As much as I'd like to agree with you, the Supreme Court has found that free speech is NOT an absolute. And it's not just "indecent material" and hate speech. You also can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater (to use the typical example). And you can't say untrue bad things about somebody else without being vulnerable to defamation law suits. There are exceptions.
With that said, this proposal is appalling. Who ever thought Demolition Man would become a reality.
"You are fined one credit for violation of the verbal morality statute."
Also, as a practitioner's guide, Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices in C# by Robert C. Martin is one of the best books I've read. You don't have to be a C# programmer to appreciate it (the examples are in C#, but could just as easily be in any other OO language), but if you're turned off by C#, look for the earlier edition which, I believe, uses C++ for the examples.
Also, The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas should be on every programmer's bookshelf.
I think you've missed one of the most important points about representative democracy. A representative's job (and in this case I mean both houses of congress and the president) is to know the most he or she possibly can about each issue he or she is to vote on. This is a more than full-time job. I'm a pretty informed voter, but I couldn't possibly be fully informed about every issue that congress and the president face. They usually aren't either, but in the ideal they are better informed than I am. When you vote, you should be voting for the person who you think will do his or her best to stay informed on the issues (or to work with people who are well informed) and will make the best decisions based on that information. That becomes even more true when we get into issues of national security because much of the information required to make informed decisions is classified.
And to respond to the main question of the discussion, I'm pretty committed to voting for Obama. I think it's past time to set the divisive issues of the baby-boomer generation behind us and try to move forward in a way that includes the most people possible, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. Obama is far more liberal (I lean more libertarian than any other particular label) than I'd normally be comfortable with. But I think he would be the best leader of any of the candidates (including the ones who have dropped out), and maybe equally importantly, I think he has a strong chance of changing the tone of US politics. And that is something I think we desperately need. I'm disgusted by the idea of 4-8 more years of Clintonian-Rovian "win at all costs and never admit a mistake" politics.
I disagree about getting rid of sports. I hated being forced to participate in sports at the schools I attended, but in retrospect, I'm very glad it happened. As somebody pointed out in an earlier reply, we have a huge problem with obesity in this country. Yes, a large part of it is diet. But sedentary lifestyle is an equally large part. Getting kids interested in actually participating in sports (rather than sitting in front of the TV watching them) is one way to help improve that. I think schools should, if anything, expand physical education programs. But they shouldn't focus quite so strongly on competitive sports. There are plenty of other ways to get out and exercise that aren't so competitive (and will appeal to some for that reason).
I agree 100% on the second point.
And what asshat modded the parent down as Flamebait? I don't agree with the first point, but it is certainly not flamebait!
Do you network all the boxes and just broadcast a remove code? And what do you do when some l33t hax0r starts sending his, unofficial, broadcasts on that network?
Then the emergency vehicles run the same way we do in places where we don't have those systems. We run red lights (legally) with lights and sirens on, but we do it carefully. It might take a little bit longer to get where they're going, but it's not a catastrophic failure.
BTW, if you're wondering about my use of "we", I'm a Maryland EMT.
Er...just as a point of fact, the United States was FAR from the first to use "weapons of mass destruction." Nuclear, yes. But biological warfare was used in Europe way back into the middle ages (and I wouldn't be shocked to hear that it'd been used farther back than that and in other areas too). Chemical weapons were used extensively in the first World War.
There are plenty of decent reasons to sling mud at the US government without people fabricating new (and utterly incorrect) ones.
I agree with you that the guy was an asshole for posting that comment. It was totally out of line. But that is, unfortunately, the kind of immature crap that will crop up frequently on internet boards.
OTOH, I do think it might be better for kids to watch the news in this case. I very clearly remember watching the footage of the Challenger disaster and the subsequent memorial service when I was in third grade. It was heart-breaking, but I wouldn't trade that experience (even as young as I was) for anything.
Hate to ruin your fun, but it's even worse. The soccer moms switched from minivans to SUVs long ago. And to make matters even worse, they usually don't drive the smaller SUVs. I think the prime example of today's soccer mom-mobile is the Ford (found on roadside dead) Expedition.
