Meh. I never really saw the point of Chrome anyway. Safari works just fine for me. I have it installed, but I only launch it when I need yet another browser so I can have one logged into my Drupal engine as admin and another as anon or a user.
No big deal.. I just won't use chrome.
It's not like we're starving for web browser options. God forbid I only have access to Safari, Firefox, Flock [firefox core], and IE through Parallels. What ever am I doing to do without you Google Chrome??
Lets take the Michael J Fox story that you mentioned as an example. Mr. Limbaugh stated on-air that he thought Michael Fox had exaggerated his Parkinson's symptoms in a political ad, and that he had done so for theatric benefit.
At issue wasn't just Rush accusing Michael J. Fox of misrepresenting himself, it was also the bobbling around making light of a serious illness which will eventually kill Michael J. Fox. It was another asshole move. That's what caught Rush as much grief as anything. The larger problem in my opinion was Rush's typical practice of accusing Fox of essentially lying with zero evidence of any impropriety. Of course, Rush was also 100% wrong in his 'analysis' but I'll get to that in a second.
It was clearly in Fox's best interest to make his disease look as debilitating as possible, and his tremors in the ad were much more pronounced than we usually saw from him.
Well that seems clear cut. I always thought motive was irrefutable proof.
Limbaugh said that he would be the first apologize to Fox if that wasn't the case. But guess what? Rush was right.
Actually he was 100% wrong and he DID appologize.. briefly. More below
Fox later admitted that he purposely skips his medication before public events like this so people will see his worst case symptoms. Here is a video clip of him admitting this.
Nice cut clip. I like how the video ends mid sentence. I like the part where she says he does it on purpose then he says he doesn't do it on purpose.
The disease makes you catatonic. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/parkinsons-disease/DS00295/DSECTION=2
It STARTS with tremors and ticks but Fox has had this for a long time. He's in the phase where he is normally rigid, even to the point where he has trouble swallowing.
Rush said Fox didn't take his medicine so that he would appear out of control. Of course Rush had no idea what he was talking about but that's never stopped him before. On October 26th, Rush 'apologized' for speculating that Fox didn't take his medicine and then immediately stated that he purposefully took too much. Hey, if you throw enough crap at the wall maybe some of it will stick. Fox responded that same night on the CBS Evening News, stating that it's difficult to gauge the correct dosage and that the dosage that day did kick too hard.
The Mayo Clinic article that I quickly found points out the dosage is a moving target..
Your medication needs may change over time, and the drug dosage and timing may require adjustment. For these reasons, you and your doctor will work together to design a program that best suits your needs, especially as the disease progresses.
And of course, pulling slander out of his butt isn't enough. Rush not only knows what M.J. Fox is thinking (well, maybe the 2nd time around) but he also seems to know that the Democrats wrote the tremors into their script.
Here's the kicker. Only Rush can do something and then immediately lie about it, then do it again and still have an audience that doesn't get it. Straight from the pie hole of Rush..
Rush: - there is an irresponsible charge that I was making fun of Michael J. Fox, and that I said Michael J. Fox was faking it. Neither of those two charges have any foundation of truth whatsoever..
Now without looking up the original transcript (though I should) let's give Rush the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn't say the word "faking". He only said Fox intentionally took too much medicine or he was intentionally exaggerating. That's totally different than faking. Of course he then says Fox was totally not faking when he was faking by intentionally overdosing.
Congratulations for being a ditto head. It'd be too much, I'm sure, to realize he's calling you sheep.
Hey dumb ass. Berger destroyed NO documents. None. Zero. So says OUR GOVERNMENT. Thats Our Government under Bush.
Berger had access to all the information he viewed. He was there to reference documents before testifying before congress. Berger was not, however, allowed to remove copies of documents or even take notes that were removed from the archives.
What did Berger really do?
He took notes. He shoved the notes "In my pants". That's his pants pockets.. it was his excuse for why he left with notes. He also viewed printed out ELECTRONIC documents (aka. copies) and left the archives with them. Berger later destroyed the copies by shredding them at his office.
Now, how did Fox News and the rest of the Lunatic Fringe sexy up the story? Berger put them in his pants.. literally, he shoved them down his pants.. Then Fox announces he shoved them in his underwear. Then Fox says on air that Berger put them in his socks. How do you make that jump unless you're completely making shit up? Of course, there was immediately a war cry over Berger shredding documents. Of course, par for the course, he shredded COPIES not the original documents.
Berger was found guilty of being so arrogant that he didn't think the rules applied to him. He had the clearance to view all that material, he just didn't think he should have to do his research in the archives so he put notes in his pockets and printed documents in his briefcase.
Berger DID NOT DESTROY ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. In a July 21 article, Washington Post staff writer Susan Schmidt reported, "The documents that were removed were copies; the National Archives retained the originals."
Berger was found guilty and fined $50000 and his classified access was revoked for 3 years. If Berger destroyed archival documents, do you believe a federal judge would give him back his Classified clearance? I believe that by now, Berger should have his access back.
P.S. WTF does Sandy Berger have to do with the Bush Administration's gross violation of the Presidential Records act? Does that make what they've done LESS ILLEGAL? Oh wait, no it doesn't. They destroyed archival data in direct violation of the law. They removed procedures that were put in place by Clinton's administration to prevent the accidental deletion of email and they put noting in place to prevent the loss of email. If you have forgotten, they've also stated that they used RNC email to conduct business on Whitehouse machines but that Mail is missing too. Use of RNC mail for government matters is also an illegal circumvention of the Presidential records act. Most corrupt government Ever. There are spans of weeks and months where there are Zero emails from various offices in the Executive branch. Bush's administration makes Nixon and his missing 8Minutes look like a childish prank in comparison.
I'm working on a Mac IIx that's still running an Electron Microscope at the end of my building. It has been my professional experience for the last decade+ that Macintoshes stay in service much longer than Windows Computers. We do have some DOS machines running research equipment around too but Macs run in more administrative roles much longer. This is my experience in multiple environments. [almost forgot, I think there is still one Apple ][e running around here, I serviced it 5 years ago when the impact printer failed:-)]
I think you're off target with the environmental issue. Your answer is to keep buying parts, with more packaging over and over to prolong the life of a computer and to toss those old parts over and over.
Here is the reality of your 10 year computer. - components, particularly interfaces, go obsolete. My AMD 754 and 939 boards are obsolete. My AGP system [754] is obsolete. - Obsolete components go up in price. Compare SDR against DDR memory Compare AGP v. PCI-E Video cards - Obsolete components don't receive driver updates. Try running, well just about anything in Vista that isn't brand new. We have people requesting downgrades to XP regularly. - It's human nature for upgraders to push the upgrade cycle. The very nature of computer Builders is to build and tinker with computers. I think we, more than regular users, want to upgrade. I don't need to upgrade my AthlonFX and 7900GS but I'm really tempted by the Nvidia 8800GT and Prescotts.
Obsolete components, software, protocols, buses mean that you end up upgrading more than just one component at a time. Since 1997 (ten years ago), the following has been obsoleted.. often several times: video bus memory standard cpu socket expansion slots video 3d support serial protocols and speeds (serial to usb 1, 1.1, 2, PS2) Parallel ports Game ports Power Supplies/Cases (ATX standards) Optical Removeable Media standards (CD-R +, +-, DVD, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-WR, HD, Blueray) Removable Media standards (Superdisk, Zip 100-250-1GB, MO.. hell even even the old 5" carts).
How many parts have been replaced to upgrade on bit? How many parts, how many times? If you're so into keeping it current, are you still using that crappy beige knuckle cutter case? Just moving to a new CPU can mean new board, new memory, new Video, new keyboard, new mouse, new PS..
I think you'd find that you had a BIG stack of spare parts and a BIG stack of packing materials trying to keep that machine running. Or, you could have bought two nice Macintoshes (or maybe 3 Dells). I've got a First-Gen dual 2.0 G5 in the front office that is still a great machine. It's running OS 10.5 like a champ. Apple will obsolete the PCOSes in a few years but it'll still run on that last version for a while longer. We bought that in the fall of 2003 so it's already over 4 years old and we have done Zero to it other than add memory and an extra drive for data recovery storage of other drives. That machine will be useful for another 4 years barring a major hardware failure. Parts? None in the trash yet. Packing? One case for G5, small packaging for 2 DIMMs and bubblewrap for one OEM SATA drive. I'm as green as can be.
