I think it's good to read both edited and unedited commentary, but those who don't understand the difference are a bit scary when they start quoting some blogger's "facts"...
Oh now, now. John Stewart is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, and says so. Let's not so "fair and balanced" on the topic so that our brains fall out, and we convince ourselves that his views don't color his own show. C'mon.
Kinda like "News for Nerds - Stuff that matters"? As if it really does? Most of the nerd-news here is, well... frankly... worthless information... but here we are.
It's too bad we're figuring out too late that 24 hour news, isn't... and you can stay quite nicely up to speed with the world reading a newspaper once a day. A bit ironic, really. All CNN, et. al., are good for is live shots of stuff, if they even bother to get there. Otherwise, you can read about it in a paper the next day and your life won't be much different.
Well, other than the possibility that the reporter took some time and effort to fact-check the damn story. Even that's not guaranteed, or even considered that important anymore, in the rush to be "first" with the news, but at least there was a small window of time to do it for a newspaper reporter...
The "sad" part is the history lost in losing the RMN. I have personally held RMN Edition #1 in my hands (inside plastic), and I assume it's still in the vault at the Denver Public Library. The stories about how the paper itself got started in early Denver are quite interesting, Byers was a crazed man. (First edition was printed on butcher paper to beat his competitor to the street, which was a bet Byers made with him... Whoever published first, got to stay. The other guy had to shut down and head back to the Kansas Territories. Ironic that another paper beat out RMN at the end...)
Written in October of 2008, even. Not Apple's fault if other manufacturers can't be "bothered" to move beyond the original VGA connector based on a DB-15.
The only thing PC engineers "get" is that people like you want an almost two-decades old connector instead of innovation that might cost $10 in cables? Is that the point?
Oh yeah, that article ends with three or four advertisements for places that sell cables... cheaper than Apple's.
Oh, whippin' out the fanboi... I'm so impressed. There's the usual non-rational argument! Wheee.
Hahaha... I criticize them all the time. Your argument, in case you've forgotten, was that no one should buy Apple laptops. Now you say you own them. WTF? You enjoying your circular conversation with yourself?
As far as the connector goes, someone has to "go first". Projectors aren't EVER going to "lead the way" on a change... haha... you're funny.
And Apple released monitors THE DAY THEY RELEASED THE LAPTOPS... so monitors aren't the problem...
Sheesh. Simple logic, is right. Simple-mindedly stuck on "OMG! This laptop needs an adapter! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
You're entertaining. Should we keep this up until say, Christmas or so, when some OTHER new connector comes out for people to whine about? LOL!
Bwahah... yes it IS stupid! You're finally catching on!
You use one adapter as a crutch to hate Apple products. ROFLMAO!
Everyone needs adapters because the industry hasn't gotten mini-displayport on projectors yet... they will. Then you'll need an adapter for a machine that has VGA... time marches on.
You can't POSSIBLY make the argument that a DB connector for VGA was ever a TECHNICALLY better connector for laptops either... all those pins unprotected in the male half, etc.
Apple decided to ENGINEER their product instead of conform to mediocre connectors. Moving forward. The fact that the rest of the industry hasn't caught up to yet, isn't their problem. They will.
My IBM laptop requires a USB to serial to get my work done, and batteries on any laptop don't last long enough for a serious day's work, so you carry a power supply everywhere.
You're now reaching -- going to the MacBook Air which is something that's known to be a specialized machine, not meant to be a primary laptop (if you ask me -- I sure as hell don't own one). Only executive prima-donnas use the Air, or any other underpowered "extra" laptop... it's an overblown Netbook. When did we start talking about the Air?
Everyone who travels for business carries adapters and cables galore with their "normal" laptop. In the Apple line, that'd be the MacBook and MacBook Pro, not the Air.
You're still just on your anti-Apple head-trip that makes no sense when viewed from the viewpoint that all laptops require additional "stuff" in your bag.
A single 2" long cable/adapter to hook to a projector, is diddly compared to the power supply, the USB to serial (if you're a tech and doing any serious work on infrastructure), etc.
Keep trying. I've seen this "it must be bad because it's Apple" BS before. It's not rational, and never will be.
The rest of the world is pragmatic and realizes that you bring the tools you need for the job, and one odd-ball connector today, will be tomorrow's "standard". Who cares?
