Because it's a non-trivial proportion of the movies' development costs.
Using equally talented, but vastly cheaper (to hire) actors could have resulted in a substantially lower production cost.
Who cares? The movie still costs $100M to make.
My point is the same movies could possibly (probably) have been made for less.
Saying that, for example, some movie cost $100M to make when $60M of that might have been spent on some pitifully small number of lead actors and then using that as a justification for saying movies are expensive to make, is not a compelling argument.
Because the situation isn't symmetrical: there are huge costs associated with switching that have nothing to do with the effectiveness of a new system. When even a fraction of organizations decides to switch despite those costs, you can be sure that the target systems are more cost effective for them.
But when they don't switch, for some reason that can't be used as proof the alternative systems *aren't* cost effective ?
Yes, indeed, it explains that.
No Linux distros I'm aware of ships with Aero or Quartz Extreme equivalents out of the box (there probably is one somewhere, but none of the majors do).
Linux desktops have been shipping hardware accelerated desktop graphics, XML-based GUI construction, and transparency for many years.
Windows has been shipping with "hardware accelerated graphics" since the early '90s (I am unable to tell if you mean "3D accelerated graphics" like Aero and QE). It's had (proper, alpha-channel) transparency capabilities since Windows 2000. I'm not entirely sure what "XML-based GUI construction" is supposed to be, however.
However - to go back to your original argument - I'll say it again, no common Linux distro has a functional equivalent to Aero or QE out of the box *now* (and getting it working on any of them afterwards by hacking on the various bits is a non-trivial process, particularly for non-expert users) let alone has had one for years.
Most people chose not to use them, which raises the question again: who are these features actually good for--the bottom line of the vendors or end users?
Maybe that's a decision best left to the end users ?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft have ever demonstrated that those features actually help make people more productive.
Nor should they have to. Let the users decide.
But we do know that they require costly upgrades.
Not really. A mundane video card from several years ago is quite capable of providing all the functionality Aero (and Quartz Extreme, for that matter) requires.
Yeah, so Apple marketing will have you believe.
No, so history would have us believe. Which "technologies" are you thinking of in Linux (or one of the other OSS OSes) that wasn't available in a commercial OS first ? Or are you going to use ridiculously vague definitions like "SMP", "pre-emptive multitasking" and the like ?
To pick some examples, that O(1) scheduler the OSS/Linux crowd were so pleased Linux had managed to get a few years ago ? Windows NT had one in 1993.
If you actually dig through the published literature, you'll find that (1) Apple doesn't actually publish much of anything, and (2) their supposed "innovations" are either copies of competitors' features, or they are copies of technologies published in the literature. And that's not even particularly surprising: the company doesn't have a research lab, so where are the innovations supposed to come from?
Because the situation isn't symmetrical: there are huge costs associated with switching that have nothing to do with the effectiveness of a new system. When even a fraction of organizations decides to switch despite those costs, you can be sure that the target systems are more cost effective for them.
But when they don't switch, for some reason that can't be used as proof the alternative systems *aren't* cost effective ?
Yes, indeed, it explains that.
No Linux distros I'm aware of ships with Aero or Quartz Extreme equivalents out of the box (there probably is one somewhere, but none of the majors do).
Linux desktops have been shipping hardware accelerated desktop graphics, XML-based GUI construction, and transparency for many years.
Windows has been shipping with "hardware accelerated graphics" since the early '90s (I am unable to tell if you mean "3D accelerated graphics" like Aero and QE). It's had (proper, alpha-channel) transparency capabilities since Windows 2000. I'm not entirely sure what "XML-based GUI construction" is supposed to be, however.
However, I'll say it again, no common Linux distro has a functional equivalent to Aero or QE out of the box, and getting it working on any of them is a non-trivial process, particularly for non-expert users.
Most people chose not to use them, which raises the question again: who are these features actually good for--the bottom line of the vendors or end users?
Maybe that's a decision best left to the end users ?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft have ever demonstrated that those features actually help make people more productive.
Nor should they have to. Let the users decide.
But we do know that they require costly upgrades.
Not really. A mundane video card from several years ago is quite capable of providing all the functionality Aero (and Quartz Extreme, for that matter) requires.
