Don't get me wrong, Macs are incredibly productive...in the right field. In terms of graphics, video editing, multimedia, etc, Macs are THE system to buy. Yet many offices and people at home want to buy cheap computers for writing documents, surfing the net, and perhaps a game of solitaire every now and then.
The reason I suggested that Macs also aren't as productive as perhaps that other OS is because the Mac interface seems quite foriegn to newbies. (Remember, these are the type of people who never make the connection that when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, the Apple key on a Mac is like the Control key for PCs.)
Although I do have a problem with your statement that "the only reason people buy Windows machines is that they don't know any better." Unfortunately, many businesses use proprietary applications to get some of the job done, and few, if any, are offered in Mac format. For example, as a health insurance broker, each company's database program are only in Windows save one, which is a DOS program.
Macs ARE easier to use, and I find that for many video editing programs I use, the iMac is just screaming for me to take it home. The problem comes when the other 80% of the world asks to exchange information with other PCs. Then you're just trying to shove a brick through a pipe.
Oh yeah, and the other catch: SuperDrive Not Included.
The middle class tends to buy a computer that will get the job done. Non-savvy users are most likely to go out to Costco or a department store and buy a computer, somewhat regardless to the specs. Bigger is better, they think. Yet Apple is doomed until they can establish a wide user among office users. The way to go about this is to either competitvely cut costs or perhaps even make the MacOS interface feel a lot more like Windows (minus those GPFs.)
As far as the middle-class is concerned, the Apple is like eye-candy to them - higher class computers that are fun, not productive. You can only have recess for so long before you have to come inside and do your work.
I deal with large files all the time, and I'm constantly looking for work arounds that don't involve lugging my 8-pound laptop to another workstation or burning something on CD. This little device would revolutionize my life if it lives up to its vaporware specs. Consider the following:
After shooting 5 minutes of DV footage on someone else's camera, I want to bring the video home to edit on my PC. Instead of borrowing their DV camera or buying my own, all I need is a PCMCIA FireWire card to transfer footage and a NIC to bring it back out to my laptop editing machine.
or...
I want to listen to MP3s in the car, but I'm on a 4-hour road trip and compressing all my songs to 64k mono versions for my old 32mb Rio just doesn't cut it for me. Now you can take those 7 gigs of Elton John and Styx without sacrificing quality.
but what about...
You've been taking a lot of pictures at some social event for the company you worked for, but you'd rather not go download all those photos into your computer in the other room nor do you want to be the nerd behind the laptop for the party. Transfer all your images into your silver device, and as an added bonus, you can even have everyone view those pics on TV when it's over. I'm sure this also would apply to making and giving presentation. Much cooler than Powerpoint when done right.
and let's not forget...
Looking at pr0n on your computer in your office isn't as appetizing as viewing it on the couch in your living room.
I just can't wait till they merge those Super Soakers with the old back pack waterguns.
Super soakers make great cat behavior-correction devices too.
I can see it now...
Muscular man with shiny futuristic armor walks in, metal jingling on each footstep, holding a bazooka-shaped water gun with the emblem "SuperSoaker XPS 3000a." He stops in front of a small grayish brown feline, licking its paws.
MAN: Hasta la vista, kitty.
A wave of water flushes the kitty down the street as the cat's bellowing cry diminishes over the horizon.
His next victim has been perambulating the streets for quite some time. The figure's bowl-cut haircut and PocketPC protector both shadow over the evil lurking beneath. Only the twinkle of dollar signs through his thick glasses and the insignia of framed flying windows give away his ebony demeanor...
No real cats were hurt in this whimsical tale of pure delight, much to anyone's displeasure.
The only big difference is that Michael Palin came back to redo his narration for the re-release. The original audio tracks sounded very "boxy" and unclean, so they called him up to imitate himself from 30 something years ago. They also cleaned up all the sound effects and explosions to give it a stronger, more current feel. More info at filmandvideomagazine.com.
In the May 2001 issue of Film & Video Magazine, they interviewed André Jacquemin, who worked on remastering and transforming the audio tracks on the Holy Grail from mono to stereo. The article is available online at filmandvideomagazine.com, but here's part of it that I found interesting:
"Basically, because modern sound equipment can handle so much more in the way of dynamics, we were able to get away with a lot more than we had before. With things like the explosion scenes at the end of Holy Grail, we could make them much more powerful...From the moment the first new music came up we realized we had something much better. Terry kept referencing back to the original and saying, 'I can't remember doing that!' We would bring it up and he'd say, 'Maybe we did do it like that."
