me: The venerable sunflower was abandoned because the G5 and its giant heat sink couldn't be quietly cooled inside the same footprint.
you: So all of a sudden, it was totally uncool to sell Apple's based on G4s? Certainly not iMac users -- that product line has always been targeted to basic user, as opposed to high-powered systems that come in big boxes.
First, I'm not perfectly clear on what you are saying... the iMac has the same performance as the bottom end Power Mac.
But, if I understand correctly, you are saying that Apple should have kept it's Middle of the Line consumer model with last generation's processor? Are you serious? For how long? You really think that "basic users" can't tell the difference in speed between a 1 GHz G4 and a 2 GHz G5? That "they aren't gonna use it" argument is totally played -- the iMac is targeted at the iLife suite. iLife '05 can totally take advantage of more horse power: The UI in iPhoto, the production time in iMovie, the flexibility in Garageband (more tracks, less bouncing to disk, less waiting when bouncing to disk); I could go on.
Lemme know, I'm dying to see how you justify that. If you justify it by saying "they could have lowered the price" then let me ask how? The pedestal iMac is much more expensive to manufacture than the all-screen iMac -- there is no way Apple would have started taking a loss (reducing their margins to keep a last-gen all-in-one competitive).
I should note that you can also run SoftwareUpdate from the command line (e.g., SoftwareUpdate --install --req to get everything critical, it approximates that warm fuzzy you get from running apt-get:).
Here's an example of update type and frequency from my log. Note, I installed Panther on a fresh hard-drive on 4-20 there:-) So frequency of updates should be noted only after that date.
Also note that this article isn't news (Thanks The Register) as most of us downloaded this 6 meg update days ago. I was all like "what another update?" but then "oh, Slashdot is just reporting the Olds for Nerds".
Anyway -- to everyone who is 'happy' about this being posted on Slashdot, because you didn't know about it yet: Please, please just set Software Update to check everyday and fetch updates in the background. Then it's like Christmas when it bounces in the dock and says "Yay, I have updates ready to go if you'd like to install them!"
(This should be familiar to all those 2K and XP folks who have the Windows Auto Update thingamajig).
Well there is that $60 steak dinner. I can get a pretty good steak dinner for $30. And a not so good one for $15
Doesn't that only prove that you can't patronize the best restaurants or that you live in an area with a significantly reduced cost of living? I mean what does saying "I can get a good-enough steak at Outback" really prove?
Oh, oh, I know, it's like how everyone hates that bourgeois elitism! Damn you Mac owners and your expensive restaurants and foreign cars!
"The iMac G5 had to be redesigned because they couldn't fit a PPC970 with all its cooling requirements into a tight little box. "
This one fact nullifies your whole argument. The pedestal was not abandoned because it was passé. The venerable sunflower was abandoned because the G5 and its giant heat sink couldn't be quietly cooled inside the same footprint.
"Wrong. I'm one of the philistines who considers a computer just another appliance -- something you'd know if you taken any care reading my previous post. I admire the pedestal iMac for its usability and ergonomics. I could give it shit that it looks cute."
Right, so now that we agree that the iMac G5 doesn't have a pedestal because it can't we'll have to address the usability and ergonomics with a $200 arm and some elbow grease. That's the trade-off: enjoy some order of performance improvement at the cost of the dead weight in the base to anchor a built-in arm. I guess they could have just shipped the iMac G5 with a leaded base (or a big brick with a chromed arm) to the same dimensions as the sunflower pedestal (or is that too obviously lame?). Since it's fuck-all to aesthetics I don't see why one wouldn't drill a whole in one's desk to mount an arm.
Anyway, it's a tough call to live with. Using a G5 for a while makes me notice the difference in a G4. Does usability include how fast you can get work done? Nothing personal. Cheers.
me: Congrats on missing my fundamental point...I guess all that zeal got in your eyes....JUST FUCKING PLAIN OLD WRONG...It is bigoted (unless you're a Christian of course) to say that Christianity is 'ascendant', i.e., supreme to all other religions by nature...You thought it was cute to quip...
you: Why so much venom? Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not blinded by zeal, stupid, or bigoted. It seems like you don't like Christians very much. Why? If this isn't the case, then what are your views on religion? Whatever they are, you seem to feel pretty strongly about them.
First, I was raised a Christian. And for the most part, I like Christians very much (my wife is Christian). I understand that on some level prostletizing and "spreading the gospel" and presuming "my God is better than your god" is one of the demands of said faith (which I guess in some aspects is similar to Islam although Islam's God is your God).
With that said, people consider me a secular humanist though in my life I have attended Unitarian churches and studied Buddhism. This is a long way to say that I don't get my spirituality from one book.
I love Christianity to an extent -- a demand to help the poor, to turn the other cheek, to love thy neighbor. I can't recall if the Bible permits slavery, but regardless I'm not sure Christ would try to own another man. What I don't love is Christians who dress themselves in religiosity while at the same time acting against the word of their Lord. The problem is many Christians will cop out on me, "It's ok for me to not be humble or to act out aggression against others because Jesus will forgive my sins." To me, this is tantamount to claiming "I can have no faith at all, but claim Christianity because it's the one that takes merely a token gesture to appease my guilt." These soft-belied, fair-weather Christians are Christian by default but don't live by the Gospel. If American Christians lived by the Word, how could we act with wars of revenge? How could we let people die of starvation in our own, some might say Christian, country? How can we continue to be xenophobic?
