Does anybody really expect that Resampling crappy music is really going to result in anything other then just more crappy music?
What do you mean "expect"? Hasn't Puff Daddy (or whatever the fuck he's calling himself until his next court appearance) proven your assertion already?
If anything should be prevented, it should be God-awful remixes and covers... Britney Spears should never have been able to cover a Rolling Stones song, and whoever put forth the abominable 'club remix' cover of Bryan Adams' "Heaven" should be lowered slowly into a wood chipper, feet first.
This is all too true. In autumn 1996, after waffling for months, I bought a MiniDisc deck/MiniDiscman bundle for about $1000. Three months later, Sony decided to start marketing the hell out of MiniDisc stuff in the United States, and aggressively decreased prices accordingly. D'oh!
The whole thing is going to be auctioned on eBay soon, having been obsoleted by MP3s and CD-R. I'll probably be lucky to get $100 for it.
FireWire was designed to be a high-speed bus, and is plenty fast for hard drive use. I keep all my installers and system builds on a 60GB FireWire drive (I'm a Mac system integrator). You want to talk about something not fast enough for hard drives, how about USB? Even USB 2.0 is no match for FireWire when it comes to moving data to/from hard drives.
And anyway, FireWire will very soon double in speed to 800Mbps (again leaving USB in the dust), as it was designed to do, and will one day scale up to 1600Mbps and probably faster. Expect to see 800Mbps FireWire on Macs and probably Sony VAIOs in 2003.
So unless you are worried about somebody in your house hacking you, its a non-issue.
Shhh! Don't anybody tell Wes Craven about this!
Police (on phone): "Miss, we managed to trace the IP-- the hacker is accessing your system from... INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!" Big-breasted teen geek-girl: (shrieks in an ear-splitting manner)
MS does not 'play nice,' they only give the appearance of doing so to distract you while easing a hand into the pocket in which your wallet resides.:-)
In an alternate universe, this is going on:
1) MSN Messenger (MSNM) interoperates with AIM. 2) MSNM is welded into XP. 3) MS says, "Hey, Windows users! Why bother to download AIM when you can just use MSNM, which is already in XP and lets you send IMs to your AIM-using friends?" 4) Lazy users, content to just use what's already there, abandon using AIM in droves because hey, they don't have to download MSNM. 5) MSNM becomes the dominant IM app. 6) AIM usage drops. AIM ad revenues sink. AIM development budget and staff is cut. AIM starts lagging behind MSNM, feature-wise. AIM becomes IM also-ran. 7) MSNM gradually adopts a new protocol that is DMCA-protectable to lock out 3rd-party clients. 8) After the new protocol is in place, one day MSNM users can suddenly no longer IM people using AIM. Microsoft PR spews forth some mumbo-jumbo about 'IM technology heading off in a different direction' as an explanation. 9) A subsequent Windows version or service pack renders AIM inoperable. AIM, long un-updated, finally has a stake driven through its heart. 10) Time to start charging for use of MSNM.
...how long before he finds himself a lawyer, patents a "method of conveying levity via a sequence of characters typed on a keyboard," and sues, well, everyone?:-)
I discovered the site about a month and a half ago, and the posts are mostly interesting glimpses of other people's lives as feces met fan blades on America's Bad Day. I revisit the site every few days to read the newest posts, and found that posting my own account of where I was and what I did and felt, was oddly therapeutic.
Nope, it doesn't bother me in the least, because my work is done on the monitor where the menubar lives (17", 1024x768). My cursor only ventures onto the palette monitor (14", 640x480) when I need to select a different tool/function.
I also usually learn the keyboard shortcuts for the menu selections I use most often.
I never have worked out why Mac users are so insistent that palettes are superior to Toolbars.
Because since 1989 when the Mac II was released, we've been able to easily plug a second video card and a cheap (or not so cheap, depending on your budget) second monitor into our Macs and use it exclusively to hold the palettes. Windows multiple-monitor capabilities didn't achieve parity with that of the Mac until Win98, IIRC.
Personally, I've used dual monitors on every desktop Mac I've owned since 1994, and have no intention of giving them up. Once you get used to that extra screen real estate, working on a single monitor feels very confining.
