That's essentially the point of trademark protection. It's a "mark of the trade" of someone, and therefore has implications on many things from the quality of the work to price, to partnership agreements.
If the name or logo of "Tommy Hilfiger" wasn't worth some value, people wouldn't be making knock-offs. They'd simply be selling cheaper quality polo shirts. The point is, these people are making a profit off of someone else's hard work. Is that right or wrong?
I wouldn't rush to the conclusion that I think it's a good thing though. Personally I agree, this is stuff you only put on your resume if you need fodder or if it's directly applicable to your expected duties (such as for admin types).
"This top line $60 billion figure is 25% above the estimated $48 billion budget for FY 08. It is quite probable that this total figure was not even known by the government until recently. Greater control and oversight of the Intelligence Community budget was a hallmark of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that created the position of the Director of National Intelligence and gave it the mandate to get an overview of the entire amount spent on intelligence government-wide. To this end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has recently gathered all parts of the previously fragmented Intelligence Community budget together for the first time as part of its Intelligence Resource Information System (IRIS). In the report from the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence released last Thursday, the committee praised the Office of the Director of Intelligence for creating a "single budget system called the Intelligence Resource Information System." It also recognizes their efforts in helping create what "will be used for further inquiry by the Committee's budget and audit staffs and will be a baseline that allows the Congress and DNI to derive trend data from future reports."
And the great eye is born. Now we're really screwed.
You'd be wrong. Well, partly anyway. Most of the money is spent on the manpower involved in actually putting a live person out there to talk to neighbors, friends, and relatives, etc. (It does happen, even when you haven't done anything noteworthy in your past) And on the beaurocracy involved in any kind of large undertaking overseen by an even larger organization.
Hate to disappoint you, but plenty of adminstrative people put that on their resumes. I know Electrical Engineers who still seem to think it's valid too despite having a decade of real experience. If you really think nobody puts it on their resumes, you haven't been hiring many people lately.
"Command-W" closes windows of most kinds in OS X. I don't know for certain if it works for pop-ups, because I always have a pop-up blocker running in Firefox or Safari. Of course for "command W" to work, the focus has to be on the correct window, which may not happen with pop-ups either.
I will readily agree that a keyboard is way faster than a mouse, but I almost never use my mouse in OS X once I have a window open so I don't understand the issue. Obviously we have different uses though, so it's certainly possible you will find issues I don't, and likewise.
I agree entirely. As I've said in other comments, Apple chooses to ignore a huge market but just because you don't fit their market doesn't mean their equipment is more expensive for people who do.
It's not a great business model, but like you said, Apple adds a lot of features that a PC won't have out of the box. If the hardware isn't exactly what you want/need, then you're definitely going to pay a premium for those features. However, saying "well that's not what I want so Apples are more expensive" is just silly.
Feature for feature isn't the comparison I made. Comparable hardware is. The problem is you can't really compare one without the other and Apple chooses not to play that game. They're completely happy (apparently) with people thinking they are more expensive because they offer less (or none depending upon your perspective) choices at the low end.
So the real point is if you're comparing overall experience, there simply isn't a comparison. You can either compare hardware only, or "comparably equipped" with all the bells and whistles of added (or included) software. If, however you fall out of the market that Apple aims out, you're just out of luck.
There's always a market that is cheaper. Apple chooses not to target that market. Compare laptops and I'm guessing the few "build your own" laptop places out there won't be significantly cheaper than comparable Apple hardware. Probably a little cheaper, but not more than a couple hundred dollars would be my guess.
You are partially correct. Macs can be upgraded, it just takes a little more effort than PCs. The build your mac in pieces crowd is "non-existent" (to all intents and purposes) by design, but Macs can be upgraded. It's a pain in the ass and daunting (though not difficult) for most consumers, but it can be done. On all the towers you can replace your graphics card. I don't know of any laptops PC or otherwise that you can upgrade your graphics after purchase, so for me that's a non-starter. In all machines you can add memory (if it's not at maximum) and hard drives are easily replaced, though the task is scary for people uncomfortable with hardware changes. Optical drives are a little more difficult because Apple keeps the OS hobbled with respect to which ones the iApps will work with, another annoyance for me.
I have yet to find a "standard" consumer who is comfortable adding/upgrading hardware on their own in either the Mac or PC world. Sure, there are far more PC users who are comfortable with it, but the market share is larger, and I find those people are more tinkerers than users. Like you said, Apple just doesn't design for that market. Personally, I don't think they should. They give the consumer a "turn-key solution" that just works. It doesn't work for everyone, and people need to learn that if they are in that market, they should simply buy something else.
The problem is the vocal minority who think that all companies should cater to their every desire. Would I like a Mac at the low end that I can upgrade and tinker with to my heart's content? Hell yes. Am I going to get it? Not a chance.
I may not use the keyboard quite as much as you but I haven't noticed any problems with tabbing in OS X. As for the rest, it seems you have a learning curve to get used to, just like anyone switching from one to the other will have.
