I was that angry once... back when I wasn't getting laid
(and in case you care, my username is "sarcasm" in the sense that it's supposed to be mocking 1337speak, not endorsing it, but your reaction is typical. luckily, I love f*cking with people like yourself. congratulations)
Dark Castle. Bolo. Early versions of MacWrite/MacPaint. Fool's Errand (and its sequels). NetTrek 3. Zork. Or anything that used to be shipped on a 400k, 800k or 1.4mb floppy(ies). Photoshop 1.0, QuickTime 1.0... Etc., etc.
For those who grew up on Macs, these have nostalgic meaning. It would be nice to be able to run them, on a whim. I know it must seem silly, but I was a nerdy kid and spent a lot of my life on Macs and promoting Macs;)
Hopefully there will be an emulation solution for this stuff. I know that back when I was at college, people were using a Mac emulation environment on Wintel just to play Snood (which has since gotten a Wintel version). Perhaps that will get a new lease on life. I know there is a solution called vMac, but I don't think it's been updated in some time...
A Google on "iapetus" will net someone more interesting (and more objectively plausible) information than a poorly-designed site that not only starts off by alluding to a science-fiction movie but is written by a well-known UFO buff (Richard Hoagland) who may suffer a certain lack of objectivity. And yes, some of the info out there is curious. Yes, there seems to be some sort of structure lying along the equator, but nothing says it's perfect; there is not enough info to determine that. Yes, there is a strange large dark area on the leading face of the moon. And that's about all we can say about it without actually being there. The rest is idle (or, in your case, rampant) speculation.
For a while I dated this really really hot woman who was great in bed, and felt I was too. Tons of chemistry/attraction, kissing was amazing (wow, does that hook one in!) but conversation was pretty boring. Also, she was not a professional type of woman, which bothered me. She was more of a feeler, than a thinker. She didn't think most of the stuff I thought was funny, was funny... python, office space, simpsons, etc... Yet, she still wanted me. I made a decision to break up with her based on intellectual dissatisfaction. It was strange breaking up with a really hot woman as I always thought that as a geek, I'd be the one getting dumped by hot women...
I then dated a gal I got along fantastic with for 2 years. Smart, geek-compatible, we were both professionals in a career, we made each other laugh a lot, we were both touchy-feely, she was clean and sweet and thoughtful and rather cute (but not *hot* per se), and she'd do things like take a day off work to take care of me when I got really sick once. The problem is, the sex/chemistry was just not quite there. I really tried- I had to, because I knew how well I was getting along with this woman- but in the end we both just had this flagging sexual interest in each other. The nail in the coffin was when I started an exercise program to get my ass back in sexy shape (for both of us) and she... did nothing but watch me.
I had a dry spell after that and before long I was fantasizing about Hot Chick again. Gave her a call, she was receptive, chat on the phone was hot, and in fact she's visiting tonight for 3 days or so (she's a little distance away, which is fine w/me). I expect a lot of hot, confusing sex, but the loneliness on the search for Everything Girl is just rough sometimes, and I'm not a one-night-stand type of guy, unfortunately. I expect to get tired of this gal right around the time she leaves (when I've plateaued in sexual satisfaction and the law of diminishing returns kicks in).
I am working on some other "leads" but nothing has come to fruition yet. I don't know if "importing an ex" for a few days is defensible objectively, but man, I could use a little TLC, I've had a rough few weeks and I'm fairly excited about seeing her. With the last g/f, we had to try to have sex- with this one, we have to try NOT to. It's fairly confusing, but I am still looking.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't worry, fellow nerds. not only is it possible to get the hot girl (depending on her insecurity), she actually gets boring. Be careful of getting attached to her, though;)
p.s. Exercise helps a LOT. Women seem to notice even after just a couple of weeks of moderate exercise.
This recent AnandTech article was very disappointing to read as an Apple (and *nix) fan. Basically, the more requests were thrown at one time at an Apache or MySQL server, the faster Linux looked compared to OS X. In fact, OS X pretty much got clobbered with an increasing number of requests... apparently because of the threading model underneath and/or the wrappers around it. I would hope that Apple finds a way to alleviate that situation ASAP. In fact, I can't believe they're even able to sell OS X Servers if this situation is as real as this article makes it seem, unless there's something I'm not aware of.