The article also mentions the re-release of Jabberwocky on DVD with a remastered 5.1 soundtrack, as well as the programs the dude used for remastering.
I've had one of these for four years, buying it when it was in its prime. That said and all, I'm quite familiar with the Aura VR. While probably not scientifically proven, I have received a TON of backaches from it whenever I wear it for sustained periods of time, as in after an hour or so.
Don't write it off just yet, if you stuff it under your bed or a couch, it makes a perfect subwoofer. It's especially soothing when you send test tones through it at one frequency; depending on what you use, you can have varying modes of back massaging beds like at the Sharper Image and such.
The following PREVIEW is rated FP-13 by CmdrTaco.
on
Mir 2
·
· Score: 2
Out of the depths of the ocean...
Comes the least anticipated sequel of all time...
If you thought "Mission to Mars" actually held your attention for its first half hour...
If you survived "Titanic" without a dry tear or a noose...
If a 51.6-degree inclination captivated your emotions until its despairing plummit towards Mother Earth...
Prepare to Experience the Awesome Power of Over 51.6 Degrees of Inclination
Witness Its Power Increase After Guest Cameo Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor comes along.
Monday February 12 1:18 PM ET
Court Says Napster Must Stop
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the music-swapping service Napster must stop trading in copyrighted material and may be held liable for ``vicarious copyright infringement.''
Does anyone think that Nautilus might be taking away from the MacOS crowd when it goes mainstream (eventually)? After all, you have a pretty nice GUI, plus Apple is really confusing people w/ the interface for OS X to the point that even the beta testers are modifying it. Perhaps Mac is putting itself into a very uncomfortable place. (What, like the backseat of a Volkswagon?)
Q. How have you contributed to confusing the masses of people that have no clue as to what Slackware is?
A. Well, I would think that explicating the derivative mechanisms for the kernel's command-line implementation could render my speech patterns to emulate the errors received when booting our prototype distribution on a Pentium 4! [laughs] But really, I've written my framework prototype file. The variables in my speech are exemplified in the brain.cortex.left functions I will try to hash out and personify using prontofkdfd.
I extract the source jargon from the perl makefile, as ironically I simplify the misunderstanding process by avoiding the use of Fortran-esque statements. Now I take that makefile and go dylexify my prototype file. Like this:
It seems that in our hyperactive I-need-it-yesturday society that everyone's more busy than ever before and working longer. Cell phones, pagers, and PDAs keep us all connected on the go. IPOs pop up every day, and new ways of tracking them 24/7 are innovated all the time. Then we drive home to greet the computer for more infodiving and work. Yet have we actually asked ourselves what the consequences of all this technology is?
Lack of sleep sometimes comes from those who can't "turn their brain off" or just can't drop everything and go to sleep. Even worse, there are those who won't let themselves obtain more than 7 hours of sleep. (Oddly enough, they don't care as much about the level of caffeine or nicotine in their blood.)
So who's to blame? Ourselves? Of course not, it's society's fault for having larger expectations in this day and age. But how did society get this way? Surely the God of Civilization didn't whisk his/her magic wand and Poof! we're all overworked and underslept.
Yet we don't really see how detrimental these little details are until we find a study on it. We just figure we can shave off minutes of sleep to achieve just a bit more productivity. Then we go back to replying to posts about the oxymoronic Microsoft Usability Labs.
Basically, we want to change society but without changing ourselves.
Enough ranting, I just think that we to take two minutes away from productivity and take a look at how we are in the mirror. Are we really taking care of ourselves, or are we working ourselves into an early grave? Is what we do necessary, or is it really expendible? As we find out here, I guess sleep isn't as expendible as we might have thought. Perhaps there's more to it, but I'll find out later.
I have a problem with comparing this to leasing a computer or even a car. Leasing is done so that if you can't buy it right now, you can keep paying some monthly sum to obtain whatever it is being leased.
Also, if you try and compare it to a subscription-based magazine, you might also forget the fact that each magazine has new content for you to graze upon.
So where does that put Office 10? Well, I'm sure we could easily afford the sale price for something even as bloated as $69.95 compared to leasing it for $20 annually with a $29.95 down payment. (BTW, these prices are only my prediction.)
Now the way this could actually be helpful is if the prices were really so low that it would be cheaper to buy the subscription version for a two-year lease and then buy the next version. I'm not advocating that we do so. Heck, that's why StarOffice was invented.