The usual argument to this is that "tsk tsk those aren't real Christians then," or "all faiths have bad guys." I hope this is not your rebuttal. Both of these are undisputed. I guess what saddens me is that unconditional forgiveness for sin provides no motivation beyond our already fallible moral compass. I apologize this feeling came across as venom. I hate dishonesty (well if I can 'hate' anything). These forms of 'white' hypocrisy sour me against the faithful. If one is to claim they are religious they must prove it in action, they are hollow Christians if they choose to act without regard and ask forgiveness later.
E.g.: How can a divorcée be a Christian [having broken a vow they swore before God]?
Finally, I don't see how [a minority of] Christians [in power] can want to have it both ways. If we were to live in a religious state by a set of laws determined to be Christian then wouldn't these fair-weather Christians be punished in droves? The adulterers... The blasphemers...
Maybe this disconnect is why Christianity is so popular -- Christianity does not force right-living as an assurance of transcendence (I acknowledge that the other faiths from the region accept this as well to varying degrees, e.g., Allah, The Forgiver). Compare these demands to other faiths that have had more adherents over time where your actions are judged in light of karma, affect of ancestral disgrace, societal dissonance. (Aside: heh, these rely on personal responsibility as neo-cons call it). I always find it amusing to think, in the eyes of some Christians, how all those billions of Buddhists are now burning in hell because they lived for centuries before God's savior appeared. They were all sinners right, because of the Original Sin. Thankfully Islam rejects original sin and is therefore compatible with other right-living faiths (and hence the religious tolerance of
Congrats on missing my fundamental point. I guess all that zeal got in your eyes. To clarify (again?):
I did not dispute that Christianity (as a whole) has more adherents than any other religion. Reread that last sentence. Here's the part of my GP so you don't have to go back and look:
Broadly though, their percentages are relevant which brings us to...
Next -- do we take dominant to mean most popular?
http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html [this url is one of their sources, what you didn't check them?] There are 2 billion Christians, but 4 billion non-Christians, does this minority dominate the majority or is it the other way round? [note my crafty rhetorical correctly using the word dominate]
Now that you understand that we agree --which you go to great lengths to reiterate-- let's talk about what was of interest to me in the first place... what does Dominant Religion mean?
Davinci1980: Christianity isn't even the *dominant* religion on the planet, in terms of number of believers.
You: Yes it is
Me: Christianity is obviously the dominant religion in America (as there are more Christians than not). Christianity is not the dominant religion in China (or India, or Iraq, the locale is irrelevant) as there are more non-Christians than not. If one agrees with these two claims, then Christianity is not the Earth's dominant religion.
You: See all the links at the top of this post, and do your own research. You'll find that it's simply a fact that there are more Christians than any other religion's adherents in the world. However one feels about Christianity, or any other religion, it doesn't change this fact.
Now that we've re-read this exchange, tell me what dominant means.
Does dominant mean a majority? The majority of Earthlings are not Christians.
Now, since that didn't get through to you last time... let's talk about what the word dominant means. If one is dominant they "exercise the most influence or control, [second, they are the] Most prominent, as in position; ascendant." The word, being rather binary in connotation also implies as submissive. For these reasons it is either imprecise or JUST FUCKING PLAIN OLD WRONG to say that "Christianity is the planet's dominant religion." It is bigoted (unless you're a Christian of course) to say that Christianity is 'ascendant', i.e., supreme to all other religions by nature. It it wrong to say that Christianity exercises the most control or influence over the planet's population. The claim is baseless for the same reason I can't say that being non-Christian is the dominant position. Dominant does not mean popular, it does not mean majority, it does not mean biggest. It does mean reigning, commanding, controlling, supreme, etc.
I hope I've made my position clear. Don't bother to come back at me if it's just going to be more of the same crap. And don't give me that prescriptive-linguistics argument. Words have meanings. Using the wrong words creates fallacy.
Sorry to rant and rave. I hope you see where I'm coming from, though. You thought it was cute to quip about how Christianity was the dominant religion when what would have been more honest would be to say 'right, maybe it's not the dominant religion but it does have more adherents'. You and I wouldn't have wasted so much time arguing over semantics if you could've just stepped back and said "what am I really saying with the simple words 'yes it is'." Cheers.
GP: Christianity isn't even the *dominant* religion on the planet, in terms of number of believers.
You: Yes it is [see parent for url]
Wow. That is a horrible chart to base your opinion on. You don't see that it's flawed to title a chart "Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents" and then include non-religions?!
I give you this awesome quote from the bottom of the page were they are backing up their spurious claims:
AR [animal rights] is a religion, but for the majority of Animal Rights supporters, AR functions as a movement and/or lifestyle choice, not their primary religion.
Emphasis is not my own. This admission leads to double counting. I.e., Most Japanese are Shinto at birth, Christian at marriage, Buddhist at death; these are based on cultural and pop-cultural traditions. Are these events sufficient to claim 'adherence'. The chart also discounts the vast population of the PRC because communist rule outlawed religion, despite that they count Confucianism, Taoism, et others for non-Chinese. WTF? They go to great lengths to justify their numbers rather than just supply census or survey results. Broadly though, their percentages are relevant which brings us to...
Next -- do we take dominant to mean most popular?
http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html There are 2 billion Christians, but 4 billion non-Christians, does this minority dominate the majority or is it the other way round?