I was on a flight recently where I was unfortunately in the middle seat. There was a nice-looking gal to my right who I managed to strike up a conversation with. I have enough charisma where this is not unusual, BUT... All was well until the guy to my left whipped out a laptop and started playing some game. I asked him about it and next thing I knew, we were discussing World of Warcraft (I currently have a lvl53 character in that game).
The woman to my right never spoke to me again for the rest of the flight.
So I didn't get laid, but I did get tips on completing my last 2 quests in Zul'Farrak, in particular, that one where about 100 NPC's storm the stairs and you have to defend the high ground. Fun stuff for a party with people who don't bail early...
It is for this reason that I feel I have to maintain "secret likes", which often includes anything IT or game-related, to the point where I find it difficult to even describe my job as it's pretty geeky and I'd rather just say I'm a "consultant". Unfortunately, to my horror I recently discovered that if I google my full name (which is uncommon), it becomes far too obvious what my really geeky likes are, despite my efforts to remove all traces of my full name from Internet sites. See, the gals I date are usually cute and best described as "geek-compatible", not "geeky"...
Actually, for anyone who cared about such things (chip geeks), the popular consensus WAS that PPC's WERE better than anything in the x86 camp. That is, during the G4 era. The instruction set was much saner (even Intel fans will complain about the bass-ackwards quirky x86 instruction set), it pushed more numbers with far less power, AltiVec showed a ton of promise (if you were willing to either wait for a good compiler or use the vector unit by hand).
With the introduction of the G5 and the failure on the promise to break through the 3GHz barrier without incurring much larger power requirements, the situation probably began to change, but us Apple Believers, admittedly, chose to ignore this slowly-dawning information. Just like those stubborn Windoze users who only surf the web and check email, and reinstall Windoze every year and spend 2 hours a week disinfecting and have pieces of apps lying around on their hard drive that failed to successfully "uninstall" (a concept foreign to OS X users), and STILL believe that their choice is cheaper and/or more effective than getting even a used Mac for the job. Their time must not be worth a damn thing. I know, because I tried to convince just such a non-technical person to buy a used Mac (since I put equal time on Macs and PC's and knew what was best for this person), but they insisted on a crappy PC laptop, and then had the nerve to call me over for free tech support... Objectivity is hard to come by all around.
Maybe we liked having a different processor because it was a different TAKE on things. It was outside the box. And certainly, every last one of us understood that it added COMPETITION to the market. Competition is good for everyone. Something else you Wintel fans seem to not care about or understand, as you freely throw your money at an industry with a leader who is a convicted monopolist. You should be kissing AMD's ass that they lit a fire under Intel's butt, because around the year 2000, it certainly did look like PPC was going to hand Intel's ass to it. (And of course, if Microsoft didn't consider open source a "threat", it would have zero incentive to change, either. Why improve when you can market instead and charge as much as the [exorbitant fee just under what would force people to buy elsewhere because it's the only game in town]?
I can't believe I even devoted this much thought to your jerkitude.
Thanks for elucidating some possible reasons why Apple decided to go x86 instead of the Cell (which ostensibly uses the same instruction set). Actually, since I thought it used the same (or similar) instruction set, I don't understand why they would have had to "rewrite a ton of assembler" except to take advantage of the vector portion, but elaborate if you wish.
Now all I need to know is why they decided Intel instead of AMD, and I'll decide this was a sane decision on the Steve's part.;)
In case you haven't noticed yet from your other replies, your reasons for being "unlikely to buy Apple again" are completely ridiculous. You could just as well have bought a Dell just before they released one with better specs at the same price. Just an FYI, I bought an iPod literally TWO WEEKS before the Color one was released, and I could care less- it's thicker and sucks the battery more.
You couldn't pay me enough money to make a Windows machine my primary machine at home, although I have to use one for work (UNfortunately). Windows is insecure, horrible with task switching (my 1GB laptop still does the HD thrash way too much, and the cursor freezes for SECONDS at a time- insanely frustrating!), processes are started from no less than about 6 different locations (including a few places in that hell known as the Registry), you can't back up your user files simply by backing up Documents and Settings, uninstalling apps is STILL a cross-your-fingers affair, and Windows is still fugly. Etc. etc. etc...
