Someone might ridicule (and condemn) you for exactly the opposite -- being obsessed with privacy.
I won't condemn anyone for it, but I'll definitely ridicule some of the chicken-littles here wear their paranoia like a badge of honor. I take some measures to ensure my privacy, but I'm not about to waste my time and energy worrying about the possibility that someone somewhere someday might want to track down what web sites I've visited. Sure, some of them would be embarassing, but I'm man enough to live with some embarassment. Maybe someday some of these sites will be incriminating, but I'm not going to restrict myself just because of something that might happen. Down that road lies total paralysis.
I used to live like that when I was younger: fearing that someone would discover that I'm gay, and taking elaborate measures to keep that secret, including the "anonymizing" and "encryption" technology of the day (e.g. giving people a fake name, going to a gay bar in another city, having magazines mailed to me in a sturdy plain brown wrapper). That's no way to live. I resolved almost 20 years ago that I wasn't going to let anyone force me into hiding... and along with countless other people coming out of the closet along the way, it's become a lot safer for anyone to live an openly gay life. That's how you regain freedom: by asserting it. And I think it's kinda sad how quickly so many people are scurrying into the shadows instead, out of fear. (A bit like the American public's willingness to trade freedom for "security" over the past five years, I suppose.) If your safety is dependent on keys (whether cryptographic or physical), you don't have real freedom.
Slimy Defense Attorney: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution has told you that my client the defendant ran over the deceased several times. But my client has knee injury and cannot run, let alone run over a person. And the deceased was covered by tire tracks, not footprints. The prosecution is obviously lying!"
Weary District Attorney: "As the jury obviously understood, I meant that the ran over the deceased with his car."
The main problem with OS 9 as a web appliance is the same one his i-Opener has: the software's getting out of date. The only web browser for OS 9 that's been updated in recent memory is iCab, and the Flash and Acrobat plug-ins for OS 9 are stalled a couple versions back.
Because they're adequate, and they're dirt cheap. I thought it was self-evident that something faster and newer might work also.
...There's so much you can do with a computer, why stick to the basic "use this to get on teh internets"?
Because that's what he asked for? Just because you get all hot and moist about all the great things you can do with a computer doesn't mean everyone does, and this kind of unable-to-listen gadget shoving is really obnoxious. The poster asked for something for a guy who's otherwise happy with an internet appliance. So give Dad what he wants, not what you think he should have. If the poster wants advice for how to turn Dad into podcast-aggregating DVD-authoring vlogger, I'll give him tips for that, but it's not what he asked for.
The "internet appliance" market has been a bust. Many have tried it but WebTV was the only one to have any success. It's because full-featured computers (even running Windows) aren't that much harder to use than the single-function machines. There's probably also some stigma to using an appliance because it implies that you're too stupid to use a "real" computer. And ultimately, because all the appliances have crashed and burned in the market, you have to give up on them get "real".
At the college where I do tech support we have a number of instructors (especially the older ones) who are not technologically inclined, but they need to do their grading on our web site, so they need a device that runs a modern web browser supported by our portal software. We're an art school, so we have a bunch of old G3-powered iMacs sitting around, and that's what we give them. Install OS X on them (they'll all run Panther; the oldest ones can install Tiger using a utility called XPostFacto), set it to auto-run Safari or Firefox when the machine starts, and voila: a generally trouble-free web browsing system in a friendly-looking package. Even a leisurely 233MHz G3 is fast enough and 128-256MB RAM should be plenty for web browsing. (Bump it to 320 or more if you want to also install NeoOffice.)
You didn't say why you'd eliminated a Mac as an option, and this pretty much meets your requirements. Yes, OS X does have a Software Update app that periodically prompts the user to install the latest security fixes and requires him to click some license agreements for them, but if you have to disable that to avoid confusing/annoying Dad or because he's on a slow dial-up line, it'll probably be OK (certainly moreso than an un-updated Windows machine). Firefox's updates might be annoying but they're quick and easy. An iMac isn't instant-on (especially not a G3), but if you let it Sleep instead of shutting it down it will be.
our President and executive branch has said to hell with checks and balances, and _IS_ controlling the country.