I still find things in OS X I hate, after 4 years (ish) of using it. I use Windows and linux at work, OS X and linux at home, and they all have their issues, as you said. When you use one significantly more than the other, you get used to that interface. There's no getting around that, but to say that's a shortcoming of the OS is a bit misleading.
You don't, but you could do just as well with a "low-end" MacBook for $1099. If you're going to spew this kind of nonsense at least have the decency to recognize your audience is not a bunch of clueless grandmas. The whole point of the article (which I'm sure you didn't read) was comparing similar hardware, not the cheapo Dell to the top end Apple. Comparing similar hardware results in similar prices. Sometimes Apple comes out cheaper, and sometimes the PCs come out cheaper.
Anyone who thinks a PowerBook is required for email and web browsing deserves to have their money taken from them, in my opinion. Those people are deliberately ignorant and there's no excuse for that.
Sure, you should purchase based on your needs. The problem with that statement, is that this article isn't about what Apple provides that Dell et al don't, it's about the FUD that Apple computers (comparably equipped) are more expensive than PCs. That's simply not true, at least in the laptop market.
Yes Dell has a lot of options. Having 30 options with 28 of them being for a market I'm not in is no better than having 3 options with 1 of them being for a market I'm not in. I'd also wager that because Dell has so many options, people simply pick the one that's listed as a "special" more often than not, because they simply don't give a damn what is inside. It's no different for Apple users, for the most part. They just want it to work with the applications they want to run. Giving them an extra 20 choices won't really matter.
This whole thing is ridiculous and has been for a long time. Yes there is a slight premium for a Mac, but it's almost insignificant when comparing overall price of nearly any Mac system to a PC these days. Here's what I wrote the other day in the thread about OS X.
"I priced a Dell XPS M1210 with identical components of your MacBook (2.16 core duo, 1GB RAM, 8x DVD burner, 160 SATA) except for video and Windows Vista Basic Edition, at $1889. The video on the Dell was a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) Go 7400 TurboCache which shares system memory, I believe, vice the 64MB video listed for the Macbook. At $1889, the Dell is significantly more expensive than the $1499 quoted for the macbook. To be fair, I also priced a Dell Inspiron E1405 with a 2.0 GHz core duo (not available with the 2.16) with the same graphics as the MacBook for $1164. If you say the price jump to the 2.16 is equal to the price difference between the 2.0 and the 1.66 (same bus speed), the price becomes $1289. So the "Apple premium" is $210. I'd be willing to bet I can find several other PC manufacturers (not even counting Sony) that come close to the same price range. Granted Dell may or may not be the most affordable system out there, but being one of the bigger names in the consumer market right now, I think it's a fair comparison of systems. I think the argument that Apple hardware is extremely expensive is outdated at best. Comparing apples to oranges, perhaps, but when comparing systems with comparable hardware, Apple doesn't look particularly expensive."
While I appreciate your responses to criticisms of your article, I feel they are still lacking. Typos can certainly be forgiven so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt with respect to the office suites. I don't understand however when one comment says "NeoOffice works well IMHO" when your comment above says it had "significant problems with either stability or ease of use" as did AbiWord and OpenOffice. Which is correct, it works well, or it has significant problems? I have no experience with AbiWord, but both OpenOffice and NeoOffice run cleanly (though OO is admittedly slow) on my G4 iBook. Your article also didn't mention once whether or not you tried OO on the Mac, despite saying you use it on your Windows computer. Saying that users will "have to get either Pages...or Word for Mac" is disingenuous at best after such a cursory review of other options.
I'll give you the point about easily accessed components in Macs, and though it's very easy for me to upgrade my machines, they aren't designed with consumer upgrades in mind, which is my biggest beef with Apple machines. I will disagree, however that the PowerMac was ever a mid-range computer. The PowerMac is what was replaced by the MacPro and was always considered their top end line before that. iMacs have been the low-mid range computers since OS X was released.
As for your assertion that Apple hardware is cost prohibitive for a lot of people to switch, I priced a Dell XPS M1210 with identical components of your MacBook (2.16 core duo, 1GB RAM, 8x DVD burner, 160 SATA) except for video and Windows Vista Basic Edition, at $1889. The video on the Dell was a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) Go 7400 TurboCache which shares system memory, I believe, vice the 64MB video listed for the Macbook. At $1889, the Dell is significantly more expensive than the $1499 quoted for the macbook. To be fair, I also priced a Dell Inspiron E1405 with a 2.0 GHz core duo (not available with the 2.16) with the same graphics as the MacBook for $1164. If you say the price jump to the 2.16 is equal to the price difference between the 2.0 and the 1.66 (same bus speed), the price becomes $1289. So the "Apple premium" is $210. I'd be willing to bet I can find several other PC manufacturers (not even counting Sony) that come close to the same price range. Granted Dell may or may not be the most affordable system out there, but being one of the bigger names in the consumer market right now, I think it's a fair comparison of systems. I think the argument that Apple hardware is extremely expensive is outdated at best. Comparing apples to oranges, perhaps, but when comparing systems with comparable hardware, Apple doesn't look particularly expensive.