If you can't figure out how to assemble IKEA furniture, I mean.... ugh! You should not have made it to adulthood, you should clearly have already died in some horrific Lego set assembly accident as a youth.
Idiots of the world: Here's a plan. If you're too fucking dumb to insert Tab A into Slot B yourself, then YOU hire someone to do it, and YOU incur the extra cost. Don't complain until they have to start making furniture that coaxes you through assembling it, thus jacking the price up for everyone including the intelligent people like me who can and will read and follow instructions.
This is further evidence that all that time I spent in search of knowledge in my younger days was wasted. I should have just spent it drinking beer, eating pork rinds, watching pro wrestling, NASCAR, and tractor pulls on TV like everyone else, and waiting for society to mold itself to my needs as a complete buffoon.
and the Windows lawsuit (which they settled with Microsoft out of court as an undisclosed sum, at the same time the $120m non-voting stock/IE default/Office port things happened) is why.
Wrong. Two separate things.
The infamous 'look-and-feel' lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted until 1993. Apple lost the case, and their defeat was ultimately upheld after several appeals. They were willing to take it all the way, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
In 1997, Apple had compiled quite a large list of lawsuit-worthy beefs with Microsoft, most if not all of which centered around Microsoft's infringement of some Apple patents. In return for Apple not suing (because apparently Gates was convinced Apple would've had a pretty good case this time), Microsoft agreed to the $150M worth of non-voting stock investment/public vote of confidence, and five years of continued development of Office on the Mac.
For another thing, for someone who claims to know about PCs, how can you not get the parts to work together correctly?
Where did I say *I* had trouble? I don't buy cutting-edge stuff or made-by-slave-labor-in-Asia-cheap stuff. I built my PC out of parts I knew to be quality by researching them. What I do is not typical. "Gimme the cheapest thing you got" is typical.
My experience has been: I can put together parts that, for the most part, are the cheapest ones available (or close to it) and get a computer that works seamlessly and flawlessly.
Well no shit, Sherlock. I should hope that someone who isn't running Windows on their PC would be able to competently assemble and maintain their own PC.
(Maybe not in Windows, though)
But Joe Sixpack is not gonna build his own PC or use something other than Windows as the OS on it-- so I guess my argument does hold water.
Oh well... what do you expect from a flamer
How disappointing. I expected better from someone with such a low User #.
When you buy a system from, say, Dell, with OS, say, Windows XP, you get hardware and software that is thouroughly tested to work together well, on par or better than Apple's hw with their software. Where's the el cheapo x86 stuff you're referring to? Nowhere in sight.
Here's another brainiac so anxious to take a potshot at me for preferring Apple, that he sees something in my post that wasn't there.
Where did I mention Dell in my post? The "el cheapo x86 stuff" I was referring to, are commodity parts bought from places like CyberGuys, Directron and Access Micro, and used by the buyers to build their own PC. The 'cheap hardware idiots' are the people clamoring for the ability to run Mac OS X on such home-built, no-two-exactly-alike boxes. This is a pipe dream, and always will be. Even Microsoft can't make an OS that will run seamlessly on all of those machines, and they've been throwing money and programmers at the problem for years.
These guys design these things, but they never look at the facts. For the most part, we are a nation of people whose VCRs (unless they can set themselves) are blinking "12:00," and who are usually shocked to learn that the right mouse button doesn't do the same stuff as the left button.
Any remote powerful enough to control everything in the house will be expensive, and so complex that the people in the target demographic will never learn how to operate all but the most basic of functions. Did they ever write down the business plan? I doubt it, because it's something like this:
The people who want to automate their homes are already doing it, and they're rolling their own solutions by using a bunch of low-cost components together in a clever way because they enjoy the tinkering it takes to achieve the end result. They're not just going to buy some pricey gewgaw to do it for them-- where's the fun in that?
As for me, I've had a Mac running my house via X-10 with great success for years. In addition to remotes, I can send commands via IM, and I've got a good bit done on a web interface. I'm always adding to and improving my system, and it works wonderfully.
Leave the home automation stuff to the DIY geeks, and the filthy rich who can afford to pay someone else to customize a system for their homes. One-size-fits-all home automation solutions will never cut it, especially when they cost a few hundred bucks like this one does.