Interesting suggestion, and I apologize for the offense (damn...) but I was only actually trying to demonstrate a lack of self-interest in the matter for those who find gayness unacceptable for whatever reason (usually a lack of education). In other words, I was trying to demonstrate a lack of bias towards it, and you are interpreting it as a bias against it, so I guess there's no way you can not sit on either side of this fence, otherwise there wouldn't be any controversy, eh?;)
Would it have been any different if I had said I was bisexual?
I've seen a trend to use an altered spelling "ghey" to distance the slang "not cool" definition of that word from the sexual-preference meaning of the "usual" spelling.
I don't think it's necessarily bigotry if a person didn't mean it as such, but I definitely think there is a need for more communication if someone says something unknowingly offending another person(s).
Disclaimer: I was a Psych major (geek cred supported by CS minor) and constantly argue to my narrow-minded conservative friends the validity of homosexuality (in many animal species, not just ours), although I am not myself of that inclination.
I would say, SQL Server is one of the few remaining reasons why Windows might be a better bet in some circumstances. It's really a fairly impressive database product. I suppose its closest competition on the Unix side is, well, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, but then you aren't even touching the Analysis Services datacube technology, which is fairly amazing and seems to have no peer in that industry.
Is anyone aware of any Safari (OS X web browser) vulnerabilities, especially exploited ones?
I think the fact that OS X throws up an auth login whenever any app tries to access a directory that the current user doesn't own, pretty much makes casual takeover difficult, even by an insecure web browser...
And your practice was sooooo easy. We all know that everyone wants to know what an ACL is, what the difference between a privileged user vs. a nonprivileged user is and why they should get into the (additional) practice of using RUNAS, or hell, what mutexes and semaphores are, much less what the registry entails. You know what? I understand all of this, but I do NOT expect everyone else to. Thus, you, my friend, are a certified computer weenie. 99% of the rest of the population (aka "the ones that this shit is supposed to be set up like this out-of-the-box for") do not give an effing shit. They just want it to "work". They have jobs, that entail them to know and understand other realms of knowledge and experience. You shouldn't need a CCNA or an MCSE or 10 years of computing experience to f*ucking just run a program securely that happens to need privilege for some stupid reason.
I prefer the OS X approach (and hey... weenie to weenie, I recommend you check it out if you haven't... hey, 10.4 aka "Tiger" has ACL's now!). When a process tries to access a directory it isn't permissioned to (and it's not permissioned to out-of-the-box!), the OS itself throws up a privileged user auth window. What a novel f*cking idea. This, coupled with Little Snitch (a VERY nice third-party util that allows you to control ALL outbound internet traffic from your machine... only processes you allow out are let out, and you can allow by port, by protocol, by destination, temporarily, etc. etc.), means that I always know I have ultimate control over ANYTHING an app can do to my data (or my privacy).
Goddamnit, this was the only way I could get episodes of Desperate Housewives without watching it during the broadcast time.
Luckily, if they come after me, all they can get me for is downloading pr0n, and DH episodes, which I already pay to be able to see via my cable subscription. (Does this mean I'm relatively safe?)
You know what would annoy the hell out of me? Having to manually manage the music on my music player. With iTunes and a few smart playlists, it automatically puts things on there that I would be putting on there manually. (And the second purpose of this is to have a backup of your player music.)
I have smart playlists set up as such, that always synchronize with the iPod every time I connect it to the 'puter: 1) A playlist that always has the latest 2gb of music I've added to my library 2) A playlist that consists of any songs I've rated 4 or 5 stars (note that ratings carry over from either the iTunes player or via the iPod interface) 3) An "audition" playlist of a random selection of 2gb of music from my library that I haven't listened to yet (playcount = 0) 4) A playlist of all music in the dance/techno/electronic genre, for working out 5) A playlist of just jazz Etc. What a hellish task it would be to have to manually update these categories on a non-iPod music player.
iPod is not alone. Don't forget that the real power is the iPod + iTunes combo. And I think it's pretty damn amazing.