Here's why I say this... Christianity is obviously the dominant religion in America (as there are more Christians than not). Christianity is not the dominant religion in China (or India, or Iraq, the locale is irrelevant) as there are more non-Christians than not. If one agrees with these two claims, then Christianity is not the Earth's dominant religion.
Here's a funny work around for G4's and the QTHD Theatre...:-D While the movie is downloading, go into the A/V controls (cmd-k) and set the play speed to 1/2x -- In QT7, if the format permits, it will time stretch the audio instead of frequency stretch it.
With the movie playing at half the speed, your G4 will be able to spit out more of the frames:) The Audio will sound a little funny because of the time-stretch. It's a fun little experiment.
GP: sometimes a spade needs to just be called a spade, and a shit OS needs to be called a shit OS. You: Yeah, but why would that get you modded up? How many times does that need to be said?
I marked myself as "unwilling to moderate" because I don't want to be part of the groupthink- and the system sucks. -- Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Yes, Slashdot's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Re:Mildly OT, since no one else has said it yet ..
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Subscribers can search post histories on accounts all the way back, not the just recent x posts. My post history would definitely show a continuity of personhood as the times when I pipe up are usually about a specific set of topics that I'm not completely ignorant on -- what happens at/inside AOL, owning a Mac, Tivo, or Gamecube, Copyright/Public Domain issues, random joking around about low user ids, whether or not Enterprise sucks in light of BSG, graphics, web-dev, Florida, growing up in the 80s and all the retro-gaming and C64 nostalgia that entails, etc. As an aside, I can't believe anyone would buy a slashdot ID. How stupid and narcissistic is that?
Being able to determine if someone is a schmuk by going through their entire post history really isn't that entertaining though - so I can't say whether it would be worth subscribing.
And you're right, since eventually means infinity less one, and humans have bad memories and short lives then yes, someday, six digit IDs may have some value. I hope to see that day, because at such point, I may be elevated to the Status of God.
Right on. I totally agree. And it sort of makes my point. Even if you'd bought a name brand enclosure+drive like a Lacie 400gb you could get it for $400 bucks. The insinuation being made by this new product is that the extra 5 ports (which costs them basically nothing to add on)* is worth an extra ONE HUNDRED dollars. You went with a solution that is not only more flexible, and a better cost/value, and has the value add of el gato's goodies (AV in/out), and has higher resale value as well. Sounds to me like you are doing a better job than these guys.
Sounds like you have exactly the set-up that I'm going for with my [future] Mini. It's gonna live in the living room replacing my cheap DVD player and letting me unify all my music storage. I'm seriously considering the eyeTV 200 to move stuff from my Tivo to disk/disc since Tivo has basically dissed Mac owners with the Tivo2go brouhaha... Plus, iChat on the TV -- talk about living in The Future where everyone has video-phones -- saves us money on long distance. How does the eyeTV 500 work with the Mini? I've heard the peanut gallery say the Mini doesn't have the horse power to do HD...
*(The electronics for the inclosure already include a firewire and usb hub, plus an interface from that to the media SATA/IDE, plus daisy chain socket(s). To claim that this is like a sweet enclosure plus drive plus two hubs is a flat lie. It's a enclosure with some extra ports. A hundred dollars worth of extra ports? You decide).
Econmies of Scale -or- How an ISV Makes Money.
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The costs we're talking about here are consumer costs -- what the consumer bears as she buys items one piece at a time, all with their own warranty terms, packaging, shipping blah blah blah. Those costs are inflated to make profit. Bulk purchasers enjoy a reduced cost per unit (vendors often sell bulk at a reduced rate because they in turn enjoy an efficiency). The manufacture should be buying [components] in bulk. I can't believe I'm explaining this.
A manufacturer, or a systems integrator makes money by packaging his know-how and leveraging his ability to work at scales the consumer can't into a desirable product. Economies of scale is like 7th grade education. If you made it out of high school, why are we having this discussion?
So, to directly answer your question: How do I expect the manufacturer to make any money off this [mac mini external drive]? I expect them to be able to buy hard-drives cheaper than I can, I expect them to be able to manufacture or purchase enclosures cheaper than I can, I expect them to get usb and firewire hubs cheaper than I can. So, If I can buy the components for the same cost as the manufacture and build it for the same cost it takes them to ship it to me then wtf am I buying? Where is the value? Finally, given that bulk ISVs/manufacturer CAN and DO enjoy economies of scale, I expect them to be making LOTS of "money off this thing", because they aren't passing a dime of that economy on to me.
HTH, cheers.
(p.s. when the GP was talking about 30 for the enclosure, that price is reduced by combining the enclosures fw / usb electronics with the hubs' electronics, they are saving even more money, i.e. making even more profit... so, not to keep ranting, the manufacturer saves on electronics, materials, power conversion, and media, and yet somehow, the cost is the same as all of these components seperately. Why not pay more for less?)
All of this is a long way to say the same damn thing I said hours ago: This device is overpriced and is therefore not news.
"News flash: neat component for excellent price!"
is much more interesting than
"News flash: barely novel component at mediocre price."
Again sorry to rant. Nothing personal.
Re:Mildly OT, since no one else has said it yet ..
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Well it's surely not cheap... because 15 (times 2) plus 90, plus 60 is $180 -- incidentally the price they are selling it for. So this assumes that the manufacturer couldn't get volume discounts or Asian fabrication to reduce costs AT ALL.