I will commend Apple's recent efforts and say that they offer the most elegant package for the home user, however, they could do the same with x86 hardware.
Show me in my post where I said they couldn't. I think you were so excited about hitting "Reply" and calling me an Apple elitist, you saw things that I didn't write.
From a technical standpoint (software developer alienation issues aside), I believe Apple certainly could pull off switching to x86 from PPC. Look how seamlessly they moved from 680x0 to PPC. It would just be a bad idea to move to x86, IMHO, because Intel, etc can't keep wringing additional cycles out of it forever. The architecture is old and tired, and it's time to take it out back and shoot it. Not time for another major comptuer maker to adopt it.
Just because you can buy cheap x86 hardware does not mean that you can not build a very high quality x86 box.
I know that. I've built several PCs in the last few years, and I know that quality components can be had for reasonable prices. But I'm in the minority who is willing to pay for quality. My post, on the other hand, was railing against the majority, who expect to run Mac OS X on a $299 PC from Wal-Mart or their home-built shitbox made from components they found in the dumpster behind CompUSA.
You can't have it both ways. You can't build a system yourself for pocket change, out of components chosen by lowest price, from hundreds of different manufacturers, and have everything work 100% seamlessly. If it were possible, Microsoft would have done it by now.
Apple will NEVER (read: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER) sell a version of the Mac OS that can be run on any cheap POS that you cobbled together from parts you bought in Target for $5 each. Wake up and smell the coffee, okay, because I'm getting tired of reading all your posts.
Apple sells the experience of using tightly-integrated hardware and software. They can't do that if they suddenly have to make sure their software will work with every home-built x86 whitebox on the face of the earth. What Apple does is something that Microsoft can never do, unless they start selling their own brand of computers and restrict Windows to only run on Microsoft PCs.
Even if Apple ever were to switch to making x86-based Macs (and you, the reader, are significantly more likely to bang Anna Kournikova than to see an x86-based Mac for sale), they would put something proprietary in those machines, maybe even in every component of those machines, and change the Mac OS to refuse to boot if it doesn't detect that proprietary something. That's the only way they'll be able to preserve the 'it just works' aspects that are a major part of their success.
Personally, I think Apple will,very soon, tell Motorola to go piss up a rope (and I say, it's about time!). The new IBM chip has something close enough to AltiVec, and IBM actually gives a shit about improving their products. Now that Mac OS X is truly ready for prime time with 10.2, all Apple needs is to be able to produce machines that will impress the MHz/GHz-obsessed, cock-measuring crowd.
This is nothing new, Apple has just never offered people the option of a discount on multiple licenses before-- but you should be buying one copy of the Mac OS for each Mac you have, if you want to stick to the letter of the EULA. I would assume this is the case for all versions of the Mac OS not freely available for download from Apple.
However, should you not want to comply with that, there's no product-activation type crapola going on. Feel free to install one licensed copy of Jaguar on all the machines you want, there is no built-in, technical means to prevent you from running it simultaneously on multiple Macs. You'll just be violating the terms of the license.
Apple is trying to kill off native AppleTalk and just using AFP via TCP/IP.
AFAIK, Jaguar supports mounting Windows shares out of the box. For Mac OS 9.x, you can get DAVE from Thursby.
There is also a means to get OS X machines to speak old-school AppleTalk. Dunno if it'll work in your situation, but you enable it by using the NetInfo Manager application. Go to/config/AppleFileServer, and modify the attribute "use_appletalk" from 0 to 1. A full description of the procedure can be found at the bottom of this page, but what I wrote above is enough to get an OS X Mac speaking old AppleTalk.
I don't know why they didn't just call it Terminal Services Client for the Macintosh, since that's pretty much what it is.
They are pushing it hard as a means to use Outlook on the Mac, since development on a native Outlook client for OS X has not even begun, AFAIK.
I tried it out the other night, and on my 500MHz iBook over an AirPort connection, it feels significantly faster than it does on my XP Pro Duron 850MHz box over a 100Mbps wired Ethernet connection. It can also take over the full screen, which I can't seem to get it to do on my XP box with the the actual client application (though I can get it fullscreen if I go in through the web front end).
It's a much nicer solution than my previous one, running the 16-bit Terminal Services Client in Win3.11 within Virtual PC.