(Now for the punch in the gut)
Has anyone seen where this is leading up to if we have time-based subscriptions? With all that.NET stuff being flinged around, we will no longer have control of our our software. Our computers would only be kiosks to use programs for micropayments; it's just as mad as if you went use the computers at Kinko's just for Word. Think of it this way:
MS Office Subscription Offer Buy a Two-Year Subscription to
MS Office 12 Online for $49.95
and receive a 100-word credit!*
*Credit only good with the purchase of the ability to type up to 500 words for the regular price of $24.95. Good for the first 30 days or until a new version, bug fix, or jury verdict is release, whichever occurs first.
I'm not trying to excessively beat down on Microsoft but just pointing our that we should remember to never expect Microsoft to play fair. A recent example is that Media Player 7 is not available for Win95, only Win98 and above. And you think they wouldn't be bias to their own programs, but hey, they're Microsoft...
Couldn't agree more, Jeff. I have been wanting to love Netscape again ever since IE started becoming the 'choice' browser. Good ol' days when IE 3.0 was all there was and couldn't surf for anything...
After seeing the other two milestones, PR3 definitly proves that it's coming back into the public's eye, not just us techies and geeks and [insert your tech identity here].
Compared to the other milestones on the Win9x port, PR3 is probably the most stable one I've used. It's actually more stable than 4.7, which isn't a big leap on my system. Rendering is fast, comparably the same speed as IE5. IE5 might be faster to open and using some window functions, but like someone else previously posted, it's mostly due to IE5's tight integration in Winblows.
Because it's a beta (or "Preview Release"), I don't expect it to be flawless, so I will mention briefly that it has trouble rendering some links, Java applets, and especially Javascripts. Plus it automatically installs that stupid Net2Phone, just like every other PR release.
Overall, I'm satified. I will most likely use this more than IE5, mostly because of its AIM/My Sidebar integrator, but I'm able to do this without a loss of speed and little loss of features. Definitly two bytes up.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, Macs are incredibly productive...in the right field. In terms of graphics, video editing, multimedia, etc, Macs are THE system to buy. Yet many offices and people at home want to buy cheap computers for writing documents, surfing the net, and perhaps a game of solitaire every now and then.
The reason I suggested that Macs also aren't as productive as perhaps that other OS is because the Mac interface seems quite foriegn to newbies. (Remember, these are the type of people who never make the connection that when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, the Apple key on a Mac is like the Control key for PCs.)
Although I do have a problem with your statement that "the only reason people buy Windows machines is that they don't know any better." Unfortunately, many businesses use proprietary applications to get some of the job done, and few, if any, are offered in Mac format. For example, as a health insurance broker, each company's database program are only in Windows save one, which is a DOS program.
Macs ARE easier to use, and I find that for many video editing programs I use, the iMac is just screaming for me to take it home. The problem comes when the other 80% of the world asks to exchange information with other PCs. Then you're just trying to shove a brick through a pipe.
Oh yeah, and the other catch: SuperDrive Not Included.
The middle class tends to buy a computer that will get the job done. Non-savvy users are most likely to go out to Costco or a department store and buy a computer, somewhat regardless to the specs. Bigger is better, they think. Yet Apple is doomed until they can establish a wide user among office users. The way to go about this is to either competitvely cut costs or perhaps even make the MacOS interface feel a lot more like Windows (minus those GPFs.)
As far as the middle-class is concerned, the Apple is like eye-candy to them - higher class computers that are fun, not productive. You can only have recess for so long before you have to come inside and do your work.
Very cool stuff. It peaked around 2:15 here, but I'm too tired for any more watching. Plus my neck's gonna kill me in the morning.
Do we really need to deurbanize that badly?
Hope it will give me a new reason to get 5.1 surround for my box, hehe
-Mr. Fusion
"The only way to win is not to play"
-Mr. Fusion
I deal with large files all the time, and I'm constantly looking for work arounds that don't involve lugging my 8-pound laptop to another workstation or burning something on CD. This little device would revolutionize my life if it lives up to its vaporware specs. Consider the following:
After shooting 5 minutes of DV footage on someone else's camera, I want to bring the video home to edit on my PC. Instead of borrowing their DV camera or buying my own, all I need is a PCMCIA FireWire card to transfer footage and a NIC to bring it back out to my laptop editing machine.
or...
I want to listen to MP3s in the car, but I'm on a 4-hour road trip and compressing all my songs to 64k mono versions for my old 32mb Rio just doesn't cut it for me. Now you can take those 7 gigs of Elton John and Styx without sacrificing quality.
but what about...
