most carriers have been collecting e911 fees for a few years now. the money was supposed to go to building and maintaining the system. the theory was that even people who don't have it in phones willw hen they upgrade. the problem is that a lot of states have done nothing to build the system and they shift the money into the general fund. a lot of carriers boast the e911 phones and sell it to safety-minded people. they neglect to tell those people that while the phone is e911 ready, there is no actual e911 system to save them.
most phones still have a pseudo-GPS that uses cell towers to triangulate your position. some phones allow you to see the GPS-ish codes if you get into the programmer's menu (look online for your phone). but those codes won't mean anything to you. in theory these can be used by the e911 system we all seem to be paying for but few, if any, states in the US actually have them working. some carriers use these vague GPS positioning systems to help you find local restaurants or movie theaters. just getting your location from one tower would be valif for that use in most cases... but if you call 911 and say "i am tied up in the trunk of a car and i don't know what it looks like".... they will need something a little better.
i think some phones may have real GPS recievers, but remember most GPS units require clear view of the sky. even being in a car (as opposed to far out on the dashboard) can block signals.
they could..... they tried it when Jobs was away and it didn't go well at all. if they impose much stricter controls on the clones at some point you wonder why they would even bother? right now the G5 production is not enough to keep Apple supplied. if it turned into a fight over who got the limited chips for their machines, it would turn ugly fast. look how often resellers now say they are getting far less inventory of some items compared to Apple's own stores. I also don't see why IBM would want to make consumer desktop machines running OS X. maybe some crazy supercomputer type thing that Apple helped with the software..... but that doesn't make a lot of sense either.
i assume they don't want to be responsible when people really screw everything up. i know someone that messed with the open firmware on his laptop and the machine was dead, had to be sent back to the magic Texas repair place and they fixed it no charge (after phone supports and the store's magic red phone had no idea how to help him). when a lot of companies seal the whole box up, Apple started using the "el capatian case" (B&W G3 and G4 towers) that allowed anyone to add PCI cards, memory, hard drives etc etc etc. same with the G5 tower, and the G5 iMac now is the same way. if you look on Apple.com they explain how it is only 4 screws to open the whole thing up and poke around.
i read on some site that Apple's idea is that if, say, you power supply goes on the G5 iMac, they would send you another power supply module instead of you having to drag it back to the store. if you look at the high res images of the guts you can see how modular the whole thing is. this probably also saves them trouble with build to order machines, or repairs/upgrades in general.
the thing about shipping OS X for other platforms is that it would be a mess. all design and control things aside, Apple makes the whole widget and has a close relationship with most all of the 3rd party vendors. by designing the hardware and software and having control over components, Apple can make a product that is not really possible with M$ products.
watch someone do a clean install of a M$ box and a Mac..... the Mac is cake partially because most of the drivers are in the OS already, and the OS only has to run on a fixed number of machines that can be easily tested in the lab before the OS ships.
doesn't the BMW interface pretty much let you select from 4 special car playlists and then just skip back and forth in those? maybe you can do more than that, but that's in the car..... if you are running or whatever you are not going to use the full navigational features of the ipods, picking a playlist and having the ability to skip a song here and there would be great. give me the ability to randomize the playlist and i would be even more happy. in terms of a device to use when doing a workout or going for a walk, that's all you need. the saved weight/size/battery/price would make it even more worth it.
think about it... 1 gig of AAC music is about 14 hours of non-repeating music. if this is targetted at gym people, they don't need a 4 gig mini just to use for workouts.
some of the other flash mp3 players work with Macs, but they are a mess to use..... if this is anywhere as easy to use as a full ipod and sync albums or playlists then it will be fun, add that it will work with songs bought from iTms (no others do right now). now if it is somewhat sweat/rain resistant and it would be awesome. water is one of the fears i used to have about taking an ipod running, and those waterproof cases add a lot of bulk. i don't need 4 - 60 gigs of music even if i am running 10 miles. also, strapping $250 to my arm seems to declare "mug me".
this is also to be given right after the accident.... the stem cell work is for people with conditions that have set in, let alone all the other possibilities.
