I have a Hotmail address that I have NEVER given to ANYONE, and it gets packed with spam. The username is my first two initials and last name.
Once in a great while I'll look at it and marvel at all the crap that collects in there, but since I don't want it I usually just let it go until M$ disables it so Trillian doesn't bug me with 'new mail' notifications.
But Steve should realize that a very important part of the 'digital hub' would be a device I can use to capture TV shows, copy them to my Mac, edit out the stupid commercials, and eventually have a nicely-edited library of The Outer Limits, The New Twilight Zone, The Simpsons, etc...
...that if anyone can probably pull off the seamless, user-friendly integration of PVR and personal computer, it will probably be Apple.
Think about it, they have, or will have, a lot of the pieces. They could make (possibly even in partnership with TiVo) a set-top box that connected with the Mac via Rendezvous and AirPort (possibly 802.11g) and some special software on the Mac side. Hell, throw in a web interface or make the control app highly AppleScriptable so people like me can roll their own.:-)
I'm just kinda tossing this out there, I haven't really given it that much thought.
...the magic is in the software-hardware combo, and the money is in the hardware.
Plus supporting only their hardware means many fewer support headaches.
Now, maybe something like TiVo-on-a-PCI-card and TiVo software that only works with that card would fly from a technical standpoint, but then the ability to trade shows would be accessible to the average user. Jack Valenti would pop a vein in his forehead. Right now, it's possible to extract the video from a TiVo only if you're willing to futz under the hood, so the majority of TiVo users can't do it, so it's not THAT big of a concern-- like MP3 trading on Usenet and FTP was, before Napster came along.
And then we're back to support issues. You put a PC TiVo kit on the shelves at CompUSA, you have to hire people to help Joe Idiot User who can barely work Windows but now expects to get his PC and cable box talking nicely to each other.
Taco: "Gee, that's a pretty nice webserver you've got your case mod info on. Sure be a shame if somethin', uh, happened to it, like, I dunno, fifty million slashgeeks all trying to load pages from it at once and reducing it to a puddle of slag." Case modder:Looking disgusted, he hands CmdrTaco a bulging cloth sack with a "$" on it.
~Philly
Re:Support for New Apple LCD Monitors?
on
USB KVMs Compared
·
· Score: 2
If an ADC KVM exists, it is probably hideously expensive. Doubly so if Belkin makes it. You're probably better off buying a high-quality, 3rd-party LCD display with a standard connector, and a normal USB KVM. That's what I'm going to be doing in a few weeks when my existing beige G3 is replaced in my KVM setup with whatever Apple announces in the very near future. I would like the one-cable convenience of the ADC display, but I need the KVM connectability more.
If you really insist on getting an Apple display and you have some cash to spare, get the ADC display, and buy a 3rd-party 17" LCD to use on the VGA port on the G4, and use that as the G4's secondary display and the primary for the other machines hooked up to the KVM.
I mean, come on. How about a straightforward demo of the damn things?
At MacWorld 2 weeks ago, these things were all over the place so people could demo Apple's new iSync software. There was no subterfuge, it was, "Here's the phone, try it out for yourself." And it worked. I want one.
Why do they deem it necessary to stoop to all this sneaky shit? If the product is good, people will want it without some fucking Jedi Mind Trick-style advertising campaign.
Ah, and the obligatory Simpsons quote:
Moe: "Hi, uh, could I buy you a drink?" Cute Girl in Bar: "Sure! How about a Bacardi Cooler?" M: "Uh.. ok." CGiB: "Or even a Bacardi Rita? Because Bacardi makes the night come alive... with freshness!" M: "What, do you work for Bacardi?" CGiB: "No, I'm in love with you." CGiB slaps a "Drink Rum" sticker on Moe's forehead
...specific tactics will include fake tourist couples at popular attractions asking bystanders to take their picture...