Of course the reason he's able to do that is because the general public want him to. Deep down, the American people want a monarchy and an aristocracy. It's why we elect politicians' brothers, wives, and sons after they die, retire, or (in modern times) get term-limited, and it's why we attach so much pomp and power to the presidency. This isn't something new to George W. Bush; it dates back to the days of John Q. Adams (our first hereditary president).
Although a fully-functional free MS-DOS clone isn't nearly as useful as it would have been 10 or more years ago, there are still uses for DOS today. For example, Symantec licenses PC-DOS from IBM for Ghost to make boot disks with. The one successful commercial clone of MS-DOS (DR-DOS), has apparently found a niche market as a mature, well-documented OS for embedded systems (not phones, obviously). Imagine putting FreeDOS in ROM on a motherboard as a last-resort boot device, along with some diagnostic tools. To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written (WordPerfect 5.1) on cast-off hardware.:)
They're not sexist. They're just clueless about women, and therefore afraid of them, so they latch onto old-fashioned sexism as a worldview in which people like them didn't have to deal with their inadequacies. It's kind of like the people who buy into racist propaganda because they can't get a job: it offers them the promise of solving all their problems... instead of forcing them to acknowledge that the problems are their own.
Given the fact that you say "every" relationship you have with a woman becomes eroticized (which is not true of most men, by the way), the reason she reacts differently to you than the guys do is probably because... you've already eroticised the relationship.
By the way, having both men and women in the same workplace is not because of feminism; 75 years ago offices had male bosses and female secretaries, hospitals had male doctors and female nurses, airplanes has male pilots and female flight attendants, restaurants had male chefs and female waitresses, etc. And before that, men and women worked together on farms, etc. No one called it "mental abuse" (though of course women did call being stuck in those jobs "unfair"). If you think it is, then in all sincerity, I really would suggest seeking professional help. Especially since the integrated workplace isn't going away any time soon.
I've also known people who prefer watching others play games...
Such as the entire viewing audience of ESPN, 99% of whom haven't touched a ball of any kind since they were in school. Personally, I don't see the appeal (spectator sports bore me to tears), but evidently there are a lot of people who will happily settle for vicarious play rather than participate in an actual activity or game. It shouldn't be too surprising if that holds true for virtual activities as well.
If its an advertisement, designed to sell macs, why didn't they make sure it would display on everything else in common use today? Targetting a winderz user and his box is still targetting the majority platform...
They display on Macs, Windows, and (most importantly) tee-vees. That pretty well sums up "everything else in common use today".
...but the guys who actually use this stuff for gainfull employment production output, could well be useing a linux box running xara-lx.
Who cares? People using that program are a tiny market, and they're not who these adverts are aimed at. Go find a Mac or a Windows box or a television and actually watch the freakin' ads, and you'll see that they are not in the least bit intended to convince any of the dozens of people in the population you're talking about to buy a Mac. They're aimed at a population which stands to actually make Apple some money: the millions of people who buy computers for their homes.
Um... their target audience for these ads is people running Windows on their PCs, not Linux. If they were targeting Linux users, they'd talk about how OS X has better media-content support, and present the adverts in... I don't know... vanilla MPEG format, so we could all see them.
The terrorist attacks worked. We're terrorized. We don't want to die. We don't want others to die. Now we're being overly vigilant. It sucks. What can we do?
Get over it. Instead of quivering like a 7-year-old because some national father figure says that we all need to be afraid of everything now, evaluate the situation for yourself and assess just how "terrorized" you really need to be. On a long soul-searching walk on September 12, I decided that I wasn't going to be afraid. Not of flying. Not of Arabs. Not of Muslims. Not of tall buildings. Not of anything that I wasn't afraid of on September 10. I wrote an essay that went into a little more depth about it (published by the local metro newspaper the following week), but the basic point was: I don't want to live in fear, and I won't. Granted, I do still struggle with certain fears... of being hit by a car on my bike, of my mom having a cancer relapse, of global warming, of losing my job... of things that have some statistically signficant chance of happening. But I won't let fear lead me to restrict my own freedom, and I don't think we as a society should allow it to restrict our collective freedom to the point that crap like this happens.