Yeah, so Apple marketing will have you believe.
No, so history would have us believe. Which "technologies" are you thinking of in Linux (or one of the other OSS OSes) that wasn't available in a commercial OS first ? Or are you going to use ridiculously vague definitions like "SMP", "pre-emptive multitasking" and the like ?
To pick some examples, that O(1) scheduler the OSS/Linux crowd were so pleased Linux had managed to get a few years ago ? Windows NT had one in 1993.
If you actually dig through the published literature, you'll find that (1) Apple doesn't actually publish much of anything, and (2) their supposed "innovations" are either copies of competitors' features, or they are copies of technologies published in the literature. And that's not even particularly surprising: the company doesn't have a research lab, so where are the innovations supposed to come from?
Richard Stallman often encourages the sale of Free Software (a position which many people unfamiliar with his ideology find confusing).
No one is surprised that Stallman encourages selling stuff people can trivially acquires themselves for free - he's more than crazy enough to write that one off. What they find surprising is that he seriously expects other people to subscribe to his craziness.
There are many piracy groups which are often seen as charities which almost aren't; pirate bay for example are most certainly profitable. Whether they are a business by the letter of the law I'm not entirely sure.
Pirate Bay aren't selling pirated software. In fact, they're not selling anything. They're (essentially) offering a platform for people who have data (be it pirated software or pictures of your mum) to tell others about it and subsequently download it - a *very* different thing by every measure - legal, moral, ethical or otherwise.
Now, I have a rather intense dislike of copyright law and, indeed, copyright in general as it stands now, but the examples you have posted are not particularly good ones, nor would they do a good job of supporting any arguments you might have against copyright.
Companies have agendas. Apple makes a great deal of money out of hardware, you expect them to suddenly gain a saints halo and rewrite os x to work on an PC?
Macs *are* "any PC" nowadays, in case you missed that whole switch-to-a-different-hardware-platform thing.
What people would *like* is for Apple to at least sancton the running of OS X on non-Apple hardware, even in a completely unsupported fashion. At least then hardware manufacturers would be able to write and release OS X drivers for certain pieces of hardware without having to worry about bogus legal proceedings.
I assume that you have had the pleasure of using Apple hardware. You realize that the quality of mac hardware is without comparison.
Indeed. No-one else sells you so little hardware, for so much money, with so few configuration options and artificially limits themselves to such tiny niches of the market.
Whether old or new mac hardware the build is beyond excellent and that is important to some people. To me it's important as I suggested my Mum get a Macbook as she is about to start an art degree. Why did I suggest a Macbook over say an Acer laptop, which for the same money would have bells and whistles coming out of it's ass? Customer support, and peace of mind for me and my Mum.
You probably don't want to know that the MacBook is just an Asus laptop with an Apple badge, then.
I know that the chances of anything going wrong with either the software or hardware are low. I also know that even though I don't live near her if anything goes wrong with her machine she can take it straight to a mac shop and get proper help.
These are guarantees you get with any large, name brand manufacturer that has a local presence.
Do you really believe that businesses and governments would be switching millions of machines to Linux if they didn't have clear evidence that it lowered their cost?
Why is this argument only valid when business and government are switching "millions of machines to Linux", but in any situation where they *aren't*, it isn't ?
Aqua and Aero are imitations of features originally introduced in research and open source systems.
Which explains why every Linux distro has had an equivalent available for the last 5 years, right ?
Oh, wait, *none* of the major Linux distros has anything close to Aqua or Aero out of the box, even today.
The same is true for just about every single technology in Mac OS and Windows. OSS is leading the way when it comes to software innovation, and has been for decades.
Commpared to whatever version of windows came on the PC that people are upgrading.
Only if you assume the newer version delivers no functionality benefits (which it may not, in which case upgrading for the sake of a newer number is a bit silly).
Right now I'm developing for Vista x64, and I've got 4GB in my machine with Dual CPUs and a 7800GTX video card, and I'm using a lot of the grunt available.
Developers always do. But Vista will run quite usably on hardware that's been unremarkable for a good year or two, just like most every version of Windows preceding it.