And if you think soccer moms are bad as a car driver, it's FAR worse when you're on a motorcycle and their stupid mistakes could much more easily kill you. Grrrr....
The emphasis on religion instead of spirituality is fairly strong evidence of your narrow-mindedness. IMO, religion as such is totally meaningless. It exists solely to support spirituality. And I do consider atheism a form of spirituality, but I suppose that's debatable. As for stating who lives or dies, I don't necessarily agree with you. I mean obviously it can't be totally arbitrary, but I believe that God understands that we can't just allow people to get away with murdering almost three thousand people. God takes care of His/Her house; we take care of ours.
While it's true that the PS2 and PSX have far more games than XBox, it's not nearly as interesting a comparison as that between XBox and GC because XBox and GC were released at the same time. The PS2 has years on both of them, so it's no shock it has far more games and is more entrenched. And I agree that game quality and quantity is the #1 factor (and that quality isn't necessarily defined by platform quality). But I'd argue that XBox already has games in at least two genres that are as good as or better than anything that PS2 has to offer (note that I have XBox, PS2, GC, and Dreamcast). I'd say Halo and Rallisport Challenge are both killer apps that are not currently available for any other platform (and I don't usually like driving games OR console FPS games).
PS2 still has a big lead, but as 2nd and 3rd generation XBox games start to come out utilizing the full potential of the XBox hardware, I think PS2's going to start showing its age more and more.
That is based on the assumption that Microsoft will eventually stop trying to compete on price because it will cost them too much money. As a result, the XBox would not be too popular (because nobody would buy them because they cost so much), and there'd be nobody "clamoring for the XBox 2." It looks to me like Microsoft is willing to do just about anything to make sure that the XBox succeeds. That means taking as big a loss as necessary on the units. And yes, for the moment that's a losing proposition. But it also means that the XBox continues to compete for console sales. As for games, Microsoft can throw enough money at their own game development studios and at 3rd party developers that there'll be no shortage of games available. In fact, go take a look at the XBox game racks next to the GameCube racks today and you'll see a pretty impressive diference. Now, the console market is somewhat unpredictable, so it's still possible that the XBox just won't catch on (the Dreamcast was a great console and had quite a few great games, but it still died). In which case there will be no demand for XBox 2 and Microsoft will have to write off the whole damned thing. But it is by no means a foregone conclusion as the article seems to suggest. My suspicion is that the XBox platform will be a success (if not the screaming success that Microsoft was hoping for).
You go after the actual copyright violators. Target the particularly egregious ones first. But don't restrict the rights of the common law-abinding citizen in order to stop the few criminals. That's just stupid. Gun control has the same problem. Despite the fact that the VAST majority of crimes are comitted with guns that are NOT legally owned, the leftists want to go after law-abiding legal gun owners.
When it comes down to it, it's not the government's perogative to stop people from engaging in perfectly legitimate legal activities just because those activities can be used to commit crimes. Punish the criminals once they commit the crimes. Don't punish the law-abiding citizen who just wants to enjoy his or her hobby.
The upshot of all this is that it is not my responsibility to sacrifice rights just to make the jobs of law-enforcement personnel or copyright holders easier.
That might be a kinda funky poll. You'd have to allow people to pick more than one. I, for example, use all of the above. Though if I had to pick one, I'd probably pick Mac OS X.
Which, unfortunately, means that these are no diferent from the previous crop of file trading utilities. They're just as vulnerable to RIAA legal bludgeoning as everybody else. It's a pretty cool idea to keep it strictly legit and legal (ie no trading of copyrighted content), but they'll just turn into another incarnation of the file trading services that are being systematically dismantled by the RIAA.
I'm just wondering how they actually control the content of their network. If they really are just trading legitimate live recordings, then I don't really see how the RIAA could touch them. But I don't know how they can keep people from trading standard album recordings that will get them in [more] trouble with the RIAA.