You carry an additional 2-3 lbs of stuff (including power supply) to run any laptop to do anything. Whoooop-dee-doo.
Go to a 17" MacBook Pro or a very large PC-style laptop with a giant heavy battery, you MIGHT get away from the power supply requirement... for ONE day. Anything past day one, you're screwed.
So having a bag with a power supply, and a 2" long adapter for a Mac... you're talkin' what, 5 oz. of weight and virtually no space? Most people carry an Ethernet cable, maybe a modem cable (if they're staying places that are without broadband), maybe a MiFi or a wireless data card/USB dongle all of which are for mobile connectivity, and maybe even other stuff. The only people who don't, aren't traveling. They're college kids walking to class.
You're very convinced you're right, but you're not. There never was any real substance to your argument. A single additional adapter to use a new port type is no big deal. Never was.
Keep trying to change it. The media event by all the manufacturers for the mini-DVI port was today... lots of KVM's, etc... all about to hit the market. Cables/connectors they keep a-changin'. Keep whining about it. It'll surely save you.
PC video card makers started switching to DVI... not on laptops, but on desktops I don't "blame" them for doing it. I just bought the correct cable for my monitor. Whooop-deee-doo.
The machines are sold clearly stating what connectors are on them. It's not like it's a big secret. Reading the specs a smart person goes, "Hmm... I think I'll need an adapter for that" and orders one, IF... they're going to hook to monitors that don't follow that standard. (Apple monitors do, of course.)
I have little remorse for your story that requires the world's smallest violin.
Been working in the industry for over 20 years now... and have a bag full of cables, adapters, and crap collected over that time.
You asked "how far I would defend it"? Probably to the end of time. At one time even USB was "non-standard" too, and finding a USB to DB9 serial adapter was a $40 proposition, but... guess what... when my company handed me a laptop with no DB-9's on it, I requisitioned an adapter for working on routers, switches, Sun boxes, whatever...
Having the right tools for the job is part of doing the job. That's not "shifting blame" that's a fact.
Need to do a presentation from a Mac, your staff or whoever your story is about (probably made up) are so dumb they don't know what connector they have on their own machines? Give me a break. No professional tasked with giving a presentation shows up with a laptop and a dumb stare when asked how they're going to plug into the projector.
If they're that dense, well.. . I probably don't want to be sitting through their presentation anyway. It probably lacks any real content.
You just want to argue on Slashdot that Apple is "evil" because someone tasked with doing a job (a presentation) didn't know anything about their own hardware, nor how to hook it to a projector?
That's a pretty irrational and lame argument, considering connector and cabling standards have continually changed... oh let's see, for my entire adult life working on computers.
Drop the Apple chip from your shoulder. These oh-so-difficult cabling changes are piss-ant compared to the more important things.
If an Apple machine isn't right for you, fine. So be it. But when you start to rationalize it in public because of a $20 connector/cable... that's pretty funny, man.
I got some Centronics Parallel cables here if you need 'em. A number of different connector types too, both the large and the DB-25 based ones. Oh, and a few serial mice, if you have any machines that still use those.
Yeah, but all of us who are playing this "keep your head down" game are also keeping score. You know you are.
When times are better, we'll know for certain that either a) the grass isn't really greener at other places, or b) we've put up with enough of the BS and it's time for a change of scenery and a pay raise to boot.
I also have a good friend who works as the only tech for a company with 400 Macs.
He also fills in as the Asterisk server deployment guy, and takes care of all phone system "stuff" in his spare time, as well as the "router/networking" guy (he wisely chose Cisco, not because it's necessarily better, for the back room, but because he can get support on things he's not sure of with a simple call to the TAC... and all this time, he's not spent dicking with all the things it takes an entire team of IT people to screw around with at a Windows shop... means he gets all three jobs done quite well.
Granted, he's not cheap. He makes nice coin, but there's only one of him. A fleet of Macs, a couple of XServes... a little Google Calendar for shared calendaring needs... (Yeah, Mac sucks at that out of the box)... and he sleeps at night.
The ROI on human resources costs is impressive. This would scare the bejeezus out of empire-building IT managers, if their companies only knew to measure them against a shop like this... not too many of them around to compare against, I suppose.
