow of an incandescent. And don't tell me that they have fluorescents with the same color temperature now. I've tried them, they still look like fluorescents.
If I lived in California and this law was passed, I would seriously consider moving. Fluorescent lighting is depressing, and I would hate to live somewhere where the government forces me to use it.
Best Buy had a Vista demo station set up yesterday. They were using what looked like a brand-new demo machine, with Vista branding on it and everything.
When I tried to turn up the graphics settings, I got a warning saying that the highest setting would result in severely decreased performance. When I tried to open the Media Center application, it crashed.
I looked around in the Control Panels, Start Menu, and Documents folders, and tried out IE 7, and was amazed at what a disaster the interface was. The cheap eye candy looked tacky and ran slowly, the "Flip 3D" feature was next to useless and an obvious failed clone of Expose, and I still found old Windows 3.1-style dialog boxes and icons littered throughout the system.
More than anything else, the interface was confusing, overly busy, and disorganized. I'm sure a power user would find what they're looking for eventually, but I got a headache just thinking about my parents, secretary, and other casual users trying to puzzle it out.
Frankly, I was amazed at how horrible it was. It seems like an early Beta release, at best - and not a very promising one, at that.
We already know that BootCamp will be part of Leopard. This article is about Apple allowing Tiger users to buy the Leopard version of BootCamp (as opposed to the betas that have been released thus far) for $30.
The cool thing about MIT is that they own the entire 18.0.0.0/8 Class A address space, so every device on campus has a public IP.
And all computers (even student machines) are connected directly to the Internet - no NAT, no firewall, no protocol limitations, no bandwidth caps.
The catch is that all computers need to have a registered MAC address in order to get on the network, so if your Windows machine gets infected with a virus, they can disconnect you in a hurry.
I don't know, people who are sick of how much the interfaces and functionality of most consumer electronics suck these days?
I have a cell phone that ostensibly does everything the iPhone will, but it is such a PITA to navigate through the convoluted menu system and shitty desktop software that I don't bother.
And as for the price, people seem to be forgetting that this is an iPod too. I'm willing to pay $250 for an iPod Nano, and $250 for a smartphone. $500 to have both of them in a single device without any compromised functionality is worth it, I think.
Re:Not impressed
on
iPhone Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Your comment makes no sense. What brains are missing? We've already seen what the phone can do in the Keynote and the Apple website: play music, play videos, surf the web (rendering pages correctly), check e-mail, send text messages, visual voicemail - the list goes on and on, and it looks likely that Apple will allow the release of third-party widgets, if not full-fledged applications.
And it will do all of this with Apple's usual ease-of-use and pleasant aesthetics. Not to mention, they have six months to refine it further.
What brains are missing, exactly? I can't really think of much else that I want a smartphone to do. 3G would be nice, but I can live with that omission for now.
The Fairness Doctrine affected only broadcast media - i.e., not cable. Any attempt to influence Fox News' content would be unconstitutional - it is a private news station carried on private networks (cable and satellite). The FCC only has authority over the broadcast media because the airwaves are considered public property.
Regardless, this is a bad idea, pure and simple. How would you feel if a Republican candidate were advocating the Fairness Doctrine, on the basis that NBC, CBS, and ABC were liberally biased? You'd go nuts and start screaming about censorship, I bet. The only difference here is who's doing the censorship.
You're talking about the DMCA, which is a law specific to the US. I agree with you about the problems with that - but I think it's a separate issue from DRM in general.
No - the difference is that not everyone sees DRM as such a critical moral issue.
I'm amazed that you think there is a parallel between sweatshop labor, and mechanisms that prevent you from copying the latest Christina Aguilera track.
I see no moral issue with DRM-encumbered products. If you don't like DRM, you don't have to buy them.
And the user is free not to use products with DRM.
If you think your freedom is being impinged by DRM-encumbered music and movies, you are free not to purchase them. No one is taking away your freedom - music and movies are not necessary for life, and there are plenty of independent musicians and cinematographers who are willing to sell you music without DRM.
The media companies are free to sell products with DRM, and you are free not to purchase them.