If they do somehow control it, it'll be interesting to see how the RIAA reacts to this.
Which is probably one of the reasons why Public Domain was specified as an alternate option. But the fact is that there's no great drawback to having to acknowledge the original author, and--as you pointed out--it is the intellectually honest thing to do, so why not allow the BSD license to be an option here? Even Microsoft is perfectly happy to use BSD-licensed code. So the author got paid to do the work. That doesn't really make them any less the author. Or if you really want, maybe they could use a modified version of the BSD license that allows the party paying for the software (in this case the government) to be the credited source (I haven't read the BSD licence, maybe this is already allowed). Anyway, you get my point.
Actually, it was Jobs' return that really killed the Cloning industry. At the time it drove me away from macs for several years. I had a dual-processor Umax clone back then. It was a great machine. After Steve killed cloning, I didn't buy another mac until the Cube. I was pretty pissed. It seemed really stupid.
Now I'm not so sure. I think that the big thing for Apple right now is features that add value to their hardware. All these things like cool cases and nice free software are just icing. And that's kinda the idea. Apple just needs to get people to realize that they're not really losing anything (unless they're hardcore gamers) by using a Mac instead of a PC.
Holding on to the hardware business for their OS has allowed Apple to decide the direction of the entire Mac industry. That could be a disaster, but in this case it's turned out pretty well. Back in the day, Apple pretty much drove the wide-spread adoption of USB with the original iMac. The reason they could do that was that they had total control of their platform. They could go out on a limb and force those who wanted to support the Mac to follow. In doing so they create enough momentum to pull the rest of the computer industry.
Ingeresting...I didn't really agree with this, but it doesn't look much more like flamebait than any other post expressing an opinion. Well, maybe meta-mod will get it...
Thing is, Enron didn't really get that much government protection. What they really wanted was a government bailout like the airlines got. And isn't it interesting that Tom Daschle's wife is a major lobyist for an airline? Just a thought. Anyway, Enron was going for the same thing. They didn't get it (sucks not to have Dasch-hole's wife on your side, doesn't it).
I do agree that there should be some sort of investigation into the fraud issue. I think there probably will be, though. That remains to be seen.
This is the "free market" in action (government-sponsored monopolies crushing independents)
No...it is not. The idea of a "government-sponsored monopoly is anathema to the free market. The whole idea of a free market is that the government keeps its dirty hands OUT of the market. No sponsoring business. No squashing it with excessive tax burden. This doesn't seem to difficult to understand.
The perception is that most mac users go for style over substance...nah. We're pretty savvy, and while looks are important, they're not the most important thing.
Hmmm...I'm not necessarily sure that's true. I'd say there are two classes of mac users. Those of us who are pretty savvy, and those who buy an iMac because it's cheap, they think it'll be easy to use (and it does still beat the hell out of windows for that), and it's "cute". I don't really think there's anything wrong with those people. They are a legitimate market, and just because they aren't geeks like us doesn't mean they are not a valid target audience. In fact, I'd say they're a great target audience. I think Apple is doing great things to get people who are not geeks excited about computers. Look at the "Digital Hub" applications. These are free apps (once you've paid for the computer...I think of them as delayed gratification on the premium I pay for Apple hardware) which make various tasks that lots of "mere mortals" might want to perform much simpler. Apple's trying to make computing fun for the mere mortal. And I think they're doing a great job thus far.
Anyway, to get back to my response to your post, I generally agree with you. I just wanted to point out that I think there's another class of mac user who you're overlooking.
Sorry to contradict, but you won't see Sony doing that any time soon. They're a major force in the RIAA through their record label.