For the rest of your comment your sort of conflicting yourself. Your saying that every OS bolts on more overhead with each release, so you agree with me that each subsequent OS requires more hardware, but then you say that 4.0 was faster than 3.51.
NT4 was faster than 3.51, assming you had suitably fast hardware in the first place. 3.51 would certainly get by on lesser hardware than 4.0, but 4.0 would make better use of higher end hardware than 3.51.
NT4 saw the moving of the display system into kernel space. This *substantially* improved the performance of anything related to displaying graphics, including the entire GUI.
I think you're right, and I think Apple knows this, which is probably why each new Mac Mini (now with Front Row, a remote control and TV output) has been inching closer and closer to the TV set.
Indeed. It's hard to think of a better HTPC than a 1.66Ghz Core Duo Mini running Windows MCE.
And as soon as the Apple resellers wake up and stop trying to flog the old Minis for a paltry $10 less than a new one from Apple, I'll be buying one to do just that.
Windows has always been a resource hog on the PC, [...]
Compared to what ? Certainly not any OS of comparable functionality.
and it's always the case that when the hardware improves to handle the current version of Windows, [...]
Hardware has been more than fast enough to run any current OS of its day since the late '90s. Heck, the only period of time that even remotely resembles your comment was the year or two around 1995.
[...] Microsoft goes and releases a new version with some extra bells and whistles that have been bolted on and thus require more hardware capability.
And provide more functionality. Wow, just like every other OS - what a surprise !
There are exceptions of course. I remember the first time I upgraded from NT 3.1 to NT 3.51 and the improvement in speed and responsiveness on the same hardware was amazing! Then they went and killed it with NT 4.0:-/
I doubt that. NT4 was quite a bit faster than 3.51.
It's not a small group: many people have MPEG4 players (including iPods). I expect to see MPEG4 and xiph codecs to become the mp3 of video. It already has a huge following among early adopters; rippers, pirates, etc. These are the same groups that were early adopters of mp3.
And when it does, MCE will do it. I imagine one of the major steps is deciding on "which" MPEG4 codec will be the market leader.
It was never much of a comparison.
Indeed. It shouldn't have even made the effort at comparing with such a ridiculous table at the end, which devalued the entire thing.
Transcode is the key word here. Transcoding from vastly different, high compression codecs yields poor results. It's not the freedom you get with MythTV.
Case in point: MCE can't write to MPEG4, because MS will never care about writing the feature. Obviously, someone around MythTV wanted this (honestly, essential) feature and wrote it in.
If it was an "honestly, essential" feature, MCE would do it.
Do not confuse a feature of interest only to a tiny proportion of people as "honestly, essential".
It is quite easy to transcode MCE recordings into whatever type of file takes your fancy. People have even written plugins so you can do it completely from within the MCE interface using the remote.
GP is correct. MythTV being Open Source - including follow-on consequences of that - is, at this point in time, a point of great irrelevance to the vast majority of consumers.
The article is utter rubbish. The "detailed comparison table" in the conclusion is largely incorrect when applied to modern versions of MCE (hey, why don't we compare to a version of MythTV release in 2004 - that would at least start to approach a fair comparison) and is both worded and defined in a way to obviously favour MythTV.
I'm a quite advanced Linux user. I have tried on numerous occasions to get a MythTV environment up and running, easily wasting days at a time doing so. When compared to the maybe 3 hour from-scratch setup time it takes to get MCE going (and that's in a country without any official guide data, necessitating third-party hacks and on a hhome-built machine) and the fact that MythTV simply doesn't do any of interest that MCE doesn't, there is no comparison.
Yeah, well "the people" got together and created this institution called "government", through which some of the people, answerable to the people as a whole, act as the agent of the people as a whole, and for example, in the US, assigned the federal implementation of this "government" thing the responsibility for regulating things with substantial impacts on interstate (including international) commerce. Including, inter alia, regulating wide ranging monopolies.
It's kind of cute you think "the people" actually have any real influence on the workings of governments and their satellite organisation, so as to have input on things like law-making and international trade.
What it really seems to me you want is to deny the people the ability to work collectively to deal with monopolies, but instead to demand that they do it separately and create better opportunities for failure via the tragedy of the commons.