1) Google charges a small fee to the content consumer to view the entire content and conveys that back to the publisher (perhaps taking a small cut)- publisher does not have to thus pay the costs associated with producing a dead-tree version- all profit. Google also makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the entire content from excerpts (algorithm up to them). Optional/devious: Google makes small changes to the wording/grammar/punctuation of the content in order to trace back to a purchaser in the event of a leak. 2) Google runs AdWords along the side and takes a portion of that as profit and pays the other portion to the publisher. 3) The cost to the consumer to view the content on Google should be less than purchasing the dead-tree version. 4) Profit (for everyone)!
Works great on my rugs, except for the one with the long fringes, which I have to pick up (not a big deal). It handles transitions from hardwood-rug and back, just great. I have no shag carpet and I figure it wouldn't like that either. It handles "clutter and corners" just great, also. Just be sure to lift up socks and cords lying on floor. Really, no big deal. Seems to cover everything in its pseudo-random pattern, too.
I have a Roomba Discovery and it works great, actually. I do have to pick up one carpet with long fringes, and make sure there are no cords dangling on the floor or socks or whatever, but I see this as "roomba makes me help clean up", small price to pay.
It navigates my chairs just fine, it must just be a peculiarity with yours.
It does sometimes get stuck under the oven, but it makes a funny attempt to wiggle itself out which sometimes works.
When I put it in the bedroom and leave it there for a while (after cleaning up clutter first), the carpet/floor is always cleaner than I could have thought possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I was that angry once... back when I wasn't getting laid
(and in case you care, my username is "sarcasm" in the sense that it's supposed to be mocking 1337speak, not endorsing it, but your reaction is typical. luckily, I love f*cking with people like yourself. congratulations)
Th1s 1s ex4ctly why this 4ggress1on will not stand, m4n.
Th1s 1s ex4ctly why this 4ggress1on will not stand, man.
(see my username for an extra chuckle)
Dark Castle.
;)
Bolo.
Early versions of MacWrite/MacPaint.
Fool's Errand (and its sequels).
NetTrek 3.
Zork.
Or anything that used to be shipped on a 400k, 800k or 1.4mb floppy(ies). Photoshop 1.0, QuickTime 1.0...
Etc., etc.
For those who grew up on Macs, these have nostalgic meaning. It would be nice to be able to run them, on a whim. I know it must seem silly, but I was a nerdy kid and spent a lot of my life on Macs and promoting Macs
Hopefully there will be an emulation solution for this stuff. I know that back when I was at college, people were using a Mac emulation environment on Wintel just to play Snood (which has since gotten a Wintel version). Perhaps that will get a new lease on life. I know there is a solution called vMac, but I don't think it's been updated in some time...
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/iapetus.htm
A Google on "iapetus" will net someone more interesting (and more objectively plausible) information than a poorly-designed site that not only starts off by alluding to a science-fiction movie but is written by a well-known UFO buff (Richard Hoagland) who may suffer a certain lack of objectivity. And yes, some of the info out there is curious. Yes, there seems to be some sort of structure lying along the equator, but nothing says it's perfect; there is not enough info to determine that. Yes, there is a strange large dark area on the leading face of the moon. And that's about all we can say about it without actually being there. The rest is idle (or, in your case, rampant) speculation.
For a while I dated this really really hot woman who was great in bed, and felt I was too. Tons of chemistry/attraction, kissing was amazing (wow, does that hook one in!) but conversation was pretty boring. Also, she was not a professional type of woman, which bothered me. She was more of a feeler, than a thinker. She didn't think most of the stuff I thought was funny, was funny... python, office space, simpsons, etc... Yet, she still wanted me. I made a decision to break up with her based on intellectual dissatisfaction. It was strange breaking up with a really hot woman as I always thought that as a geek, I'd be the one getting dumped by hot women...
;)
I then dated a gal I got along fantastic with for 2 years. Smart, geek-compatible, we were both professionals in a career, we made each other laugh a lot, we were both touchy-feely, she was clean and sweet and thoughtful and rather cute (but not *hot* per se), and she'd do things like take a day off work to take care of me when I got really sick once. The problem is, the sex/chemistry was just not quite there. I really tried- I had to, because I knew how well I was getting along with this woman- but in the end we both just had this flagging sexual interest in each other. The nail in the coffin was when I started an exercise program to get my ass back in sexy shape (for both of us) and she... did nothing but watch me.