i am sure medical grade antifreeze will cost even more than injet ink.... kind of like how superglue can close wounds from razor sharp objects, but hostipal grade liquid bandage probably costs about $200/tube.
if you go to the to do list you can make a recording start or end at a tweaked time.... i have only added (to compensate for this) and it lets you add 1 minute, 2, 5 then i guess it goes up by 5?
the big stinker is if you need to record till 21:01 and a show on a network that uses standard timing starts another show you want to record at 21:00. fortunately i don't TiVo much so that has not been an issue yet.
for the record i use a series 1 TiVo with.... whatever the newest software is... or close to it.
you mean the show right? i noticed that show seems to lose the last 30 seconds or so, let alone a preview of what's coming next week. because i only grab a few shows off and on i have not noticed it really on other things i record..... but then again adult Swim stuff is so short anyway i would just miss the in between goofyness and not important cartoons. as for the show lost, i just added 5 minutes to the manual recording since i dont try to record anything right after it.
for the record i don't tivo very much, i actually dont subscribe to the service, i just got a bare bones to replace a broken VCR. since i watch what i record, then delete it, a dumb mode tivo made more sense to me than another VCR. maybe i am not noticing other shows/networks doing this.
i'm not trolling... and i mean the average citizen that mostly uses their computer for email/web/IM and maybe to sometimes type up a text document. the person that doesn't buy (or steal) applications beyond what comes on the machine...... do you think they really care what OS they run? you hear a lot of people say they can not really afford to switch because they own all this Windows only software so buying a Mac is the cost of the hardware plus thousands and thousands in software replacement. if somebody is just using their machine for simple tasks, they can switch when they buy a new machine. i know people that don't even really transfer files when they upgrade hardware. they only care about emails and those are on their AOL account. the less somebody really uses a computer, the friendlier and easier a Mac is going to seem.
the same argument can be used to support the valu-computers with Linux that wallmart sells. if it has a web browser and works.... why not! that's all most people really do. when i say most, i mean people that do not use a computer at work, and do not use it as a tool to do things they can do analog.
i never said it cures everything, but most of your list could be taken care of with public transportation. maybe not if you live in some middle-american wasteland, but then i am sure you are all about giant SUVs anyway.
there are a lot of people still today in the United States (let alone the rest of the world) that manage to do all those things without owning a car at all..... ever heard of places like New York, Philadelphia, Boston? not everyone lives in some suburban sprawl pre-fab neighborhood. the busses here actually go to schools, so plenty of kids us them if they can not take a school bus or, god forbid, they WALK! busses/trains/trolleys actually go to places with restaurants too. i can tell you that it is more likely that public transportation goes into an urban area which is going to be much better food than the fucking Appleby's at the strip mall that used to be a farm 5 years ago. i would rather have people take public transportation when they leave the bars then try to drive their cars. same with people going to sporting events. they can be so mad if their team loses they might as well be drinking. my sister often works till 9pm and she still takes the train to her house. in our world the trains don't shut down at dark. she has a car but she never drives to work because it's just stupid. i spent a few years taking public transportation home from school when i was taking night classes. maybe i live in some magical place but i can get home 24/7 on public transportation if i have to.... that's if i didn't ride my bike. plenty of supermarkets (at least around here) will deliver your groceries. if you are buying enough for a family of 6 they will do it for free, or something that works out to nothing when you are talking about that much food. i don't live in center city and the dry cleaning place near me is 2 blocks away.... so i could walk there if i was not capable of doing my own laundry.
that all being said i do drive a car too.... but most of your reasons for not taking public transportation are bunk. there is this bizare perception with suburbanites or rural red state people that the only people that take public transportation are people that can not afford a car.
i bought a Mac soundblaster card at MacWorld in 2001 or something (which they charged like $150 for). i am STILL waiting for OS X drivers that they promised in the next 2 months. ok, i'm not really waiting..... i pulled the card and chucked it in a box somewhere.... but their sales people flat out lied. they went through the expense of getting a booth and selling products to Mac users that they never had any intention to support. It was MacWorld (NYC), so it was the more dedicated users and many/most were already running OS X.. though Creative never made drivers past OS 9. assholes!