Re:More information from the keynote
on
New iMac Announced
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Yeah, but what this misses is the whole Digital Hub philosophy. And no, that's not just the latest marketing catch-phrase. Apple seems to have remembered that the idea behind computers is to make all our lives easier and more enjoyable. They're trying to do it by streamlining things that we already do (or would like to do but didn't feel like dealing with the hastle). And I think they do a fantastic job of it with their Digital Hub software/hardware. I have an iPod and I think it's great. Jobs wasn't just blowing smoke when he quoted all the reviews saying it's the best digital music player ever. And the integration with iTunes is not a small part of that. iTunes is an extremely easy to use, yet flexible app. The integration with iPod is seamless. The iMovie tutorial I did was pretty cool, and I can't wait to play with it when I actually have some video I want to mess with. I haven't used iDVD yet (probably won't happen until I make my iMovies). I can't wait to use iPhoto. One of the reasons I don't use my digital camera much is that it's just so much of a hastle actually making anything of the images I take. Sure, I can drag and drop them onto my Wintel machine and then I can edit them with some other utility. But iPhoto appears to share one of the greatest features of iTunes...its library function. Sure, functionally it's not a whole lot different from what you can normally get from the filesystem. But it does add a LOT more convenience and accessibility.
Right now Apple's concentrating more on useability and convenience than sheer power. And at the moment, that's most of what I'm looking for. Yeah, I'll probably always keep a Wintel machine to play games on. But to an increasing degree, that's ALL i'm doing on Wintel. The user experience on the Macs is hard to leave behind. And that's really where Apple's adding the value. Not simply in the basic power of the hardware. Though the hardware isn't all that bad either (especially when "Velocity Engine" comes into play).
" People need to realize that MBs and BMWs are in the shop as often, or more often, than new Fords or Chevys."
In what world? My father has had MBs for the last 15 years, and I can't think of a single time he has had it in the shop for a malfunction that wasn't driver caused (IE backing into my 4-Runner:-P). Obviously he takes it in for routine maintenance, but that's it. I don't think Ford (fix or replace daily) can even come close to that record.
The battery thing is a pretty big issue. I have an Ipaq too and I love the thing. But at least once every 2-3 weeks I lose all my data (except contacts for some reason) because I let the battery get discharged. I thought the whole idea with PDA's was to use SRAM so that losing power doesn't kill your data! And the discharge rate when it's off is pretty bad. It only takes 1-2 weeks of no use for everything to be zapped. And that includes any software that didn't come with the device. I think that's a huge pain in the ass. If the battery lasted a bit longer, it wouldn't be so bad because I'd be a lot more likely to recharge the bugger. And why does it keep your contacts, but not things like owner information? Or calendar and to-do list? That seems pretty arbitrary to me.
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i work for the welfare office, i put up with more shit than any cop. I should know, there's a cop posted as a security guard and he's a little pussy.
That's probably why he got posted as a security guard in a welfare office. It's not exactly a gravy posting for a cop.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, the Supreme Court has found that free speech is NOT an absolute. And it's not just "indecent material" and hate speech. You also can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater (to use the typical example). And you can't say untrue bad things about somebody else without being vulnerable to defamation law suits. There are exceptions.
With that said, this proposal is appalling. Who ever thought Demolition Man would become a reality.
"You are fined one credit for violation of the verbal morality statute."
Yes, both of these.
Also, as a practitioner's guide, Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices in C# by Robert C. Martin is one of the best books I've read. You don't have to be a C# programmer to appreciate it (the examples are in C#, but could just as easily be in any other OO language), but if you're turned off by C#, look for the earlier edition which, I believe, uses C++ for the examples.
Also, The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas should be on every programmer's bookshelf.
I think you've missed one of the most important points about representative democracy. A representative's job (and in this case I mean both houses of congress and the president) is to know the most he or she possibly can about each issue he or she is to vote on. This is a more than full-time job. I'm a pretty informed voter, but I couldn't possibly be fully informed about every issue that congress and the president face. They usually aren't either, but in the ideal they are better informed than I am. When you vote, you should be voting for the person who you think will do his or her best to stay informed on the issues (or to work with people who are well informed) and will make the best decisions based on that information. That becomes even more true when we get into issues of national security because much of the information required to make informed decisions is classified.