I had a dry spell after that and before long I was fantasizing about Hot Chick again. Gave her a call, she was receptive, chat on the phone was hot, and in fact she's visiting tonight for 3 days or so (she's a little distance away, which is fine w/me). I expect a lot of hot, confusing sex, but the loneliness on the search for Everything Girl is just rough sometimes, and I'm not a one-night-stand type of guy, unfortunately. I expect to get tired of this gal right around the time she leaves (when I've plateaued in sexual satisfaction and the law of diminishing returns kicks in).
I am working on some other "leads" but nothing has come to fruition yet. I don't know if "importing an ex" for a few days is defensible objectively, but man, I could use a little TLC, I've had a rough few weeks and I'm fairly excited about seeing her. With the last g/f, we had to try to have sex- with this one, we have to try NOT to. It's fairly confusing, but I am still looking.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't worry, fellow nerds. not only is it possible to get the hot girl (depending on her insecurity), she actually gets boring. Be careful of getting attached to her, though
p.s. Exercise helps a LOT. Women seem to notice even after just a couple of weeks of moderate exercise.
This recent AnandTech article was very disappointing to read as an Apple (and *nix) fan. Basically, the more requests were thrown at one time at an Apache or MySQL server, the faster Linux looked compared to OS X. In fact, OS X pretty much got clobbered with an increasing number of requests... apparently because of the threading model underneath and/or the wrappers around it. I would hope that Apple finds a way to alleviate that situation ASAP. In fact, I can't believe they're even able to sell OS X Servers if this situation is as real as this article makes it seem, unless there's something I'm not aware of.
I was on a flight recently where I was unfortunately in the middle seat. There was a nice-looking gal to my right who I managed to strike up a conversation with. I have enough charisma where this is not unusual, BUT... All was well until the guy to my left whipped out a laptop and started playing some game. I asked him about it and next thing I knew, we were discussing World of Warcraft (I currently have a lvl53 character in that game).
The woman to my right never spoke to me again for the rest of the flight.
So I didn't get laid, but I did get tips on completing my last 2 quests in Zul'Farrak, in particular, that one where about 100 NPC's storm the stairs and you have to defend the high ground. Fun stuff for a party with people who don't bail early...
It is for this reason that I feel I have to maintain "secret likes", which often includes anything IT or game-related, to the point where I find it difficult to even describe my job as it's pretty geeky and I'd rather just say I'm a "consultant". Unfortunately, to my horror I recently discovered that if I google my full name (which is uncommon), it becomes far too obvious what my really geeky likes are, despite my efforts to remove all traces of my full name from Internet sites. See, the gals I date are usually cute and best described as "geek-compatible", not "geeky"...
Actually, for anyone who cared about such things (chip geeks), the popular consensus WAS that PPC's WERE better than anything in the x86 camp. That is, during the G4 era. The instruction set was much saner (even Intel fans will complain about the bass-ackwards quirky x86 instruction set), it pushed more numbers with far less power, AltiVec showed a ton of promise (if you were willing to either wait for a good compiler or use the vector unit by hand).
With the introduction of the G5 and the failure on the promise to break through the 3GHz barrier without incurring much larger power requirements, the situation probably began to change, but us Apple Believers, admittedly, chose to ignore this slowly-dawning information. Just like those stubborn Windoze users who only surf the web and check email, and reinstall Windoze every year and spend 2 hours a week disinfecting and have pieces of apps lying around on their hard drive that failed to successfully "uninstall" (a concept foreign to OS X users), and STILL believe that their choice is cheaper and/or more effective than getting even a used Mac for the job. Their time must not be worth a damn thing. I know, because I tried to convince just such a non-technical person to buy a used Mac (since I put equal time on Macs and PC's and knew what was best for this person), but they insisted on a crappy PC laptop, and then had the nerve to call me over for free tech support... Objectivity is hard to come by all around.