You've been taking a lot of pictures at some social event for the company you worked for, but you'd rather not go download all those photos into your computer in the other room nor do you want to be the nerd behind the laptop for the party. Transfer all your images into your silver device, and as an added bonus, you can even have everyone view those pics on TV when it's over. I'm sure this also would apply to making and giving presentation. Much cooler than Powerpoint when done right.
and let's not forget...
Looking at pr0n on your computer in your office isn't as appetizing as viewing it on the couch in your living room.
-Mr. Fusion
Check out some of those picture, you can really pop a wheelie (well, a rudder) with those things!
Super soakers make great cat behavior-correction devices too.
I can see it now...
Muscular man with shiny futuristic armor walks in, metal jingling on each footstep, holding a bazooka-shaped water gun with the emblem "SuperSoaker XPS 3000a." He stops in front of a small grayish brown feline, licking its paws.
MAN: Hasta la vista, kitty.
A wave of water flushes the kitty down the street as the cat's bellowing cry diminishes over the horizon.
His next victim has been perambulating the streets for quite some time. The figure's bowl-cut haircut and PocketPC protector both shadow over the evil lurking beneath. Only the twinkle of dollar signs through his thick glasses and the insignia of framed flying windows give away his ebony demeanor...
No real cats were hurt in this whimsical tale of pure delight, much to anyone's displeasure.
-Mr. Fusion
-Mr. Fusion
"Basically, because modern sound equipment can handle so much more in the way of dynamics, we were able to get away with a lot more than we had before. With things like the explosion scenes at the end of Holy Grail, we could make them much more powerful...From the moment the first new music came up we realized we had something much better. Terry kept referencing back to the original and saying, 'I can't remember doing that!' We would bring it up and he'd say, 'Maybe we did do it like that."
The article also mentions the re-release of Jabberwocky on DVD with a remastered 5.1 soundtrack, as well as the programs the dude used for remastering.
-Mr. Fusion
Don't write it off just yet, if you stuff it under your bed or a couch, it makes a perfect subwoofer. It's especially soothing when you send test tones through it at one frequency; depending on what you use, you can have varying modes of back massaging beds like at the Sharper Image and such.
Out of the depths of the ocean...
Comes the least anticipated sequel of all time...
If you thought "Mission to Mars" actually held your attention for its first half hour...
If you survived "Titanic" without a dry tear or a noose...
If a 51.6-degree inclination captivated your emotions until its despairing plummit towards Mother Earth...
Prepare to Experience the Awesome Power of Over 51.6 Degrees of Inclination
Witness Its Power Increase After Guest Cameo Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor comes along.
From Russia With Love Comes:
MIR 2: THE UNWANTED JOURNEY
A Mikhail Synelshchikov Production
Rated FP-13, parental guidance suggested
Coming Soon to a JonKatz review near you.
Monday February 12 1:18 PM ET
Court Says Napster Must Stop
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the music-swapping service Napster must stop trading in copyrighted material and may be held liable for ``vicarious copyright infringement.''
It's called three.drinks.minimum(); -Mr. Fusion
Does anyone think that Nautilus might be taking away from the MacOS crowd when it goes mainstream (eventually)? After all, you have a pretty nice GUI, plus Apple is really confusing people w/ the interface for OS X to the point that even the beta testers are modifying it. Perhaps Mac is putting itself into a very uncomfortable place. (What, like the backseat of a Volkswagon?)
-Mr. Fusion
A. Well, I would think that explicating the derivative mechanisms for the kernel's command-line implementation could render my speech patterns to emulate the errors received when booting our prototype distribution on a Pentium 4! [laughs] But really, I've written my framework prototype file. The variables in my speech are exemplified in the brain.cortex.left functions I will try to hash out and personify using prontofkdfd.
I extract the source jargon from the perl makefile, as ironically I simplify the misunderstanding process by avoiding the use of Fortran-esque statements. Now I take that makefile and go dylexify my prototype file. Like this:
IGNOREPATH=/mnt:/home:/dev:/opt:/root:/export
PATER@SLASHDOT.ORG=CowboyNeal
STRIPLIB=yNot
STRIPBIN=y?b/cWeLikeU
VERSION=2.04x10^-34
PROGNAME=Yfixelsyd
DESC="Yfixelsyd confuses the hell out of those JonKatz advocating, Windows novices."