99.99% of the OS does 'Just Work'. The difference is, because this is Apple, you here about every one of the 00.01% that constitute the failures. Remember the colossal bitchfest shortly after the launch of the MacBook, where we had a story on Slashdot about how the fucking PALMRESTS were being discolored?
Think about that. How often do you read about problems with HP, IBM or Dell computers on here? Hardly ever. It's not because they don't have problems - they've got motherboard failures, overheating issues, warped screens, all that crap, left and right. Only when their batteries started fucking EXPLODING did we hear anything abotu HP, IBM and Dell on here.
Contrast that with Apple. Slashdot runs a story about Dell's problems when the machines are at risk of EXPLODING IN YOUR LAP. Slashdot runs a story about Apple's problems when people's greasy fingers stain the finish.
You're freaking nuts, and ignorant to boot. DRM was not the reason Apple switched to Intel - there's nothing DRM-specific about the Intel architecture. Apple switched because IBM was not able to deliver a PowerPC laptop chip that met modern performance targets (yes, we all know the G5 was fast, but it also sucked down power and spewed out heat).
And, name me one thing that Apple has done that involves DRM, besides the iTunes Music Store. You can't, because they haven't done ANYTHING. And the music store only has DRM at the insistence of the record labels.
As for the iPhone, I can't argue there - I can only hope that Apple will come to its senses in the next six months, and open it up for public development.
I wouldn't let the whining of a bunch of self-important idiots dissuade you from buying a MacBook. Apple is not perfect, it's true. But there hardware and software is a hell of a lot better than everyone else out there.
This kind of thing happens every day to Dell, IBM, and Microsoft. The difference is, everyone expects them to suck, and so you don't see a post on Slashdot every time someone discovers a problem with one of their products (except for security flaws in IE, that is). However, every time someone has the slightest problem with their Mac, you get a post on here, with the attendant slew of frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics complaining about how Apple didn't give them a personal response when their palmrest got discolored from their Cheeto-stained fingers (remember that, from last year?)
Let the free market decide how to deal with copyright. It's already been shown that we don't want it.
LOL. That's exactly what's happening, except you're only one half of the free market, buddy. The people selling the music have made the opposite decision.
No one is worth 2000% more than another individual regardless of how good you are at your job.
Why not? Let's say Person A is a salesman who brings a company twenty million dollars in business in a year. Person B is a salesman who manages only one million dollars. Sounds to me that Person A is worth twenty times Person B.
I don't know how how your brain works, but it's a lot easier for me to remember/keep track of a single device, compared to three devices. And are you really so forgetful that you're constantly at risk of losing the stuff you carry around with you? I hope you don't keep a lot of cash in your wallet.
Are you saying you'd really prefer to carry around a phone, an MP3 player, and a PDA? I don't even have enough pockets for all that crap.
New versions of Mac OS X have always run faster than their predecessors, because Apple is continually including optimizations. I believe that was also the case with the 10.3 to 10.4 transition, although it was less noticeable speedup than from 10.2 to 10.3.
I doubt Apple will be able to keep it up forever. I haven't heard anything on what the early builds of 10.5 are like, but (being early builds) it's probably too soon to draw any conclusions from them. Still, eventually they'll run out of things to optimize, and all the new features will catch up to them.
Slashdot Mirror
What's next from the People's Republic of California? Will they make it illegal to leave a light on when you're not in a room? How about making it illegal to keep your home warmer than 65 degrees in the winter, or cooler than 80 in the summer?
Perhaps it should be illegal to drive instead of use public transportation? Illegal to drive a car that gets less than 20 mpg, or carries only two people?
Perhaps they should ban CRT monitors and TVs, since flat-panels take up so much less power? Perhaps they should ban TV altogether, since it's a waste of electricity?
Maybe they'll start prosecuting people who take warm showers, or stay in the shower too long.
All you Democrats who complain about the administration's wiretapping, warrantless searches, and other invasions of our privacy, what do you think of this?
This is completely infeasible. There may be an CCFL equivalent for the 60W lamp in your living room - but what about the 100W halogen I have over my workbench? The spotlights that light up the outside of my house? The turn signal blinkers in my car? The bulb inside my microwave?