Frankly, going with just the numbers you've given me, I'd say the unit could cost 15 to 20% less than it does. But screw them, let 'the market' decide. If people are willing to pay a dollar per gig just to have 5 extra ports on the back then let them. Just as I prognosticated in a previous post, I'll now have to mention that if they really wanted a killer app, something you would bare to stack your mini on (and to increase your expenditure by 20 to 50%), they would have included the ports the mini DOESN'T have: crappy old 1/8" line in, optical in/out, and then why not, a couple extra firewire sockets.
Cheers.
Re:Mildly OT, since no one else has said it yet ..
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Guess you didn't notice the caveat about how no one else has bitched yet.
Of course it happens regularly, but you have to speak truth to power... You have to stand up and shout "damn you slashdot for posting an advertisement as news!"
Additionally I'm not even that pissed about the 'ads as news' in and of itself... it's just stupid that it's not even like a newsworthy ad. It's just "ho hum, another external hard-drive that isn't worth it". A dollar per gig?! Even with a 10 dollars worth of USB/FW hubs? It's a fucking travesty. ('Course now I'll get 5 posts saying "it's a great value having those hubs and stuff built into something that costs 50% of the machine in the first place; I'll then have to retort, ad nauseam, about how "it leaves out some of the glaring oversights of the Mini itself, notably, a line in." Why are you going to spend that much money and not want the sockets on the front? )
Anyway, if you were a subscriber you could see this surely isn't a purchased account, but it's more fun to troll, isn't it? Fortunately your comments usually add to a discussion, so we don't all have to write you off for this one lame post.
Sorry to rant, I guess you asked for it.
Mildly OT, since no one else has said it yet ...
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Isn't this just an outright advertisement posing as News for Nerds? You think I could get an 'article' into slashdot if it was just touting a 30% sale at DealRam or Newegg or something?
The only time I would think a product like this was news was if the price was stupidly low. Like... "new external firewire drive that stacks perfectly with Mini, 3 additional USB2, 2 additional Firewire 400, 250 GB for $99!" Maybe with some more exclamation points so it looks really news-like.
Sorry for the rant. Glad to see there have been so few dupes (possibly none?!) in the last two weeks.:-)
Sometimes people don't quote the what they are replying (that's no big deal in itself). It's only annoying when the replies are getting modded up while the original gets modded down (usually for being retarded). Then you see great replies but no context.:-p That's why I said thanks.
I'm with you on this... I don't see any reason why I (or something at the application level) should be making lots of extra inodes just to store alternate 'groupings' (why call those groupings metadata? if you have to assign the metadata, why not attach it to the file as the fs level, rather than indirectly with an inode?).
I think it's a much more elegant solution to just store a query rather than create a new directory on disk, and fill it with additional inodes. (I guess there are millisecond performance differences to be had, but I'm not interested in that debate.)
One can demonstrate a misuse of the English language and "they [can bong] you for misusage of" an English word. These are subtly different.
Additionally, you've misused the dash and colon. I warned you I was going to be pedantic.:-) Don't take it up with me though; take it up with your bewildered English professor.
But that's kindof moot, as the treaties signed require the signatories to pass laws to enforce the provisions of the treaty. A treaty does not give the federal government authority provided to it outside of the constitution.
Right. I know. I said that in the post you are replying to.:-D Additionally, I left 'pursuance' out becuase it is widely known that Law that is unconstitutional is only valid until challenged (and the execution of that law cannot be 'undone' i.e. terms have been served, fines paid, perps executed). Take the example of your choice, but there are laws right now that you might consider 'void' that you will still go to jail for until your crack law team can get the Supreme Court to spring you. Anyway, that's my justification, laws that pass the Congress are laws of the land, they don't have to be upheld by the judiciary until --at some future date-- they are challenged by citizens.
Obviously I'm not a lawyer, and could very well be less informed than you.:-p
You: I have no doubt that such things go on in prisons in the US and around the world. But I really wonder on the frequency of them. From your post, it seems like you think these sorts of things happen to everyone who goes to prison for a certain period of time or more.
Me: Wow... are you trying to be willfully ignorant? Information about the prevalance of prison rape is pretty wide spread.
You: I never said it wasn't. Are you trying to willfully misinterpret what I said?
I guess that's fair. I took "I really wonder" to be an admission of ignorance. Of course, in a non-real-time conversation, you never have to reply ignorantly, so I took it to be willful. I hope this clears up my misinterpretation.
And while I agree that this is a number that I wouldn't want to take a chance on, 21% is hardly a certainty, which the original poster seemed to claim.
Maybe the OP's use of the second person was for rhetorical effect, and not for statistical purposes (see bold text where you make this inference). That aside, I'm not really interested in the semantic arguments. Twenty percent may sound like a small number but I would think the gravity would affect one's perception. Sure, if there was a 20% chance of rain you might go out without an umbrella, but if there was a 20% chance of getting shot then you might not go out at all. "So what, I might get rained on" is very different from "I might get raped." I'm glad to hear you wouldn't want to take the chance. Personally, I wouldn't want to take a chance on anything that wasn't "rare", because again, 1 in 5 is pretty fucking likely.
(Again, 20% being the conservative estimate given the reluctance of all parties --victims, gaurds, administrators, perps-- to admit to this criminal activity, or criminal negligence. I'm not trying to bait you.)