The problem is that our governmnets are responding to terrorism by promoting hysteria instead. It sounds like every airline and government employee in this incident shut off their common sense and overreacted, responding not to the actual situation (some online gamer loses his iPod in the toilet), but to an imagined worst-case scenario (a baby-raping racist cyberterrorist has rigged a bomb to explode in an airplane lavatory). If an individual behaved in this manner, he'd be diagnosed as psychotic; why do we excuse it when a government does?
Does "supervised release" mean that he'll have to go back and live with his parents, who'll check on him every hour to make sure he isn't surfing porn, downloading pirated movies, or trying to take down the internet?
Like most geeks of a certain age, I cut my coding teeth on BASIC, which in its traditional implementations (TRS-80, Apple ][, C64) was nicely interactive, but probably too boringly textual for Kids These Days.® Don't know how the "modern" versions of it compare.
Logo became available to me after I was "too advanced" for it, but certainly deserves a look as the "other" classical language for introductory programming.
The point? You're completely missing it as well. Evaluating your job-worthiness by simulating real-world problem-solving situations (e.g. vague specs) is not malicious, sneaky, etc. It's a way to weed out the under-qualified and make sure you get someone who can do more than crank out code. If this works against you... that's not the employer's fault.
By calling someone an "idiot" when he's just pretending to have low standards, you've demonstrated that you're completely unqualified for most jobs that involve working with other people. But go ahead and keep throwing geek tantrums. If it means I don't have to deal with someone with an overinflated sense of their own worth and a crippled ability to get along with other people, then I'll be happy to cross your name off the list and give you the "You're highly skilled, but we found someone who is a better match for our needs" letter.
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I used to live like that when I was younger: fearing that someone would discover that I'm gay, and taking elaborate measures to keep that secret, including the "anonymizing" and "encryption" technology of the day (e.g. giving people a fake name, going to a gay bar in another city, having magazines mailed to me in a sturdy plain brown wrapper). That's no way to live. I resolved almost 20 years ago that I wasn't going to let anyone force me into hiding... and along with countless other people coming out of the closet along the way, it's become a lot safer for anyone to live an openly gay life. That's how you regain freedom: by asserting it. And I think it's kinda sad how quickly so many people are scurrying into the shadows instead, out of fear. (A bit like the American public's willingness to trade freedom for "security" over the past five years, I suppose.) If your safety is dependent on keys (whether cryptographic or physical), you don't have real freedom.
Oh, no, consumers won't find this confusing at all.
What amazes me is that this pram is going to be faster than the Flash (the fastest man alive)!
Director Joel Schumacher will be recasting the role of Gandalf with a younger actor. Val Kilmer and George Clooney are on the short list.
Ignore the headlines. Read the articles and look at the data. Once you do, you'll start writing alarmed headlines as well.
Weary District Attorney: "As the jury obviously understood, I meant that the ran over the deceased with his car."
The main problem with OS 9 as a web appliance is the same one his i-Opener has: the software's getting out of date. The only web browser for OS 9 that's been updated in recent memory is iCab, and the Flash and Acrobat plug-ins for OS 9 are stalled a couple versions back.
Because that's what he asked for? Just because you get all hot and moist about all the great things you can do with a computer doesn't mean everyone does, and this kind of unable-to-listen gadget shoving is really obnoxious. The poster asked for something for a guy who's otherwise happy with an internet appliance. So give Dad what he wants, not what you think he should have. If the poster wants advice for how to turn Dad into podcast-aggregating DVD-authoring vlogger, I'll give him tips for that, but it's not what he asked for.
The "internet appliance" market has been a bust. Many have tried it but WebTV was the only one to have any success. It's because full-featured computers (even running Windows) aren't that much harder to use than the single-function machines. There's probably also some stigma to using an appliance because it implies that you're too stupid to use a "real" computer. And ultimately, because all the appliances have crashed and burned in the market, you have to give up on them get "real".
At the college where I do tech support we have a number of instructors (especially the older ones) who are not technologically inclined, but they need to do their grading on our web site, so they need a device that runs a modern web browser supported by our portal software. We're an art school, so we have a bunch of old G3-powered iMacs sitting around, and that's what we give them. Install OS X on them (they'll all run Panther; the oldest ones can install Tiger using a utility called XPostFacto), set it to auto-run Safari or Firefox when the machine starts, and voila: a generally trouble-free web browsing system in a friendly-looking package. Even a leisurely 233MHz G3 is fast enough and 128-256MB RAM should be plenty for web browsing. (Bump it to 320 or more if you want to also install NeoOffice.)