You also note several things in your review that you didn't seem to give much attention to, like iChat. You imply it doesn't work with video conferencing between windows machines, but works fine with other Macs. The function works extremely well between Macs, Windows, and Linux machines, though it does occasionally require a little tweaking, like most video chat programs. When discussing video encoding you mention that you couldn't convert video using default windows tools then expressly mention that it also required 3rd party (non-freeware) tools in OS X. Your mention, however, implied that you expected to be able to convert files in OS X for free, when it's not reasonable to expect that for a windows machine either.
OS X is a memory hog, and I'd love the link to the disable dashboard as I almost never use it for anything except world clocks and weather, but the link is broken. 512 is definitely a bit light for OS X, but the same can be said for Vista, and in some cases XP too. Linux obviously can run as light and fast as you want.
Your comments about peripherals shows one thing to me. 3rd party vendors don't extensively consider anyone but Windows when writing drivers. Other OSes are second-hand considerations given poor quality treatment. That said, HP especially sucks with regard to that, but
So it will work with my ATI All-In-Wonder out of the box? I don't think so. I'll not deny that modern distros have strong support, but to say it's better than windows because windows requires after-install driver loads is a bit silly. All OSes need that for certain hardware, it's a simple fact. The problem with Linux is that those after-install drivers are generally harder to find because they don't come with the damn device. It's getting better, but it's not there yet.
All that said, I think this little device will make some inroads that will be good for the linux community.
I am neither militant nor stupid about this subject. I'm not denying that there is a valid threat in terrorists, or that Hezbollah is a militant group that has espoused hate for a long time. I'm just saying that not everything is a terrorist threat. I'm also saying there are far more terrorists out there than the currently popular muslim extremists and it's not all "jihad" as some people are claiming. We haven't been hearing about any of those threats lately, though. Should we be concerned about terrorists? Yes. Should we consider all terrorists jihadists? No. Should we consider all muslims jihadists? No. That is the only bias I have.
To answer your questions with my admittedly limited knowlege of the Koran and Islam:
1) The sunnah is a traditional way of life according to the teachings of Muhammed. 2) As I understand it from conversations I've had, Bukhari and Muslim were people who had a certain interpretation of the texts that describe the sunnah. I'm not sure if I'm correct that they were specific people, but I do know that Bukhari is "short for" al-bukhari, which means "from Bukhar" or something like that, implying that it was indeed a specific person. 3) Jizyah, is more or less a religious tax on non-Muslims. 4) I have no idea how the suras are arranged. 5) A hudna, is some sort of truce, I believe. Looked that one up on google though. 6) Again, I don't know anything about offensive battles Mohammed led. I would imagine it's a particularly important number though, so I'll go with whatever number of virgins martyrs get when they die. How many has the Pope led, (personally or just on paper) I wonder? 7) Again, a dhimmi is a non-muslim citizen of a muslim state who has lower privelege than a muslim citizen. I would guess these are the people who pay the jizyah.
I'm not a scholar of the Koran, I just don't think people should be ignorant of it either. Obviously you have some belief that Islam teaches people to be terrorists, or sets a heirarchy of rights based on religious preferences. I ask you to define one of the major religions (excluding perhaps Buddhism) that doesn't do that. Especially in ancient texts without the benefit of modern translation and interpretation. Most of the world understands that the people who espouse those things are doing so for means other than religion and are interpreting the words incorrectly or "too literally".
I personally don't give a damn how many battles Mohammed led to spread Islam any more than I actually care about the specifics of the first, second or third crusades. None of those wars were actually about religion so much as power and that was also part of my original point.
What you claim I'm speaking as a "classic progressive rhetorical response to concerns about jihad ideology" is nothing more than my belief that people should investigate and weigh both sides of an argument before making a decision. You seem to think that taking direct quotes from 2000 year old documents as gospel is somehow the modern belief structure of most religions, and I disagree.
What I will agree on is that people who are extreme fundamentalists of any kind are scary. They don't understand progress, they don't want progress, and they certainly don't want people educated to think for themselves. It seems to have worked on many people, but calling me names and saying I'm stupid because I happen to harbor a different belief system than you just makes you look like one of those people.
There was more stability in the middle east before removing Hussein from power. That's exactly my point.
"Our government has to choose it's battles and it will only get involved in conflicts that are in our best national interest."
Yes, I agree. I think the question is who defines "our national interest" and what exactly is it? We definitely have more people (Americans and otherwise) dying in the middle east right now than there were 5 years ago, so how is it more stable? I'll say, it's not. I think you'd also be highly disocunting the effect of general asian instability by saying atrocities in Indonesia and Thailand don't have any impact on our economy. Those things significantly impact the local economies, which in turn ripples into ours because we do business with them, through outsourcing of textile production, electronics assembly, and other things. Check out a pair of sneakers sometime, and see where they are manufactured. Odds are, it's in southeast Asia. Thailand is currently in an economic recession that has definitely been felt all over Asia and in our consumer electronics market as well.
Is oil a more direct impact? Absolutely. Should that be reason for war? I don't happen to think so.