Me: "Sure, folks, I'll take your picture. Move back towards the fountain." Tourists (moving back): "How's this?" Me: "No, no, a little farther back." Tourists (moving back again): "Better?" Me: "Hey, I know! Why don't you take off your shoes and stand *in* the fountain?" Tourists: "Umm.... okay." (Tourists take off shoes and socks and wade into fountain.) Tourists: "Okay, how's this?" /me runs off with the phone.
I can see it now, the day after a major software package is released, the site slows to a crawl as everyone scrambles to check out the EULA so they're not left out of the chat around the water cooler!
~Philly
Re:former ZD staffer on product reviews
on
Ziff Davis Teeters
·
· Score: 2
As opposed to constantly buying the newest version of Windows, and constantly upgrading your PC to accommodate the added bloat of the newest version, in the *hopes* that everything will *finally* work as promised? Feh! Windows from 3.0 to ME and NT4 was the same run-down outhouse, only with a fresh coat of paint.
I'm still working on a six year-old Power Mac. It does everything I want it to do, and then some, but won't run OS X as quickly as I'd like. So it is soon to be replaced by a brand new G4, which will give me another 6 or 7 years of trouble-free operation, where I'll open it 3 or 4 times a year to blow out any accumulating dust. This while the Windows tinkerers are furiously swapping out video cards, mobos, processors, and cooling equipment, and don't even bother to put the case back together most of the time.
Yes, Macs cost more. But the higher initial cost buys you longer-lasting equipment that does not need as much support attention as a comparable Windows PC. Study after study has borne out that Macs win on TCO. But hey there, little soldier, you keep right on going with your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, chanting "Windows is always better, Windows is always better, Windows is always better..." if that's what makes you happy!:-) Lord knows that's the party line at ZD.
I know Outlook 2001 exists, I thought it was clear by context that I was referring to an OS X-native version of it.
And I don't find it buggy. I have several clients who use it and the worst issue I've seen is a 'selected radio button is invisible' cosmetic problem.
Outlook 8.2.2, now THAT was a piece of shit.
~Philly
Re:former ZD staffer on product reviews
on
Ziff Davis Teeters
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
it wasn't about advertising. It was about geeky guys wanting their PCs to do multimedia, cut and paste, hook up with peripherals more easily, etc., so people got excited and hopeful about Windows.
Why waste hope on Windows when they could've all just gotten Macs and been enjoying those features all along?
Eventually you're going to get a government almost wholly controlled by these huge corporations with big pockets who just want to protect their own interests.
"Eventually"? Oh, you must be an optimist. Because it seems to me that our collective tit is already in the wringer, and the crank just keeps getting turned.
I wholeheartedly agree about Outlook. Microsoft has only themselves to blame for Office X's slow adoption rate. They priced it in the frickin' stratosphere for non-academic purchasers, and Outlook, arguably the most important app under the Office umbrella for corporate purchasers who can easily afford Microsoft's extortionate pricing, has not even begun to be developed (AFAIK).
Though I do like Entourage a lot for my own personal mail and calendar at home, I was very impressed with the improvements to Apple's own Mail, and iCal, and iSync to keep all my devices that need that data up to date. I have not yet made the plunge to OS X as my primary OS at home, because I don't have a Mac truly capable of running it. That will change, as my six year-old Power Mac 7600 with the G3/400 upgrade moves to the server room and a shiny, new G4/G5 tower being introduced in a few weeks (with Jaguar preloaded) replaces it. When that day comes, I will take a long, hard look at how much I *really* need Microsoft Office.
One of Apple's Jaguar pages vaguely hints at Exchange compatibility, but does not go into specifics. This worries me, because I'm hoping they don't just mean, "it's compatible with the POP/SMTP functionality of your company's Exchange server." Also, isn't Outlook/Exchange a proprietary enough system that Microsoft could raise a stink over Apple developing their own Outlook client, or even take measures (legal or technical) to stop/prevent it?