Individuals have vastly more capacity to act against a "monopoly" than the government does. Largely because individuals are able to make the best decision as to whether or not a "monopoly" is actually harming them.
Har Har. "Lie" is completely the wrong word, so unless you were being funny, explain where I've "lied" to them.
[...] it won't be as good as XP. It will force them to buy a new computer, and will lock them out of many things they want to do like copying DVDs. I let them know that Ubuntu can do everything they'll want their computer to do [...]
What I've done is I've weighed the negative points about Vista, the positive points of XP, and of Ubuntu, and made the judgment for them that I think they would have made too if they knew the facts about DRM, patents, and open source software.
[...] and had a similar bias against Microsoft and Windows, and for Linux.
If MS went all the way and refused to sell any copies of any of their software, there's a real chance that affected EU member states would simply (temporarily) revoke MS's copyrights - remember that these are granted by the government for the good of society as a whole. If society is better served by ignoring a particular copyright, then it should be ignored.
Given the significance of copyright in the EU (in the US it's just about money, in the EU it's an issue of human rights), doing something like nullifying a "person's" copyrights would be a political catastrophy.
I already have people telling me they want the next system after Windows XP. I tell them it's called Windows Vista, and that they probably don't want it because it won't be as good as XP. It will force them to buy a new computer, and will lock them out of many things they want to do like copying DVDs. I let them know that Ubuntu can do everything they'll want their computer to do, and they won't have to pay $300 to get it.
If governements want to extort money, they just tax you. Even if they have to write a special law, it's a lot simpler and less hassle than what they have gone through.
I imagine it would have been pretty hard to write a law that targets *only* Microsoft.
Think about it, what would be one reason to use Windows? Is it for the multi-user server capabilities? The stable modular and portable Kernel? The portable WM? etc. People buy Windows to run the programs that should be portable anyways.
I use Windows because it's faster and cheaper than using OS X and dramatically easier to use and maintain than Linux.
I'm quite comfortable using a whole range of OSes (and frequently do). None of the software that I require to do my job is Windows only. In fact, about the only thing I use computers for that "requires" Windows is playing games (something I rarely do anyway).
I *choose* to use Windows on a day to day basis because I find it better than any of the alternatives.
If MSFT were truly about marketting various products you'd see things like Visual Studio or Office for GNU/Linux. I mean can't the Office business unit of MSFT only win by selling to both windows and GNU/Linux audiences?
Which "Linux" do you propose they write Office for ?
oh wait, Office exists to sell Windows. That's about it.
Now, maybe if they'd fix the awful scheduler of XP - have they ? Then you could run things like renders or compilers in the background and still have a usefull desktop, like in Linux.
You can do that *now*, as long as the background process has its priority suitably modified. I regularly have several VMWare machines running in the background on my Windows 2003 machine, and the desktop is perfectly responsive.
Now, if the developer isn't smart enough to tell the OS that their long-running task can and should be run at a lower priority in the background, that's hardly the fault of Windows.
The labor cost of my assembling it all, figuring two hours for assembly, installation, and drivers/troubleshooting is also pretty damn high, considering how much I make hourly.
For varying values of "significant", this can mean whatever you want it to mean.
It means that a Mac Mini is not just an iMac without a screen, as you suggest it is.
And what the heck would Apple want with a machine they could sell a lot of? Heaven forfend!
They don't want a machine that would take substantial sales away from their high end machine with its much better margins.
The situation is pretty simple. If you want a Mac without a screen (which covers the vast majority of purchasers who are replacing an existing machine) you either have to get a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro. Given the vast gulf in capabilities between the Mini and the Pro, and that the Pro - even in its cheapest configuration - is an expensive high-end machine, it's quite obvious that there are a large proportion of buyers who are interested in a machine that sits between the two. In particular, professional and enthusiast users for whom the Mini is inadequate, but the Pro is overkill.
Or, to put it more succintly, there is a gaping hole in Apple's lineup for a machine without a builtin monitor, but with options for a mid-range to high-end CPU and video card (there are some other holes as well, but that's the most obvious one).
