This is all great and everything but if we're going to be spending time and money chasing a very likely pipe dream I would much rather they get cracking on those personal teleporters.
I have a fantasy where I leave for work at 8:00AM and get to work right on time at exactly 8:00AM. That would be the ticket. Gimmie something that will enable me to sleep in later in the morning and get to work without sitting in traffic and tossing a bunch of pollution in the air.
Imagine the changes something like that would bring to the world. Hell even if they never got to a point where you could teleport living things but only inanimate objects that would be something. Zero transportation costs would do an number on both prices and pollution.
You make an excellent point and one I can say describes my MCSE perfectly. I got the thing because they decided where I work that without one we just wouldn't have what it took to do our jobs even though we were already doing them with no complaints.
So they spent a bunch of money, which I and every other member of our IT department would have spent on something useful if it had been up to us, on some of those shake and bake MCSE classes and sent us off to take them one at a time. The only good thing in the entire deal was that the price of the tests was included but the classes didn't prepare you for the tests, much less the actual work.
I ended up borrowing some MCSE "Dummies" books and learned more from those than I did listening to someone pimp Microsoft products for days on end. Granted what I learned was only how to get by a test but at least it accomplished that and I got to keep my job.
The end result is that I'm no better or worse from having the damned thing.
You might not owe anyone a free lunch granted (I'm a Mac user and I certainly don't want anyone to take me to lunch for buying a Mac, other than Steve Jobs maybe - that dude owes me one) but you aren't going to help the cause of Linux/UNIX on the desktop by accusing people newly arrived at your part of jumping on the bandwagon.
You want to displace MS on the desktop then you have to be more accepting of new arrivals in your camp.
I'm trying like all hell to get an XServe in here. I probably pimp that puppy three times a day but to no avail. It's just not that simple.
One thing you have to take into account is that the 100% Windows shops are not a new thing and have been around long enough to become very closed in their thinking. Where I work we have four people involved in IT support for a total of 300 users. Out of those four people three of them have Macs at home and use them. One, myself, actually brought a Mac from home to use at work. The problem in our case isn't about trying to get the machine considered by the IT folks. It goes higher than that.
The PHB's are the ones who have been listening to our predecessors and marketing sluts for years and who have had this "standardize on Windows" drivel pounded into their heads. Hell it's the only reason I even HAVE my MCSE. Because someone higher up than myself decided I needed one to be effective at my job.
Troll yes, no doubt about it. I actually had some time on my hands and decided to read the page that this shaved ape's link pointed to. My short review for anyone curious but not curious enough to click the link follows:
Typical paranoid pseudo-educational babble that follows the usual course of starting out sounding reasonable and then trying to gently convince the reader that the rest of the article that follows is also reasonable.
Actual content is nothing more than a large pile of facts about the religous beliefs of a number of people who are near the top of a large number of media outlets but who in reality only show an equal amount of greed to others in similar positions with different religous and racial backgrounds.
Ever notice that you never see anyone with a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger and a brain like Albert Einstein talking up "White Superiority"? It's always some moron who's inferior to pretty much every other life form on the planet trying to convince you that he's a member of the master race.
Forget about being ashamed of being in the same race with these losers. I'm embarrassed to be in the same species with them.
When are these guys going to learn that this is a game in which they are hopelessly outclassed. This bill, if it makes it into law, is going to only provide more reason for people to advance the science of getting around them.
The media fires another shot and the technology gets pushed farther forward by it. Their enemies (or customers depending on how you look at it) are always going to be one step ahead of them in this fight.
It's not that different from the situation faced by the rest of the software world trying to maintain compatibility with Microsoft in order to eek out a living in the software industry. No matter how good you or your products are you are always reduced to playing catch up when they move "forward". It's only reversed here.
When you are big and powerful you are also often slow and easy to see. When you are small and weak you have the advantage of often being quicker and easier to overlook.
I fail to see the reason Macs are gay. Now granted the "Flower Power" model was less masculine than one would want but overall I find my Quicksilver to be pretty much inconsequential to my sexual preferences.
Could be you are meaning that the Mac itself is gay. I have seen no proof of this to date. Not once in the year I have owned the Mac have I come into my computer room to find my Quicksilver mounting my Beige G3 in sweaty, hairy arousal.
On the other hand my wife has a Toshiba laptop that came with XP on it and I'm pretty sure it smokes ass when no one is around.
I mean, Printer port? Gimmie a break. They should have just gone ahead and lost the PS/2's for the mouse AND the Serial ports while they were at it. For that matter I'd like to see one of these without the plate for a floppy and with a cover for the CDROM bay that kept the front panel looking nice. Kind of like the CDROM drive door on the PowerMac. That would have been really nice.