Oh, and don't get me started on those Quark assholes. They are just begging Adobe, "Please, please, keep polishing your X-native InDesign! Take our marketshare! Put us out of business!"
While certainly not a suitable answer to for the guy who Asked Slashdot, AppleScript is fantastic. How the hell is it cumbersome, painful, and unreliable?
If you can read and write English, you can become a pretty decent AppleScripter in a few hours. Pick up a decent book on it, and you'll be making your Mac do backflips in a few days.
I've used AppleScript to write a CGI that duplicates the functionality of Outlook Web Access with Microsoft Entourage.
I also make extensive use of it in my web-based control system for my home automation rig-- hell, AppleScript is the BACKBONE of my home automation rig, gluing together various apps.
In about 20 minutes one day, I wrote a script to strip out the stupid, extraneous shit from "CNN Breaking News" e-mails, create a new message with nothing but the actual news item in it, and send it along to my cell phone.
One of my clients (a huge, multi-national food company whose products are mm mm good) uses two AppleScript CGIs that I wrote for searching job archives they have on their internal web site.
Sure, sometimes I've had to write a small 'test' script on the side to help myself understand how to extract a particular data item from a record, but it's a relatively painless process.
Whenever you have trouble with a scriptable app not made by Apple, blame that app's vendor for not doing a good enough job at making it scriptable, DON'T blame AppleScript.
~Philly
Re:Most heavily polluted? Cite your sources..
on
Sili-Hudson Valley?
·
· Score: 2
I look forward to seeing whatever query you'll be submitting as an "Ask Slashdot" in the near future, since all of their recent ones have come from other people too lazy to do a Google search for one thing or another.:-)
Mac OS 7.6.1 to 8.0 had a major UI overhaul, mutli-threaded Finder, and major architectural re-writes.
Actually, OS 8.0 only contained enough true changes to be 7.7 or 7.8, but it was artificially bumped up to kill the cloners, whose licenses were only valid for 7.x.
I agree, but what companies, share holders, CEOs, etc. are interested in is the amount of $ they earned at the end of the year.
Not all of them. Apple is a very profitable company as it is, but that doesn't matter much to Steve Jobs. What matters to him is getting mere mortals to see things his way about how they should be interacting with their computers.
Jobs thinks Windows is an inelegant, insecure, virus-prone, bloated, crashy piece of dreck, and he's had to keep that opinion to himself (publicly, anyway) while that development agreement was in place with the Beast of Redmond. Now that that's over the gloves have come off, as evidenced by the highly visible, popular, and apparently effective "Switch" campaign.
Microsoft will only help him as they continue to piss off legions of their customers who only bought Windows "because that's what everyone else buys." The constant revelations of security holes, their view of their customers as nothing more than a 'revenue source,' the constant paid upgrades, the product activation stuff, the DRM stuff, the EULAs that sneak in passages like "if Bill stops by your house, your mom and sister have to each give him a hummer."-- these things are growing the anti-Microsoft sentiment amongst Microsoft's own customers, and those people will eventually feel abused enough to take a good hard look at alternatives like the Mac.
Not every DSL provider makes you use PPPoE, doesn't a non-monopoly-telephone-company offer DSL in your area?
Here in Philly, Verizon calls the shots with their lame-ass DSL, but I got Covad DSL through Speakeasy, and I'm really happy with it. I've got three static IPs, run my own mail, web, and other servers, and hook up as many computers as I want to it.
The transaction went something like this: Me: "Here's some money." Them: "Here's your bandwidth! Have at it-- just don't run any pr0n servers, please."
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Hotmail address that I have NEVER given to ANYONE, and it gets packed with spam. The username is my first two initials and last name.
Once in a great while I'll look at it and marvel at all the crap that collects in there, but since I don't want it I usually just let it go until M$ disables it so Trillian doesn't bug me with 'new mail' notifications.
~Philly
Eh the joke works better in Basic.
Like this?