This guy is an idiot.
Besides, CCFL's suck. I like the warm yellow glow of an incandescent. And don't tell me that they have fluorescents with the same color temperature now. I've tried them, they still look like fluorescents.
If I lived in California and this law was passed, I would seriously consider moving. Fluorescent lighting is depressing, and I would hate to live somewhere where the government forces me to use it.
Best Buy had a Vista demo station set up yesterday. They were using what looked like a brand-new demo machine, with Vista branding on it and everything.
When I tried to turn up the graphics settings, I got a warning saying that the highest setting would result in severely decreased performance. When I tried to open the Media Center application, it crashed.
I looked around in the Control Panels, Start Menu, and Documents folders, and tried out IE 7, and was amazed at what a disaster the interface was. The cheap eye candy looked tacky and ran slowly, the "Flip 3D" feature was next to useless and an obvious failed clone of Expose, and I still found old Windows 3.1-style dialog boxes and icons littered throughout the system.
More than anything else, the interface was confusing, overly busy, and disorganized. I'm sure a power user would find what they're looking for eventually, but I got a headache just thinking about my parents, secretary, and other casual users trying to puzzle it out.
Frankly, I was amazed at how horrible it was. It seems like an early Beta release, at best - and not a very promising one, at that.
We already know that BootCamp will be part of Leopard. This article is about Apple allowing Tiger users to buy the Leopard version of BootCamp (as opposed to the betas that have been released thus far) for $30.
The cool thing about MIT is that they own the entire 18.0.0.0/8 Class A address space, so every device on campus has a public IP.
And all computers (even student machines) are connected directly to the Internet - no NAT, no firewall, no protocol limitations, no bandwidth caps.
The catch is that all computers need to have a registered MAC address in order to get on the network, so if your Windows machine gets infected with a virus, they can disconnect you in a hurry.
I don't know, people who are sick of how much the interfaces and functionality of most consumer electronics suck these days?
I have a cell phone that ostensibly does everything the iPhone will, but it is such a PITA to navigate through the convoluted menu system and shitty desktop software that I don't bother.
And as for the price, people seem to be forgetting that this is an iPod too. I'm willing to pay $250 for an iPod Nano, and $250 for a smartphone. $500 to have both of them in a single device without any compromised functionality is worth it, I think.
Your comment makes no sense. What brains are missing? We've already seen what the phone can do in the Keynote and the Apple website: play music, play videos, surf the web (rendering pages correctly), check e-mail, send text messages, visual voicemail - the list goes on and on, and it looks likely that Apple will allow the release of third-party widgets, if not full-fledged applications.
And it will do all of this with Apple's usual ease-of-use and pleasant aesthetics. Not to mention, they have six months to refine it further.
What brains are missing, exactly? I can't really think of much else that I want a smartphone to do. 3G would be nice, but I can live with that omission for now.
"Shawn was kidnapped more than four years ago, and his absence has made his parents worry..."
It's only January, and we already have a solid nomination for understatement of the year!
This sounds like something a third-grader would say while giving a book report.
They all have DRM, to my knowledge. What's your point? As I said, if you don't like it, don't buy it.
You're pretty lucky if all you have to do to uphold your moral principles is 'do without' a handheld video game system.
You are incorrect.
The Fairness Doctrine affected only broadcast media - i.e., not cable. Any attempt to influence Fox News' content would be unconstitutional - it is a private news station carried on private networks (cable and satellite). The FCC only has authority over the broadcast media because the airwaves are considered public property.
Regardless, this is a bad idea, pure and simple. How would you feel if a Republican candidate were advocating the Fairness Doctrine, on the basis that NBC, CBS, and ABC were liberally biased? You'd go nuts and start screaming about censorship, I bet. The only difference here is who's doing the censorship.
You're talking about the DMCA, which is a law specific to the US. I agree with you about the problems with that - but I think it's a separate issue from DRM in general.
No - the difference is that not everyone sees DRM as such a critical moral issue.
I'm amazed that you think there is a parallel between sweatshop labor, and mechanisms that prevent you from copying the latest Christina Aguilera track.