Still, a native Outlook would be much better. Hop to it, MacBU!
They say that "a domain name isn't tangible property."
Uh huh. Tell that to people who wind up on the wrong end of 'cybersquatter' lawsuits, like this guy.
If a domain name isn't tangible property, then doesn't this ruling somehow negate or diminish the concept of a trademark, which is also in most cases just a name?
If a big corporation can sue for alleged misuse of their name or dilution of their trademark, then I would say that a name certainly can be tangible property and that the ruling that stated it isn't is flawed as all hell. Or is this just another case of monied corporations having rights that citizens don't?
Conversely why can't people just not steal the mp3's?
Because the RIAA refuses to sell them in a way that encourages people to pay for them: High quality files in a DRM-free format, at a price so cheap per song that people would rather pay it to get a file of guaranteed high quality than waste the time trying to find a perfectly-ripped, glitch-free copy somewhere for free. Do you know how many times I've had to keep re-downloading songs from Gnutella because they're cut off at the end or have glitches in the middle from the CD skipping when the song was ripped? It's not a fun thing to do with a speedy broadband connection, much less the dialup connection that the majority of people still use.
If the RIAA charged, say, 5 to 25 cents per song, or a more expensive x dollars-per-month all-you-can-download plan, with NO DRM CRAP, they would make a killing. Why don't they?
They're greedy. They like the profit margins they maintain with their extortionate CD pricing.
They're cheap. The startup costs for their own MP3 server farm would be pretty hefty, and that's money that (in their eyes) would be better put to use stuffing Hilary's couch cushions and mattress, and buying laws that prop up their existing business model.
They're lazy. They don't want to have to strive to create more high-quality content. By only selling album-length CDs (the purchasable single as we know it is being killed off), they can effectively force you to pay $20 for that one song you like, because the other eleven on the CD make you bleed from the ears because they're so terrible. In all my years of CD buying (pre-Napster, of course), I can still have enough fingers to count the number of CDs I have where I love every single track on them. I could have a nasty accident with a bandsaw and that would still be true.
They're stupid. They just can't see that if they sell something cheaply enough and without onerous restrictions, people won't be motivated to steal it. Every time they come close to this idea, the services they launch are too expensive and/or use some proprietary file format locked down six ways from Sunday, or have other consumer-hostile aspects.
I don't really want the government to have to make cell phone use illegal in certain places, either. I'd much prefer it if they made it legal for us to occasionally beat some courtesy into people who need it, without worrying about prosecution for it.
We need laws that allow us to simply euthanize deaf old people who go to movies and constantly ask their companion to repeat/explain something. Because they get pissy and indignant when someone under 65 asks them to be quiet, no matter how nicely. Usually, angrily whispering "Shut the FUCK UP!" will shock them into silence for a while, though.
My worst experience in a theater, however, was with a cell phone. Since I generally hate people because they're fucking rude idiots, I go to the movies by myself and only attend the earliest possible show on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks after it opens. When I saw 40 Days & 40 Nights, I was the only person in the theater, and quite happy about it. A little more than halfway through, two theater employees came in and sat down near me. Less than three minutes later, the one dickmonkey's freaking cell phone rings! I am disgusted to reaffirm that this actually happened, I'm not making it up. You would think that at least the people who work at the damned theater would have their phones off or set to vibrate.
Blocking won't work because of liability issues. The first time someone misses an emergency call because blocking/jamming technology is used wherever they are, it'll be multimillion-dollar lawsuit time.
Just throwing the ignorant or forgetful asswipes out of the theater won't work well, either. But if they get fined one or two hundred bucks, that will most likely give their memory and courtesy a little boost the next time.
IMHO, a fine won't work as well as a healthy dose of Angry Mob Justice, but the fine is much more likely to be legislated into existence.:-)
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Does anybody really expect that Resampling crappy music is really going to result in anything other then just more crappy music?
What do you mean "expect"? Hasn't Puff Daddy (or whatever the fuck he's calling himself until his next court appearance) proven your assertion already?
If anything should be prevented, it should be God-awful remixes and covers... Britney Spears should never have been able to cover a Rolling Stones song, and whoever put forth the abominable 'club remix' cover of Bryan Adams' "Heaven" should be lowered slowly into a wood chipper, feet first.