10 LET POT$="black"
20 LET KETTLE$=POT$
30 PRINT POT$, KETTLE$
40 GOTO 10
~Philly
But Steve should realize that a very important part of the 'digital hub' would be a device I can use to capture TV shows, copy them to my Mac, edit out the stupid commercials, and eventually have a nicely-edited library of The Outer Limits, The New Twilight Zone, The Simpsons, etc...
It was just reported on the local news here in Philadelphia.
They speculate it got there from candle-drippings from all the candlelight vigils they have for people getting shot to death, etc.
...that if anyone can probably pull off the seamless, user-friendly integration of PVR and personal computer, it will probably be Apple.
:-)
Think about it, they have, or will have, a lot of the pieces. They could make (possibly even in partnership with TiVo) a set-top box that connected with the Mac via Rendezvous and AirPort (possibly 802.11g) and some special software on the Mac side. Hell, throw in a web interface or make the control app highly AppleScriptable so people like me can roll their own.
I'm just kinda tossing this out there, I haven't really given it that much thought.
~Philly
...the magic is in the software-hardware combo, and the money is in the hardware.
Plus supporting only their hardware means many fewer support headaches.
Now, maybe something like TiVo-on-a-PCI-card and TiVo software that only works with that card would fly from a technical standpoint, but then the ability to trade shows would be accessible to the average user. Jack Valenti would pop a vein in his forehead. Right now, it's possible to extract the video from a TiVo only if you're willing to futz under the hood, so the majority of TiVo users can't do it, so it's not THAT big of a concern-- like MP3 trading on Usenet and FTP was, before Napster came along.
And then we're back to support issues. You put a PC TiVo kit on the shelves at CompUSA, you have to hire people to help Joe Idiot User who can barely work Windows but now expects to get his PC and cable box talking nicely to each other.
~Philly
Has your buddy downloaded the 1.0.1 software update they just released a few days ago? I think it's supposed to improve a fair amount of things.
~Philly
It's not so much 'insurance' as 'protection'...
Taco: "Gee, that's a pretty nice webserver you've got your case mod info on. Sure be a shame if somethin', uh, happened to it, like, I dunno, fifty million slashgeeks all trying to load pages from it at once and reducing it to a puddle of slag."
Case modder: Looking disgusted, he hands CmdrTaco a bulging cloth sack with a "$" on it.
~Philly
If an ADC KVM exists, it is probably hideously expensive. Doubly so if Belkin makes it. You're probably better off buying a high-quality, 3rd-party LCD display with a standard connector, and a normal USB KVM. That's what I'm going to be doing in a few weeks when my existing beige G3 is replaced in my KVM setup with whatever Apple announces in the very near future. I would like the one-cable convenience of the ADC display, but I need the KVM connectability more.
If you really insist on getting an Apple display and you have some cash to spare, get the ADC display, and buy a 3rd-party 17" LCD to use on the VGA port on the G4, and use that as the G4's secondary display and the primary for the other machines hooked up to the KVM.
~Philly
...Congratulations! You have won a FREE motorboat^H^H^H^H^H^Hcomputer!
Please pick it up in person today at the Springfield PD^H^H^H^H^H^HFBI Headquarters.
Signed,
Chief Wiggum^H^H^H^H^HJohn Ashcroft
I mean, come on. How about a straightforward demo of the damn things?
At MacWorld 2 weeks ago, these things were all over the place so people could demo Apple's new iSync software. There was no subterfuge, it was, "Here's the phone, try it out for yourself." And it worked. I want one.
Why do they deem it necessary to stoop to all this sneaky shit? If the product is good, people will want it without some fucking Jedi Mind Trick-style advertising campaign.
Ah, and the obligatory Simpsons quote:
Moe: "Hi, uh, could I buy you a drink?"
Cute Girl in Bar: "Sure! How about a Bacardi Cooler?"
M: "Uh.. ok."
CGiB: "Or even a Bacardi Rita? Because Bacardi makes the night come alive... with freshness!"