Wholeheartedly agreed. All you have to do is look at most U.S. company's R&D spending (maybe pharma excluded) to see they're not interested in anything but next quarter.
And we're about to add "healthcare" to the list of things people are no longer personally responsible for. Just think when the "healthcare economists" studying whether or not our lives are a "good statistical risk" start to manage that capital.
Wall Street is using models, because a large percentage (and growing) of U.S. business is NOT creating real long-term wealth. They're looking for something to analyze.
The words software and engineering shouldn't be allowed together until there are the equivalent of Engineering Boards, Building Codes, and other quality standards built-in to disciplines like Civil Engineering. Software "engineering" these days is usually just hacks with intelligent release mechanisms that protect the company from their mistakes.
I like your comment. Why? Because the average person can't even do a budget and live within it. That's 6th grade math or lower. But they'll spend $70/month on Cable TV, and another $50/month on high-speed internet, to debate economics online and watch CNBC. LOL!
You could just stop at "leverage" and leave it there. People purchase things on credit that by very definition will take them half or more of their adult lives to pay off (30 yr. mortgages, for example), that the statistics show that few will live in longer than 7 years before starting over with a new loan. This means, they never get to paying anything of significance on the PRINCIPAL, therefore they're basically paying interest for 7 years, and then starting over. A large majority of the housing in this country is based on this hard fiscal fact. Even a bog-standard 15 year loan is more than double the statistical average for number of years spent living in a home. The entire housing market is "speculation" in this case... and lots of speculators lost over the last few years... if the government hadn't bailed out the lenders.
Slashdot Mirror
There's one I can think of... factcheck.org -- but even their bias shows through from under their clothes once in a while.
I think it's good to read both edited and unedited commentary, but those who don't understand the difference are a bit scary when they start quoting some blogger's "facts"...
Oh now, now. John Stewart is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, and says so. Let's not so "fair and balanced" on the topic so that our brains fall out, and we convince ourselves that his views don't color his own show. C'mon.
Everything is inexorably tied to economics, in the end. Some kind of economics. So that "sale" analogy, isn't THAT far off the mark... :-)
Kinda like "News for Nerds - Stuff that matters"? As if it really does? Most of the nerd-news here is, well... frankly... worthless information... but here we are.
It's too bad we're figuring out too late that 24 hour news, isn't... and you can stay quite nicely up to speed with the world reading a newspaper once a day. A bit ironic, really. All CNN, et. al., are good for is live shots of stuff, if they even bother to get there. Otherwise, you can read about it in a paper the next day and your life won't be much different.
Well, other than the possibility that the reporter took some time and effort to fact-check the damn story. Even that's not guaranteed, or even considered that important anymore, in the rush to be "first" with the news, but at least there was a small window of time to do it for a newspaper reporter...
The "sad" part is the history lost in losing the RMN. I have personally held RMN Edition #1 in my hands (inside plastic), and I assume it's still in the vault at the Denver Public Library. The stories about how the paper itself got started in early Denver are quite interesting, Byers was a crazed man. (First edition was printed on butcher paper to beat his competitor to the street, which was a bet Byers made with him... Whoever published first, got to stay. The other guy had to shut down and head back to the Kansas Territories. Ironic that another paper beat out RMN at the end...)
So you're convinced that hanging on to connectors created 10 or more years ago on laptops is a good engineering design call?
Here's some light reading on the topic for ya.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/10/21/apple-and-the-mini-displayport/
Written in October of 2008, even. Not Apple's fault if other manufacturers can't be "bothered" to move beyond the original VGA connector based on a DB-15.
The only thing PC engineers "get" is that people like you want an almost two-decades old connector instead of innovation that might cost $10 in cables? Is that the point?
Oh yeah, that article ends with three or four advertisements for places that sell cables... cheaper than Apple's.
Back to yawning. Keep trying.
Oh, whippin' out the fanboi... I'm so impressed. There's the usual non-rational argument! Wheee.
Hahaha... I criticize them all the time. Your argument, in case you've forgotten, was that no one should buy Apple laptops. Now you say you own them. WTF? You enjoying your circular conversation with yourself?
As far as the connector goes, someone has to "go first". Projectors aren't EVER going to "lead the way" on a change... haha... you're funny.