~Philly
This is all too true. In autumn 1996, after waffling for months, I bought a MiniDisc deck/MiniDiscman bundle for about $1000. Three months later, Sony decided to start marketing the hell out of MiniDisc stuff in the United States, and aggressively decreased prices accordingly. D'oh!
The whole thing is going to be auctioned on eBay soon, having been obsoleted by MP3s and CD-R. I'll probably be lucky to get $100 for it.
~Philly
FireWire was designed to be a high-speed bus, and is plenty fast for hard drive use. I keep all my installers and system builds on a 60GB FireWire drive (I'm a Mac system integrator). You want to talk about something not fast enough for hard drives, how about USB? Even USB 2.0 is no match for FireWire when it comes to moving data to/from hard drives.
And anyway, FireWire will very soon double in speed to 800Mbps (again leaving USB in the dust), as it was designed to do, and will one day scale up to 1600Mbps and probably faster. Expect to see 800Mbps FireWire on Macs and probably Sony VAIOs in 2003.
~Philly
So unless you are worried about somebody in your house hacking you, its a non-issue.
Shhh! Don't anybody tell Wes Craven about this!
Police (on phone): "Miss, we managed to trace the IP-- the hacker is accessing your system from... INSIDE THE HOUSE!!!"
Big-breasted teen geek-girl: (shrieks in an ear-splitting manner)
~Philly
MS does not 'play nice,' they only give the appearance of doing so to distract you while easing a hand into the pocket in which your wallet resides. :-)
In an alternate universe, this is going on:
1) MSN Messenger (MSNM) interoperates with AIM.
2) MSNM is welded into XP.
3) MS says, "Hey, Windows users! Why bother to download AIM when you can just use MSNM, which is already in XP and lets you send IMs to your AIM-using friends?"
4) Lazy users, content to just use what's already there, abandon using AIM in droves because hey, they don't have to download MSNM.
5) MSNM becomes the dominant IM app.
6) AIM usage drops. AIM ad revenues sink. AIM development budget and staff is cut. AIM starts lagging behind MSNM, feature-wise. AIM becomes IM also-ran.
7) MSNM gradually adopts a new protocol that is DMCA-protectable to lock out 3rd-party clients.
8) After the new protocol is in place, one day MSNM users can suddenly no longer IM people using AIM. Microsoft PR spews forth some mumbo-jumbo about 'IM technology heading off in a different direction' as an explanation.
9) A subsequent Windows version or service pack renders AIM inoperable. AIM, long un-updated, finally has a stake driven through its heart.
10) Time to start charging for use of MSNM.
~Philly
...how long before he finds himself a lawyer, patents a "method of conveying levity via a sequence of characters typed on a keyboard," and sues, well, everyone? :-)
(Oops!)
~Philly
Have you posted your story on wherewereyou.org?
I discovered the site about a month and a half ago, and the posts are mostly interesting glimpses of other people's lives as feces met fan blades on America's Bad Day. I revisit the site every few days to read the newest posts, and found that posting my own account of where I was and what I did and felt, was oddly therapeutic.
~Philly
Nope, it doesn't bother me in the least, because my work is done on the monitor where the menubar lives (17", 1024x768). My cursor only ventures onto the palette monitor (14", 640x480) when I need to select a different tool/function.
I also usually learn the keyboard shortcuts for the menu selections I use most often.
~Philly
I never have worked out why Mac users are so insistent that palettes are superior to Toolbars.
Because since 1989 when the Mac II was released, we've been able to easily plug a second video card and a cheap (or not so cheap, depending on your budget) second monitor into our Macs and use it exclusively to hold the palettes. Windows multiple-monitor capabilities didn't achieve parity with that of the Mac until Win98, IIRC.
Personally, I've used dual monitors on every desktop Mac I've owned since 1994, and have no intention of giving them up. Once you get used to that extra screen real estate, working on a single monitor feels very confining.
~Philly
If you can't figure out how to assemble IKEA furniture, I mean.... ugh! You should not have made it to adulthood, you should clearly have already died in some horrific Lego set assembly accident as a youth.