Wow... are you trying to be willfully ignorant? Information about the prevalance of prison rape is pretty wide spread.
If I gave you a chance to win a lottery of one in five, would you take it? I would... those are great odds. And that's the conservative figure. One in five men sent to prison gets raped. One In Five, and that's the Nice estimate.
No conclusive national data exists regarding the prevalence of this phenomenon, but the most recent statistical survey, published in the Prison Journal, revealed that 21 percent of inmates in seven Midwestern prisons had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sex since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility.
Correctional authorities generally deny that rape is a serious problem. In Human Rights Watch's survey of all 50 states, not one correctional authority reported abuse rates even approaching those found by the rights group. The authorities' reluctance to acknowledge the scale of the violation is reflected not only in misleading official statistics, but also in a glaringly inadequate response to incidents of rape.
Similarly, a 1988 study of line officers in the Texas prison system reported that only 9 percent of officers agreed that rape in prison was a "rare" occurrence, while 87 percent disagreed. These findings are all the more notable when one considers that the question was limited to instances of "rape" -- not sexual abuse in general -- a term that many people interpret narrowly (typically believing that rape only occurs where physical force is used).
So - the concensus from gaurds who work in prisons is that "it's not rare to get raped in prison." Have a great time!
(Sorry about the subject line, I know it's a bit too pithy.)
Slashdot Mirror
me: The venerable sunflower was abandoned because the G5 and its giant heat sink couldn't be quietly cooled inside the same footprint.
you: So all of a sudden, it was totally uncool to sell Apple's based on G4s? Certainly not iMac users -- that product line has always been targeted to basic user, as opposed to high-powered systems that come in big boxes.
First, I'm not perfectly clear on what you are saying... the iMac has the same performance as the bottom end Power Mac.
But, if I understand correctly, you are saying that Apple should have kept it's Middle of the Line consumer model with last generation's processor? Are you serious? For how long? You really think that "basic users" can't tell the difference in speed between a 1 GHz G4 and a 2 GHz G5? That "they aren't gonna use it" argument is totally played -- the iMac is targeted at the iLife suite. iLife '05 can totally take advantage of more horse power: The UI in iPhoto, the production time in iMovie, the flexibility in Garageband (more tracks, less bouncing to disk, less waiting when bouncing to disk); I could go on.
Lemme know, I'm dying to see how you justify that. If you justify it by saying "they could have lowered the price" then let me ask how? The pedestal iMac is much more expensive to manufacture than the all-screen iMac -- there is no way Apple would have started taking a loss (reducing their margins to keep a last-gen all-in-one competitive).
He said he had a B&W, not an iMac. You should have linked here.
Here's an example of update type and frequency from my log. Note, I installed Panther on a fresh hard-drive on 4-20 there
Also note that this article isn't news (Thanks The Register) as most of us downloaded this 6 meg update days ago. I was all like "what another update?" but then "oh, Slashdot is just reporting the Olds for Nerds".Anyway -- to everyone who is 'happy' about this being posted on Slashdot, because you didn't know about it yet: Please, please just set Software Update to check everyday and fetch updates in the background. Then it's like Christmas when it bounces in the dock and says "Yay, I have updates ready to go if you'd like to install them!"
(This should be familiar to all those 2K and XP folks who have the Windows Auto Update thingamajig).
Well there is that $60 steak dinner. I can get a pretty good steak dinner for $30. And a not so good one for $15
Doesn't that only prove that you can't patronize the best restaurants or that you live in an area with a significantly reduced cost of living? I mean what does saying "I can get a good-enough steak at Outback" really prove?
Oh, oh, I know, it's like how everyone hates that bourgeois elitism! Damn you Mac owners and your expensive restaurants and foreign cars!
Are you just trying to be obstinate?
"The iMac G5 had to be redesigned because they couldn't fit a PPC970 with all its cooling requirements into a tight little box. "
This one fact nullifies your whole argument. The pedestal was not abandoned because it was passé. The venerable sunflower was abandoned because the G5 and its giant heat sink couldn't be quietly cooled inside the same footprint.
"Wrong. I'm one of the philistines who considers a computer just another appliance -- something you'd know if you taken any care reading my previous post. I admire the pedestal iMac for its usability and ergonomics. I could give it shit that it looks cute."
Right, so now that we agree that the iMac G5 doesn't have a pedestal because it can't we'll have to address the usability and ergonomics with a $200 arm and some elbow grease. That's the trade-off: enjoy some order of performance improvement at the cost of the dead weight in the base to anchor a built-in arm. I guess they could have just shipped the iMac G5 with a leaded base (or a big brick with a chromed arm) to the same dimensions as the sunflower pedestal (or is that too obviously lame?). Since it's fuck-all to aesthetics I don't see why one wouldn't drill a whole in one's desk to mount an arm.
See: http://www.lcdmonitorarm.com/lcd_arms_3.htm
Anyway, it's a tough call to live with. Using a G5 for a while makes me notice the difference in a G4. Does usability include how fast you can get work done? Nothing personal. Cheers.
me: Congrats on missing my fundamental point...I guess all that zeal got in your eyes....JUST FUCKING PLAIN OLD WRONG...It is bigoted (unless you're a Christian of course) to say that Christianity is 'ascendant', i.e., supreme to all other religions by nature...You thought it was cute to quip...
you: Why so much venom? Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not blinded by zeal, stupid, or bigoted. It seems like you don't like Christians very much. Why? If this isn't the case, then what are your views on religion? Whatever they are, you seem to feel pretty strongly about them.