And Apple released monitors THE DAY THEY RELEASED THE LAPTOPS... so monitors aren't the problem...
Sheesh. Simple logic, is right. Simple-mindedly stuck on "OMG! This laptop needs an adapter! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
You're entertaining. Should we keep this up until say, Christmas or so, when some OTHER new connector comes out for people to whine about? LOL!
Bwahah... yes it IS stupid! You're finally catching on!
You use one adapter as a crutch to hate Apple products. ROFLMAO!
Everyone needs adapters because the industry hasn't gotten mini-displayport on projectors yet... they will. Then you'll need an adapter for a machine that has VGA... time marches on.
You can't POSSIBLY make the argument that a DB connector for VGA was ever a TECHNICALLY better connector for laptops either... all those pins unprotected in the male half, etc.
Apple decided to ENGINEER their product instead of conform to mediocre connectors. Moving forward. The fact that the rest of the industry hasn't caught up to yet, isn't their problem. They will.
No, the point doesn't really stand.
My IBM laptop requires a USB to serial to get my work done, and batteries on any laptop don't last long enough for a serious day's work, so you carry a power supply everywhere.
You're now reaching -- going to the MacBook Air which is something that's known to be a specialized machine, not meant to be a primary laptop (if you ask me -- I sure as hell don't own one). Only executive prima-donnas use the Air, or any other underpowered "extra" laptop... it's an overblown Netbook. When did we start talking about the Air?
Everyone who travels for business carries adapters and cables galore with their "normal" laptop. In the Apple line, that'd be the MacBook and MacBook Pro, not the Air.
You're still just on your anti-Apple head-trip that makes no sense when viewed from the viewpoint that all laptops require additional "stuff" in your bag.
A single 2" long cable/adapter to hook to a projector, is diddly compared to the power supply, the USB to serial (if you're a tech and doing any serious work on infrastructure), etc.
Keep trying. I've seen this "it must be bad because it's Apple" BS before. It's not rational, and never will be.
The rest of the world is pragmatic and realizes that you bring the tools you need for the job, and one odd-ball connector today, will be tomorrow's "standard". Who cares?
You carry an additional 2-3 lbs of stuff (including power supply) to run any laptop to do anything. Whoooop-dee-doo.
Go to a 17" MacBook Pro or a very large PC-style laptop with a giant heavy battery, you MIGHT get away from the power supply requirement... for ONE day. Anything past day one, you're screwed.
So having a bag with a power supply, and a 2" long adapter for a Mac... you're talkin' what, 5 oz. of weight and virtually no space? Most people carry an Ethernet cable, maybe a modem cable (if they're staying places that are without broadband), maybe a MiFi or a wireless data card/USB dongle all of which are for mobile connectivity, and maybe even other stuff. The only people who don't, aren't traveling. They're college kids walking to class.
You're very convinced you're right, but you're not. There never was any real substance to your argument. A single additional adapter to use a new port type is no big deal. Never was.
Keep trying to change it. The media event by all the manufacturers for the mini-DVI port was today... lots of KVM's, etc... all about to hit the market. Cables/connectors they keep a-changin'. Keep whining about it. It'll surely save you.
PC video card makers started switching to DVI... not on laptops, but on desktops I don't "blame" them for doing it. I just bought the correct cable for my monitor. Whooop-deee-doo.
The machines are sold clearly stating what connectors are on them. It's not like it's a big secret. Reading the specs a smart person goes, "Hmm... I think I'll need an adapter for that" and orders one, IF... they're going to hook to monitors that don't follow that standard. (Apple monitors do, of course.)
I have little remorse for your story that requires the world's smallest violin.
Been working in the industry for over 20 years now... and have a bag full of cables, adapters, and crap collected over that time.
You asked "how far I would defend it"? Probably to the end of time. At one time even USB was "non-standard" too, and finding a USB to DB9 serial adapter was a $40 proposition, but ... guess what... when my company handed me a laptop with no DB-9's on it, I requisitioned an adapter for working on routers, switches, Sun boxes, whatever...
Having the right tools for the job is part of doing the job. That's not "shifting blame" that's a fact.
Need to do a presentation from a Mac, your staff or whoever your story is about (probably made up) are so dumb they don't know what connector they have on their own machines? Give me a break. No professional tasked with giving a presentation shows up with a laptop and a dumb stare when asked how they're going to plug into the projector.