anyway, for that alone i will never support them.... not that their products work on my machines anyway.... but if i COULD buy their shitty junk, i would not.
i don't know if it was based on anything else, but on some Mac site i read about a piece of software that used the firewire output on the back of digital cable boxes. you just connected it to your machine with a normal firewire cable and the software could capture HDTV. supposedly if you have digital cable and your box does not have a FW port you can demand one (some FCC rule because some HDTV ready TVs have firewire inputs?). it seems only the HDTV channels would come through the port though, so on my system that's maybe a dozen channels if you had the full subscription package.
i realize you wanted a linux solution, but if there is this OS X solution that require no additional hardware, and some shareware software... maybe there is a Linux version? or could be? sorry i forget where i saw it and the name, i just stumbled across it a few months back. i dont have FW cable box and i am awaiting the PVR cable boxes to upgrade so i'll cope till then.
Re:The Mozilla brand is probably stronger now
on
Netscape Reborn?
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· Score: 1
hey now..... while i have not actually run Netscape in a long time (except on some ancient machine running 4.x) i still think of Netscape as being THE browser for so long....... then again i still have a floppy somewhere with a netscape 1.1 installer, and i used to use Mosiac. Netscape was great till Netscape 6, and by then i was using Mozilla betas for the fun features.
but AOL still uses IE as its browser
on
Netscape Reborn?
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· Score: 1
well AOL still uses a modified version of IE for their browser right? i think the OS X version of AOL does (or at least beta tested) another browser to stick in the AOL app, but that may be due to M$ dropping development of IE for OS X. i think that was some mozilla derived thing. the only person i know that uses AOL has no idea what they are running anyway.
i though Netscape 5 was the opensource project that never really got finished..... i thought it was a ground up rewrite of Netscape done opensource.... and in some roundabout way that evolved into the Mozilla project. that's why till a while ago (maybe still?) you could download Netscape 4.x and Netscape 6.x, but there was never a 5.
the later versions of Netscape were basically tweaked versions of Mozilla. then the desire for a streamlined browser lead to the firefox/chimera and camino splinters....... knocking out the mail/news features to be handled by Thnuderbird.
if you never used the later versions of Netscape, it was out of control..... web browsing, email, newsgroups, instant messages bla bla bla all wrapped up in one application. i don't know what they were planning, but in a way it was the perfect lone application to have you mom/grandma launch when they want to "go internetting". maybe they were going to try to embed it in some Audrey-like device..... or just some simple all in one monster.
are you suggesting the school kids might be as clever as to cut out their chips and glue them to the back of a rat?
actually the visual that comes to mind is from Aliens where they track all the lost people and find them all lumped in one area of the base. not that the tracking chips helped them any........
if those MIT kids can measure a bridge in Smoots (Smoot was a student), they can measure make the Green building a larger unit..... try and stop em....
yes you are paying for them solving one of their problems.... but as the customer you pay for everything. you pay for far more than 30 days worth of pills.... you pay for everything from the headquarters having nice floral arangements to their letterhead.
i have never stolen anything from a Home Depot, yet part of the price i pay for tools and hardware goes for security tags and readers and guards. the system would not work if only the thieves had to pay up for the cost of security.
well in a way the iTMS works on a mac or pc...... it will always play on that ipod, as long as the ipod is alive. if you own a mac or pc now and switch to the other in a few years there will still be free iTunes software to play your songs.
if you are buying the other types of music and want to switch to a Mac.... i think you are screwed? none of those stores support Mac OS except Apple itself. you can throw around numbers of how many PCs and how many Macs ship per year, but a lot of those PCs end up in business enviroments. Macs are way more common in homes, plus they live longer, add the fact that some houses have both machines and would want to play the same songs (iTunes allows multiple computers to play a DRM'd song).
looking at it fromt hat standpoint... if you own or ever might own a Mac or live with someone that may own a Mac.... then you can only shop at Apple's store. as for Linux/BSD users.... well i don't know.