This was actually in response to some idiot who claims to be "saving the children" threatening to go to LJs advertisors and showing them supposed accounts that are doing and discussing illegal things. The mass hysteria is a result of LJ going overboard with which communities and accounts they suspended/deleted.
Personally, I think anyone who lost data should get over it. There are plenty of ways of archiving your stuff, and if a conversation held anonymously in an internet discussion forum is that important to you, you need a life. Than again, I didn't lose any data either, so my opinion might be different if I were involved in any of the stuff that got deleted.
As for the advertisors being their customers, I believe LJ actually gets most of it's revenue from users with paid accounts. I haven't bothered to verify that, but it's the impression I've had for the last year or so. Most of the advertisers seem more like supplemental income to pay for the free accounts.
It's telling that you mention "Islamic fundamentalists" and "Al Quaeda" multiple times in your post. the damage has already been done, just by the mere fact you've mentioned a specific terrorist group by name. As the saying goes, "to name a thing, is to give it power".
You (and most of us) have already fallen prey to the fear mongers. Everything is now an islamic fundamentalist or Al Quaeda. We've forgotten our own home-grown terrors, like Timothy McVegh and Ted Kazinski because they look like us and they talk like us. It's always something different that galvanizes fear, not something familiar.
Education is the key to fixing this problem, and that's where this administration (and most of its predecessors) have gone wrong. Instead of teaching people about islam and about how to protect ourselves, the government has bolstered the false security of metal detectors and no liquids on airplanes and an attitude of hate. Fix that first. Then we will have a much smaller problem to deal with when it actually happens instead of a ghost enemy that is primarily our own fear that we're fighting to our own ruin.
Anyone that thinks they can guarantee (or can have) 100% security should be locked in a padded cell because they need far more help than security can provide.
While I don't disagree with your point that the enemy is bad, even if the President is an idiot, there are plenty of places in this world that are in far worse shape than Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. You've heard of Sudan right? The President just made some sort of speech about it, several years after we learned about the problem and over a year after his administration claimed they would do something proactive about it.
And lets not get into Indonesia and all the problems there that we could have helped with, or Tibet, or Nepal. You do know there was essentially a civil war in Nepal for the last 10 years right? Oh, and the monarch disolved the parliament and basically imposed martial law on the place. What about Thailand, and the military coup that just occured?
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad man doing bad things. The point is, however, he was an "evil" we understood how to deal with. He was essentially no threat to anyone but himself and his own people. Yes that's bad, but his conflict wasn't causing issues any different than the others that have been going on at the same time. We did however decide to put on our big boy shoes and step in his playground to pick a fight with him as opposed to others. Why? Because it was a name people recognized (so even if it was the wrong choice at least some people would support it on name recognition alone), it was a profitable place to pick a fight, and it was during a period of economic "recession", which always calls for war. It's the great economic provider for the USA, and has been for a very long time. I won't even speculate at the personal economic gains of the administration, which others probably have far more information about.
As I understand it, TiVo pretty much has all of the features you mentioned, it just requires the user to be willing to do some hacking. TiVo is an open system, it just has a lot of these features turned off by default. You can, however, turn on TiVo sharing to play from one box to another, or to your computer, and you can turn on remote administration for webmin type access. TiVo plays (as far as I know) most of the same formats that Myth supports, audio and video, and photo. I'm not sure about.ogg files but certainly many others are completely usable by TiVo with minor script editing. You can get weather on a TiVo and you can time shift and format shift your media to your heart's content, again with some script editing.
The features I see getting from a Myth box are things like mame support, karaoke (my girlfriend likes that feature) and a few others that TiVo isn't likely to support any time soon if for no other reason than lack of public interest.
Plus, I can easily set up a Myth box to also run other things and perform other functions, which would be a little more difficult with a TiVo.
My answer to that is that the administrators need to grow a backbone and tell the whiners to get used to the new tools.
As for the Office 2007 XML format, if they don't have 2007 that wouldn't be an issue. I'd still let those people who couldn't learn to cope have Office 2003 and simply tell them they have to use specific computers if they want to work with that. If they need to use another computer, they learn the new tool. It's not difficult to make the whole system work giving people the tools that they want, it just takes some adjustments (for everyone) to do so.
Then again, I don't have to administrate the system or the teachers so it's easy for me to say that.
I don't know about you, but I have about 700 CDs ripped to about 50GB. That's about 2100 albums, which really isn't that much these days. Especially for music collectors. I don't even have music that is hugely dynamic, for the most part, so my compression is reasonably good with VBR set with minimum of 190 or something like that. For music that has a lot of dynamic sound bitrates are going to be higher. 150 GB is nowhere near 3600 albums if you actually want the music to sound close to correct.
My question is why purchase Office 2007 if you migrated all those other computers to OpenOffice? why not give the few who were bitching older copies of Office 2003 or whatever and leave the remaining (happy) users on OO?
"Newspapers tend to do these reprints over 3-day weekends since not a lotta news happening"
Because the rest of the world stops for US holidays, right? I think you mean they do this over 3-day weekends so that the reporters don't have to work the holiday, like most other people.