And to respond to the main question of the discussion, I'm pretty committed to voting for Obama. I think it's past time to set the divisive issues of the baby-boomer generation behind us and try to move forward in a way that includes the most people possible, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. Obama is far more liberal (I lean more libertarian than any other particular label) than I'd normally be comfortable with. But I think he would be the best leader of any of the candidates (including the ones who have dropped out), and maybe equally importantly, I think he has a strong chance of changing the tone of US politics. And that is something I think we desperately need. I'm disgusted by the idea of 4-8 more years of Clintonian-Rovian "win at all costs and never admit a mistake" politics.
I disagree about getting rid of sports. I hated being forced to participate in sports at the schools I attended, but in retrospect, I'm very glad it happened. As somebody pointed out in an earlier reply, we have a huge problem with obesity in this country. Yes, a large part of it is diet. But sedentary lifestyle is an equally large part. Getting kids interested in actually participating in sports (rather than sitting in front of the TV watching them) is one way to help improve that. I think schools should, if anything, expand physical education programs. But they shouldn't focus quite so strongly on competitive sports. There are plenty of other ways to get out and exercise that aren't so competitive (and will appeal to some for that reason).
I agree 100% on the second point.
And what asshat modded the parent down as Flamebait? I don't agree with the first point, but it is certainly not flamebait!
Do you network all the boxes and just broadcast a remove code? And what do you do when some l33t hax0r starts sending his, unofficial, broadcasts on that network?
Then the emergency vehicles run the same way we do in places where we don't have those systems. We run red lights (legally) with lights and sirens on, but we do it carefully. It might take a little bit longer to get where they're going, but it's not a catastrophic failure.
BTW, if you're wondering about my use of "we", I'm a Maryland EMT.
Er...just as a point of fact, the United States was FAR from the first to use "weapons of mass destruction." Nuclear, yes. But biological warfare was used in Europe way back into the middle ages (and I wouldn't be shocked to hear that it'd been used farther back than that and in other areas too). Chemical weapons were used extensively in the first World War.
There are plenty of decent reasons to sling mud at the US government without people fabricating new (and utterly incorrect) ones.
I agree with you that the guy was an asshole for posting that comment. It was totally out of line. But that is, unfortunately, the kind of immature crap that will crop up frequently on internet boards.
OTOH, I do think it might be better for kids to watch the news in this case. I very clearly remember watching the footage of the Challenger disaster and the subsequent memorial service when I was in third grade. It was heart-breaking, but I wouldn't trade that experience (even as young as I was) for anything.
Just my $0.02.
Hate to ruin your fun, but it's even worse. The soccer moms switched from minivans to SUVs long ago. And to make matters even worse, they usually don't drive the smaller SUVs. I think the prime example of today's soccer mom-mobile is the Ford (found on roadside dead) Expedition.
And if you think soccer moms are bad as a car driver, it's FAR worse when you're on a motorcycle and their stupid mistakes could much more easily kill you. Grrrr....
The emphasis on religion instead of spirituality is fairly strong evidence of your narrow-mindedness. IMO, religion as such is totally meaningless. It exists solely to support spirituality. And I do consider atheism a form of spirituality, but I suppose that's debatable. As for stating who lives or dies, I don't necessarily agree with you. I mean obviously it can't be totally arbitrary, but I believe that God understands that we can't just allow people to get away with murdering almost three thousand people. God takes care of His/Her house; we take care of ours.
While it's true that the PS2 and PSX have far more games than XBox, it's not nearly as interesting a comparison as that between XBox and GC because XBox and GC were released at the same time. The PS2 has years on both of them, so it's no shock it has far more games and is more entrenched. And I agree that game quality and quantity is the #1 factor (and that quality isn't necessarily defined by platform quality). But I'd argue that XBox already has games in at least two genres that are as good as or better than anything that PS2 has to offer (note that I have XBox, PS2, GC, and Dreamcast). I'd say Halo and Rallisport Challenge are both killer apps that are not currently available for any other platform (and I don't usually like driving games OR console FPS games).