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most carriers have been collecting e911 fees for a few years now. the money was supposed to go to building and maintaining the system. the theory was that even people who don't have it in phones willw hen they upgrade. the problem is that a lot of states have done nothing to build the system and they shift the money into the general fund.
a lot of carriers boast the e911 phones and sell it to safety-minded people. they neglect to tell those people that while the phone is e911 ready, there is no actual e911 system to save them.
most phones still have a pseudo-GPS that uses cell towers to triangulate your position. some phones allow you to see the GPS-ish codes if you get into the programmer's menu (look online for your phone). but those codes won't mean anything to you. in theory these can be used by the e911 system we all seem to be paying for but few, if any, states in the US actually have them working. some carriers use these vague GPS positioning systems to help you find local restaurants or movie theaters. just getting your location from one tower would be valif for that use in most cases... but if you call 911 and say "i am tied up in the trunk of a car and i don't know what it looks like".... they will need something a little better.
i think some phones may have real GPS recievers, but remember most GPS units require clear view of the sky. even being in a car (as opposed to far out on the dashboard) can block signals.
they could..... they tried it when Jobs was away and it didn't go well at all. if they impose much stricter controls on the clones at some point you wonder why they would even bother?
right now the G5 production is not enough to keep Apple supplied. if it turned into a fight over who got the limited chips for their machines, it would turn ugly fast. look how often resellers now say they are getting far less inventory of some items compared to Apple's own stores.
I also don't see why IBM would want to make consumer desktop machines running OS X. maybe some crazy supercomputer type thing that Apple helped with the software..... but that doesn't make a lot of sense either.
i assume they don't want to be responsible when people really screw everything up. i know someone that messed with the open firmware on his laptop and the machine was dead, had to be sent back to the magic Texas repair place and they fixed it no charge (after phone supports and the store's magic red phone had no idea how to help him).
when a lot of companies seal the whole box up, Apple started using the "el capatian case" (B&W G3 and G4 towers) that allowed anyone to add PCI cards, memory, hard drives etc etc etc. same with the G5 tower, and the G5 iMac now is the same way. if you look on Apple.com they explain how it is only 4 screws to open the whole thing up and poke around.
i read on some site that Apple's idea is that if, say, you power supply goes on the G5 iMac, they would send you another power supply module instead of you having to drag it back to the store. if you look at the high res images of the guts you can see how modular the whole thing is. this probably also saves them trouble with build to order machines, or repairs/upgrades in general.
the thing about shipping OS X for other platforms is that it would be a mess. all design and control things aside, Apple makes the whole widget and has a close relationship with most all of the 3rd party vendors. by designing the hardware and software and having control over components, Apple can make a product that is not really possible with M$ products.
watch someone do a clean install of a M$ box and a Mac..... the Mac is cake partially because most of the drivers are in the OS already, and the OS only has to run on a fixed number of machines that can be easily tested in the lab before the OS ships.
doesn't the BMW interface pretty much let you select from 4 special car playlists and then just skip back and forth in those? maybe you can do more than that, but that's in the car..... if you are running or whatever you are not going to use the full navigational features of the ipods, picking a playlist and having the ability to skip a song here and there would be great. give me the ability to randomize the playlist and i would be even more happy. in terms of a device to use when doing a workout or going for a walk, that's all you need. the saved weight/size/battery/price would make it even more worth it.
think about it... 1 gig of AAC music is about 14 hours of non-repeating music. if this is targetted at gym people, they don't need a 4 gig mini just to use for workouts.
some of the other flash mp3 players work with Macs, but they are a mess to use..... if this is anywhere as easy to use as a full ipod and sync albums or playlists then it will be fun, add that it will work with songs bought from iTms (no others do right now). now if it is somewhat sweat/rain resistant and it would be awesome. water is one of the fears i used to have about taking an ipod running, and those waterproof cases add a lot of bulk. i don't need 4 - 60 gigs of music even if i am running 10 miles. also, strapping $250 to my arm seems to declare "mug me".
this is also to be given right after the accident.... the stem cell work is for people with conditions that have set in, let alone all the other possibilities.