Maybe we liked having a different processor because it was a different TAKE on things. It was outside the box. And certainly, every last one of us understood that it added COMPETITION to the market. Competition is good for everyone. Something else you Wintel fans seem to not care about or understand, as you freely throw your money at an industry with a leader who is a convicted monopolist. You should be kissing AMD's ass that they lit a fire under Intel's butt, because around the year 2000, it certainly did look like PPC was going to hand Intel's ass to it. (And of course, if Microsoft didn't consider open source a "threat", it would have zero incentive to change, either. Why improve when you can market instead and charge as much as the [exorbitant fee just under what would force people to buy elsewhere because it's the only game in town]?
I can't believe I even devoted this much thought to your jerkitude.
Thanks for elucidating some possible reasons why Apple decided to go x86 instead of the Cell (which ostensibly uses the same instruction set). Actually, since I thought it used the same (or similar) instruction set, I don't understand why they would have had to "rewrite a ton of assembler" except to take advantage of the vector portion, but elaborate if you wish.
;)
Now all I need to know is why they decided Intel instead of AMD, and I'll decide this was a sane decision on the Steve's part.
In case you haven't noticed yet from your other replies, your reasons for being "unlikely to buy Apple again" are completely ridiculous. You could just as well have bought a Dell just before they released one with better specs at the same price. Just an FYI, I bought an iPod literally TWO WEEKS before the Color one was released, and I could care less- it's thicker and sucks the battery more.
You couldn't pay me enough money to make a Windows machine my primary machine at home, although I have to use one for work (UNfortunately). Windows is insecure, horrible with task switching (my 1GB laptop still does the HD thrash way too much, and the cursor freezes for SECONDS at a time- insanely frustrating!), processes are started from no less than about 6 different locations (including a few places in that hell known as the Registry), you can't back up your user files simply by backing up Documents and Settings, uninstalling apps is STILL a cross-your-fingers affair, and Windows is still fugly. Etc. etc. etc...
This is incredible. The only thing more earth-shattering would be Apple dropping the "i" prefix from the entire product line.
Is it a sign of a dying company when marketing innovation exceeds technical innovation? i hope so
Interesting suggestion, and I apologize for the offense (damn...) but I was only actually trying to demonstrate a lack of self-interest in the matter for those who find gayness unacceptable for whatever reason (usually a lack of education). In other words, I was trying to demonstrate a lack of bias towards it, and you are interpreting it as a bias against it, so I guess there's no way you can not sit on either side of this fence, otherwise there wouldn't be any controversy, eh? ;)
Would it have been any different if I had said I was bisexual?
I've seen a trend to use an altered spelling "ghey" to distance the slang "not cool" definition of that word from the sexual-preference meaning of the "usual" spelling.
I don't think it's necessarily bigotry if a person didn't mean it as such, but I definitely think there is a need for more communication if someone says something unknowingly offending another person(s).
Disclaimer: I was a Psych major (geek cred supported by CS minor) and constantly argue to my narrow-minded conservative friends the validity of homosexuality (in many animal species, not just ours), although I am not myself of that inclination.
Look here for Acrobat load speedup tips. Or, um, Google it ;)
Disclaimer: I was motivated to find this for my Windows work machine as OS X's Preview.app loads PDF's like nobody's business.
Are we somehow magically* exempt from this figure, or will we, too, die off one day?
It's not great to think about, but...
*smacks too much of religion
I would say, SQL Server is one of the few remaining reasons why Windows might be a better bet in some circumstances. It's really a fairly impressive database product. I suppose its closest competition on the Unix side is, well, Oracle, or PostgreSQL, but then you aren't even touching the Analysis Services datacube technology, which is fairly amazing and seems to have no peer in that industry.
Is anyone aware of any Safari (OS X web browser) vulnerabilities, especially exploited ones?
I think the fact that OS X throws up an auth login whenever any app tries to access a directory that the current user doesn't own, pretty much makes casual takeover difficult, even by an insecure web browser...