I pretty much agree with Walt on this one. Dell has more options, I'd take the Apple. It should be mentioned, however, that Walt Mossberg is a freaking shill for Apple. I would never use Walt Mossberg as an objective Technical Writer. He's got bias written all over him. Check out Apple's site. It's littered with References to Walt because he never writes anything bad about Apple. He's the anti-Divorak.
I see this a lot in older users, especially the older *nix guys. I just sent someone to LISA and they said 80% of the laptops in most sessions were Macs. I think we geeks, as we mature, just want to get the work done. We don't want to buy a new computer and spend days getting Linux to work on the new hardware when we can unwrap the Mac and start working.
As for me, I started on the Mac and THEN went to Linux and Free-BSD. I'm back to the Mac (and Windows) now though.
I have to call bullshit on that. I've been building machines for a long time and the margins are razor thin these days. I can't build a box for 20% than a vendors price. No way. I would have trouble doing it for the same price.
Of course, you think you can hit the sales.. check the NewEgg daily specials.. and come out the winner, but all I have to do is wait 3 days for the right Dell sale in the small business center and the next thing you know I'm running my dualcore and 20" lcd for $600. Not to mention that I get a warranty.:-) When's the last time you RMA'd a motherboard to a motherboard maker? I don't think I ever got one back in under 3 months (I run an IT shop, we RMA parts).
But, of course, this is about All-In-One form factors. Spec out an All in one for us for 20% less than either model. Remember it must fit the form so you need laptop parts like slim CDROMs. No Riser cards either.. then fabricate a new case around your LCD to hold it all. Let us know what the parts and time cost and we'll figure out what your 20% margin might be. I bet you'll have a great $/hr average.
Apple's own financials have shown extremely strong quarter over quarter sales increases (compared to their own historic sales). Once again, Apple has sold more Macs than ever before. I mention this not to prove overall market share but just to show that Apple's sales are increasing very well, at a rate that other vendors dream about.
That all said, I like Dell. We almost exclusively purchase Dells and Apples (for non-*nix systems). The new Dells are very nice.. well designed, quiet (BTX). We see a pretty low failure rate too and I've got a decent sample. I support, directly or indirectly, roughly 2000 systems. I'm not bashing Dell or propping up Apple, just reporting the figures.:-)
First off, I didn't call anything the standard. I merely pointed out that your numbers are totally wrong, by a factor of roughly 2 1/2 in the U.S. market. I also pointed out that Apple is one of the 5 largest PC makers in the world, 3 largest in the U.S.. You can live in your bubble where Apple doesn't matter but that doesn't make it real. You [in the generic sense, not you] can have my AthlonFX (or my X2) any day before my MacbookPro.
Second, now that you mention it, Yes the iMac is the standard to be measured against. You seem to disagree. What do you think is the All-in-one PC Standard? Is it MPC (who only sells to corporate markets and makes a pretty crappy All-in-one compared to Apple, and who entered years after Apple)? Is it the shitty Gateway with the underclocked CPU and the integrated Graphics (and iMac Looks)? Can you name another All in one other than the iMac or those mentioned by me?
Yes, Apple is the standard because the iMac is the most successful All in One by orders of Magnitude and up until now, it was the undisputed best model. Go drink your koolaid and enjoy. It doesn't bother me if you're a dumb ass, but I do feel compelled to point it out as a PSA.
ffakr
P.S. An order of magnitude is 10x. Idiots always misuse "order of magnitude" because it sounds cool. I don't want to take any chances here.:-)
I've been building computers for over a decade and I can't wait to get a 24" iMac at home to replace my AthlonFX in my LianLi case (I'm a Windows and OS X/Mac user.. I dropped FreeBSD and Linux mostly when Apple moved to OS X).
It took me a long time but I'm reformed. No matter how anal I was with parts selection and cable routing I've never had a truly quiet home built PC [that wasn't underpowered]. Even my expensive LianLi with 120mm fans and aftermarket heatsink is too damned loud to run all the time in a quiet room. I'm also realized a long time ago that build-your-own is only cheaper at the instant you buy that one new component. The habit of incrementally replacing parts makes the home-built a money pit. It _might_ still be a better deal, especially if you want to keep on the bleeding edge but for most users it's just a bad habit of tossing good money after bad. I am itching to build a new gaming rig. That 8800GT is gnawing at me, but I'll be much more happy with a more all-around-useful iMac that will just work. I spent hours on driver patches and troubleshooting recently because HL2 kept freezing in the same spot.
So, F all that. I'm waiting for the next iMac revision to see what the video looks like and I'll see if I can swing one based on my finances. I can always write if off my taxes since I work from home. If they'd only increase my hardware budget, I'd order one through work.:-) Somehow, I think I can swing it. It might not be fast enough to play crysis but it will play most of the games I'm in to just fine (currently HL2/Portal, CoD4). It's also the only way to do all the other things I want to do (general work, sys-admin work, personal multi-media, music...) as far as I'm concerned.
As for the general debate, the Dell only has better stats IF you dump the optional parts in and it's not even that much better. I did a comparison of All-in-ones recently and Apple was by far the best deal considering we have a Microsoft Site License. I'd buy the Mac for a few reasons:
OS X
bundled OS X Applications
The OS X Server admin tools and Unix sys-admin tools I need
Design
The XPS looks like an IBM and I'm so over that.
The XPS has big speaker wings like a plasma/lcd. I'd rather add good external speakers, possibly recording monitors.
The new iMac are quite nice looking,.. much cleaner, smaller than the Dell.
The options on the Dell,.. I'm not interested.
I'm sitting out the HD/Blueray wars, at least till prices come down more.
I don't need or want s-video or composite video out. Who would take a 20 or 24" LCD and plug that into TV to use as a media center??.. just my opinion. Ffakr.
Just a tip though, Apple's market share is 6.8% or 8.1% U.S. share and apparently growing faster than any other vendor. Hmn, they're apparently a top 5 World PC manufacturer and a top 3 U.S. manufacturer. Must suck when you irrationally hate something you've probably never tried only to find out it's succeeding, in fact doing just swimmingly.
Your post really glosses over the facts in this case.
Mr. Bloch was appointed to an office charged with providing oversight for the administration. The irony was, Bloch was appointed by George Bush but that position does not serve 'at the pleasure of the President'. The person in that position has a 5 year term and can not be removed except through disciplinary means. Theoretically, Bloch was independent from the WH and above partisan politics.
Bloch was charged with investigating whether or not the Whitehouse violated the Hatch Act by directing non-political employees to work for the reelection of the Republican party. Not surprisingly, President Bush's appointee, Bloch, has made no perceivable progress in his oversight duties even though there has been rafts of evidence that the Whitehouse broke the law.
Doan, in the GSA presented a powerpoint presentation to several groups of non-political staff, that presentation's purpose was specifically about helping Republicans in tough races. At least 20 people in one meeting have testified to hearing the Doan finished the presentation by asking, 'What can we do to help our party in the upcoming election' [paraphrased on my part]. That presentation was put together by Rove's office in the WH.
Bloch is either incompetent [surprise] or another partisan political hack appointed by Bush [surprise].
That is the back story. Here is where we are at now: - Bloch was under investigation precisely because he wasn't doing his oversight duties. I believe Doan is STILL in office. - While under investigation he called in an outside private group to 7-way wipe his drive and the drives of others in his office. - His office (which he RAN) has clear policy stating that no outside IT were allowed to work on their machines. - Bloch's excuse is beyond pathetic. A Virus? Our government has become so corrupt I sometimes think they say crap just to see if they can get away with it, or rather because it makes them feel powerful to know that they can get away with the most ridiculous claims.
I think you've touched upon the main problem but you've missed the larger picture. You SHOULD offend Americans, particularly my brethren who fire people for trying to teach Science to their children in Science class. America is a scary place right now. Also, fundamentalism IS prevalent in the U.S. today. It was religious fundamentalism that put the moron in the office these past 7 years.
I suspect that some officials are beginning to feel the wall against their backs. I read sections of this article and it's like reading an interview with a government in Bizarro world, we'll it's like reading an interview with just about anyone in this Administration I suppose.
McConnell admitted the Telecos were in on illegal wiretapping (yes it was illegal, the FISA courts have told Bush this several times). He then went on to say that they should get immunity because that revelation would hurt their buisiness. He claims to be affraid it would put them out of business. Way to teach big corporations to not engage in illegal activities, grant them blanket immunity.