i am sure medical grade antifreeze will cost even more than injet ink....
kind of like how superglue can close wounds from razor sharp objects, but hostipal grade liquid bandage probably costs about $200/tube.
if you go to the to do list you can make a recording start or end at a tweaked time.... i have only added (to compensate for this) and it lets you add 1 minute, 2, 5 then i guess it goes up by 5?
the big stinker is if you need to record till 21:01 and a show on a network that uses standard timing starts another show you want to record at 21:00. fortunately i don't TiVo much so that has not been an issue yet.
for the record i use a series 1 TiVo with.... whatever the newest software is... or close to it.
you mean the show right? i noticed that show seems to lose the last 30 seconds or so, let alone a preview of what's coming next week. because i only grab a few shows off and on i have not noticed it really on other things i record..... but then again adult Swim stuff is so short anyway i would just miss the in between goofyness and not important cartoons. as for the show lost, i just added 5 minutes to the manual recording since i dont try to record anything right after it.
for the record i don't tivo very much, i actually dont subscribe to the service, i just got a bare bones to replace a broken VCR. since i watch what i record, then delete it, a dumb mode tivo made more sense to me than another VCR. maybe i am not noticing other shows/networks doing this.
wasn't some system of facial recognition duped by people smiling in one shot and not the other.
i'm not trolling... and i mean the average citizen that mostly uses their computer for email/web/IM and maybe to sometimes type up a text document. the person that doesn't buy (or steal) applications beyond what comes on the machine...... do you think they really care what OS they run? you hear a lot of people say they can not really afford to switch because they own all this Windows only software so buying a Mac is the cost of the hardware plus thousands and thousands in software replacement.
if somebody is just using their machine for simple tasks, they can switch when they buy a new machine. i know people that don't even really transfer files when they upgrade hardware. they only care about emails and those are on their AOL account. the less somebody really uses a computer, the friendlier and easier a Mac is going to seem.
the same argument can be used to support the valu-computers with Linux that wallmart sells. if it has a web browser and works.... why not! that's all most people really do. when i say most, i mean people that do not use a computer at work, and do not use it as a tool to do things they can do analog.
you might as well ship them all to me for enviro-friendly disposal. message me and i'll give you my PO Box.
i never said it cures everything, but most of your list could be taken care of with public transportation. maybe not if you live in some middle-american wasteland, but then i am sure you are all about giant SUVs anyway.
there are a lot of people still today in the United States (let alone the rest of the world) that manage to do all those things without owning a car at all..... ever heard of places like New York, Philadelphia, Boston? not everyone lives in some suburban sprawl pre-fab neighborhood.
the busses here actually go to schools, so plenty of kids us them if they can not take a school bus or, god forbid, they WALK! busses/trains/trolleys actually go to places with restaurants too.
i can tell you that it is more likely that public transportation goes into an urban area which is going to be much better food than the fucking Appleby's at the strip mall that used to be a farm 5 years ago.
i would rather have people take public transportation when they leave the bars then try to drive their cars. same with people going to sporting events. they can be so mad if their team loses they might as well be drinking.
my sister often works till 9pm and she still takes the train to her house. in our world the trains don't shut down at dark. she has a car but she never drives to work because it's just stupid. i spent a few years taking public transportation home from school when i was taking night classes. maybe i live in some magical place but i can get home 24/7 on public transportation if i have to.... that's if i didn't ride my bike.
plenty of supermarkets (at least around here) will deliver your groceries. if you are buying enough for a family of 6 they will do it for free, or something that works out to nothing when you are talking about that much food.
i don't live in center city and the dry cleaning place near me is 2 blocks away.... so i could walk there if i was not capable of doing my own laundry.
that all being said i do drive a car too.... but most of your reasons for not taking public transportation are bunk. there is this bizare perception with suburbanites or rural red state people that the only people that take public transportation are people that can not afford a car.