Idiots of the world: Here's a plan. If you're too fucking dumb to insert Tab A into Slot B yourself, then YOU hire someone to do it, and YOU incur the extra cost. Don't complain until they have to start making furniture that coaxes you through assembling it, thus jacking the price up for everyone including the intelligent people like me who can and will read and follow instructions.
This is further evidence that all that time I spent in search of knowledge in my younger days was wasted. I should have just spent it drinking beer, eating pork rinds, watching pro wrestling, NASCAR, and tractor pulls on TV like everyone else, and waiting for society to mold itself to my needs as a complete buffoon.
Hmm... maybe I can fix things myself....
/me looks around for a crayon and a mallet.
~Philly
and the Windows lawsuit (which they settled with Microsoft out of court as an undisclosed sum, at the same time the $120m non-voting stock/IE default/Office port things happened) is why.
Wrong. Two separate things.
The infamous 'look-and-feel' lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted until 1993. Apple lost the case, and their defeat was ultimately upheld after several appeals. They were willing to take it all the way, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
In 1997, Apple had compiled quite a large list of lawsuit-worthy beefs with Microsoft, most if not all of which centered around Microsoft's infringement of some Apple patents. In return for Apple not suing (because apparently Gates was convinced Apple would've had a pretty good case this time), Microsoft agreed to the $150M worth of non-voting stock investment/public vote of confidence, and five years of continued development of Office on the Mac.
~Philly
For another thing, for someone who claims to know about PCs, how can you not get the parts to work together correctly?
Where did I say *I* had trouble? I don't buy cutting-edge stuff or made-by-slave-labor-in-Asia-cheap stuff. I built my PC out of parts I knew to be quality by researching them. What I do is not typical. "Gimme the cheapest thing you got" is typical.
My experience has been: I can put together parts that, for the most part, are the cheapest ones available (or close to it) and get a computer that works seamlessly and flawlessly.
Well no shit, Sherlock. I should hope that someone who isn't running Windows on their PC would be able to competently assemble and maintain their own PC.
(Maybe not in Windows, though)
But Joe Sixpack is not gonna build his own PC or use something other than Windows as the OS on it-- so I guess my argument does hold water.
Oh well... what do you expect from a flamer
How disappointing. I expected better from someone with such a low User #.
~Philly
When you buy a system from, say, Dell, with OS, say, Windows XP, you get hardware and software that is thouroughly tested to work together well, on par or better than Apple's hw with their software. Where's the el cheapo x86 stuff you're referring to? Nowhere in sight.
Here's another brainiac so anxious to take a potshot at me for preferring Apple, that he sees something in my post that wasn't there.
Where did I mention Dell in my post? The "el cheapo x86 stuff" I was referring to, are commodity parts bought from places like CyberGuys, Directron and Access Micro, and used by the buyers to build their own PC. The 'cheap hardware idiots' are the people clamoring for the ability to run Mac OS X on such home-built, no-two-exactly-alike boxes. This is a pipe dream, and always will be. Even Microsoft can't make an OS that will run seamlessly on all of those machines, and they've been throwing money and programmers at the problem for years.
~Philly
Slow news day, CNN?
These guys design these things, but they never look at the facts. For the most part, we are a nation of people whose VCRs (unless they can set themselves) are blinking "12:00," and who are usually shocked to learn that the right mouse button doesn't do the same stuff as the left button.
Any remote powerful enough to control everything in the house will be expensive, and so complex that the people in the target demographic will never learn how to operate all but the most basic of functions. Did they ever write down the business plan? I doubt it, because it's something like this:
1) Market expensive, complex device to cheap, dumb/lazy users.
2) ???
3) Profit!
The people who want to automate their homes are already doing it, and they're rolling their own solutions by using a bunch of low-cost components together in a clever way because they enjoy the tinkering it takes to achieve the end result. They're not just going to buy some pricey gewgaw to do it for them-- where's the fun in that?
As for me, I've had a Mac running my house via X-10 with great success for years. In addition to remotes, I can send commands via IM, and I've got a good bit done on a web interface. I'm always adding to and improving my system, and it works wonderfully.
Leave the home automation stuff to the DIY geeks, and the filthy rich who can afford to pay someone else to customize a system for their homes. One-size-fits-all home automation solutions will never cut it, especially when they cost a few hundred bucks like this one does.