McConnell described how many people in and out of the US were currently under surveillance. He gave out more detail than anyone [I've seen] has been asking about. The critics of illegal wiretapping don't ask for methods and proceedures they just want this done within the constraints of the law. McConnell was getting awfully close to giving out dangerous information. McConnell then states that publication of this information will kill Americans. No Shit, he said that. First off, it's hyperbole.. he didn't give out that much info but he started to get close. Second, why the fuck is National Intelligence Director giving out information to a reporter that will get Americans killed? I suspect he believes that.
sorry, I should have been more clear as I was in my first post in this thread. In the above (my second post) I wasn't clear that Berger destroyed COPIES of documents at home. The National Archives has confirmed in their official report that NO documents were destroyed. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH. This isn't open to opinion. Anyone saying he erased information from the Archives immediately looses all credibility.
Look up the report from the NA investigation.
Berger's an arrogant bastard but I'll stamp out lies from Either side of this pollitical shit-fest.
Berger did NOT destroy and documents in the National Archives. Berger printed electronic documents and removed them (knowing this was wrong) to study at home. He destroyed the documents at home when finished because he knew he was breaking the law.
Berger did NOT put documents into his waist band, underwear, or socks. These are lies from partisian bloviators. Berger admited to putting notes into his pants. He did say pants initially which was an incredibly awkward way of saying he put notes into his pockes. He was also not allowed to remove notes. This was his 2nd violation.
Basically you're full of shit. I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not. You did link to Malkin. Malkin is wrong about EVERYTHING. Her last 4 or 5 crusades were completely, 180 degrees wrong. What about her shrieks about that Iraqi Policeman who didn't exist.. until they found him and endangered his life and his family's lives by outing him? Geez, Malkin wrote a whole book in support of the illegal detention of US Citizens of Japanese decent for christs sake. Malkin would like nothing better than for the US to set up concentration camps.
while Sandy "Pants Burgler" Berger walked after finally being cornered by the facts and CONFESSING to stealing classified documents by stuffing them into his pants/socks/etc to remove them from the National Archives for the purpose of destroying them.
I love when the right wingers bring out the Sandy Berger charade. It's bad enough that Berger violated the classified information acts so why do you have to lie about it?
Look up the facts somewhere other than RedState or LittleGreenFootballs. The results of the actual investigation are on line after all.
Berger pulled research information before testifying before congress. He had authorization to pull that information but he did NOT have any clearance to remove it. During the course of his research, he printed up several files and wrote down notes. He was also NOT allowed to remove notes.
Berger stated that he put the notes in his pants. He was stating, awkwardly that he put scraps of paper in his pockets as he later clarifed. The right wing blogs went up in shrieks of indignation first claiming that Berger put DOCUMENTS down his pants, then in his underwear, then into his socks. I've found chronologies on the web linking back to the actual progression of the misinformation. Berger never stated that he stuffed DOCUMENTS into his waist band or his underwear or his socks. These were all off-the-cuff bloviation by pundits and partisian talking heads and they're now ingrained into the right-wing history. Further, the National Archives which investigated the matter has NEVER stated that that Berger did anything but put notes into his pockes in regard to this particular issue.
The second infraction was the removal of printed copies of actual documents. Berger admitted that he printed up copies of electronic documents in order to study. Berger admitted that he knowingly violated the rules by removing these COPIES so that he could review them at home. Berger knew this was wrong. It's my opinion that he was too arrogant to believe that he should have to do all of his research in the Archives. He was Sandy Berger after all. Berger destroyed the copies when he was finished with them because he knew they weren't supposed to be outside of the archives. Berger NEVER DESTROYED AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENT. The National Archives report concluded that no materials were removed and Berger only printed electronic documents. This is why Berger was fined and not imprisoned. If he had destroyed actual documents from the archives he'd have been hoisted on a petard.
You're either stupid or a liar for posting that crap about socks here. Which one is it?
I agree that the Dems have lost their focus on occasion. They have never been able to keep a sharp focus like the Republicans. I also agree that some Dems in office now are bums and crooks who should be kicked out of office. They are, however, the least evil of the choices right now by far. The corruption and incompetence, and rank stupidity of republicans right now is far past comical.
As to what you've all missed.. The Dems don't REALLY have power in congress right now. They have a decent majority in the House which is good but they don't have the 60% required quash a Republican fillibuster. Remember when Republicans were going to re-write 200+ years of proceedure to stop minority filibusters before they started regularly doing them again?
In the Senate it's more bleak. The Democrats do not have a majority at all. Lieberman bailed from the Democratic party when he lost the the primary nomination for being in bed with the Democrats and Bush in particular. Lieberman has had a man-crush on Bush for years now. Lieberman SAYS he's working with the Dems now (because he's from a blue state and he'll lose next time if he doesn't convince just enough Dems that he's one of them. Lieberman just campaigned for a REPUBLICAN from his state. It's gotten so bad that the head of his new party, Independent Democratic Party, has asked him to resign so that the Governor can assign a replacement. He left the Democrats because the majority didn't want him, now his new party is kicking him out for being a closet Republican. The senate can go either way with independents but it's basically 50-50. It's certainly not 60% or super-majority in favor of Democrats.
The reality is, politics is dirty. There's an old saying that you know you've got something in Politics when everyone leaves the table unhappy. The thing that really has the left wing of the Democratic party up in arms is the folding on the Iraq funding. Unfortunately, the reality is, Dems didn't have enough votes to shoot down a Presidential veto and they had to add ear-marks to get enough people to sign on to even get it to pass. The Dems are TERRIBLE at 'reading the crowd' even when 70% of Americans want us out of Iraq. In their defense, however, they were in an untenable situation. They had zero chance of getting that bill through and there was a good chance that the decades of Republican media buildup would have been successful in portraying it as the Dems fault.
IMHO, If I were the Democratic leadership I would have sent that bill back over and over and over, every week if possible. I'd have made Bush veto funding the troops over and over. I'd have put out the party members to simply say "why does President Bush refuse to fund the troops? First it was the body armor and the Humvee armor, now he won't sign the funding bill.". That's it, nothing more.. over and over. In fact, they could have stripped appropriations one by one and threatened their own members that they were in it now appropriations or not.. or they'd be flip-floppers at their next election cycle.
Bottom line, the Dems are anything but all powerful in Congress right now. They have enough power to assign committee seats and put up legislation but they don't have enough juice to push anything all the way through if the Republicans and Bush say no. The plan now isn't to bring Republicans down. The plan now is to maneuver, politically, so that they stand to gain more power in 2008. Unfortunately, I suspect that Dems will control both Congress and the WH in 2008. I think it's dangerous to vest too much power in one party (as we've seen). The good thing is, we've seen a lot of new (young) Democratic blood come in. We've seen a lot of war vets who seem to be in for the right reasons. I hope they can hold the corruption back for a while. I would suggest that I'd like to see some of the old Democratic blood (particularly the corrupt) taken out in 2008 by young un-tainted Republicans but Rove and his Ilk h
I can't believe the number of Hero delusions in the thread. Everybody's a big hero. 'I'd have rushed that guy at VT'... 'I can't believe no one rushed that guy at VT'.
You're all F'n pathetic; legends in your own minds. You'd be the first ones hiding behind the women.
If a guy walks in and methodically starts shooting at everyone in a classroom, you put your head down or you get shot. This wasn't chaos, he walked in calmly and started picking people off. Throw a book at him? Give me a F'n break you morons. The worst situtation would be that the gunman only killed some people in each class. If that was the case, and I believe it was, it was only the ones who didn't duck fast enough or hide well enough who are dead now. Maybe someone did try to attack him, I don't know that any better than any of you. I do know with some degree of certainty that if anyone did, their the ones who are dead.
Teach the kids to rush gunmen??? They're F'n KIDS!! Hey buddy, your kid or your little brother first. How's that sound? Dumbass.
I don't have children but if my kid's teachers threatend to shoot my kid while he was away from home, I'd be really torn between suing them into oblivian or showing up at school with a gun and sticking it in their mouth. I wonder what kind of lesson they'd learn from believing I was going to splatter their cherry cobbler all over the wall? I'm not litigious or particulary violent but this story pisses me off to no end. I've got nieces and nephews. If this happened to them there'd be hell to pay. Don't mistake this as emergency training, this was threatening the children with death even if the threat was not real. It was real to those kids.. that's the way they planned it. Go put a replica in your waist band and threaten a cop's life.. see if they laugh it off as 'preparation and training' for the police.
I probably won't buy one because I rarely use my phone. I keep it as a convenience. I would, however, love to have a real convergence device like this. I just got back from MWSF for some IT training and I have to say, the iPhone really is years ahead of any other vendor's phones.
So.. if you want to be on your high horses, don't buy the damn thing. If I get one, I'm sure I'll put an occasional Apple Store tv show on it and I'll put some of the music on that I've ripped myself. Just don't bitch that you CAN'T get one when you simply feel too moral to buy one.