What customers want is a headless iMac. This is pretty obvious to see from the fuss that gets kicked up whenever some rumor circulates that Apple are going to come out with a mid-range, non-integrated machine with limited expansion capabilities, with a starting price a bit lower than an iMac.
There are people who whine that the mini is too expensive.
It's definitely "expensive". Whether it's "too expensive" depends on the buyer being more interested in form factor or hardware resources.
Apple cannot and should not be all things to all people.
Indeed. Heaven forbid Apple have machines that *everyone* is willing to pay for.
It would not be particularly difficult for Apple to plug the holes in their lineup and make it attractive to 99% of purchasers. In increasing order of importance: A bottom-end machine priced lower than the current Mini (but not necessarily with the tiny case). A low end (single processor, dual core) Mac Pro. A MacBook Pro replacement for the 12" PowerBook (to compete with the tiny Sony Vaios). An option on the MacBook Pros for a docking station. And, of course, a mid-range non-integrated desktop.
Apple had the perfect opportunity to seemlessly introduce a headless iMac with the introduction of the G4 iMac, simply by making the screen+arm assembly modular. But they didn't. Then they redesigned the G5 iMac to return it to an extremely integrated design like the G3 iMacs. It's pretty obvious they have little interest in producing a headless iMac, because they know it will have a massive negative impact on Mac Pro sales.
Look, there's lots of fish in the sea. Buy a Mac, or don't. You are the only person who can make the determination for what suits your needs.
Which I do. But that's no justification for me not to complain about Apple not catering to it.
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Uh, the whole *point* of patents is to keep potential competitors out of the marketplace for the life of the patent.
Because it's a non-trivial proportion of the movies' development costs.
Using equally talented, but vastly cheaper (to hire) actors could have resulted in a substantially lower production cost.
Who cares? The movie still costs $100M to make.
My point is the same movies could possibly (probably) have been made for less.
Saying that, for example, some movie cost $100M to make when $60M of that might have been spent on some pitifully small number of lead actors and then using that as a justification for saying movies are expensive to make, is not a compelling argument.
But when they don't switch, for some reason that can't be used as proof the alternative systems *aren't* cost effective ?
Yes, indeed, it explains that.
No Linux distros I'm aware of ships with Aero or Quartz Extreme equivalents out of the box (there probably is one somewhere, but none of the majors do).
Linux desktops have been shipping hardware accelerated desktop graphics, XML-based GUI construction, and transparency for many years.
Windows has been shipping with "hardware accelerated graphics" since the early '90s (I am unable to tell if you mean "3D accelerated graphics" like Aero and QE). It's had (proper, alpha-channel) transparency capabilities since Windows 2000. I'm not entirely sure what "XML-based GUI construction" is supposed to be, however.
However - to go back to your original argument - I'll say it again, no common Linux distro has a functional equivalent to Aero or QE out of the box *now* (and getting it working on any of them afterwards by hacking on the various bits is a non-trivial process, particularly for non-expert users) let alone has had one for years.
Most people chose not to use them, which raises the question again: who are these features actually good for--the bottom line of the vendors or end users?
Maybe that's a decision best left to the end users ?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft have ever demonstrated that those features actually help make people more productive.
Nor should they have to. Let the users decide.
But we do know that they require costly upgrades.
Not really. A mundane video card from several years ago is quite capable of providing all the functionality Aero (and Quartz Extreme, for that matter) requires.
Yeah, so Apple marketing will have you believe.
No, so history would have us believe. Which "technologies" are you thinking of in Linux (or one of the other OSS OSes) that wasn't available in a commercial OS first ? Or are you going to use ridiculously vague definitions like "SMP", "pre-emptive multitasking" and the like ?
To pick some examples, that O(1) scheduler the OSS/Linux crowd were so pleased Linux had managed to get a few years ago ? Windows NT had one in 1993.
If you actually dig through the published literature, you'll find that (1) Apple doesn't actually publish much of anything, and (2) their supposed "innovations" are either copies of competitors' features, or they are copies of technologies published in the literature. And that's not even particularly surprising: the company doesn't have a research lab, so where are the innovations supposed to come from?
And I wouldn't argue otherwise.