I see no moral issue with DRM-encumbered products. If you don't like DRM, you don't have to buy them.
And the user is free not to use products with DRM.
If you think your freedom is being impinged by DRM-encumbered music and movies, you are free not to purchase them. No one is taking away your freedom - music and movies are not necessary for life, and there are plenty of independent musicians and cinematographers who are willing to sell you music without DRM.
The media companies are free to sell products with DRM, and you are free not to purchase them.
99.99% of the OS does 'Just Work'. The difference is, because this is Apple, you here about every one of the 00.01% that constitute the failures. Remember the colossal bitchfest shortly after the launch of the MacBook, where we had a story on Slashdot about how the fucking PALMRESTS were being discolored?
Think about that. How often do you read about problems with HP, IBM or Dell computers on here? Hardly ever. It's not because they don't have problems - they've got motherboard failures, overheating issues, warped screens, all that crap, left and right. Only when their batteries started fucking EXPLODING did we hear anything abotu HP, IBM and Dell on here.
Contrast that with Apple. Slashdot runs a story about Dell's problems when the machines are at risk of EXPLODING IN YOUR LAP. Slashdot runs a story about Apple's problems when people's greasy fingers stain the finish.
You're freaking nuts, and ignorant to boot. DRM was not the reason Apple switched to Intel - there's nothing DRM-specific about the Intel architecture. Apple switched because IBM was not able to deliver a PowerPC laptop chip that met modern performance targets (yes, we all know the G5 was fast, but it also sucked down power and spewed out heat).
And, name me one thing that Apple has done that involves DRM, besides the iTunes Music Store. You can't, because they haven't done ANYTHING. And the music store only has DRM at the insistence of the record labels.
As for the iPhone, I can't argue there - I can only hope that Apple will come to its senses in the next six months, and open it up for public development.
I wouldn't let the whining of a bunch of self-important idiots dissuade you from buying a MacBook. Apple is not perfect, it's true. But there hardware and software is a hell of a lot better than everyone else out there.
This kind of thing happens every day to Dell, IBM, and Microsoft. The difference is, everyone expects them to suck, and so you don't see a post on Slashdot every time someone discovers a problem with one of their products (except for security flaws in IE, that is). However, every time someone has the slightest problem with their Mac, you get a post on here, with the attendant slew of frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics complaining about how Apple didn't give them a personal response when their palmrest got discolored from their Cheeto-stained fingers (remember that, from last year?)
Let the free market decide how to deal with copyright. It's already been shown that we don't want it.
LOL. That's exactly what's happening, except you're only one half of the free market, buddy. The people selling the music have made the opposite decision.
No one is worth 2000% more than another individual regardless of how good you are at your job.
Why not? Let's say Person A is a salesman who brings a company twenty million dollars in business in a year. Person B is a salesman who manages only one million dollars. Sounds to me that Person A is worth twenty times Person B.
I don't know how how your brain works, but it's a lot easier for me to remember/keep track of a single device, compared to three devices. And are you really so forgetful that you're constantly at risk of losing the stuff you carry around with you? I hope you don't keep a lot of cash in your wallet.
Are you saying you'd really prefer to carry around a phone, an MP3 player, and a PDA? I don't even have enough pockets for all that crap.
Yes, but the nice thing about the iPhone is that it looks like it will be just as good at every task as an individual phone/MP3 player/PDA.
The little guy can terminate the big corporation's license if they sue him.
PCGamer used to be pretty good - compared to the competition, anyway. I don't know what they're like now.
If you don't care about fashion or appearances, why do you care how grubby your iPod looks?
You can easily transfer music from your iPod to your computer now, too - Apple saw the light and added that a few months/revisions ago.
New versions of Mac OS X have always run faster than their predecessors, because Apple is continually including optimizations. I believe that was also the case with the 10.3 to 10.4 transition, although it was less noticeable speedup than from 10.2 to 10.3.
I doubt Apple will be able to keep it up forever. I haven't heard anything on what the early builds of 10.5 are like, but (being early builds) it's probably too soon to draw any conclusions from them. Still, eventually they'll run out of things to optimize, and all the new features will catch up to them.