Personally I've always preferred Quark to PageMaker and InDesign. I find it MUCH more intuitive and functional.
Quark was dethroned not because InDesign was so superior (IMHO) but rather because of terrible blunders by Quark. Quark was incredibly slow to update at curical periods in their product life. They were Too slow to update when PowerPC Macs became available back in 95. They were too slow to update when Apple moved to OS X. That mistake was huge because people really wanted OS X and Quark was horribly slow to release a version that even functioned properly in emulation. They were even late in updates after this as inDesign continued to take market from them.
I still prefer Quark but I'm an IT guy and not a designer. My wife, however, is a designer and her office is still using Quark. They're finally making a concerted effort to go to indesign since the whole industry has moved. It's getting increasingly difficult dealing with clients and printers if you're not on InDesign.
I was interested to hear that their experience with Indesign is pretty much identical to mine. Indesign is obviously powerful and feature-full but it is completely unintuitive. Tools that would be common to use in typical layout are buried in sub-menus of menus and they're nearly impossible to find without knowing or opening Help. Personally I would have written this off if I were just an IT guy but I'm married to a Designer and I've taught designers how to use design and editing software. The University that my wife and her friends attended (and were I attended and worked in IT) did not actually teach the students how to use any of the tools so I had to give them seminars on their software.:-) That and I'm a frequent user myself. Come to think of it, I'm full circle.. I'm at a new University and I support the Design Department next door which doesn't employ any designers (only old draftsmen).
Back to the larger topic. I don't think that Adobe will make any real inroads back into the Mac market. Their software has sucked for years now. The only reason Photoshop and Illustrator continue to be good applications is because they were good applications 10 years ago and Adobe hasn't changed them that significantly. Adobe really does, often, design crappy software. They are absolutely the Microsoft of software vendors (non OS vendors that is.. you know what I mean). Call me old school but I think Photoshop 4.5 was the last great release. It was easy to use and it did everything that was required of 95% of users. Adobe seems to add widgets and move menus with every upgrade just to justify the release as a new package. Now, I use Adobe software all the time and I appreciate the software in as much as its an unweildly but very useful tool.. but it seems like it should be so much better by now. I've used various versions of GoLive and they just don't work. I've not spent [wasted] time on CS2 yet but CS1 actually never worked for me. Seriously, it was completely broken through reinstalls of Adobe and the entire machine. I've never successfully created and uploaded even a simple web page in GoLive. Never. I really want all my apps to work together and I still like the idea of the creative suites but Adobe never seems to pull it off well. I think I'm with you on this.. the desire to have all the apps work together (you mentioned frustration with Quark and Adobe).
I do have hope for Adobe. Apple's bundled apps are great for what they are but they don't cut it for doing real work. I don't use Adobe products for my personal photos (other than serious touchups) and I don't use iPhoto if I have to color correct Mars Lander photos for the Design shop next door (Now THAT was cool.. I do work at a research university after all). I Hope they pull this off. I hope they make CS3 solid. I hope their new Premier is solid and that it seemlessly integrates with all their other apps.
I can see 1000 games as a target for Linux releases. Linux geeks are often (but certainly not always) gamers but people don't install linux to play games. If you want optimised video drivers and if you just want the damn game to 'just work' you keep a Windows machine or Windows Partition. Not to mention the lag in patches.. it's no fun bringing your linux rig to lan party only to find out that you can't join the game because the V. 1.1 patch is not available for you yet.
The 1000 number for OS X is a joke though. Seriously, Any decent game should sell more than 1000 copies on the Mac. There are far too many Macs in use in homes for a GOOD game to not sell reasonably well. The Mac has issues.. it's rare to see them with really good video systems. The recent Intel machines have solid offerings but they aren't fantastic ( Elder Scrolls would play like crap on a stock iMac with underclocked X1600 video). I have, however, played Battlefield 2 at native rez with decent settings on a 1st gen Intel 17" iMac and it ran great. It beat the hell out of my Athlon X2 3800 w/ AGP Nvidia 6600GT. The current iMacs are much nicer too.
The bigger problem, as I see it, is that the gaming industry is in a lull. I don't see any really compelling titles. I love WW2 era FPShooters but the Genre has been played out to death. The Battlefield series has been solid but every new version is just a new veneer on the same game. To me and my friends, EQ and WWC MassivelyMulitPlayer games are played out. The frustration of dumping time into them has long since outweighted the enjoyment (I never did try World of WarCraft.. I got burned out before that). Really, I walk through the gaming isle at Frys and nothing excites me and I've been looking to have another lan party. There's literally dozens of FPS War games but none stand out and I'm not going to try them all so I can tell people to buy one just for a night at my house.
The other problem is crappy coding though this is more minor issue. If the developer houses wrote tighter code, there'd be a larger range of medoicre machines that could run that code. Remember when the big guns were Doom3 vs. HalfLife2.. HalfLife2, to me, looked every bit as good overall and it ran MUCH better on less than cutting edge hardware. Doom3 was the killer benchmark for a while and the lighting system does look nice but the HL2 engine looks great and I really enjoyed the game (more so than the 'turn the corner and shoot' story line of Doom3). IMHO, HL2 is a superior game because the sum of the whole package is superior [visuals, story, environment, gameplay..]. The impressive thing is, Valve pulled this off without forcing everyone to run out and drop $500 on upgrades. If Valve, for instance, started supporting OS X, I'm sure they'd be able to run on a pretty large Mac installed base. Everything over the Mini should run HL2 fantastically. [other noteable crap-tastic games I'd never buy for a Mac.. BF Vietnam.. which crippled my Radeon9800Pro back in 2003, EQ (HORRIBLE CODING) and even EQ2 which seemed un-reasonably slow on decent PC hardware)
If we had good, compelling games.. I'd guarantee that a port of a GOOD game to OS X would sell a hell of a lot more than 1000 copies with annual sales of Millions of computers and poor enterprise market penetration (most macs go home or at least into EDU markets).
I work in EDU also so this isn't an unfamiliar issue to me.
I look at it this way, kids that are 'bad students' will skip classes no matter what. They'll use other student's notes, they'll use pod casts, or (like me) they'll just skip classes to do something more interesting (like fix computers). This is why I'm now an IT Manager and not a professor I guess.. too many skipped classes.
The reality is, you can't limit access to the pod casts. It's completely un-reasonable to only allow students who have been to the lectures.. to allow only them to download the pod-casts. What if the kid is sick? What if they had something more important happened like some very 'close' but not close enough dying? (I got in trouble once for missing a speech when my Grandfather died. No make ups in Public Speaking)
The reality is.. If kids skip classes and they pass the tests by just listening to the pod casts.. good for them. Either your class is too damn easy or they don't have any need to be there. College is supposed to be about the whole educational experience but at the end of the day it's about passing the classes and getting 'the paper'. The future employer wants to know that you got X out of Y GPA and that you finished. We, on the inside, like to believe it's about the educational experience and about expanding our perceptions and horizions, and about building character and a dozen other things but unless you're planning a career in Education it's about getting that paper and moving (in your education or in your career).
The other reality is that some classes can't be passed by just listening (or watching grainy video) podcasts. It helps being in Math class and seeing the work on the board. Sure, some kids can pod-cast and read the book and figure out dif-eq but I'd guarantee that the ones most likely to skip classes won't be in that group. At the very least, it's safe to say that some if not most kids can't do it (pass without class). The kids should be warned, in no uncertain terms, that pod casts are not replacements for sitting in class and asking questions. If they fail, they'll learn. If they fail, they'll tell other kids how they got screwed by just pod-casting.
There is an easy solution to this if the students really find this offensive.
Sign up for a myspace account if you don't have one. Exchange them among students. Complain about everyone elses account. Everyone ask every day if they have investigated all complaints. I think the biggest offense here from a liability standpoint would likely be the targeting of some students over others.
I'd also suggest fun with content. It'd be fun to post extensive content on which teachers were less than competent. Nothing libelous or overly inflamatory but it'd be nice to have a post for everytime a teacher was late to class or every time an administrator picked their nose. Just stick to the facts kids. Rat out every shortcoming of the institution and force them to read it all day in and day out. I ran pretty low on the Radar in highschool but I can still think of pleny of shortcommings that they would probably not like to hear about themselves.
I do believe that Libertyville is a farily large school so it should quickly turn into a giant morass.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh. I never really saw the point of Chrome anyway. Safari works just fine for me.