But when they don't switch, for some reason that can't be used as proof the alternative systems *aren't* cost effective ?
Yes, indeed, it explains that.
No Linux distros I'm aware of ships with Aero or Quartz Extreme equivalents out of the box (there probably is one somewhere, but none of the majors do).
Linux desktops have been shipping hardware accelerated desktop graphics, XML-based GUI construction, and transparency for many years.
Windows has been shipping with "hardware accelerated graphics" since the early '90s (I am unable to tell if you mean "3D accelerated graphics" like Aero and QE). It's had (proper, alpha-channel) transparency capabilities since Windows 2000. I'm not entirely sure what "XML-based GUI construction" is supposed to be, however.
However, I'll say it again, no common Linux distro has a functional equivalent to Aero or QE out of the box, and getting it working on any of them is a non-trivial process, particularly for non-expert users.
Most people chose not to use them, which raises the question again: who are these features actually good for--the bottom line of the vendors or end users?
Maybe that's a decision best left to the end users ?
Neither Apple nor Microsoft have ever demonstrated that those features actually help make people more productive.
Nor should they have to. Let the users decide.
But we do know that they require costly upgrades.
Not really. A mundane video card from several years ago is quite capable of providing all the functionality Aero (and Quartz Extreme, for that matter) requires.
Yeah, so Apple marketing will have you believe.
No, so history would have us believe. Which "technologies" are you thinking of in Linux (or one of the other OSS OSes) that wasn't available in a commercial OS first ? Or are you going to use ridiculously vague definitions like "SMP", "pre-emptive multitasking" and the like ?
To pick some examples, that O(1) scheduler the OSS/Linux crowd were so pleased Linux had managed to get a few years ago ? Windows NT had one in 1993.
If you actually dig through the published literature, you'll find that (1) Apple doesn't actually publish much of anything, and (2) their supposed "innovations" are either copies of competitors' features, or they are copies of technologies published in the literature. And that's not even particularly surprising: the company doesn't have a research lab, so where are the innovations supposed to come from?
And I wouldn't argue otherwise.
No one is surprised that Stallman encourages selling stuff people can trivially acquires themselves for free - he's more than crazy enough to write that one off. What they find surprising is that he seriously expects other people to subscribe to his craziness.
There are many piracy groups which are often seen as charities which almost aren't; pirate bay for example are most certainly profitable. Whether they are a business by the letter of the law I'm not entirely sure.
Pirate Bay aren't selling pirated software. In fact, they're not selling anything. They're (essentially) offering a platform for people who have data (be it pirated software or pictures of your mum) to tell others about it and subsequently download it - a *very* different thing by every measure - legal, moral, ethical or otherwise.
Now, I have a rather intense dislike of copyright law and, indeed, copyright in general as it stands now, but the examples you have posted are not particularly good ones, nor would they do a good job of supporting any arguments you might have against copyright.
How much of that sum was required to pay the salaries of "big name" actors ?
What's "technically marvelous" about Linux ?
Macs *are* "any PC" nowadays, in case you missed that whole switch-to-a-different-hardware-platform thing.
What people would *like* is for Apple to at least sancton the running of OS X on non-Apple hardware, even in a completely unsupported fashion. At least then hardware manufacturers would be able to write and release OS X drivers for certain pieces of hardware without having to worry about bogus legal proceedings.
I assume that you have had the pleasure of using Apple hardware. You realize that the quality of mac hardware is without comparison.
Indeed. No-one else sells you so little hardware, for so much money, with so few configuration options and artificially limits themselves to such tiny niches of the market.
Whether old or new mac hardware the build is beyond excellent and that is important to some people. To me it's important as I suggested my Mum get a Macbook as she is about to start an art degree. Why did I suggest a Macbook over say an Acer laptop, which for the same money would have bells and whistles coming out of it's ass? Customer support, and peace of mind for me and my Mum.
You probably don't want to know that the MacBook is just an Asus laptop with an Apple badge, then.
I know that the chances of anything going wrong with either the software or hardware are low. I also know that even though I don't live near her if anything goes wrong with her machine she can take it straight to a mac shop and get proper help.
These are guarantees you get with any large, name brand manufacturer that has a local presence.