First, I was raised a Christian. And for the most part, I like Christians very much (my wife is Christian). I understand that on some level prostletizing and "spreading the gospel" and presuming "my God is better than your god" is one of the demands of said faith (which I guess in some aspects is similar to Islam although Islam's God is your God).
With that said, people consider me a secular humanist though in my life I have attended Unitarian churches and studied Buddhism. This is a long way to say that I don't get my spirituality from one book.
I love Christianity to an extent -- a demand to help the poor, to turn the other cheek, to love thy neighbor. I can't recall if the Bible permits slavery, but regardless I'm not sure Christ would try to own another man. What I don't love is Christians who dress themselves in religiosity while at the same time acting against the word of their Lord. The problem is many Christians will cop out on me, "It's ok for me to not be humble or to act out aggression against others because Jesus will forgive my sins." To me, this is tantamount to claiming "I can have no faith at all, but claim Christianity because it's the one that takes merely a token gesture to appease my guilt." These soft-belied, fair-weather Christians are Christian by default but don't live by the Gospel. If American Christians lived by the Word, how could we act with wars of revenge? How could we let people die of starvation in our own, some might say Christian, country? How can we continue to be xenophobic?
The usual argument to this is that "tsk tsk those aren't real Christians then," or "all faiths have bad guys." I hope this is not your rebuttal. Both of these are undisputed. I guess what saddens me is that unconditional forgiveness for sin provides no motivation beyond our already fallible moral compass. I apologize this feeling came across as venom. I hate dishonesty (well if I can 'hate' anything). These forms of 'white' hypocrisy sour me against the faithful. If one is to claim they are religious they must prove it in action, they are hollow Christians if they choose to act without regard and ask forgiveness later.
E.g.: How can a divorcée be a Christian [having broken a vow they swore before God]?
Finally, I don't see how [a minority of] Christians [in power] can want to have it both ways. If we were to live in a religious state by a set of laws determined to be Christian then wouldn't these fair-weather Christians be punished in droves? The adulterers... The blasphemers...
Maybe this disconnect is why Christianity is so popular -- Christianity does not force right-living as an assurance of transcendence (I acknowledge that the other faiths from the region accept this as well to varying degrees, e.g., Allah, The Forgiver). Compare these demands to other faiths that have had more adherents over time where your actions are judged in light of karma, affect of ancestral disgrace, societal dissonance. (Aside: heh, these rely on personal responsibility as neo-cons call it). I always find it amusing to think, in the eyes of some Christians, how all those billions of Buddhists are now burning in hell because they lived for centuries before God's savior appeared. They were all sinners right, because of the Original Sin. Thankfully Islam rejects original sin and is therefore compatible with other right-living faiths (and hence the religious tolerance of
Didn't notice someone made this very same post 8 hours before you?
4 08959
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148046&cid=12
Anyhow, the short version: Most popular by adherents today, yes. Dominant religion on the planet, no.
I did not dispute that Christianity (as a whole) has more adherents than any other religion. Reread that last sentence. Here's the part of my GP so you don't have to go back and look:
Now that you understand that we agree --which you go to great lengths to reiterate-- let's talk about what was of interest to me in the first place
Now that we've re-read this exchange, tell me what dominant means.
Does dominant mean a majority? The majority of Earthlings are not Christians.
Now, since that didn't get through to you last time
I hope I've made my position clear. Don't bother to come back at me if it's just going to be more of the same crap. And don't give me that prescriptive-linguistics argument. Words have meanings. Using the wrong words creates fallacy.
Sorry to rant and rave. I hope you see where I'm coming from, though. You thought it was cute to quip about how Christianity was the dominant religion when what would have been more honest would be to say 'right, maybe it's not the dominant religion but it does have more adherents'. You and I wouldn't have wasted so much time arguing over semantics if you could've just stepped back and said "what am I really saying with the simple words 'yes it is'." Cheers.
You: Yes it is [see parent for url]
Wow. That is a horrible chart to base your opinion on. You don't see that it's flawed to title a chart "Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents" and then include non-religions?!
I give you this awesome quote from the bottom of the page were they are backing up their spurious claims:
Emphasis is not my own. This admission leads to double counting. I.e., Most Japanese are Shinto at birth, Christian at marriage, Buddhist at death; these are based on cultural and pop-cultural traditions. Are these events sufficient to claim 'adherence'. The chart also discounts the vast population of the PRC because communist rule outlawed religion, despite that they count Confucianism, Taoism, et others for non-Chinese. WTF? They go to great lengths to justify their numbers rather than just supply census or survey results. Broadly though, their percentages are relevant which brings us to...
Next -- do we take dominant to mean most popular?
http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html There are 2 billion Christians, but 4 billion non-Christians, does this minority dominate the majority or is it the other way round?
Here's why I say this... Christianity is obviously the dominant religion in America (as there are more Christians than not). Christianity is not the dominant religion in China (or India, or Iraq, the locale is irrelevant) as there are more non-Christians than not. If one agrees with these two claims, then Christianity is not the Earth's dominant religion.
I don't recall ADC tasking XiSO with distributing their development builds.