M: "What, do you work for Bacardi?"
CGiB: "No, I'm in love with you."
CGiB slaps a "Drink Rum" sticker on Moe's forehead
...specific tactics will include fake tourist couples at popular attractions asking bystanders to take their picture...
/me runs off with the phone.
Me: "Sure, folks, I'll take your picture. Move back towards the fountain."
Tourists (moving back): "How's this?"
Me: "No, no, a little farther back."
Tourists (moving back again): "Better?"
Me: "Hey, I know! Why don't you take off your shoes and stand *in* the fountain?"
Tourists: "Umm.... okay."
(Tourists take off shoes and socks and wade into fountain.)
Tourists: "Okay, how's this?"
~Philly
I can see it now, the day after a major software package is released, the site slows to a crawl as everyone scrambles to check out the EULA so they're not left out of the chat around the water cooler!
~Philly
As opposed to constantly buying the newest version of Windows, and constantly upgrading your PC to accommodate the added bloat of the newest version, in the *hopes* that everything will *finally* work as promised? Feh! Windows from 3.0 to ME and NT4 was the same run-down outhouse, only with a fresh coat of paint.
:-) Lord knows that's the party line at ZD.
I'm still working on a six year-old Power Mac. It does everything I want it to do, and then some, but won't run OS X as quickly as I'd like. So it is soon to be replaced by a brand new G4, which will give me another 6 or 7 years of trouble-free operation, where I'll open it 3 or 4 times a year to blow out any accumulating dust. This while the Windows tinkerers are furiously swapping out video cards, mobos, processors, and cooling equipment, and don't even bother to put the case back together most of the time.
Yes, Macs cost more. But the higher initial cost buys you longer-lasting equipment that does not need as much support attention as a comparable Windows PC. Study after study has borne out that Macs win on TCO. But hey there, little soldier, you keep right on going with your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, chanting "Windows is always better, Windows is always better, Windows is always better..." if that's what makes you happy!
~Philly
I know Outlook 2001 exists, I thought it was clear by context that I was referring to an OS X-native version of it.
And I don't find it buggy. I have several clients who use it and the worst issue I've seen is a 'selected radio button is invisible' cosmetic problem.
Outlook 8.2.2, now THAT was a piece of shit.
~Philly
it wasn't about advertising. It was about geeky guys wanting their PCs to do multimedia, cut and paste, hook up with peripherals more easily, etc., so people got excited and hopeful about Windows.
Why waste hope on Windows when they could've all just gotten Macs and been enjoying those features all along?
Eventually you're going to get a government almost wholly controlled by these huge corporations with big pockets who just want to protect their own interests.
"Eventually"? Oh, you must be an optimist. Because it seems to me that our collective tit is already in the wringer, and the crank just keeps getting turned.
~Philly
And yet, they don't offer a version of the Atari that *uses* a Supercharger.
~Philly
I wholeheartedly agree about Outlook. Microsoft has only themselves to blame for Office X's slow adoption rate. They priced it in the frickin' stratosphere for non-academic purchasers, and Outlook, arguably the most important app under the Office umbrella for corporate purchasers who can easily afford Microsoft's extortionate pricing, has not even begun to be developed (AFAIK).
Though I do like Entourage a lot for my own personal mail and calendar at home, I was very impressed with the improvements to Apple's own Mail, and iCal, and iSync to keep all my devices that need that data up to date. I have not yet made the plunge to OS X as my primary OS at home, because I don't have a Mac truly capable of running it. That will change, as my six year-old Power Mac 7600 with the G3/400 upgrade moves to the server room and a shiny, new G4/G5 tower being introduced in a few weeks (with Jaguar preloaded) replaces it. When that day comes, I will take a long, hard look at how much I *really* need Microsoft Office.