I have it installed, but I only launch it when I need yet another browser so I can have one logged into my Drupal engine as admin and another as anon or a user.
No big deal.. I just won't use chrome.
It's not like we're starving for web browser options. God forbid I only have access to Safari, Firefox, Flock [firefox core], and IE through Parallels. What ever am I doing to do without you Google Chrome??
At issue wasn't just Rush accusing Michael J. Fox of misrepresenting himself, it was also the bobbling around making light of a serious illness which will eventually kill Michael J. Fox. It was another asshole move. That's what caught Rush as much grief as anything. The larger problem in my opinion was Rush's typical practice of accusing Fox of essentially lying with zero evidence of any impropriety. Of course, Rush was also 100% wrong in his 'analysis' but I'll get to that in a second.
Well that seems clear cut. I always thought motive was irrefutable proof.
Actually he was 100% wrong and he DID appologize.. briefly. More below
Nice cut clip. I like how the video ends mid sentence. I like the part where she says he does it on purpose then he says he doesn't do it on purpose. The disease makes you catatonic. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/parkinsons-disease/DS00295/DSECTION=2 It STARTS with tremors and ticks but Fox has had this for a long time. He's in the phase where he is normally rigid, even to the point where he has trouble swallowing.
Rush said Fox didn't take his medicine so that he would appear out of control. Of course Rush had no idea what he was talking about but that's never stopped him before. On October 26th, Rush 'apologized' for speculating that Fox didn't take his medicine and then immediately stated that he purposefully took too much. Hey, if you throw enough crap at the wall maybe some of it will stick. Fox responded that same night on the CBS Evening News, stating that it's difficult to gauge the correct dosage and that the dosage that day did kick too hard.
The Mayo Clinic article that I quickly found points out the dosage is a moving target.. Your medication needs may change over time, and the drug dosage and timing may require adjustment. For these reasons, you and your doctor will work together to design a program that best suits your needs, especially as the disease progresses. And of course, pulling slander out of his butt isn't enough. Rush not only knows what M.J. Fox is thinking (well, maybe the 2nd time around) but he also seems to know that the Democrats wrote the tremors into their script.
Here's the kicker. Only Rush can do something and then immediately lie about it, then do it again and still have an audience that doesn't get it. Straight from the pie hole of Rush..
Now without looking up the original transcript (though I should) let's give Rush the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn't say the word "faking". He only said Fox intentionally took too much medicine or he was intentionally exaggerating. That's totally different than faking. Of course he then says Fox was totally not faking when he was faking by intentionally overdosing. Congratulations for being a ditto head. It'd be too much, I'm sure, to realize he's calling you sheep.
P.S. Probably my favorite Rus
Hey dumb ass. Berger destroyed NO documents. None. Zero.
So says OUR GOVERNMENT. Thats Our Government under Bush.
Berger had access to all the information he viewed. He was there to reference documents before testifying before congress.
Berger was not, however, allowed to remove copies of documents or even take notes that were removed from the archives.
What did Berger really do?
He took notes. He shoved the notes "In my pants". That's his pants pockets.. it was his excuse for why he left with notes.
He also viewed printed out ELECTRONIC documents (aka. copies) and left the archives with them. Berger later destroyed the copies by shredding them at his office.
Now, how did Fox News and the rest of the Lunatic Fringe sexy up the story?
Berger put them in his pants.. literally, he shoved them down his pants..
Then Fox announces he shoved them in his underwear.
Then Fox says on air that Berger put them in his socks. How do you make that jump unless you're completely making shit up?
Of course, there was immediately a war cry over Berger shredding documents. Of course, par for the course, he shredded COPIES not the original documents.
Berger was found guilty of being so arrogant that he didn't think the rules applied to him. He had the clearance to view all that material, he just didn't think he should have to do his research in the archives so he put notes in his pockets and printed documents in his briefcase.
Berger DID NOT DESTROY ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.
In a July 21 article, Washington Post staff writer Susan Schmidt reported, "The documents that were removed were copies; the National Archives retained the originals."
Berger was found guilty and fined $50000 and his classified access was revoked for 3 years. If Berger destroyed archival documents, do you believe a federal judge would give him back his Classified clearance? I believe that by now, Berger should have his access back.
P.S. WTF does Sandy Berger have to do with the Bush Administration's gross violation of the Presidential Records act? Does that make what they've done LESS ILLEGAL? Oh wait, no it doesn't. They destroyed archival data in direct violation of the law. They removed procedures that were put in place by Clinton's administration to prevent the accidental deletion of email and they put noting in place to prevent the loss of email.
If you have forgotten, they've also stated that they used RNC email to conduct business on Whitehouse machines but that Mail is missing too. Use of RNC mail for government matters is also an illegal circumvention of the Presidential records act.
Most corrupt government Ever. There are spans of weeks and months where there are Zero emails from various offices in the Executive branch. Bush's administration makes Nixon and his missing 8Minutes look like a childish prank in comparison.
I'm working on a Mac IIx that's still running an Electron Microscope at the end of my building. :-)]
It has been my professional experience for the last decade+ that Macintoshes stay in service much longer than Windows Computers. We do have some DOS machines running research equipment around too but Macs run in more administrative roles much longer. This is my experience in multiple environments. [almost forgot, I think there is still one Apple ][e running around here, I serviced it 5 years ago when the impact printer failed
I think you're off target with the environmental issue. Your answer is to keep buying parts, with more packaging over and over to prolong the life of a computer and to toss those old parts over and over.
Here is the reality of your 10 year computer.
- components, particularly interfaces, go obsolete. My AMD 754 and 939 boards are obsolete. My AGP system [754] is obsolete.
- Obsolete components go up in price. Compare SDR against DDR memory Compare AGP v. PCI-E Video cards
- Obsolete components don't receive driver updates. Try running, well just about anything in Vista that isn't brand new. We have people requesting downgrades to XP regularly.
- It's human nature for upgraders to push the upgrade cycle. The very nature of computer Builders is to build and tinker with computers. I think we, more than regular users, want to upgrade. I don't need to upgrade my AthlonFX and 7900GS but I'm really tempted by the Nvidia 8800GT and Prescotts.
Obsolete components, software, protocols, buses mean that you end up upgrading more than just one component at a time.
Since 1997 (ten years ago), the following has been obsoleted.. often several times:
video bus
memory standard
cpu socket
expansion slots
video 3d support
serial protocols and speeds (serial to usb 1, 1.1, 2, PS2)
Parallel ports
Game ports
Power Supplies/Cases (ATX standards)
Optical Removeable Media standards (CD-R +, +-, DVD, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-WR, HD, Blueray)
Removable Media standards (Superdisk, Zip 100-250-1GB, MO.. hell even even the old 5" carts).
How many parts have been replaced to upgrade on bit? How many parts, how many times? If you're so into keeping it current, are you still using that crappy beige knuckle cutter case? Just moving to a new CPU can mean new board, new memory, new Video, new keyboard, new mouse, new PS..
I think you'd find that you had a BIG stack of spare parts and a BIG stack of packing materials trying to keep that machine running. Or, you could have bought two nice Macintoshes (or maybe 3 Dells).
I've got a First-Gen dual 2.0 G5 in the front office that is still a great machine. It's running OS 10.5 like a champ. Apple will obsolete the PCOSes in a few years but it'll still run on that last version for a while longer. We bought that in the fall of 2003 so it's already over 4 years old and we have done Zero to it other than add memory and an extra drive for data recovery storage of other drives. That machine will be useful for another 4 years barring a major hardware failure.
Parts? None in the trash yet.
Packing? One case for G5, small packaging for 2 DIMMs and bubblewrap for one OEM SATA drive. I'm as green as can be.
ffakr.
I don't think I've seen this mentioned.
I pretty much agree with Walt on this one. Dell has more options, I'd take the Apple.
It should be mentioned, however, that Walt Mossberg is a freaking shill for Apple. I would never use Walt Mossberg as an objective Technical Writer. He's got bias written all over him.
Check out Apple's site. It's littered with References to Walt because he never writes anything bad about Apple. He's the anti-Divorak.
ffakr.
I see this a lot in older users, especially the older *nix guys. I just sent someone to LISA and they said 80% of the laptops in most sessions were Macs.
I think we geeks, as we mature, just want to get the work done. We don't want to buy a new computer and spend days getting Linux to work on the new hardware when we can unwrap the Mac and start working.
As for me, I started on the Mac and THEN went to Linux and Free-BSD. I'm back to the Mac (and Windows) now though.
ffakr.
I have to call bullshit on that.