~Philly
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=6.
Whee! All I need is "Funny" and "Troll", and I will have hit for the cycle. Will two moderators please oblige and mod my parent comment accordingly?
~Philly
I will commend Apple's recent efforts and say that they offer the most elegant package for the home user, however, they could do the same with x86 hardware.
Show me in my post where I said they couldn't. I think you were so excited about hitting "Reply" and calling me an Apple elitist, you saw things that I didn't write.
From a technical standpoint (software developer alienation issues aside), I believe Apple certainly could pull off switching to x86 from PPC. Look how seamlessly they moved from 680x0 to PPC. It would just be a bad idea to move to x86, IMHO, because Intel, etc can't keep wringing additional cycles out of it forever. The architecture is old and tired, and it's time to take it out back and shoot it. Not time for another major comptuer maker to adopt it.
Just because you can buy cheap x86 hardware does not mean that you can not build a very high quality x86 box.
I know that. I've built several PCs in the last few years, and I know that quality components can be had for reasonable prices. But I'm in the minority who is willing to pay for quality. My post, on the other hand, was railing against the majority, who expect to run Mac OS X on a $299 PC from Wal-Mart or their home-built shitbox made from components they found in the dumpster behind CompUSA.
You can't have it both ways. You can't build a system yourself for pocket change, out of components chosen by lowest price, from hundreds of different manufacturers, and have everything work 100% seamlessly. If it were possible, Microsoft would have done it by now.
~Philly
Apple will NEVER (read: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER) sell a version of the Mac OS that can be run on any cheap POS that you cobbled together from parts you bought in Target for $5 each. Wake up and smell the coffee, okay, because I'm getting tired of reading all your posts.
Apple sells the experience of using tightly-integrated hardware and software. They can't do that if they suddenly have to make sure their software will work with every home-built x86 whitebox on the face of the earth. What Apple does is something that Microsoft can never do, unless they start selling their own brand of computers and restrict Windows to only run on Microsoft PCs.
Even if Apple ever were to switch to making x86-based Macs (and you, the reader, are significantly more likely to bang Anna Kournikova than to see an x86-based Mac for sale), they would put something proprietary in those machines, maybe even in every component of those machines, and change the Mac OS to refuse to boot if it doesn't detect that proprietary something. That's the only way they'll be able to preserve the 'it just works' aspects that are a major part of their success.
Personally, I think Apple will,very soon, tell Motorola to go piss up a rope (and I say, it's about time!). The new IBM chip has something close enough to AltiVec, and IBM actually gives a shit about improving their products. Now that Mac OS X is truly ready for prime time with 10.2, all Apple needs is to be able to produce machines that will impress the MHz/GHz-obsessed, cock-measuring crowd.
~Philly
This is nothing new, Apple has just never offered people the option of a discount on multiple licenses before-- but you should be buying one copy of the Mac OS for each Mac you have, if you want to stick to the letter of the EULA. I would assume this is the case for all versions of the Mac OS not freely available for download from Apple.
However, should you not want to comply with that, there's no product-activation type crapola going on. Feel free to install one licensed copy of Jaguar on all the machines you want, there is no built-in, technical means to prevent you from running it simultaneously on multiple Macs. You'll just be violating the terms of the license.
~Philly
Apple is trying to kill off native AppleTalk and just using AFP via TCP/IP.
/config/AppleFileServer, and modify the attribute "use_appletalk" from 0 to 1. A full description of the procedure can be found at the bottom of this page, but what I wrote above is enough to get an OS X Mac speaking old AppleTalk.
AFAIK, Jaguar supports mounting Windows shares out of the box. For Mac OS 9.x, you can get DAVE from Thursby.
There is also a means to get OS X machines to speak old-school AppleTalk. Dunno if it'll work in your situation, but you enable it by using the NetInfo Manager application. Go to
~Philly
I don't know why they didn't just call it Terminal Services Client for the Macintosh, since that's pretty much what it is.
They are pushing it hard as a means to use Outlook on the Mac, since development on a native Outlook client for OS X has not even begun, AFAIK.