Here's a funny work around for G4's and the QTHD Theatre ... :-D While the movie is downloading, go into the A/V controls (cmd-k) and set the play speed to 1/2x -- In QT7, if the format permits, it will time stretch the audio instead of frequency stretch it.
:) The Audio will sound a little funny because of the time-stretch. It's a fun little experiment.
With the movie playing at half the speed, your G4 will be able to spit out more of the frames
GP: sometimes a spade needs to just be called a spade, and a shit OS needs to be called a shit OS.
You: Yeah, but why would that get you modded up? How many times does that need to be said?
I marked myself as "unwilling to moderate" because I don't want to be part of the groupthink- and the system sucks.
--
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Yes, Slashdot's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
Subscribers can search post histories on accounts all the way back, not the just recent x posts. My post history would definitely show a continuity of personhood as the times when I pipe up are usually about a specific set of topics that I'm not completely ignorant on -- what happens at/inside AOL, owning a Mac, Tivo, or Gamecube, Copyright/Public Domain issues, random joking around about low user ids, whether or not Enterprise sucks in light of BSG, graphics, web-dev, Florida, growing up in the 80s and all the retro-gaming and C64 nostalgia that entails, etc. As an aside, I can't believe anyone would buy a slashdot ID. How stupid and narcissistic is that?
Being able to determine if someone is a schmuk by going through their entire post history really isn't that entertaining though - so I can't say whether it would be worth subscribing.
And you're right, since eventually means infinity less one, and humans have bad memories and short lives then yes, someday, six digit IDs may have some value. I hope to see that day, because at such point, I may be elevated to the Status of God.
Right on. I totally agree. And it sort of makes my point. Even if you'd bought a name brand enclosure+drive like a Lacie 400gb you could get it for $400 bucks. The insinuation being made by this new product is that the extra 5 ports (which costs them basically nothing to add on)* is worth an extra ONE HUNDRED dollars. You went with a solution that is not only more flexible, and a better cost/value, and has the value add of el gato's goodies (AV in/out), and has higher resale value as well. Sounds to me like you are doing a better job than these guys.
Sounds like you have exactly the set-up that I'm going for with my [future] Mini. It's gonna live in the living room replacing my cheap DVD player and letting me unify all my music storage. I'm seriously considering the eyeTV 200 to move stuff from my Tivo to disk/disc since Tivo has basically dissed Mac owners with the Tivo2go brouhaha... Plus, iChat on the TV -- talk about living in The Future where everyone has video-phones -- saves us money on long distance. How does the eyeTV 500 work with the Mini? I've heard the peanut gallery say the Mini doesn't have the horse power to do HD...
*(The electronics for the inclosure already include a firewire and usb hub, plus an interface from that to the media SATA/IDE, plus daisy chain socket(s). To claim that this is like a sweet enclosure plus drive plus two hubs is a flat lie. It's a enclosure with some extra ports. A hundred dollars worth of extra ports? You decide).
The costs we're talking about here are consumer costs -- what the consumer bears as she buys items one piece at a time, all with their own warranty terms, packaging, shipping blah blah blah. Those costs are inflated to make profit. Bulk purchasers enjoy a reduced cost per unit (vendors often sell bulk at a reduced rate because they in turn enjoy an efficiency). The manufacture should be buying [components] in bulk. I can't believe I'm explaining this.
A manufacturer, or a systems integrator makes money by packaging his know-how and leveraging his ability to work at scales the consumer can't into a desirable product. Economies of scale is like 7th grade education. If you made it out of high school, why are we having this discussion?
So, to directly answer your question: How do I expect the manufacturer to make any money off this [mac mini external drive]? I expect them to be able to buy hard-drives cheaper than I can, I expect them to be able to manufacture or purchase enclosures cheaper than I can, I expect them to get usb and firewire hubs cheaper than I can. So, If I can buy the components for the same cost as the manufacture and build it for the same cost it takes them to ship it to me then wtf am I buying? Where is the value? Finally, given that bulk ISVs/manufacturer CAN and DO enjoy economies of scale, I expect them to be making LOTS of "money off this thing", because they aren't passing a dime of that economy on to me.
HTH, cheers.
(p.s. when the GP was talking about 30 for the enclosure, that price is reduced by combining the enclosures fw / usb electronics with the hubs' electronics, they are saving even more money, i.e. making even more profit... so, not to keep ranting, the manufacturer saves on electronics, materials, power conversion, and media, and yet somehow, the cost is the same as all of these components seperately. Why not pay more for less?)
All of this is a long way to say the same damn thing I said hours ago: This device is overpriced and is therefore not news.
"News flash: neat component for excellent price!"
is much more interesting than
"News flash: barely novel component at mediocre price."
Again sorry to rant. Nothing personal.
Well it's surely not cheap... because 15 (times 2) plus 90, plus 60 is $180 -- incidentally the price they are selling it for. So this assumes that the manufacturer couldn't get volume discounts or Asian fabrication to reduce costs AT ALL.
Frankly, going with just the numbers you've given me, I'd say the unit could cost 15 to 20% less than it does. But screw them, let 'the market' decide. If people are willing to pay a dollar per gig just to have 5 extra ports on the back then let them. Just as I prognosticated in a previous post, I'll now have to mention that if they really wanted a killer app, something you would bare to stack your mini on (and to increase your expenditure by 20 to 50%), they would have included the ports the mini DOESN'T have: crappy old 1/8" line in, optical in/out, and then why not, a couple extra firewire sockets.