PS2 still has a big lead, but as 2nd and 3rd generation XBox games start to come out utilizing the full potential of the XBox hardware, I think PS2's going to start showing its age more and more.
That is based on the assumption that Microsoft will eventually stop trying to compete on price because it will cost them too much money. As a result, the XBox would not be too popular (because nobody would buy them because they cost so much), and there'd be nobody "clamoring for the XBox 2." It looks to me like Microsoft is willing to do just about anything to make sure that the XBox succeeds. That means taking as big a loss as necessary on the units. And yes, for the moment that's a losing proposition. But it also means that the XBox continues to compete for console sales. As for games, Microsoft can throw enough money at their own game development studios and at 3rd party developers that there'll be no shortage of games available. In fact, go take a look at the XBox game racks next to the GameCube racks today and you'll see a pretty impressive diference. Now, the console market is somewhat unpredictable, so it's still possible that the XBox just won't catch on (the Dreamcast was a great console and had quite a few great games, but it still died). In which case there will be no demand for XBox 2 and Microsoft will have to write off the whole damned thing. But it is by no means a foregone conclusion as the article seems to suggest. My suspicion is that the XBox platform will be a success (if not the screaming success that Microsoft was hoping for).
You go after the actual copyright violators. Target the particularly egregious ones first. But don't restrict the rights of the common law-abinding citizen in order to stop the few criminals. That's just stupid. Gun control has the same problem. Despite the fact that the VAST majority of crimes are comitted with guns that are NOT legally owned, the leftists want to go after law-abiding legal gun owners.
When it comes down to it, it's not the government's perogative to stop people from engaging in perfectly legitimate legal activities just because those activities can be used to commit crimes. Punish the criminals once they commit the crimes. Don't punish the law-abiding citizen who just wants to enjoy his or her hobby.
The upshot of all this is that it is not my responsibility to sacrifice rights just to make the jobs of law-enforcement personnel or copyright holders easier.
That might be a kinda funky poll. You'd have to allow people to pick more than one. I, for example, use all of the above. Though if I had to pick one, I'd probably pick Mac OS X.
Which, unfortunately, means that these are no diferent from the previous crop of file trading utilities. They're just as vulnerable to RIAA legal bludgeoning as everybody else. It's a pretty cool idea to keep it strictly legit and legal (ie no trading of copyrighted content), but they'll just turn into another incarnation of the file trading services that are being systematically dismantled by the RIAA.
I'm just wondering how they actually control the content of their network. If they really are just trading legitimate live recordings, then I don't really see how the RIAA could touch them. But I don't know how they can keep people from trading standard album recordings that will get them in [more] trouble with the RIAA.
If they do somehow control it, it'll be interesting to see how the RIAA reacts to this.
Which is probably one of the reasons why Public Domain was specified as an alternate option. But the fact is that there's no great drawback to having to acknowledge the original author, and--as you pointed out--it is the intellectually honest thing to do, so why not allow the BSD license to be an option here? Even Microsoft is perfectly happy to use BSD-licensed code. So the author got paid to do the work. That doesn't really make them any less the author. Or if you really want, maybe they could use a modified version of the BSD license that allows the party paying for the software (in this case the government) to be the credited source (I haven't read the BSD licence, maybe this is already allowed). Anyway, you get my point.
Actually, it was Jobs' return that really killed the Cloning industry. At the time it drove me away from macs for several years. I had a dual-processor Umax clone back then. It was a great machine. After Steve killed cloning, I didn't buy another mac until the Cube. I was pretty pissed. It seemed really stupid.
Now I'm not so sure. I think that the big thing for Apple right now is features that add value to their hardware. All these things like cool cases and nice free software are just icing. And that's kinda the idea. Apple just needs to get people to realize that they're not really losing anything (unless they're hardcore gamers) by using a Mac instead of a PC.