Slashdot Mirror
That's essentially the point of trademark protection. It's a "mark of the trade" of someone, and therefore has implications on many things from the quality of the work to price, to partnership agreements.
If the name or logo of "Tommy Hilfiger" wasn't worth some value, people wouldn't be making knock-offs. They'd simply be selling cheaper quality polo shirts. The point is, these people are making a profit off of someone else's hard work. Is that right or wrong?
I wouldn't rush to the conclusion that I think it's a good thing though. Personally I agree, this is stuff you only put on your resume if you need fodder or if it's directly applicable to your expected duties (such as for admin types).
"This top line $60 billion figure is 25% above the estimated $48 billion budget for FY 08. It is quite probable that this total figure was not even known by the government until recently. Greater control and oversight of the Intelligence Community budget was a hallmark of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that created the position of the Director of National Intelligence and gave it the mandate to get an overview of the entire amount spent on intelligence government-wide. To this end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has recently gathered all parts of the previously fragmented Intelligence Community budget together for the first time as part of its Intelligence Resource Information System (IRIS). In the report from the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence released last Thursday, the committee praised the Office of the Director of Intelligence for creating a "single budget system called the Intelligence Resource Information System." It also recognizes their efforts in helping create what "will be used for further inquiry by the Committee's budget and audit staffs and will be a baseline that allows the Congress and DNI to derive trend data from future reports."
And the great eye is born. Now we're really screwed.
You'd be wrong. Well, partly anyway. Most of the money is spent on the manpower involved in actually putting a live person out there to talk to neighbors, friends, and relatives, etc. (It does happen, even when you haven't done anything noteworthy in your past) And on the beaurocracy involved in any kind of large undertaking overseen by an even larger organization.
Hate to disappoint you, but plenty of adminstrative people put that on their resumes. I know Electrical Engineers who still seem to think it's valid too despite having a decade of real experience. If you really think nobody puts it on their resumes, you haven't been hiring many people lately.
"Command-W" closes windows of most kinds in OS X. I don't know for certain if it works for pop-ups, because I always have a pop-up blocker running in Firefox or Safari. Of course for "command W" to work, the focus has to be on the correct window, which may not happen with pop-ups either.
I will readily agree that a keyboard is way faster than a mouse, but I almost never use my mouse in OS X once I have a window open so I don't understand the issue. Obviously we have different uses though, so it's certainly possible you will find issues I don't, and likewise.
I agree entirely. As I've said in other comments, Apple chooses to ignore a huge market but just because you don't fit their market doesn't mean their equipment is more expensive for people who do.
It's not a great business model, but like you said, Apple adds a lot of features that a PC won't have out of the box. If the hardware isn't exactly what you want/need, then you're definitely going to pay a premium for those features. However, saying "well that's not what I want so Apples are more expensive" is just silly.
Feature for feature isn't the comparison I made. Comparable hardware is. The problem is you can't really compare one without the other and Apple chooses not to play that game. They're completely happy (apparently) with people thinking they are more expensive because they offer less (or none depending upon your perspective) choices at the low end.
So the real point is if you're comparing overall experience, there simply isn't a comparison. You can either compare hardware only, or "comparably equipped" with all the bells and whistles of added (or included) software. If, however you fall out of the market that Apple aims out, you're just out of luck.
There's always a market that is cheaper. Apple chooses not to target that market. Compare laptops and I'm guessing the few "build your own" laptop places out there won't be significantly cheaper than comparable Apple hardware. Probably a little cheaper, but not more than a couple hundred dollars would be my guess.
You are partially correct. Macs can be upgraded, it just takes a little more effort than PCs. The build your mac in pieces crowd is "non-existent" (to all intents and purposes) by design, but Macs can be upgraded. It's a pain in the ass and daunting (though not difficult) for most consumers, but it can be done. On all the towers you can replace your graphics card. I don't know of any laptops PC or otherwise that you can upgrade your graphics after purchase, so for me that's a non-starter. In all machines you can add memory (if it's not at maximum) and hard drives are easily replaced, though the task is scary for people uncomfortable with hardware changes. Optical drives are a little more difficult because Apple keeps the OS hobbled with respect to which ones the iApps will work with, another annoyance for me.
I have yet to find a "standard" consumer who is comfortable adding/upgrading hardware on their own in either the Mac or PC world. Sure, there are far more PC users who are comfortable with it, but the market share is larger, and I find those people are more tinkerers than users. Like you said, Apple just doesn't design for that market. Personally, I don't think they should. They give the consumer a "turn-key solution" that just works. It doesn't work for everyone, and people need to learn that if they are in that market, they should simply buy something else.
The problem is the vocal minority who think that all companies should cater to their every desire. Would I like a Mac at the low end that I can upgrade and tinker with to my heart's content? Hell yes. Am I going to get it? Not a chance.
I may not use the keyboard quite as much as you but I haven't noticed any problems with tabbing in OS X. As for the rest, it seems you have a learning curve to get used to, just like anyone switching from one to the other will have.