BUILD=1
ARCH=i386
WASH=rinse
MAINTAINER="David Cantrell "
SOURCE=http://poocs.net/babbling/53/
PKGNAME=confusification-$VERSION-$ARCH-$BUILD
compile() {
tar xvzf $CWD/confusification-2.04x10^-
34.tar.gz
cd confusification-2.04x10^-34
perl Makefile.PL
make
}
install() {
make install
repeat() {
if WASH=rinse {
repeat();
}
}
But that's just the current version. Wait till our implementation and compilation of the abusifcation confusification installation parameters.
install() { make install /usr/doc/confusification-2.04x10^-34
/usr/doc/confusification-2.04x10^-34
mkdir -p
cp COPYING ChangeLog INSTALL MANIFESTATION README ToDoLaterOn *.html \
}
But then we take the Eggdacator indacator, wait until Easter, and then, uh, and then, um...
Where was I?
It seems that in our hyperactive I-need-it-yesturday society that everyone's more busy than ever before and working longer. Cell phones, pagers, and PDAs keep us all connected on the go. IPOs pop up every day, and new ways of tracking them 24/7 are innovated all the time. Then we drive home to greet the computer for more infodiving and work. Yet have we actually asked ourselves what the consequences of all this technology is?
Lack of sleep sometimes comes from those who can't "turn their brain off" or just can't drop everything and go to sleep. Even worse, there are those who won't let themselves obtain more than 7 hours of sleep. (Oddly enough, they don't care as much about the level of caffeine or nicotine in their blood.)
So who's to blame? Ourselves? Of course not, it's society's fault for having larger expectations in this day and age. But how did society get this way? Surely the God of Civilization didn't whisk his/her magic wand and Poof! we're all overworked and underslept.
Yet we don't really see how detrimental these little details are until we find a study on it. We just figure we can shave off minutes of sleep to achieve just a bit more productivity. Then we go back to replying to posts about the oxymoronic Microsoft Usability Labs.
Basically, we want to change society but without changing ourselves.
Enough ranting, I just think that we to take two minutes away from productivity and take a look at how we are in the mirror. Are we really taking care of ourselves, or are we working ourselves into an early grave? Is what we do necessary, or is it really expendible? As we find out here, I guess sleep isn't as expendible as we might have thought. Perhaps there's more to it, but I'll find out later.
I need to go to sleep.
Also, if you try and compare it to a subscription-based magazine, you might also forget the fact that each magazine has new content for you to graze upon. So where does that put Office 10? Well, I'm sure we could easily afford the sale price for something even as bloated as $69.95 compared to leasing it for $20 annually with a $29.95 down payment. (BTW, these prices are only my prediction.)
Now the way this could actually be helpful is if the prices were really so low that it would be cheaper to buy the subscription version for a two-year lease and then buy the next version. I'm not advocating that we do so. Heck, that's why StarOffice was invented.
(Now for the punch in the gut)
Has anyone seen where this is leading up to if we have time-based subscriptions? With all that .NET stuff being flinged around, we will no longer have control of our our software. Our computers would only be kiosks to use programs for micropayments; it's just as mad as if you went use the computers at Kinko's just for Word. Think of it this way:
MS Office Subscription Offer
Buy a Two-Year Subscription to
MS Office 12 Online for $49.95
and receive a 100-word credit!*
*Credit only good with the purchase of the ability to type up to 500 words for the regular price of $24.95. Good for the first 30 days or until a new version, bug fix, or jury verdict is release, whichever occurs first.
I'm not trying to excessively beat down on Microsoft but just pointing our that we should remember to never expect Microsoft to play fair. A recent example is that Media Player 7 is not available for Win95, only Win98 and above. And you think they wouldn't be bias to their own programs, but hey, they're Microsoft...
Couldn't agree more, Jeff. I have been wanting to love Netscape again ever since IE started becoming the 'choice' browser. Good ol' days when IE 3.0 was all there was and couldn't surf for anything...
After seeing the other two milestones, PR3 definitly proves that it's coming back into the public's eye, not just us techies and geeks and [insert your tech identity here].
Compared to the other milestones on the Win9x port, PR3 is probably the most stable one I've used. It's actually more stable than 4.7, which isn't a big leap on my system. Rendering is fast, comparably the same speed as IE5. IE5 might be faster to open and using some window functions, but like someone else previously posted, it's mostly due to IE5's tight integration in Winblows.
Because it's a beta (or "Preview Release"), I don't expect it to be flawless, so I will mention briefly that it has trouble rendering some links, Java applets, and especially Javascripts. Plus it automatically installs that stupid Net2Phone, just like every other PR release.
Overall, I'm satified. I will most likely use this more than IE5, mostly because of its AIM/My Sidebar integrator, but I'm able to do this without a loss of speed and little loss of features. Definitly two bytes up.
-Mr. Fusion