If they're that dense, well.. . I probably don't want to be sitting through their presentation anyway. It probably lacks any real content.
You just want to argue on Slashdot that Apple is "evil" because someone tasked with doing a job (a presentation) didn't know anything about their own hardware, nor how to hook it to a projector?
That's a pretty irrational and lame argument, considering connector and cabling standards have continually changed... oh let's see, for my entire adult life working on computers.
Drop the Apple chip from your shoulder. These oh-so-difficult cabling changes are piss-ant compared to the more important things.
If an Apple machine isn't right for you, fine. So be it. But when you start to rationalize it in public because of a $20 connector/cable... that's pretty funny, man.
I got some Centronics Parallel cables here if you need 'em. A number of different connector types too, both the large and the DB-25 based ones. Oh, and a few serial mice, if you have any machines that still use those.
Get over it. Cables is cables. Yawn.
LOL, as if nothing on a PC has ever "wasted your time"?
ROFLMAO... you're funny.
There's nothing "hidden" about it. The plug is on the side of the machine. Want to plug into it, get the right cable.
Not flippin' hard.
Now... for your real root-cause problem... hiring non-dimwits might be something your company is poor at, but I can't help you there.
Yeah, but all of us who are playing this "keep your head down" game are also keeping score. You know you are.
When times are better, we'll know for certain that either a) the grass isn't really greener at other places, or b) we've put up with enough of the BS and it's time for a change of scenery and a pay raise to boot.
What goes around, comes around.
I also have a good friend who works as the only tech for a company with 400 Macs.
He also fills in as the Asterisk server deployment guy, and takes care of all phone system "stuff" in his spare time, as well as the "router/networking" guy (he wisely chose Cisco, not because it's necessarily better, for the back room, but because he can get support on things he's not sure of with a simple call to the TAC... and all this time, he's not spent dicking with all the things it takes an entire team of IT people to screw around with at a Windows shop... means he gets all three jobs done quite well.
Granted, he's not cheap. He makes nice coin, but there's only one of him. A fleet of Macs, a couple of XServes... a little Google Calendar for shared calendaring needs... (Yeah, Mac sucks at that out of the box)... and he sleeps at night.
The ROI on human resources costs is impressive. This would scare the bejeezus out of empire-building IT managers, if their companies only knew to measure them against a shop like this... not too many of them around to compare against, I suppose.
By your own admission it *WAS* a hidden cost to Macs. Now that you *CAN* find them 3rd party, you're whining about the past.
Ahh, yes, that's what I was saying too, just seeing if that's what you were saying.
Yes. Did you have a point?
Wholeheartedly agreed. All you have to do is look at most U.S. company's R&D spending (maybe pharma excluded) to see they're not interested in anything but next quarter.
And we're about to add "healthcare" to the list of things people are no longer personally responsible for. Just think when the "healthcare economists" studying whether or not our lives are a "good statistical risk" start to manage that capital.
Wall Street is using models, because a large percentage (and growing) of U.S. business is NOT creating real long-term wealth. They're looking for something to analyze.
The words software and engineering shouldn't be allowed together until there are the equivalent of Engineering Boards, Building Codes, and other quality standards built-in to disciplines like Civil Engineering. Software "engineering" these days is usually just hacks with intelligent release mechanisms that protect the company from their mistakes.
I like your comment. Why? Because the average person can't even do a budget and live within it. That's 6th grade math or lower. But they'll spend $70/month on Cable TV, and another $50/month on high-speed internet, to debate economics online and watch CNBC. LOL!
You could just stop at "leverage" and leave it there. People purchase things on credit that by very definition will take them half or more of their adult lives to pay off (30 yr. mortgages, for example), that the statistics show that few will live in longer than 7 years before starting over with a new loan. This means, they never get to paying anything of significance on the PRINCIPAL, therefore they're basically paying interest for 7 years, and then starting over. A large majority of the housing in this country is based on this hard fiscal fact. Even a bog-standard 15 year loan is more than double the statistical average for number of years spent living in a home. The entire housing market is "speculation" in this case... and lots of speculators lost over the last few years... if the government hadn't bailed out the lenders.