:-) When's the last time you RMA'd a motherboard to a motherboard maker? I don't think I ever got one back in under 3 months (I run an IT shop, we RMA parts).
I've been building machines for a long time and the margins are razor thin these days. I can't build a box for 20% than a vendors price. No way. I would have trouble doing it for the same price.
Of course, you think you can hit the sales.. check the NewEgg daily specials.. and come out the winner, but all I have to do is wait 3 days for the right Dell sale in the small business center and the next thing you know I'm running my dualcore and 20" lcd for $600. Not to mention that I get a warranty.
But, of course, this is about All-In-One form factors. Spec out an All in one for us for 20% less than either model. Remember it must fit the form so you need laptop parts like slim CDROMs. No Riser cards either.. then fabricate a new case around your LCD to hold it all. Let us know what the parts and time cost and we'll figure out what your 20% margin might be. I bet you'll have a great $/hr average.
ffakr
Last I heard, Macs were HUGE in Japan though far behind Sony which still can do no wrong (even after all those crappy Vaios with proprietary innards).
:-)
Google: apple market share
Appleinsider.com references the Gartner Group for these numbers.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/17/apples_u_s_mac_market_share_rises_to_8_1_percent_in_q3.html
Apple's own financials have shown extremely strong quarter over quarter sales increases (compared to their own historic sales). Once again, Apple has sold more Macs than ever before. I mention this not to prove overall market share but just to show that Apple's sales are increasing very well, at a rate that other vendors dream about.
That all said, I like Dell. We almost exclusively purchase Dells and Apples (for non-*nix systems). The new Dells are very nice.. well designed, quiet (BTX). We see a pretty low failure rate too and I've got a decent sample. I support, directly or indirectly, roughly 2000 systems.
I'm not bashing Dell or propping up Apple, just reporting the figures.
Ffakr.
You're an idiot.
:-)
First off, I didn't call anything the standard. I merely pointed out that your numbers are totally wrong, by a factor of roughly 2 1/2 in the U.S. market. I also pointed out that Apple is one of the 5 largest PC makers in the world, 3 largest in the U.S.. You can live in your bubble where Apple doesn't matter but that doesn't make it real. You [in the generic sense, not you] can have my AthlonFX (or my X2) any day before my MacbookPro.
Second, now that you mention it, Yes the iMac is the standard to be measured against. You seem to disagree. What do you think is the All-in-one PC Standard? Is it MPC (who only sells to corporate markets and makes a pretty crappy All-in-one compared to Apple, and who entered years after Apple)? Is it the shitty Gateway with the underclocked CPU and the integrated Graphics (and iMac Looks)? Can you name another All in one other than the iMac or those mentioned by me?
Yes, Apple is the standard because the iMac is the most successful All in One by orders of Magnitude and up until now, it was the undisputed best model.
Go drink your koolaid and enjoy. It doesn't bother me if you're a dumb ass, but I do feel compelled to point it out as a PSA.
ffakr
P.S. An order of magnitude is 10x. Idiots always misuse "order of magnitude" because it sounds cool. I don't want to take any chances here.
I've been building computers for over a decade and I can't wait to get a 24" iMac at home to replace my AthlonFX in my LianLi case (I'm a Windows and OS X/Mac user.. I dropped FreeBSD and Linux mostly when Apple moved to OS X).
:-) Somehow, I think I can swing it.
.. just my opinion.
It took me a long time but I'm reformed. No matter how anal I was with parts selection and cable routing I've never had a truly quiet home built PC [that wasn't underpowered]. Even my expensive LianLi with 120mm fans and aftermarket heatsink is too damned loud to run all the time in a quiet room.
I'm also realized a long time ago that build-your-own is only cheaper at the instant you buy that one new component. The habit of incrementally replacing parts makes the home-built a money pit. It _might_ still be a better deal, especially if you want to keep on the bleeding edge but for most users it's just a bad habit of tossing good money after bad.
I am itching to build a new gaming rig. That 8800GT is gnawing at me, but I'll be much more happy with a more all-around-useful iMac that will just work. I spent hours on driver patches and troubleshooting recently because HL2 kept freezing in the same spot.
So, F all that.
I'm waiting for the next iMac revision to see what the video looks like and I'll see if I can swing one based on my finances. I can always write if off my taxes since I work from home. If they'd only increase my hardware budget, I'd order one through work.
It might not be fast enough to play crysis but it will play most of the games I'm in to just fine (currently HL2/Portal, CoD4). It's also the only way to do all the other things I want to do (general work, sys-admin work, personal multi-media, music...) as far as I'm concerned.
As for the general debate, the Dell only has better stats IF you dump the optional parts in and it's not even that much better. I did a comparison of All-in-ones recently and Apple was by far the best deal considering we have a Microsoft Site License. I'd buy the Mac for a few reasons:
OS X
bundled OS X Applications
The OS X Server admin tools and Unix sys-admin tools I need
Design
The XPS looks like an IBM and I'm so over that.
The XPS has big speaker wings like a plasma/lcd. I'd rather add good external speakers, possibly recording monitors.
The new iMac are quite nice looking,.. much cleaner, smaller than the Dell.
The options on the Dell,.. I'm not interested.
I'm sitting out the HD/Blueray wars, at least till prices come down more.
I don't need or want s-video or composite video out. Who would take a 20 or 24" LCD and plug that into TV to use as a media center??
Ffakr.
Bwahaha, that's pretty funny.
No really, it is.
Just a tip though, Apple's market share is 6.8% or 8.1% U.S. share and apparently growing faster than any other vendor. Hmn, they're apparently a top 5 World PC manufacturer and a top 3 U.S. manufacturer.
Must suck when you irrationally hate something you've probably never tried only to find out it's succeeding, in fact doing just swimmingly.
ffakr.
Your post really glosses over the facts in this case.
Mr. Bloch was appointed to an office charged with providing oversight for the administration. The irony was, Bloch was appointed by George Bush but that position does not serve 'at the pleasure of the President'. The person in that position has a 5 year term and can not be removed except through disciplinary means. Theoretically, Bloch was independent from the WH and above partisan politics.
Bloch was charged with investigating whether or not the Whitehouse violated the Hatch Act by directing non-political employees to work for the reelection of the Republican party. Not surprisingly, President Bush's appointee, Bloch, has made no perceivable progress in his oversight duties even though there has been rafts of evidence that the Whitehouse broke the law.
Doan, in the GSA presented a powerpoint presentation to several groups of non-political staff, that presentation's purpose was specifically about helping Republicans in tough races. At least 20 people in one meeting have testified to hearing the Doan finished the presentation by asking, 'What can we do to help our party in the upcoming election' [paraphrased on my part]. That presentation was put together by Rove's office in the WH.
Bloch is either incompetent [surprise] or another partisan political hack appointed by Bush [surprise].
That is the back story. Here is where we are at now:
- Bloch was under investigation precisely because he wasn't doing his oversight duties. I believe Doan is STILL in office.
- While under investigation he called in an outside private group to 7-way wipe his drive and the drives of others in his office.
- His office (which he RAN) has clear policy stating that no outside IT were allowed to work on their machines.
- Bloch's excuse is beyond pathetic. A Virus? Our government has become so corrupt I sometimes think they say crap just to see if they can get away with it, or rather because it makes them feel powerful to know that they can get away with the most ridiculous claims.
I fear for the future of our nation.
I think you've touched upon the main problem but you've missed the larger picture.
You SHOULD offend Americans, particularly my brethren who fire people for trying to teach Science to their children in Science class. America is a scary place right now.
Also, fundamentalism IS prevalent in the U.S. today. It was religious fundamentalism that put the moron in the office these past 7 years.
ffakr
I suspect that some officials are beginning to feel the wall against their backs.
I read sections of this article and it's like reading an interview with a government in Bizarro world, we'll it's like reading an interview with just about anyone in this Administration I suppose.
McConnell admitted the Telecos were in on illegal wiretapping (yes it was illegal, the FISA courts have told Bush this several times). He then went on to say that they should get immunity because that revelation would hurt their buisiness. He claims to be affraid it would put them out of business. Way to teach big corporations to not engage in illegal activities, grant them blanket immunity.
McConnell described how many people in and out of the US were currently under surveillance. He gave out more detail than anyone [I've seen] has been asking about. The critics of illegal wiretapping don't ask for methods and proceedures they just want this done within the constraints of the law. McConnell was getting awfully close to giving out dangerous information.
McConnell then states that publication of this information will kill Americans. No Shit, he said that. First off, it's hyperbole.. he didn't give out that much info but he started to get close. Second, why the fuck is National Intelligence Director giving out information to a reporter that will get Americans killed? I suspect he believes that.