I still find things in OS X I hate, after 4 years (ish) of using it. I use Windows and linux at work, OS X and linux at home, and they all have their issues, as you said. When you use one significantly more than the other, you get used to that interface. There's no getting around that, but to say that's a shortcoming of the OS is a bit misleading.
You don't, but you could do just as well with a "low-end" MacBook for $1099. If you're going to spew this kind of nonsense at least have the decency to recognize your audience is not a bunch of clueless grandmas. The whole point of the article (which I'm sure you didn't read) was comparing similar hardware, not the cheapo Dell to the top end Apple. Comparing similar hardware results in similar prices. Sometimes Apple comes out cheaper, and sometimes the PCs come out cheaper.
Anyone who thinks a PowerBook is required for email and web browsing deserves to have their money taken from them, in my opinion. Those people are deliberately ignorant and there's no excuse for that.
Sure, you should purchase based on your needs. The problem with that statement, is that this article isn't about what Apple provides that Dell et al don't, it's about the FUD that Apple computers (comparably equipped) are more expensive than PCs. That's simply not true, at least in the laptop market.
Yes Dell has a lot of options. Having 30 options with 28 of them being for a market I'm not in is no better than having 3 options with 1 of them being for a market I'm not in. I'd also wager that because Dell has so many options, people simply pick the one that's listed as a "special" more often than not, because they simply don't give a damn what is inside. It's no different for Apple users, for the most part. They just want it to work with the applications they want to run. Giving them an extra 20 choices won't really matter.
This whole thing is ridiculous and has been for a long time. Yes there is a slight premium for a Mac, but it's almost insignificant when comparing overall price of nearly any Mac system to a PC these days. Here's what I wrote the other day in the thread about OS X.
"I priced a Dell XPS M1210 with identical components of your MacBook (2.16 core duo, 1GB RAM, 8x DVD burner, 160 SATA) except for video and Windows Vista Basic Edition, at $1889. The video on the Dell was a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) Go 7400 TurboCache which shares system memory, I believe, vice the 64MB video listed for the Macbook. At $1889, the Dell is significantly more expensive than the $1499 quoted for the macbook. To be fair, I also priced a Dell Inspiron E1405 with a 2.0 GHz core duo (not available with the 2.16) with the same graphics as the MacBook for $1164. If you say the price jump to the 2.16 is equal to the price difference between the 2.0 and the 1.66 (same bus speed), the price becomes $1289. So the "Apple premium" is $210. I'd be willing to bet I can find several other PC manufacturers (not even counting Sony) that come close to the same price range. Granted Dell may or may not be the most affordable system out there, but being one of the bigger names in the consumer market right now, I think it's a fair comparison of systems. I think the argument that Apple hardware is extremely expensive is outdated at best. Comparing apples to oranges, perhaps, but when comparing systems with comparable hardware, Apple doesn't look particularly expensive."
While I appreciate your responses to criticisms of your article, I feel they are still lacking. Typos can certainly be forgiven so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt with respect to the office suites. I don't understand however when one comment says "NeoOffice works well IMHO" when your comment above says it had "significant problems with either stability or ease of use" as did AbiWord and OpenOffice. Which is correct, it works well, or it has significant problems? I have no experience with AbiWord, but both OpenOffice and NeoOffice run cleanly (though OO is admittedly slow) on my G4 iBook. Your article also didn't mention once whether or not you tried OO on the Mac, despite saying you use it on your Windows computer. Saying that users will "have to get either Pages...or Word for Mac" is disingenuous at best after such a cursory review of other options.
I'll give you the point about easily accessed components in Macs, and though it's very easy for me to upgrade my machines, they aren't designed with consumer upgrades in mind, which is my biggest beef with Apple machines. I will disagree, however that the PowerMac was ever a mid-range computer. The PowerMac is what was replaced by the MacPro and was always considered their top end line before that. iMacs have been the low-mid range computers since OS X was released.
As for your assertion that Apple hardware is cost prohibitive for a lot of people to switch, I priced a Dell XPS M1210 with identical components of your MacBook (2.16 core duo, 1GB RAM, 8x DVD burner, 160 SATA) except for video and Windows Vista Basic Edition, at $1889. The video on the Dell was a 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) Go 7400 TurboCache which shares system memory, I believe, vice the 64MB video listed for the Macbook. At $1889, the Dell is significantly more expensive than the $1499 quoted for the macbook. To be fair, I also priced a Dell Inspiron E1405 with a 2.0 GHz core duo (not available with the 2.16) with the same graphics as the MacBook for $1164. If you say the price jump to the 2.16 is equal to the price difference between the 2.0 and the 1.66 (same bus speed), the price becomes $1289. So the "Apple premium" is $210. I'd be willing to bet I can find several other PC manufacturers (not even counting Sony) that come close to the same price range. Granted Dell may or may not be the most affordable system out there, but being one of the bigger names in the consumer market right now, I think it's a fair comparison of systems. I think the argument that Apple hardware is extremely expensive is outdated at best. Comparing apples to oranges, perhaps, but when comparing systems with comparable hardware, Apple doesn't look particularly expensive.