i bought a Mac soundblaster card at MacWorld in 2001 or something (which they charged like $150 for). i am STILL waiting for OS X drivers that they promised in the next 2 months. ok, i'm not really waiting..... i pulled the card and chucked it in a box somewhere.... but their sales people flat out lied. they went through the expense of getting a booth and selling products to Mac users that they never had any intention to support. It was MacWorld (NYC), so it was the more dedicated users and many/most were already running OS X.. though Creative never made drivers past OS 9. assholes!
anyway, for that alone i will never support them.... not that their products work on my machines anyway.... but if i COULD buy their shitty junk, i would not.
it's been around for years and it cost under $2 a ride
i don't know if it was based on anything else, but on some Mac site i read about a piece of software that used the firewire output on the back of digital cable boxes. you just connected it to your machine with a normal firewire cable and the software could capture HDTV. supposedly if you have digital cable and your box does not have a FW port you can demand one (some FCC rule because some HDTV ready TVs have firewire inputs?). it seems only the HDTV channels would come through the port though, so on my system that's maybe a dozen channels if you had the full subscription package.
i realize you wanted a linux solution, but if there is this OS X solution that require no additional hardware, and some shareware software... maybe there is a Linux version? or could be? sorry i forget where i saw it and the name, i just stumbled across it a few months back. i dont have FW cable box and i am awaiting the PVR cable boxes to upgrade so i'll cope till then.
hey now..... while i have not actually run Netscape in a long time (except on some ancient machine running 4.x) i still think of Netscape as being THE browser for so long....... then again i still have a floppy somewhere with a netscape 1.1 installer, and i used to use Mosiac. Netscape was great till Netscape 6, and by then i was using Mozilla betas for the fun features.
well AOL still uses a modified version of IE for their browser right? i think the OS X version of AOL does (or at least beta tested) another browser to stick in the AOL app, but that may be due to M$ dropping development of IE for OS X. i think that was some mozilla derived thing. the only person i know that uses AOL has no idea what they are running anyway.
i though Netscape 5 was the opensource project that never really got finished..... i thought it was a ground up rewrite of Netscape done opensource.... and in some roundabout way that evolved into the Mozilla project. that's why till a while ago (maybe still?) you could download Netscape 4.x and Netscape 6.x, but there was never a 5.
the later versions of Netscape were basically tweaked versions of Mozilla. then the desire for a streamlined browser lead to the firefox/chimera and camino splinters....... knocking out the mail/news features to be handled by Thnuderbird.
if you never used the later versions of Netscape, it was out of control..... web browsing, email, newsgroups, instant messages bla bla bla all wrapped up in one application. i don't know what they were planning, but in a way it was the perfect lone application to have you mom/grandma launch when they want to "go internetting". maybe they were going to try to embed it in some Audrey-like device..... or just some simple all in one monster.
are you suggesting the school kids might be as clever as to cut out their chips and glue them to the back of a rat?
actually the visual that comes to mind is from Aliens where they track all the lost people and find them all lumped in one area of the base. not that the tracking chips helped them any........
if those MIT kids can measure a bridge in Smoots (Smoot was a student), they can measure make the Green building a larger unit..... try and stop em....
yes you are paying for them solving one of their problems.... but as the customer you pay for everything. you pay for far more than 30 days worth of pills.... you pay for everything from the headquarters having nice floral arangements to their letterhead.
i have never stolen anything from a Home Depot, yet part of the price i pay for tools and hardware goes for security tags and readers and guards. the system would not work if only the thieves had to pay up for the cost of security.
well in a way the iTMS works on a mac or pc...... it will always play on that ipod, as long as the ipod is alive. if you own a mac or pc now and switch to the other in a few years there will still be free iTunes software to play your songs.
if you are buying the other types of music and want to switch to a Mac.... i think you are screwed? none of those stores support Mac OS except Apple itself. you can throw around numbers of how many PCs and how many Macs ship per year, but a lot of those PCs end up in business enviroments. Macs are way more common in homes, plus they live longer, add the fact that some houses have both machines and would want to play the same songs (iTunes allows multiple computers to play a DRM'd song).
looking at it fromt hat standpoint... if you own or ever might own a Mac or live with someone that may own a Mac.... then you can only shop at Apple's store. as for Linux/BSD users.... well i don't know.