You didn't say why you'd eliminated a Mac as an option, and this pretty much meets your requirements. Yes, OS X does have a Software Update app that periodically prompts the user to install the latest security fixes and requires him to click some license agreements for them, but if you have to disable that to avoid confusing/annoying Dad or because he's on a slow dial-up line, it'll probably be OK (certainly moreso than an un-updated Windows machine). Firefox's updates might be annoying but they're quick and easy. An iMac isn't instant-on (especially not a G3), but if you let it Sleep instead of shutting it down it will be.
Although a fully-functional free MS-DOS clone isn't nearly as useful as it would have been 10 or more years ago, there are still uses for DOS today. For example, Symantec licenses PC-DOS from IBM for Ghost to make boot disks with. The one successful commercial clone of MS-DOS (DR-DOS), has apparently found a niche market as a mature, well-documented OS for embedded systems (not phones, obviously). Imagine putting FreeDOS in ROM on a motherboard as a last-resort boot device, along with some diagnostic tools. To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written (WordPerfect 5.1) on cast-off hardware. :)
They're not sexist. They're just clueless about women, and therefore afraid of them, so they latch onto old-fashioned sexism as a worldview in which people like them didn't have to deal with their inadequacies. It's kind of like the people who buy into racist propaganda because they can't get a job: it offers them the promise of solving all their problems... instead of forcing them to acknowledge that the problems are their own.
Given the fact that you say "every" relationship you have with a woman becomes eroticized (which is not true of most men, by the way), the reason she reacts differently to you than the guys do is probably because... you've already eroticised the relationship.
By the way, having both men and women in the same workplace is not because of feminism; 75 years ago offices had male bosses and female secretaries, hospitals had male doctors and female nurses, airplanes has male pilots and female flight attendants, restaurants had male chefs and female waitresses, etc. And before that, men and women worked together on farms, etc. No one called it "mental abuse" (though of course women did call being stuck in those jobs "unfair"). If you think it is, then in all sincerity, I really would suggest seeking professional help. Especially since the integrated workplace isn't going away any time soon.
Who cares? People using that program are a tiny market, and they're not who these adverts are aimed at. Go find a Mac or a Windows box or a television and actually watch the freakin' ads, and you'll see that they are not in the least bit intended to convince any of the dozens of people in the population you're talking about to buy a Mac. They're aimed at a population which stands to actually make Apple some money: the millions of people who buy computers for their homes.
Um... their target audience for these ads is people running Windows on their PCs, not Linux. If they were targeting Linux users, they'd talk about how OS X has better media-content support, and present the adverts in... I don't know... vanilla MPEG format, so we could all see them.
The problem is that our governmnets are responding to terrorism by promoting hysteria instead. It sounds like every airline and government employee in this incident shut off their common sense and overreacted, responding not to the actual situation (some online gamer loses his iPod in the toilet), but to an imagined worst-case scenario (a baby-raping racist cyberterrorist has rigged a bomb to explode in an airplane lavatory). If an individual behaved in this manner, he'd be diagnosed as psychotic; why do we excuse it when a government does?
Does "supervised release" mean that he'll have to go back and live with his parents, who'll check on him every hour to make sure he isn't surfing porn, downloading pirated movies, or trying to take down the internet?
Like most geeks of a certain age, I cut my coding teeth on BASIC, which in its traditional implementations (TRS-80, Apple ][, C64) was nicely interactive, but probably too boringly textual for Kids These Days.® Don't know how the "modern" versions of it compare.
Logo became available to me after I was "too advanced" for it, but certainly deserves a look as the "other" classical language for introductory programming.
I've heard some good things about Toon Talk.
Or there's always BrainFuck.
By calling someone an "idiot" when he's just pretending to have low standards, you've demonstrated that you're completely unqualified for most jobs that involve working with other people. But go ahead and keep throwing geek tantrums. If it means I don't have to deal with someone with an overinflated sense of their own worth and a crippled ability to get along with other people, then I'll be happy to cross your name off the list and give you the "You're highly skilled, but we found someone who is a better match for our needs" letter.