Cheers.
Guess you didn't notice the caveat about how no one else has bitched yet.
Of course it happens regularly, but you have to speak truth to power... You have to stand up and shout "damn you slashdot for posting an advertisement as news!"
Additionally I'm not even that pissed about the 'ads as news' in and of itself... it's just stupid that it's not even like a newsworthy ad. It's just "ho hum, another external hard-drive that isn't worth it". A dollar per gig?! Even with a 10 dollars worth of USB/FW hubs? It's a fucking travesty. ('Course now I'll get 5 posts saying "it's a great value having those hubs and stuff built into something that costs 50% of the machine in the first place; I'll then have to retort, ad nauseam, about how "it leaves out some of the glaring oversights of the Mini itself, notably, a line in." Why are you going to spend that much money and not want the sockets on the front? )
Anyway, if you were a subscriber you could see this surely isn't a purchased account, but it's more fun to troll, isn't it? Fortunately your comments usually add to a discussion, so we don't all have to write you off for this one lame post.
Sorry to rant, I guess you asked for it.
Isn't this just an outright advertisement posing as News for Nerds? You think I could get an 'article' into slashdot if it was just touting a 30% sale at DealRam or Newegg or something?
... "new external firewire drive that stacks perfectly with Mini, 3 additional USB2, 2 additional Firewire 400, 250 GB for $99!" Maybe with some more exclamation points so it looks really news-like.
:-)
The only time I would think a product like this was news was if the price was stupidly low. Like
Sorry for the rant. Glad to see there have been so few dupes (possibly none?!) in the last two weeks.
Not being sarcastic at all.
Sometimes people don't quote the what they are replying (that's no big deal in itself). It's only annoying when the replies are getting modded up while the original gets modded down (usually for being retarded). Then you see great replies but no context.
Thank you for quoting the posts you're replying to. I makes for much better reading :-)
I'm with you on this ... I don't see any reason why I (or something at the application level) should be making lots of extra inodes just to store alternate 'groupings' (why call those groupings metadata? if you have to assign the metadata, why not attach it to the file as the fs level, rather than indirectly with an inode?).
I think it's a much more elegant solution to just store a query rather than create a new directory on disk, and fill it with additional inodes. (I guess there are millisecond performance differences to be had, but I'm not interested in that debate.)
While we're nitpicking other's posts...
:-) Don't take it up with me though; take it up with your bewildered English professor.
One can demonstrate a misuse of the English language and "they [can bong] you for misusage of" an English word. These are subtly different.
Additionally, you've misused the dash and colon. I warned you I was going to be pedantic.
But that's kindof moot, as the treaties signed require the signatories to pass laws to enforce the provisions of the treaty. A treaty does not give the federal government authority provided to it outside of the constitution.
:-D Additionally, I left 'pursuance' out becuase it is widely known that Law that is unconstitutional is only valid until challenged (and the execution of that law cannot be 'undone' i.e. terms have been served, fines paid, perps executed). Take the example of your choice, but there are laws right now that you might consider 'void' that you will still go to jail for until your crack law team can get the Supreme Court to spring you. Anyway, that's my justification, laws that pass the Congress are laws of the land, they don't have to be upheld by the judiciary until --at some future date-- they are challenged by citizens.
:-p
Right. I know. I said that in the post you are replying to.
Obviously I'm not a lawyer, and could very well be less informed than you.
You: I have no doubt that such things go on in prisons in the US and around the world. But I really wonder on the frequency of them. From your post, it seems like you think these sorts of things happen to everyone who goes to prison for a certain period of time or more.
Me: Wow... are you trying to be willfully ignorant? Information about the prevalance of prison rape is pretty wide spread.
You: I never said it wasn't. Are you trying to willfully misinterpret what I said?
I guess that's fair. I took "I really wonder" to be an admission of ignorance. Of course, in a non-real-time conversation, you never have to reply ignorantly, so I took it to be willful. I hope this clears up my misinterpretation.
And while I agree that this is a number that I wouldn't want to take a chance on, 21% is hardly a certainty, which the original poster seemed to claim.
Maybe the OP's use of the second person was for rhetorical effect, and not for statistical purposes (see bold text where you make this inference). That aside, I'm not really interested in the semantic arguments. Twenty percent may sound like a small number but I would think the gravity would affect one's perception. Sure, if there was a 20% chance of rain you might go out without an umbrella, but if there was a 20% chance of getting shot then you might not go out at all. "So what, I might get rained on" is very different from "I might get raped." I'm glad to hear you wouldn't want to take the chance. Personally, I wouldn't want to take a chance on anything that wasn't "rare", because again, 1 in 5 is pretty fucking likely.
(Again, 20% being the conservative estimate given the reluctance of all parties --victims, gaurds, administrators, perps-- to admit to this criminal activity, or criminal negligence. I'm not trying to bait you.)
If I gave you a chance to win a lottery of one in five, would you take it? I would... those are great odds. And that's the conservative figure. One in five men sent to prison gets raped. One In Five, and that's the Nice estimate.
You can read all about it: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report1.ht
For more fun: http://www.counterpunch.org/mariner08012003.html with the money quote:
So - the concensus from gaurds who work in prisons is that "it's not rare to get raped in prison." Have a great time!
(Sorry about the subject line, I know it's a bit too pithy.)