You completely miss the point. The users are going to have complete access to 95% of the net. It will be the 95% that's mostly crap you couldn't care less about and it will be hand picked by the "powers that be" for you to see. You will get everything handed to you with cute little keywords and plenty of advertising around the edges. Content will be generic and come at a price. And of course it will all flow merrily to you through your friends at Microsoft.
The problem for "the users" will be in trying to take a look at the 5% that makes a difference. That will be the content that has merit and mostly resembles what you are accustomed to being able to find easily enough today.
Right now you can see it with no trouble. Before long you'll have to use something other than IE to get to it. Eventually though I can see a point where you have to change to an alternative OS to get to it. That's when things get interesting because then you have to ask yourself how long you have before the line gets drawn at your hardware.
It's cool though because it's all to make sure your computing world (brought to you by MSPepsi Cola!) is safe and secure.
Hope you are right though about the "gamble huge and lose it all" part. People love freedom I agree. A lot of those who love it couldn't spot one of their freedoms being taken away to save their lives though and I wouldn't even begin to put falling for this past the "silent majority".
It's becoming harder and harder every year to insult the intelligence of the average American. By 2006 it's probably going to be impossible.
...I would be forced to assume that the second of your choices is correct since we are talking about a man who has been "trying very hard to bring such predictions about" for over a decade.
This was bound to happen. Hell, NT5 came real close and I figure that if we somehow manage to survive NT6 then there's no way on earth that NT7 is going to be survivable.
I think you are being overly pessimistic about the platform personally. I "grew up" in the computer sense with a serious bias against any computer I didn't put together myself. I am well aware of the massive advantages to being able to buy a pile of parts and make a computer out of it. The flexibility is astounding and your path to upgrading is admittedly unequaled. You can trod along one part at a time and keep pace with what's new at your own pace. It's sweet and it beats any offering from HPaq, Dell, or anyone else selling pre-built machines including Apple.
I recently ditched the PC platform completely for a new PowerMac after spending some time with an older Beige G3 which I was easily able to upgrade nearly to the extent that I used to upgrade my clone boxes. On that Beige G3 I was able to add a faster processor (from 233 to 500Mhz), some commodity RAM to bring it up to 368MB, a better video card, a CD-Burner, and an IDE hard drive. It now runs OSX very quickly and it makes a great box for Office apps and a few games. Granted even with the video card upgrade it's not up to some of the heavier titles but it runs most of what I want to do without a hitch.
Granted I'm not going to be able to go out and replace the motherboard with a new one but I challenge anyone outside of a "true" clone owner to do the same thing. When you get that replacement board from Dell that lets you upgrade your old Dimension Pentium 200 to a P4 2.5Ghz let me know. On the other hand the board might be in there forever but I can get a G4 processor that will go on it if I so choose. You won't be able to find a Dell from 1997 that you can similarly upgrade to a Pentium II, III or 4.
The point is that yes, it is less upgradable than your average home built PC but it's far more upgradable than any commercial offering.
I bought my new PowerMac G4 2x1Gig with that in mind and so I agreed to trade some of my ability to upgrade the machine for what I have found to be a stable and still pretty darned flexible platform. When the time comes I'll be adding the better video card and faster hard drives, RAM, and faster processor. Yeah they'll cost a little more than if I was buying for a PC but they will be there. In the meantime I'll be enjoying stability that easily exceeds anything from Microsoft, a UI that makes the desktop offerings for Linux seem pitiful, and getting some work done which is why I have a computer in the first place.
It hardly seems to be "welded shut hardware" from where I'm sitting.
No it's not mandatory but it will be if we all sit there and accept it. Possibly that's already been covered by another reply to your post but it's worth repeating. If we buy the stuff that's been neutered this way then we won't have anyone else to blame but ourselves when the inevitable happens.
Slashdot Mirror
This is all great and everything but if we're going to be spending time and money chasing a very likely pipe dream I would much rather they get cracking on those personal teleporters.
I have a fantasy where I leave for work at 8:00AM and get to work right on time at exactly 8:00AM. That would be the ticket. Gimmie something that will enable me to sleep in later in the morning and get to work without sitting in traffic and tossing a bunch of pollution in the air.
Imagine the changes something like that would bring to the world. Hell even if they never got to a point where you could teleport living things but only inanimate objects that would be something. Zero transportation costs would do an number on both prices and pollution.
If I had made that statement I would have posted it anonymously too.
Though it was funny.
Give me the Penis Mightier for $500
Why not follow your convictions fully and go ahead and move somewhere else now?