There's something wrong with McConnell.
Impeach everyone
sorry, I should have been more clear as I was in my first post in this thread. In the above (my second post) I wasn't clear that Berger destroyed COPIES of documents at home. The National Archives has confirmed in their official report that NO documents were destroyed. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH.
This isn't open to opinion. Anyone saying he erased information from the Archives immediately looses all credibility.
Look up the report from the NA investigation.
Berger's an arrogant bastard but I'll stamp out lies from Either side of this pollitical shit-fest.
Read my other comment.
Berger did NOT destroy and documents in the National Archives. Berger printed electronic documents and removed them (knowing this was wrong) to study at home. He destroyed the documents at home when finished because he knew he was breaking the law.
Berger did NOT put documents into his waist band, underwear, or socks. These are lies from partisian bloviators. Berger admited to putting notes into his pants. He did say pants initially which was an incredibly awkward way of saying he put notes into his pockes. He was also not allowed to remove notes. This was his 2nd violation.
Basically you're full of shit. I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not. You did link to Malkin. Malkin is wrong about EVERYTHING. Her last 4 or 5 crusades were completely, 180 degrees wrong. What about her shrieks about that Iraqi Policeman who didn't exist.. until they found him and endangered his life and his family's lives by outing him? Geez, Malkin wrote a whole book in support of the illegal detention of US Citizens of Japanese decent for christs sake. Malkin would like nothing better than for the US to set up concentration camps.
I love when the right wingers bring out the Sandy Berger charade. It's bad enough that Berger violated the classified information acts so why do you have to lie about it?
Look up the facts somewhere other than RedState or LittleGreenFootballs. The results of the actual investigation are on line after all.
Berger pulled research information before testifying before congress. He had authorization to pull that information but he did NOT have any clearance to remove it. During the course of his research, he printed up several files and wrote down notes. He was also NOT allowed to remove notes.
Berger stated that he put the notes in his pants. He was stating, awkwardly that he put scraps of paper in his pockets as he later clarifed. The right wing blogs went up in shrieks of indignation first claiming that Berger put DOCUMENTS down his pants, then in his underwear, then into his socks. I've found chronologies on the web linking back to the actual progression of the misinformation. Berger never stated that he stuffed DOCUMENTS into his waist band or his underwear or his socks. These were all off-the-cuff bloviation by pundits and partisian talking heads and they're now ingrained into the right-wing history. Further, the National Archives which investigated the matter has NEVER stated that that Berger did anything but put notes into his pockes in regard to this particular issue.
The second infraction was the removal of printed copies of actual documents. Berger admitted that he printed up copies of electronic documents in order to study. Berger admitted that he knowingly violated the rules by removing these COPIES so that he could review them at home. Berger knew this was wrong. It's my opinion that he was too arrogant to believe that he should have to do all of his research in the Archives. He was Sandy Berger after all. Berger destroyed the copies when he was finished with them because he knew they weren't supposed to be outside of the archives.
Berger NEVER DESTROYED AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENT. The National Archives report concluded that no materials were removed and Berger only printed electronic documents.
This is why Berger was fined and not imprisoned. If he had destroyed actual documents from the archives he'd have been hoisted on a petard.
You're either stupid or a liar for posting that crap about socks here. Which one is it?
ffakr.
You all seem to be missing the obvious.
I agree that the Dems have lost their focus on occasion. They have never been able to keep a sharp focus like the Republicans. I also agree that some Dems in office now are bums and crooks who should be kicked out of office. They are, however, the least evil of the choices right now by far. The corruption and incompetence, and rank stupidity of republicans right now is far past comical.
As to what you've all missed.. The Dems don't REALLY have power in congress right now. They have a decent majority in the House which is good but they don't have the 60% required quash a Republican fillibuster. Remember when Republicans were going to re-write 200+ years of proceedure to stop minority filibusters before they started regularly doing them again?
In the Senate it's more bleak. The Democrats do not have a majority at all. Lieberman bailed from the Democratic party when he lost the the primary nomination for being in bed with the Democrats and Bush in particular. Lieberman has had a man-crush on Bush for years now. Lieberman SAYS he's working with the Dems now (because he's from a blue state and he'll lose next time if he doesn't convince just enough Dems that he's one of them. Lieberman just campaigned for a REPUBLICAN from his state. It's gotten so bad that the head of his new party, Independent Democratic Party, has asked him to resign so that the Governor can assign a replacement. He left the Democrats because the majority didn't want him, now his new party is kicking him out for being a closet Republican. The senate can go either way with independents but it's basically 50-50. It's certainly not 60% or super-majority in favor of Democrats.
The reality is, politics is dirty. There's an old saying that you know you've got something in Politics when everyone leaves the table unhappy.
The thing that really has the left wing of the Democratic party up in arms is the folding on the Iraq funding. Unfortunately, the reality is, Dems didn't have enough votes to shoot down a Presidential veto and they had to add ear-marks to get enough people to sign on to even get it to pass. The Dems are TERRIBLE at 'reading the crowd' even when 70% of Americans want us out of Iraq.
In their defense, however, they were in an untenable situation. They had zero chance of getting that bill through and there was a good chance that the decades of Republican media buildup would have been successful in portraying it as the Dems fault.
IMHO, If I were the Democratic leadership I would have sent that bill back over and over and over, every week if possible. I'd have made Bush veto funding the troops over and over. I'd have put out the party members to simply say "why does President Bush refuse to fund the troops? First it was the body armor and the Humvee armor, now he won't sign the funding bill.". That's it, nothing more.. over and over. In fact, they could have stripped appropriations one by one and threatened their own members that they were in it now appropriations or not.. or they'd be flip-floppers at their next election cycle.
Bottom line, the Dems are anything but all powerful in Congress right now. They have enough power to assign committee seats and put up legislation but they don't have enough juice to push anything all the way through if the Republicans and Bush say no.
The plan now isn't to bring Republicans down. The plan now is to maneuver, politically, so that they stand to gain more power in 2008. Unfortunately, I suspect that Dems will control both Congress and the WH in 2008. I think it's dangerous to vest too much power in one party (as we've seen). The good thing is, we've seen a lot of new (young) Democratic blood come in. We've seen a lot of war vets who seem to be in for the right reasons. I hope they can hold the corruption back for a while.
I would suggest that I'd like to see some of the old Democratic blood (particularly the corrupt) taken out in 2008 by young un-tainted Republicans but Rove and his Ilk h
I can't believe the number of Hero delusions in the thread. Everybody's a big hero. 'I'd have rushed that guy at VT'... 'I can't believe no one rushed that guy at VT'.
You're all F'n pathetic; legends in your own minds. You'd be the first ones hiding behind the women.
If a guy walks in and methodically starts shooting at everyone in a classroom, you put your head down or you get shot. This wasn't chaos, he walked in calmly and started picking people off. Throw a book at him? Give me a F'n break you morons.
The worst situtation would be that the gunman only killed some people in each class. If that was the case, and I believe it was, it was only the ones who didn't duck fast enough or hide well enough who are dead now. Maybe someone did try to attack him, I don't know that any better than any of you. I do know with some degree of certainty that if anyone did, their the ones who are dead.
Teach the kids to rush gunmen??? They're F'n KIDS!! Hey buddy, your kid or your little brother first. How's that sound? Dumbass.
I don't have children but if my kid's teachers threatend to shoot my kid while he was away from home, I'd be really torn between suing them into oblivian or showing up at school with a gun and sticking it in their mouth. I wonder what kind of lesson they'd learn from believing I was going to splatter their cherry cobbler all over the wall?
I'm not litigious or particulary violent but this story pisses me off to no end. I've got nieces and nephews. If this happened to them there'd be hell to pay. Don't mistake this as emergency training, this was threatening the children with death even if the threat was not real. It was real to those kids.. that's the way they planned it.
Go put a replica in your waist band and threaten a cop's life.. see if they laugh it off as 'preparation and training' for the police.
This was soo cool when I was writing 3d screen savers with it last year. Way to go Apple!! I love Quartz Composer.
/ quartzcomposer.html
Oh wait, Nevermind.
http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/quartz
Oh christ, don't buy it.
Whine whine, bitch bitch, moan moan.
I probably won't buy one because I rarely use my phone. I keep it as a convenience. I would, however, love to have a real convergence device like this. I just got back from MWSF for some IT training and I have to say, the iPhone really is years ahead of any other vendor's phones.
So.. if you want to be on your high horses, don't buy the damn thing. If I get one, I'm sure I'll put an occasional Apple Store tv show on it and I'll put some of the music on that I've ripped myself.