You also note several things in your review that you didn't seem to give much attention to, like iChat. You imply it doesn't work with video conferencing between windows machines, but works fine with other Macs. The function works extremely well between Macs, Windows, and Linux machines, though it does occasionally require a little tweaking, like most video chat programs. When discussing video encoding you mention that you couldn't convert video using default windows tools then expressly mention that it also required 3rd party (non-freeware) tools in OS X. Your mention, however, implied that you expected to be able to convert files in OS X for free, when it's not reasonable to expect that for a windows machine either.
OS X is a memory hog, and I'd love the link to the disable dashboard as I almost never use it for anything except world clocks and weather, but the link is broken. 512 is definitely a bit light for OS X, but the same can be said for Vista, and in some cases XP too. Linux obviously can run as light and fast as you want.
Your comments about peripherals shows one thing to me. 3rd party vendors don't extensively consider anyone but Windows when writing drivers. Other OSes are second-hand considerations given poor quality treatment. That said, HP especially sucks with regard to that, but
So it will work with my ATI All-In-Wonder out of the box? I don't think so. I'll not deny that modern distros have strong support, but to say it's better than windows because windows requires after-install driver loads is a bit silly. All OSes need that for certain hardware, it's a simple fact. The problem with Linux is that those after-install drivers are generally harder to find because they don't come with the damn device. It's getting better, but it's not there yet.
All that said, I think this little device will make some inroads that will be good for the linux community.
I am neither militant nor stupid about this subject. I'm not denying that there is a valid threat in terrorists, or that Hezbollah is a militant group that has espoused hate for a long time. I'm just saying that not everything is a terrorist threat. I'm also saying there are far more terrorists out there than the currently popular muslim extremists and it's not all "jihad" as some people are claiming. We haven't been hearing about any of those threats lately, though. Should we be concerned about terrorists? Yes. Should we consider all terrorists jihadists? No. Should we consider all muslims jihadists? No. That is the only bias I have.
To answer your questions with my admittedly limited knowlege of the Koran and Islam:
1) The sunnah is a traditional way of life according to the teachings of Muhammed.
2) As I understand it from conversations I've had, Bukhari and Muslim were people who had a certain interpretation of the texts that describe the sunnah. I'm not sure if I'm correct that they were specific people, but I do know that Bukhari is "short for" al-bukhari, which means "from Bukhar" or something like that, implying that it was indeed a specific person.
3) Jizyah, is more or less a religious tax on non-Muslims.
4) I have no idea how the suras are arranged.
5) A hudna, is some sort of truce, I believe. Looked that one up on google though.
6) Again, I don't know anything about offensive battles Mohammed led. I would imagine it's a particularly important number though, so I'll go with whatever number of virgins martyrs get when they die. How many has the Pope led, (personally or just on paper) I wonder?
7) Again, a dhimmi is a non-muslim citizen of a muslim state who has lower privelege than a muslim citizen. I would guess these are the people who pay the jizyah.
I'm not a scholar of the Koran, I just don't think people should be ignorant of it either. Obviously you have some belief that Islam teaches people to be terrorists, or sets a heirarchy of rights based on religious preferences. I ask you to define one of the major religions (excluding perhaps Buddhism) that doesn't do that. Especially in ancient texts without the benefit of modern translation and interpretation. Most of the world understands that the people who espouse those things are doing so for means other than religion and are interpreting the words incorrectly or "too literally".
I personally don't give a damn how many battles Mohammed led to spread Islam any more than I actually care about the specifics of the first, second or third crusades. None of those wars were actually about religion so much as power and that was also part of my original point.
What you claim I'm speaking as a "classic progressive rhetorical response to concerns about jihad ideology" is nothing more than my belief that people should investigate and weigh both sides of an argument before making a decision. You seem to think that taking direct quotes from 2000 year old documents as gospel is somehow the modern belief structure of most religions, and I disagree.
What I will agree on is that people who are extreme fundamentalists of any kind are scary. They don't understand progress, they don't want progress, and they certainly don't want people educated to think for themselves. It seems to have worked on many people, but calling me names and saying I'm stupid because I happen to harbor a different belief system than you just makes you look like one of those people.
There was more stability in the middle east before removing Hussein from power. That's exactly my point.
"Our government has to choose it's battles and it will only get involved in conflicts that are in our best national interest."
Yes, I agree. I think the question is who defines "our national interest" and what exactly is it? We definitely have more people (Americans and otherwise) dying in the middle east right now than there were 5 years ago, so how is it more stable? I'll say, it's not. I think you'd also be highly disocunting the effect of general asian instability by saying atrocities in Indonesia and Thailand don't have any impact on our economy. Those things significantly impact the local economies, which in turn ripples into ours because we do business with them, through outsourcing of textile production, electronics assembly, and other things. Check out a pair of sneakers sometime, and see where they are manufactured. Odds are, it's in southeast Asia. Thailand is currently in an economic recession that has definitely been felt all over Asia and in our consumer electronics market as well.
Is oil a more direct impact? Absolutely. Should that be reason for war? I don't happen to think so.