And your practice was sooooo easy. We all know that everyone wants to know what an ACL is, what the difference between a privileged user vs. a nonprivileged user is and why they should get into the (additional) practice of using RUNAS, or hell, what mutexes and semaphores are, much less what the registry entails. You know what? I understand all of this, but I do NOT expect everyone else to. Thus, you, my friend, are a certified computer weenie. 99% of the rest of the population (aka "the ones that this shit is supposed to be set up like this out-of-the-box for") do not give an effing shit. They just want it to "work". They have jobs, that entail them to know and understand other realms of knowledge and experience. You shouldn't need a CCNA or an MCSE or 10 years of computing experience to f*ucking just run a program securely that happens to need privilege for some stupid reason.
I prefer the OS X approach (and hey... weenie to weenie, I recommend you check it out if you haven't... hey, 10.4 aka "Tiger" has ACL's now!). When a process tries to access a directory it isn't permissioned to (and it's not permissioned to out-of-the-box!), the OS itself throws up a privileged user auth window. What a novel f*cking idea. This, coupled with Little Snitch (a VERY nice third-party util that allows you to control ALL outbound internet traffic from your machine... only processes you allow out are let out, and you can allow by port, by protocol, by destination, temporarily, etc. etc.), means that I always know I have ultimate control over ANYTHING an app can do to my data (or my privacy).
Goddamnit, this was the only way I could get episodes of Desperate Housewives without watching it during the broadcast time.
Luckily, if they come after me, all they can get me for is downloading pr0n, and DH episodes, which I already pay to be able to see via my cable subscription. (Does this mean I'm relatively safe?)
You know what would annoy the hell out of me? Having to manually manage the music on my music player. With iTunes and a few smart playlists, it automatically puts things on there that I would be putting on there manually. (And the second purpose of this is to have a backup of your player music.)
I have smart playlists set up as such, that always synchronize with the iPod every time I connect it to the 'puter:
1) A playlist that always has the latest 2gb of music I've added to my library
2) A playlist that consists of any songs I've rated 4 or 5 stars (note that ratings carry over from either the iTunes player or via the iPod interface)
3) An "audition" playlist of a random selection of 2gb of music from my library that I haven't listened to yet (playcount = 0)
4) A playlist of all music in the dance/techno/electronic genre, for working out
5) A playlist of just jazz
Etc. What a hellish task it would be to have to manually update these categories on a non-iPod music player.
iPod is not alone. Don't forget that the real power is the iPod + iTunes combo. And I think it's pretty damn amazing.
This just needs the right pricing model built.
1) Google charges a small fee to the content consumer to view the entire content and conveys that back to the publisher (perhaps taking a small cut)- publisher does not have to thus pay the costs associated with producing a dead-tree version- all profit. Google also makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the entire content from excerpts (algorithm up to them). Optional/devious: Google makes small changes to the wording/grammar/punctuation of the content in order to trace back to a purchaser in the event of a leak.
2) Google runs AdWords along the side and takes a portion of that as profit and pays the other portion to the publisher.
3) The cost to the consumer to view the content on Google should be less than purchasing the dead-tree version.
4) Profit (for everyone)!
I have a Roomba Discovery.
Works great on my rugs, except for the one with the long fringes, which I have to pick up (not a big deal). It handles transitions from hardwood-rug and back, just great. I have no shag carpet and I figure it wouldn't like that either. It handles "clutter and corners" just great, also. Just be sure to lift up socks and cords lying on floor. Really, no big deal. Seems to cover everything in its pseudo-random pattern, too.
I have a Roomba Discovery and it works great, actually. I do have to pick up one carpet with long fringes, and make sure there are no cords dangling on the floor or socks or whatever, but I see this as "roomba makes me help clean up", small price to pay.
It navigates my chairs just fine, it must just be a peculiarity with yours.
It does sometimes get stuck under the oven, but it makes a funny attempt to wiggle itself out which sometimes works.
When I put it in the bedroom and leave it there for a while (after cleaning up clutter first), the carpet/floor is always cleaner than I could have thought possible.
500 bucks, about as much as buying Windows XP Pro, for the Mac Mini, will get you a seat. Set up a KVM switch and get the OS X-perience ;)
You WILL like it, and find a use for it, even if it doesn't become your primary machine.
Disclaimer: I use a Windows laptop for work and have a beloved G5 at home.