Holding on to the hardware business for their OS has allowed Apple to decide the direction of the entire Mac industry. That could be a disaster, but in this case it's turned out pretty well. Back in the day, Apple pretty much drove the wide-spread adoption of USB with the original iMac. The reason they could do that was that they had total control of their platform. They could go out on a limb and force those who wanted to support the Mac to follow. In doing so they create enough momentum to pull the rest of the computer industry.
Ingeresting...I didn't really agree with this, but it doesn't look much more like flamebait than any other post expressing an opinion. Well, maybe meta-mod will get it...
Thing is, Enron didn't really get that much government protection. What they really wanted was a government bailout like the airlines got. And isn't it interesting that Tom Daschle's wife is a major lobyist for an airline? Just a thought. Anyway, Enron was going for the same thing. They didn't get it (sucks not to have Dasch-hole's wife on your side, doesn't it).
I do agree that there should be some sort of investigation into the fraud issue. I think there probably will be, though. That remains to be seen.
No...it is not. The idea of a "government-sponsored monopoly is anathema to the free market. The whole idea of a free market is that the government keeps its dirty hands OUT of the market. No sponsoring business. No squashing it with excessive tax burden. This doesn't seem to difficult to understand.
Anyway, to get back to my response to your post, I generally agree with you. I just wanted to point out that I think there's another class of mac user who you're overlooking.
Sorry to contradict, but you won't see Sony doing that any time soon. They're a major force in the RIAA through their record label.
Yeah, but what this misses is the whole Digital Hub philosophy. And no, that's not just the latest marketing catch-phrase. Apple seems to have remembered that the idea behind computers is to make all our lives easier and more enjoyable. They're trying to do it by streamlining things that we already do (or would like to do but didn't feel like dealing with the hastle). And I think they do a fantastic job of it with their Digital Hub software/hardware. I have an iPod and I think it's great. Jobs wasn't just blowing smoke when he quoted all the reviews saying it's the best digital music player ever. And the integration with iTunes is not a small part of that. iTunes is an extremely easy to use, yet flexible app. The integration with iPod is seamless. The iMovie tutorial I did was pretty cool, and I can't wait to play with it when I actually have some video I want to mess with. I haven't used iDVD yet (probably won't happen until I make my iMovies). I can't wait to use iPhoto. One of the reasons I don't use my digital camera much is that it's just so much of a hastle actually making anything of the images I take. Sure, I can drag and drop them onto my Wintel machine and then I can edit them with some other utility. But iPhoto appears to share one of the greatest features of iTunes...its library function. Sure, functionally it's not a whole lot different from what you can normally get from the filesystem. But it does add a LOT more convenience and accessibility.
Right now Apple's concentrating more on useability and convenience than sheer power. And at the moment, that's most of what I'm looking for. Yeah, I'll probably always keep a Wintel machine to play games on. But to an increasing degree, that's ALL i'm doing on Wintel. The user experience on the Macs is hard to leave behind. And that's really where Apple's adding the value. Not simply in the basic power of the hardware. Though the hardware isn't all that bad either (especially when "Velocity Engine" comes into play).
" People need to realize that MBs and BMWs are in the shop as often, or more often, than new Fords or Chevys."
:-P). Obviously he takes it in for routine maintenance, but that's it. I don't think Ford (fix or replace daily) can even come close to that record.
In what world? My father has had MBs for the last 15 years, and I can't think of a single time he has had it in the shop for a malfunction that wasn't driver caused (IE backing into my 4-Runner
The battery thing is a pretty big issue. I have an Ipaq too and I love the thing. But at least once every 2-3 weeks I lose all my data (except contacts for some reason) because I let the battery get discharged. I thought the whole idea with PDA's was to use SRAM so that losing power doesn't kill your data! And the discharge rate when it's off is pretty bad. It only takes 1-2 weeks of no use for everything to be zapped. And that includes any software that didn't come with the device. I think that's a huge pain in the ass. If the battery lasted a bit longer, it wouldn't be so bad because I'd be a lot more likely to recharge the bugger. And why does it keep your contacts, but not things like owner information? Or calendar and to-do list? That seems pretty arbitrary to me.