This was actually in response to some idiot who claims to be "saving the children" threatening to go to LJs advertisors and showing them supposed accounts that are doing and discussing illegal things. The mass hysteria is a result of LJ going overboard with which communities and accounts they suspended/deleted.
Personally, I think anyone who lost data should get over it. There are plenty of ways of archiving your stuff, and if a conversation held anonymously in an internet discussion forum is that important to you, you need a life. Than again, I didn't lose any data either, so my opinion might be different if I were involved in any of the stuff that got deleted.
As for the advertisors being their customers, I believe LJ actually gets most of it's revenue from users with paid accounts. I haven't bothered to verify that, but it's the impression I've had for the last year or so. Most of the advertisers seem more like supplemental income to pay for the free accounts.
It's telling that you mention "Islamic fundamentalists" and "Al Quaeda" multiple times in your post. the damage has already been done, just by the mere fact you've mentioned a specific terrorist group by name. As the saying goes, "to name a thing, is to give it power".
You (and most of us) have already fallen prey to the fear mongers. Everything is now an islamic fundamentalist or Al Quaeda. We've forgotten our own home-grown terrors, like Timothy McVegh and Ted Kazinski because they look like us and they talk like us. It's always something different that galvanizes fear, not something familiar.
Education is the key to fixing this problem, and that's where this administration (and most of its predecessors) have gone wrong. Instead of teaching people about islam and about how to protect ourselves, the government has bolstered the false security of metal detectors and no liquids on airplanes and an attitude of hate. Fix that first. Then we will have a much smaller problem to deal with when it actually happens instead of a ghost enemy that is primarily our own fear that we're fighting to our own ruin.
Anyone that thinks they can guarantee (or can have) 100% security should be locked in a padded cell because they need far more help than security can provide.
While I don't disagree with your point that the enemy is bad, even if the President is an idiot, there are plenty of places in this world that are in far worse shape than Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. You've heard of Sudan right? The President just made some sort of speech about it, several years after we learned about the problem and over a year after his administration claimed they would do something proactive about it.
And lets not get into Indonesia and all the problems there that we could have helped with, or Tibet, or Nepal. You do know there was essentially a civil war in Nepal for the last 10 years right? Oh, and the monarch disolved the parliament and basically imposed martial law on the place. What about Thailand, and the military coup that just occured?
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad man doing bad things. The point is, however, he was an "evil" we understood how to deal with. He was essentially no threat to anyone but himself and his own people. Yes that's bad, but his conflict wasn't causing issues any different than the others that have been going on at the same time. We did however decide to put on our big boy shoes and step in his playground to pick a fight with him as opposed to others. Why? Because it was a name people recognized (so even if it was the wrong choice at least some people would support it on name recognition alone), it was a profitable place to pick a fight, and it was during a period of economic "recession", which always calls for war. It's the great economic provider for the USA, and has been for a very long time. I won't even speculate at the personal economic gains of the administration, which others probably have far more information about.
As I understand it, TiVo pretty much has all of the features you mentioned, it just requires the user to be willing to do some hacking. TiVo is an open system, it just has a lot of these features turned off by default. You can, however, turn on TiVo sharing to play from one box to another, or to your computer, and you can turn on remote administration for webmin type access. TiVo plays (as far as I know) most of the same formats that Myth supports, audio and video, and photo. I'm not sure about .ogg files but certainly many others are completely usable by TiVo with minor script editing. You can get weather on a TiVo and you can time shift and format shift your media to your heart's content, again with some script editing.
The features I see getting from a Myth box are things like mame support, karaoke (my girlfriend likes that feature) and a few others that TiVo isn't likely to support any time soon if for no other reason than lack of public interest.
Plus, I can easily set up a Myth box to also run other things and perform other functions, which would be a little more difficult with a TiVo.
My answer to that is that the administrators need to grow a backbone and tell the whiners to get used to the new tools.
As for the Office 2007 XML format, if they don't have 2007 that wouldn't be an issue. I'd still let those people who couldn't learn to cope have Office 2003 and simply tell them they have to use specific computers if they want to work with that. If they need to use another computer, they learn the new tool. It's not difficult to make the whole system work giving people the tools that they want, it just takes some adjustments (for everyone) to do so.
Then again, I don't have to administrate the system or the teachers so it's easy for me to say that.
I don't know about you, but I have about 700 CDs ripped to about 50GB. That's about 2100 albums, which really isn't that much these days. Especially for music collectors. I don't even have music that is hugely dynamic, for the most part, so my compression is reasonably good with VBR set with minimum of 190 or something like that. For music that has a lot of dynamic sound bitrates are going to be higher. 150 GB is nowhere near 3600 albums if you actually want the music to sound close to correct.
My question is why purchase Office 2007 if you migrated all those other computers to OpenOffice? why not give the few who were bitching older copies of Office 2003 or whatever and leave the remaining (happy) users on OO?
"Newspapers tend to do these reprints over 3-day weekends since not a lotta news happening"
Because the rest of the world stops for US holidays, right? I think you mean they do this over 3-day weekends so that the reporters don't have to work the holiday, like most other people.