Why is this argument only valid when business and government are switching "millions of machines to Linux", but in any situation where they *aren't*, it isn't ?
Aqua and Aero are imitations of features originally introduced in research and open source systems.
Which explains why every Linux distro has had an equivalent available for the last 5 years, right ?
Oh, wait, *none* of the major Linux distros has anything close to Aqua or Aero out of the box, even today.
The same is true for just about every single technology in Mac OS and Windows. OSS is leading the way when it comes to software innovation, and has been for decades.
Bullshit. The opposite, in most cases, is true.
Only if you assume the newer version delivers no functionality benefits (which it may not, in which case upgrading for the sake of a newer number is a bit silly).
Right now I'm developing for Vista x64, and I've got 4GB in my machine with Dual CPUs and a 7800GTX video card, and I'm using a lot of the grunt available.
Developers always do. But Vista will run quite usably on hardware that's been unremarkable for a good year or two, just like most every version of Windows preceding it.
For the rest of your comment your sort of conflicting yourself. Your saying that every OS bolts on more overhead with each release, so you agree with me that each subsequent OS requires more hardware, but then you say that 4.0 was faster than 3.51.
NT4 was faster than 3.51, assming you had suitably fast hardware in the first place. 3.51 would certainly get by on lesser hardware than 4.0, but 4.0 would make better use of higher end hardware than 3.51.
NT4 saw the moving of the display system into kernel space. This *substantially* improved the performance of anything related to displaying graphics, including the entire GUI.
Indeed. It's hard to think of a better HTPC than a 1.66Ghz Core Duo Mini running Windows MCE.
And as soon as the Apple resellers wake up and stop trying to flog the old Minis for a paltry $10 less than a new one from Apple, I'll be buying one to do just that.
Compared to what ? Certainly not any OS of comparable functionality.
and it's always the case that when the hardware improves to handle the current version of Windows, [...]
Hardware has been more than fast enough to run any current OS of its day since the late '90s. Heck, the only period of time that even remotely resembles your comment was the year or two around 1995.
[...] Microsoft goes and releases a new version with some extra bells and whistles that have been bolted on and thus require more hardware capability.
And provide more functionality. Wow, just like every other OS - what a surprise !
There are exceptions of course. I remember the first time I upgraded from NT 3.1 to NT 3.51 and the improvement in speed and responsiveness on the same hardware was amazing! Then they went and killed it with NT 4.0 :-/
I doubt that. NT4 was quite a bit faster than 3.51.
And when it does, MCE will do it. I imagine one of the major steps is deciding on "which" MPEG4 codec will be the market leader.
It was never much of a comparison.
Indeed. It shouldn't have even made the effort at comparing with such a ridiculous table at the end, which devalued the entire thing.
Transcode is the key word here. Transcoding from vastly different, high compression codecs yields poor results. It's not the freedom you get with MythTV.
MCE records in uncompressed MPEG2.
If it was an "honestly, essential" feature, MCE would do it.
Do not confuse a feature of interest only to a tiny proportion of people as "honestly, essential".
It is quite easy to transcode MCE recordings into whatever type of file takes your fancy. People have even written plugins so you can do it completely from within the MCE interface using the remote.
GP is correct. MythTV being Open Source - including follow-on consequences of that - is, at this point in time, a point of great irrelevance to the vast majority of consumers.
The article is utter rubbish. The "detailed comparison table" in the conclusion is largely incorrect when applied to modern versions of MCE (hey, why don't we compare to a version of MythTV release in 2004 - that would at least start to approach a fair comparison) and is both worded and defined in a way to obviously favour MythTV.
I'm a quite advanced Linux user. I have tried on numerous occasions to get a MythTV environment up and running, easily wasting days at a time doing so. When compared to the maybe 3 hour from-scratch setup time it takes to get MCE going (and that's in a country without any official guide data, necessitating third-party hacks and on a hhome-built machine) and the fact that MythTV simply doesn't do any of interest that MCE doesn't, there is no comparison.
It's kind of cute you think "the people" actually have any real influence on the workings of governments and their satellite organisation, so as to have input on things like law-making and international trade.