Just don't bitch that you CAN'T get one when you simply feel too moral to buy one.
Personally I've always preferred Quark to PageMaker and InDesign. I find it MUCH more intuitive and functional.
:-) That and I'm a frequent user myself. Come to think of it, I'm full circle.. I'm at a new University and I support the Design Department next door which doesn't employ any designers (only old draftsmen).
Quark was dethroned not because InDesign was so superior (IMHO) but rather because of terrible blunders by Quark. Quark was incredibly slow to update at curical periods in their product life. They were Too slow to update when PowerPC Macs became available back in 95. They were too slow to update when Apple moved to OS X. That mistake was huge because people really wanted OS X and Quark was horribly slow to release a version that even functioned properly in emulation. They were even late in updates after this as inDesign continued to take market from them.
I still prefer Quark but I'm an IT guy and not a designer. My wife, however, is a designer and her office is still using Quark. They're finally making a concerted effort to go to indesign since the whole industry has moved. It's getting increasingly difficult dealing with clients and printers if you're not on InDesign.
I was interested to hear that their experience with Indesign is pretty much identical to mine. Indesign is obviously powerful and feature-full but it is completely unintuitive. Tools that would be common to use in typical layout are buried in sub-menus of menus and they're nearly impossible to find without knowing or opening Help. Personally I would have written this off if I were just an IT guy but I'm married to a Designer and I've taught designers how to use design and editing software. The University that my wife and her friends attended (and were I attended and worked in IT) did not actually teach the students how to use any of the tools so I had to give them seminars on their software.
Back to the larger topic. I don't think that Adobe will make any real inroads back into the Mac market. Their software has sucked for years now. The only reason Photoshop and Illustrator continue to be good applications is because they were good applications 10 years ago and Adobe hasn't changed them that significantly.
Adobe really does, often, design crappy software. They are absolutely the Microsoft of software vendors (non OS vendors that is.. you know what I mean). Call me old school but I think Photoshop 4.5 was the last great release. It was easy to use and it did everything that was required of 95% of users. Adobe seems to add widgets and move menus with every upgrade just to justify the release as a new package.
Now, I use Adobe software all the time and I appreciate the software in as much as its an unweildly but very useful tool.. but it seems like it should be so much better by now. I've used various versions of GoLive and they just don't work. I've not spent [wasted] time on CS2 yet but CS1 actually never worked for me. Seriously, it was completely broken through reinstalls of Adobe and the entire machine. I've never successfully created and uploaded even a simple web page in GoLive. Never.
I really want all my apps to work together and I still like the idea of the creative suites but Adobe never seems to pull it off well. I think I'm with you on this.. the desire to have all the apps work together (you mentioned frustration with Quark and Adobe).
I do have hope for Adobe. Apple's bundled apps are great for what they are but they don't cut it for doing real work. I don't use Adobe products for my personal photos (other than serious touchups) and I don't use iPhoto if I have to color correct Mars Lander photos for the Design shop next door (Now THAT was cool.. I do work at a research university after all).
I Hope they pull this off. I hope they make CS3 solid. I hope their new Premier is solid and that it seemlessly integrates with all their other apps.
I doubt it though.
ffakr.
I can see 1000 games as a target for Linux releases. Linux geeks are often (but certainly not always) gamers but people don't install linux to play games. If you want optimised video drivers and if you just want the damn game to 'just work' you keep a Windows machine or Windows Partition. Not to mention the lag in patches.. it's no fun bringing your linux rig to lan party only to find out that you can't join the game because the V. 1.1 patch is not available for you yet.
The 1000 number for OS X is a joke though. Seriously, Any decent game should sell more than 1000 copies on the Mac. There are far too many Macs in use in homes for a GOOD game to not sell reasonably well. The Mac has issues.. it's rare to see them with really good video systems. The recent Intel machines have solid offerings but they aren't fantastic ( Elder Scrolls would play like crap on a stock iMac with underclocked X1600 video). I have, however, played Battlefield 2 at native rez with decent settings on a 1st gen Intel 17" iMac and it ran great. It beat the hell out of my Athlon X2 3800 w/ AGP Nvidia 6600GT. The current iMacs are much nicer too.
The bigger problem, as I see it, is that the gaming industry is in a lull. I don't see any really compelling titles. I love WW2 era FPShooters but the Genre has been played out to death. The Battlefield series has been solid but every new version is just a new veneer on the same game. To me and my friends, EQ and WWC MassivelyMulitPlayer games are played out. The frustration of dumping time into them has long since outweighted the enjoyment (I never did try World of WarCraft.. I got burned out before that).
Really, I walk through the gaming isle at Frys and nothing excites me and I've been looking to have another lan party. There's literally dozens of FPS War games but none stand out and I'm not going to try them all so I can tell people to buy one just for a night at my house.
The other problem is crappy coding though this is more minor issue. If the developer houses wrote tighter code, there'd be a larger range of medoicre machines that could run that code. Remember when the big guns were Doom3 vs. HalfLife2.. HalfLife2, to me, looked every bit as good overall and it ran MUCH better on less than cutting edge hardware. Doom3 was the killer benchmark for a while and the lighting system does look nice but the HL2 engine looks great and I really enjoyed the game (more so than the 'turn the corner and shoot' story line of Doom3). IMHO, HL2 is a superior game because the sum of the whole package is superior [visuals, story, environment, gameplay..]. The impressive thing is, Valve pulled this off without forcing everyone to run out and drop $500 on upgrades. If Valve, for instance, started supporting OS X, I'm sure they'd be able to run on a pretty large Mac installed base. Everything over the Mini should run HL2 fantastically. [other noteable crap-tastic games I'd never buy for a Mac.. BF Vietnam.. which crippled my Radeon9800Pro back in 2003, EQ (HORRIBLE CODING) and even EQ2 which seemed un-reasonably slow on decent PC hardware)
If we had good, compelling games.. I'd guarantee that a port of a GOOD game to OS X would sell a hell of a lot more than 1000 copies with annual sales of Millions of computers and poor enterprise market penetration (most macs go home or at least into EDU markets).
I work in EDU also so this isn't an unfamiliar issue to me.
I look at it this way, kids that are 'bad students' will skip classes no matter what. They'll use other student's notes, they'll use pod casts, or (like me) they'll just skip classes to do something more interesting (like fix computers). This is why I'm now an IT Manager and not a professor I guess.. too many skipped classes.
The reality is, you can't limit access to the pod casts. It's completely un-reasonable to only allow students who have been to the lectures.. to allow only them to download the pod-casts. What if the kid is sick? What if they had something more important happened like some very 'close' but not close enough dying? (I got in trouble once for missing a speech when my Grandfather died. No make ups in Public Speaking)
The reality is.. If kids skip classes and they pass the tests by just listening to the pod casts.. good for them. Either your class is too damn easy or they don't have any need to be there. College is supposed to be about the whole educational experience but at the end of the day it's about passing the classes and getting 'the paper'. The future employer wants to know that you got X out of Y GPA and that you finished. We, on the inside, like to believe it's about the educational experience and about expanding our perceptions and horizions, and about building character and a dozen other things but unless you're planning a career in Education it's about getting that paper and moving (in your education or in your career).
The other reality is that some classes can't be passed by just listening (or watching grainy video) podcasts. It helps being in Math class and seeing the work on the board. Sure, some kids can pod-cast and read the book and figure out dif-eq but I'd guarantee that the ones most likely to skip classes won't be in that group. At the very least, it's safe to say that some if not most kids can't do it (pass without class). The kids should be warned, in no uncertain terms, that pod casts are not replacements for sitting in class and asking questions. If they fail, they'll learn. If they fail, they'll tell other kids how they got screwed by just pod-casting.
There is an easy solution to this if the students really find this offensive.
Sign up for a myspace account if you don't have one. Exchange them among students. Complain about everyone elses account. Everyone ask every day if they have investigated all complaints. I think the biggest offense here from a liability standpoint would likely be the targeting of some students over others.
I'd also suggest fun with content. It'd be fun to post extensive content on which teachers were less than competent. Nothing libelous or overly inflamatory but it'd be nice to have a post for everytime a teacher was late to class or every time an administrator picked their nose. Just stick to the facts kids. Rat out every shortcoming of the institution and force them to read it all day in and day out. I ran pretty low on the Radar in highschool but I can still think of pleny of shortcommings that they would probably not like to hear about themselves.
I do believe that Libertyville is a farily large school so it should quickly turn into a giant morass.
Have fun people.