Yeah, you might be right but it's the closest thing to it that you're going to get a lot of people to buy and that should pretty much cinch the deal.
You make an excellent point and one I can say describes my MCSE perfectly. I got the thing because they decided where I work that without one we just wouldn't have what it took to do our jobs even though we were already doing them with no complaints.
So they spent a bunch of money, which I and every other member of our IT department would have spent on something useful if it had been up to us, on some of those shake and bake MCSE classes and sent us off to take them one at a time. The only good thing in the entire deal was that the price of the tests was included but the classes didn't prepare you for the tests, much less the actual work.
I ended up borrowing some MCSE "Dummies" books and learned more from those than I did listening to someone pimp Microsoft products for days on end. Granted what I learned was only how to get by a test but at least it accomplished that and I got to keep my job.
The end result is that I'm no better or worse from having the damned thing.
You might not owe anyone a free lunch granted (I'm a Mac user and I certainly don't want anyone to take me to lunch for buying a Mac, other than Steve Jobs maybe - that dude owes me one) but you aren't going to help the cause of Linux/UNIX on the desktop by accusing people newly arrived at your part of jumping on the bandwagon.
You want to displace MS on the desktop then you have to be more accepting of new arrivals in your camp.
I'm trying like all hell to get an XServe in here. I probably pimp that puppy three times a day but to no avail. It's just not that simple.
One thing you have to take into account is that the 100% Windows shops are not a new thing and have been around long enough to become very closed in their thinking. Where I work we have four people involved in IT support for a total of 300 users. Out of those four people three of them have Macs at home and use them. One, myself, actually brought a Mac from home to use at work. The problem in our case isn't about trying to get the machine considered by the IT folks. It goes higher than that.
The PHB's are the ones who have been listening to our predecessors and marketing sluts for years and who have had this "standardize on Windows" drivel pounded into their heads. Hell it's the only reason I even HAVE my MCSE. Because someone higher up than myself decided I needed one to be effective at my job.
Oh you weren't being a nitpicking asshole at all. I was replying to one of the replies to your post. The one who stated that Macs were gay.
Simple miscommunication. Imagine that happening on Slashdot? Who would have thunk it could happen?
Troll yes, no doubt about it. I actually had some time on my hands and decided to read the page that this shaved ape's link pointed to. My short review for anyone curious but not curious enough to click the link follows:
Typical paranoid pseudo-educational babble that follows the usual course of starting out sounding reasonable and then trying to gently convince the reader that the rest of the article that follows is also reasonable.
Actual content is nothing more than a large pile of facts about the religous beliefs of a number of people who are near the top of a large number of media outlets but who in reality only show an equal amount of greed to others in similar positions with different religous and racial backgrounds.
Ever notice that you never see anyone with a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger and a brain like Albert Einstein talking up "White Superiority"? It's always some moron who's inferior to pretty much every other life form on the planet trying to convince you that he's a member of the master race.
Forget about being ashamed of being in the same race with these losers. I'm embarrassed to be in the same species with them.
That was an outstanding take on the entire mess this will become. And funny too.
When are these guys going to learn that this is a game in which they are hopelessly outclassed. This bill, if it makes it into law, is going to only provide more reason for people to advance the science of getting around them.
The media fires another shot and the technology gets pushed farther forward by it. Their enemies (or customers depending on how you look at it) are always going to be one step ahead of them in this fight.
It's not that different from the situation faced by the rest of the software world trying to maintain compatibility with Microsoft in order to eek out a living in the software industry. No matter how good you or your products are you are always reduced to playing catch up when they move "forward". It's only reversed here.
When you are big and powerful you are also often slow and easy to see. When you are small and weak you have the advantage of often being quicker and easier to overlook.
I fail to see the reason Macs are gay. Now granted the "Flower Power" model was less masculine than one would want but overall I find my Quicksilver to be pretty much inconsequential to my sexual preferences.
Could be you are meaning that the Mac itself is gay. I have seen no proof of this to date. Not once in the year I have owned the Mac have I come into my computer room to find my Quicksilver mounting my Beige G3 in sweaty, hairy arousal.
On the other hand my wife has a Toshiba laptop that came with XP on it and I'm pretty sure it smokes ass when no one is around.
I mean, Printer port? Gimmie a break. They should have just gone ahead and lost the PS/2's for the mouse AND the Serial ports while they were at it. For that matter I'd like to see one of these without the plate for a floppy and with a cover for the CDROM bay that kept the front panel looking nice. Kind of like the CDROM drive door on the PowerMac. That would have been really nice.
Might want to think about walking away from the computer, going outside, getting the paper, and looking through the classifieds.
They got these things called jobs.