I tried it out the other night, and on my 500MHz iBook over an AirPort connection, it feels significantly faster than it does on my XP Pro Duron 850MHz box over a 100Mbps wired Ethernet connection. It can also take over the full screen, which I can't seem to get it to do on my XP box with the the actual client application (though I can get it fullscreen if I go in through the web front end).
It's a much nicer solution than my previous one, running the 16-bit Terminal Services Client in Win3.11 within Virtual PC.
Still, a native Outlook would be much better. Hop to it, MacBU!
~Philly
They say that "a domain name isn't tangible property."
Uh huh. Tell that to people who wind up on the wrong end of 'cybersquatter' lawsuits, like this guy.
If a domain name isn't tangible property, then doesn't this ruling somehow negate or diminish the concept of a trademark, which is also in most cases just a name?
If a big corporation can sue for alleged misuse of their name or dilution of their trademark, then I would say that a name certainly can be tangible property and that the ruling that stated it isn't is flawed as all hell. Or is this just another case of monied corporations having rights that citizens don't?
~Philly
Conversely why can't people just not steal the mp3's?
Because the RIAA refuses to sell them in a way that encourages people to pay for them: High quality files in a DRM-free format, at a price so cheap per song that people would rather pay it to get a file of guaranteed high quality than waste the time trying to find a perfectly-ripped, glitch-free copy somewhere for free. Do you know how many times I've had to keep re-downloading songs from Gnutella because they're cut off at the end or have glitches in the middle from the CD skipping when the song was ripped? It's not a fun thing to do with a speedy broadband connection, much less the dialup connection that the majority of people still use.
If the RIAA charged, say, 5 to 25 cents per song, or a more expensive x dollars-per-month all-you-can-download plan, with NO DRM CRAP, they would make a killing. Why don't they?
They're greedy.
They like the profit margins they maintain with their extortionate CD pricing.
They're cheap.
The startup costs for their own MP3 server farm would be pretty hefty, and that's money that (in their eyes) would be better put to use stuffing Hilary's couch cushions and mattress, and buying laws that prop up their existing business model.
They're lazy.
They don't want to have to strive to create more high-quality content. By only selling album-length CDs (the purchasable single as we know it is being killed off), they can effectively force you to pay $20 for that one song you like, because the other eleven on the CD make you bleed from the ears because they're so terrible. In all my years of CD buying (pre-Napster, of course), I can still have enough fingers to count the number of CDs I have where I love every single track on them. I could have a nasty accident with a bandsaw and that would still be true.
They're stupid.
They just can't see that if they sell something cheaply enough and without onerous restrictions, people won't be motivated to steal it. Every time they come close to this idea, the services they launch are too expensive and/or use some proprietary file format locked down six ways from Sunday, or have other consumer-hostile aspects.
~Philly
I don't really want the government to have to make cell phone use illegal in certain places, either. I'd much prefer it if they made it legal for us to occasionally beat some courtesy into people who need it, without worrying about prosecution for it.
~Philly
I agree with you.
We need laws that allow us to simply euthanize deaf old people who go to movies and constantly ask their companion to repeat/explain something. Because they get pissy and indignant when someone under 65 asks them to be quiet, no matter how nicely. Usually, angrily whispering "Shut the FUCK UP!" will shock them into silence for a while, though.
My worst experience in a theater, however, was with a cell phone. Since I generally hate people because they're fucking rude idiots, I go to the movies by myself and only attend the earliest possible show on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks after it opens. When I saw 40 Days & 40 Nights, I was the only person in the theater, and quite happy about it. A little more than halfway through, two theater employees came in and sat down near me. Less than three minutes later, the one dickmonkey's freaking cell phone rings! I am disgusted to reaffirm that this actually happened, I'm not making it up. You would think that at least the people who work at the damned theater would have their phones off or set to vibrate.
~Philly
Blocking won't work because of liability issues. The first time someone misses an emergency call because blocking/jamming technology is used wherever they are, it'll be multimillion-dollar lawsuit time.
:-)
Just throwing the ignorant or forgetful asswipes out of the theater won't work well, either. But if they get fined one or two hundred bucks, that will most likely give their memory and courtesy a little boost the next time.
IMHO, a fine won't work as well as a healthy dose of Angry Mob Justice, but the fine is much more likely to be legislated into existence.
~Philly