One of Apple's Jaguar pages vaguely hints at Exchange compatibility, but does not go into specifics. This worries me, because I'm hoping they don't just mean, "it's compatible with the POP/SMTP functionality of your company's Exchange server." Also, isn't Outlook/Exchange a proprietary enough system that Microsoft could raise a stink over Apple developing their own Outlook client, or even take measures (legal or technical) to stop/prevent it?
Oh, and don't get me started on those Quark assholes. They are just begging Adobe, "Please, please, keep polishing your X-native InDesign! Take our marketshare! Put us out of business!"
~Philly
While certainly not a suitable answer to for the guy who Asked Slashdot, AppleScript is fantastic. How the hell is it cumbersome, painful, and unreliable?
If you can read and write English, you can become a pretty decent AppleScripter in a few hours. Pick up a decent book on it, and you'll be making your Mac do backflips in a few days.
I've used AppleScript to write a CGI that duplicates the functionality of Outlook Web Access with Microsoft Entourage.
I also make extensive use of it in my web-based control system for my home automation rig-- hell, AppleScript is the BACKBONE of my home automation rig, gluing together various apps.
In about 20 minutes one day, I wrote a script to strip out the stupid, extraneous shit from "CNN Breaking News" e-mails, create a new message with nothing but the actual news item in it, and send it along to my cell phone.
One of my clients (a huge, multi-national food company whose products are mm mm good) uses two AppleScript CGIs that I wrote for searching job archives they have on their internal web site.
Sure, sometimes I've had to write a small 'test' script on the side to help myself understand how to extract a particular data item from a record, but it's a relatively painless process.
Whenever you have trouble with a scriptable app not made by Apple, blame that app's vendor for not doing a good enough job at making it scriptable, DON'T blame AppleScript.
~Philly
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q= Rochester+Kodak+pollution
:-)
I look forward to seeing whatever query you'll be submitting as an "Ask Slashdot" in the near future, since all of their recent ones have come from other people too lazy to do a Google search for one thing or another.
~Philly
Mac OS 7.6.1 to 8.0 had a major UI overhaul, mutli-threaded Finder, and major architectural re-writes.
Actually, OS 8.0 only contained enough true changes to be 7.7 or 7.8, but it was artificially bumped up to kill the cloners, whose licenses were only valid for 7.x.
~Philly
If you change the channel too many times in an hour, do you have to call Microsoft to have your set-top box re-activated?
~Philly
I agree, but what companies, share holders, CEOs, etc. are interested in is the amount of $ they earned at the end of the year.
Not all of them. Apple is a very profitable company as it is, but that doesn't matter much to Steve Jobs. What matters to him is getting mere mortals to see things his way about how they should be interacting with their computers.
Jobs thinks Windows is an inelegant, insecure, virus-prone, bloated, crashy piece of dreck, and he's had to keep that opinion to himself (publicly, anyway) while that development agreement was in place with the Beast of Redmond. Now that that's over the gloves have come off, as evidenced by the highly visible, popular, and apparently effective "Switch" campaign.
Microsoft will only help him as they continue to piss off legions of their customers who only bought Windows "because that's what everyone else buys." The constant revelations of security holes, their view of their customers as nothing more than a 'revenue source,' the constant paid upgrades, the product activation stuff, the DRM stuff, the EULAs that sneak in passages like "if Bill stops by your house, your mom and sister have to each give him a hummer."-- these things are growing the anti-Microsoft sentiment amongst Microsoft's own customers, and those people will eventually feel abused enough to take a good hard look at alternatives like the Mac.
~Philly
Not every DSL provider makes you use PPPoE, doesn't a non-monopoly-telephone-company offer DSL in your area?
Here in Philly, Verizon calls the shots with their lame-ass DSL, but I got Covad DSL through Speakeasy, and I'm really happy with it. I've got three static IPs, run my own mail, web, and other servers, and hook up as many computers as I want to it.
The transaction went something like this:
Me: "Here's some money."
Them: "Here's your bandwidth! Have at it-- just don't run any pr0n servers, please."
~Philly