You completely miss the point. The users are going to have complete access to 95% of the net. It will be the 95% that's mostly crap you couldn't care less about and it will be hand picked by the "powers that be" for you to see. You will get everything handed to you with cute little keywords and plenty of advertising around the edges. Content will be generic and come at a price. And of course it will all flow merrily to you through your friends at Microsoft.
The problem for "the users" will be in trying to take a look at the 5% that makes a difference. That will be the content that has merit and mostly resembles what you are accustomed to being able to find easily enough today.
Right now you can see it with no trouble. Before long you'll have to use something other than IE to get to it. Eventually though I can see a point where you have to change to an alternative OS to get to it. That's when things get interesting because then you have to ask yourself how long you have before the line gets drawn at your hardware.
It's cool though because it's all to make sure your computing world (brought to you by MSPepsi Cola!) is safe and secure.
Hope you are right though about the "gamble huge and lose it all" part. People love freedom I agree. A lot of those who love it couldn't spot one of their freedoms being taken away to save their lives though and I wouldn't even begin to put falling for this past the "silent majority".
It's becoming harder and harder every year to insult the intelligence of the average American. By 2006 it's probably going to be impossible.
...I would be forced to assume that the second of your choices is correct since we are talking about a man who has been "trying very hard to bring such predictions about" for over a decade.
I would have preferred to see something along the lines of "Motorola partners with Apple to bring you the 2.4Ghz G5".
Games are cool and all but I want Motorola to get off their collective asses and get with the faster CPU making.
This was bound to happen. Hell, NT5 came real close and I figure that if we somehow manage to survive NT6 then there's no way on earth that NT7 is going to be survivable.
And yeah it's bashing Windows. If the shoe fits.
I think you are being overly pessimistic about the platform personally. I "grew up" in the computer sense with a serious bias against any computer I didn't put together myself. I am well aware of the massive advantages to being able to buy a pile of parts and make a computer out of it. The flexibility is astounding and your path to upgrading is admittedly unequaled. You can trod along one part at a time and keep pace with what's new at your own pace. It's sweet and it beats any offering from HPaq, Dell, or anyone else selling pre-built machines including Apple.
I recently ditched the PC platform completely for a new PowerMac after spending some time with an older Beige G3 which I was easily able to upgrade nearly to the extent that I used to upgrade my clone boxes. On that Beige G3 I was able to add a faster processor (from 233 to 500Mhz), some commodity RAM to bring it up to 368MB, a better video card, a CD-Burner, and an IDE hard drive. It now runs OSX very quickly and it makes a great box for Office apps and a few games. Granted even with the video card upgrade it's not up to some of the heavier titles but it runs most of what I want to do without a hitch.
Granted I'm not going to be able to go out and replace the motherboard with a new one but I challenge anyone outside of a "true" clone owner to do the same thing. When you get that replacement board from Dell that lets you upgrade your old Dimension Pentium 200 to a P4 2.5Ghz let me know. On the other hand the board might be in there forever but I can get a G4 processor that will go on it if I so choose. You won't be able to find a Dell from 1997 that you can similarly upgrade to a Pentium II, III or 4.
The point is that yes, it is less upgradable than your average home built PC but it's far more upgradable than any commercial offering.
I bought my new PowerMac G4 2x1Gig with that in mind and so I agreed to trade some of my ability to upgrade the machine for what I have found to be a stable and still pretty darned flexible platform. When the time comes I'll be adding the better video card and faster hard drives, RAM, and faster processor. Yeah they'll cost a little more than if I was buying for a PC but they will be there. In the meantime I'll be enjoying stability that easily exceeds anything from Microsoft, a UI that makes the desktop offerings for Linux seem pitiful, and getting some work done which is why I have a computer in the first place.
It hardly seems to be "welded shut hardware" from where I'm sitting.
No it's not mandatory but it will be if we all sit there and accept it. Possibly that's already been covered by another reply to your post but it's worth repeating. If we buy the stuff that's been neutered this way then we won't have anyone else to blame but ourselves when the inevitable happens.
Mac's can't be upgraded?
Do you actually know what a Mac is?
We aren't expecting you to "take up the slack" for us poor Mac users. We're asking you to get off your ass and keep up.
Kick ass, I said I would be redundant and I am.
Now I'm going to say I'm a billionaire and that I drove a Ferrari to work.
Can I be moderated to instant wealth and happiness please?
Going to go ahead and be redundant and say that I saw this story somewhere else not too long ago... ...Oh yeah, it was here!
So "bug PNG" is not a good alternative to JPG. But what about plain old PNG? Maybe that would work with fewer bugs and stuff?