What it really seems to me you want is to deny the people the ability to work collectively to deal with monopolies, but instead to demand that they do it separately and create better opportunities for failure via the tragedy of the commons.
Individuals have vastly more capacity to act against a "monopoly" than the government does. Largely because individuals are able to make the best decision as to whether or not a "monopoly" is actually harming them.
What I've done is I've weighed the negative points about Vista, the positive points of XP, and of Ubuntu, and made the judgment for them that I think they would have made too if they knew the facts about DRM, patents, and open source software.
[...] and had a similar bias against Microsoft and Windows, and for Linux.
Given the significance of copyright in the EU (in the US it's just about money, in the EU it's an issue of human rights), doing something like nullifying a "person's" copyrights would be a political catastrophy.
So, basically, you lie ?
I imagine it would have been pretty hard to write a law that targets *only* Microsoft.
I use Windows because it's faster and cheaper than using OS X and dramatically easier to use and maintain than Linux.
I'm quite comfortable using a whole range of OSes (and frequently do). None of the software that I require to do my job is Windows only. In fact, about the only thing I use computers for that "requires" Windows is playing games (something I rarely do anyway).
I *choose* to use Windows on a day to day basis because I find it better than any of the alternatives.
Which "Linux" do you propose they write Office for ?
oh wait, Office exists to sell Windows. That's about it.
Which explains its presence on OS X brilliantly !
You can do that *now*, as long as the background process has its priority suitably modified. I regularly have several VMWare machines running in the background on my Windows 2003 machine, and the desktop is perfectly responsive.
Now, if the developer isn't smart enough to tell the OS that their long-running task can and should be run at a lower priority in the background, that's hardly the fault of Windows.
The carnage that would be wrought upon PowerMac^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMac Pro sales.
You get paid 24/7/365 ?
It means that a Mac Mini is not just an iMac without a screen, as you suggest it is.
And what the heck would Apple want with a machine they could sell a lot of? Heaven forfend!
They don't want a machine that would take substantial sales away from their high end machine with its much better margins.
The situation is pretty simple. If you want a Mac without a screen (which covers the vast majority of purchasers who are replacing an existing machine) you either have to get a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro. Given the vast gulf in capabilities between the Mini and the Pro, and that the Pro - even in its cheapest configuration - is an expensive high-end machine, it's quite obvious that there are a large proportion of buyers who are interested in a machine that sits between the two. In particular, professional and enthusiast users for whom the Mini is inadequate, but the Pro is overkill.
Or, to put it more succintly, there is a gaping hole in Apple's lineup for a machine without a builtin monitor, but with options for a mid-range to high-end CPU and video card (there are some other holes as well, but that's the most obvious one).
What customers want is a headless iMac. This is pretty obvious to see from the fuss that gets kicked up whenever some rumor circulates that Apple are going to come out with a mid-range, non-integrated machine with limited expansion capabilities, with a starting price a bit lower than an iMac.
There are people who whine that the mini is too expensive.
It's definitely "expensive". Whether it's "too expensive" depends on the buyer being more interested in form factor or hardware resources.
Apple cannot and should not be all things to all people.
Indeed. Heaven forbid Apple have machines that *everyone* is willing to pay for.
It would not be particularly difficult for Apple to plug the holes in their lineup and make it attractive to 99% of purchasers. In increasing order of importance: A bottom-end machine priced lower than the current Mini (but not necessarily with the tiny case). A low end (single processor, dual core) Mac Pro. A MacBook Pro replacement for the 12" PowerBook (to compete with the tiny Sony Vaios). An option on the MacBook Pros for a docking station. And, of course, a mid-range non-integrated desktop.
Apple had the perfect opportunity to seemlessly introduce a headless iMac with the introduction of the G4 iMac, simply by making the screen+arm assembly modular. But they didn't. Then they redesigned the G5 iMac to return it to an extremely integrated design like the G3 iMacs. It's pretty obvious they have little interest in producing a headless iMac, because they know it will have a massive negative impact on Mac Pro sales.
Look, there's lots of fish in the sea. Buy a Mac, or don't. You are the only person who can make the determination for what suits your needs.
Which I do. But that's no justification for me not to complain about Apple not catering to it.