Does Microsoft give free PR to "security researchers" every time it patches a bug? How about various linux software projects, do they crow openly about those who find bugs in their software? Or do they just patch the bugs?
Everything I've read about this suggests the "security professionals" are looking for fame and Apple doesn't care. I don't either. As long as bugs get patched, and Apple seems to have done so in a timely fashion, at least as much as Microsoft and other software companies do.
This isn't actually an Extreme Tech article, it's a PC Mag article.
A friend of mine sent this to me recently since I'm somewhat active in environmental circles and also a "tech" guy in some senses to my friends. I'll note here the same thing I noted to them:
You may as well just buy a Mac mini. 66% power usage (110 watts for Mac mini vs. 168 for this guy's setup), no Vista (100% better if you ask me), no time spent buying separate components and assembling them (easy!!), and Apple has a nice trade-in/recycling program, not to mention they're compliant with EU environmental standards.
And these days you can even run Windows on it if you really really have to for some strange reason. No, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Greenest, easiest PC you can buy? A Mac. Someone please prove me wrong buy pointing to a "greener" PC from Dell, HP, Gateway or some other major manufacturer.
You're mostly right. My mother? Over 60 years old, and she certainly doesn't edit HD video.
Me? I'm rarely a geek and I mostly just browse the web and play solitaire. But once in a while I find myself needing to do more than that, and that's what I need some power for. HD video still isn't in the cards for me, need-wise, but standard video? Sure, it comes up once in a while. And certainly MP3s and such.
I consider myself slightly above average. I think, judging from YouTube and other data points, that editing video to some extent - and certainly encoding music, etc. - is very average use of computers. A notch or two above "just browsing the web and playing solitaire."
Probably any computer post-2001 or so can accommodate those needs, though, so "old hardware" is still useful.
If I was Balmer, I'd be thinking, "WTF? I run a billion dollar corporation and I'm supposed to read and respond to this? This is even worth picking up a small stool."
I think you meant "This isn't even worth picking up a small stool."
Pot? Kettle. But then you aren't trying to take on Microsoft with your comment, so it doesn't much matter:)
Because, as we all know cars own our cities and not people, people have no business enjoying city streets. Going outside? You're taking your life in your hands, mister. Or rather, putting it in the hands of drivers who most likely don't even live in your city and are cocooned in protective metal cages.
Cities have made themselves too friendly to cars, agreeing to bear the burdens of smog, noise, loss of public space and safety, for minor unproven economic benefits. Time to start going the other way. Minor pedestrian nuisances to drivers are nothing to the nuisances drivers make of themselves every time they start their vehicles.
People really need to stop conflating "the government" with "one legislater." One person's stupid idea does not make it "the government."
Yeah, if this were to get passed, that might warrant a "teh guvmint suxors" screed, but as it is it's just a stupid NY State senator who probably got annoyed by some pedestrian delaying his limo ride.
If you read the article you see that "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is no longer used as a test; rather the part I quoted is the new "test" of lawful restrictions on speech.
Whether you agree with it is another thing; I just wanted to make that clear since you quoted the link, which includes the old test, but did not quote what I was referring to, which is the new test.
Regardless, "tyranny" is a word so bandied about by ideological extremists it means little these days. For some (not saying you, necessarily), having someone criticize their grammar is tyranny; I'm not sure being punished by society for inciting riots, presumably after the riots are over and everything has settled, is necessarily a bad thing.
I wonder, perhaps a successful riot is a revolution; an unsuccessful revolution is just a riot. Hmm...
Brandenburg v. Ohio, which ruled that speech could only be banned when it was directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot), the test which remains until this day.
I think under this interpretation of law, astroturfing should be banned. It is most often utilized to protect lawless action (e.g. corporate malfeasances). And to incite the election of Republicans, which should also be illegal.
Oh yes, I know. Click my links and you'll see it's the same thing. In fact, here's the "standard" Weetabix. The company licenses their brand to Barbara's Bakery in the US.
I just prefer the "Crispy Flakes & Fiber" version as it has more fiber & protein. A little more sugar, too, but not much. Sorry to see they don't have this version in the UK. But when I was there I had the biscuit version and it wasn't too much different, flavor-wise, so I still say, bring on the Weetabix in the morning! Great with yogurt.
Are you eff'n kidding me? I live in NYC and eat Weetabix every day! It's awesomely good. Particularly with some lovely Shredded Spoonfuls layered on top. Nice!
The world is getting warmer. I doubt anyone is disputing that. The thing in question is what is the driving forces for it and wether man plays a significant role in those forces and whether or not it is a natural occurance as science has proved it happened before man was around.
No, among peer-reviewed client scientists, that is not in question. And "it," meaning CO2 levels as high as they are now, has not happened in a long, long, long, long, long time. Small climate shifts have happened in between then and now, which is no doubt what you're referring to, but this is something quite different.
This movie by algore isn't supposed to educate as much as it is supposed to indoctinate people into some semi religious experience. It is as if they are trying to turn every public school into a catholic school and mother earth is marry! And yes it is perfectly fair to draw conclusion about science becoming a religion when the people defending it are acting in the exact same unbendible ways.
I disagree. "Acting in unbendable ways" is not the defining feature of religion, or else everyone who insisted on the truth of, say, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, would be laughed off as a religious nut because they were being "unbendable."
No - acting so despite reproducible evidence to the contrary is moreso a defining feature of religious behavior. In that case, who's the one who should be laughed off as religious in this case? The one acting "unbendable" due to the weight of the peer-reviewed scientific community? Or the one acting "unbendable" because of what she interprets her bible to mean?
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that - last I heard they were going to offer "dual tuning" by way of a cable-in and a regular antenna-in, which just seemed wholly not worth the effort. Nice to see the Series 3 actually supports dual tuning by way of two cablecards.
Still rather pricey compared with my current solution, but that makes sense since it's HD, which I'm not interested in due to the fact that everything HD-related is still so darn pricey.
You're definitely right about lots of examples of common products not supporting AAC. However, I believe that is changing, which is why I said "starting to be able" - lots still don't, but it's percolating. Certainly any new iPod competitor should be able to play AAC for all the people who've had iTunes for a few years and imported their music with the default settings.
TiVo - meh. I thought they were great at first but couldn't afford or rationalize them, and by the time I could my cable company was already offering a more convenient all-in-one DVR solution so I don't much care what TiVo does anymore. Yeah, I can't get video off the cable company's box, but I can set recordings once instead of twice on two boxes, and I can record two channels at once or watch one while recording another, and I value that more than "owning" the shows I watch.
If they had a proper dual-CableCard solution right now, I might care as that would solve the above problems, but they don't. And by the time they get around to it I expect Elgato or one of the other Mac-compatible TV-tuner companies to have something with dual CableCard abilities, so again I won't care what TiVo does as I'll just replace my cable company's DVR box with a mini + TV tuner. That's the plan, anyway, but things change.
(BTW, don't take any of the above personally, I expect TiVo is a great solution for lots of people!)
Just another reason to get a real Mac Mini and use that instead of an iTV. Then you get a nice home server and the possibility of DVR functionality with the right add-ons.
Amen - this is the year for me, my 3-year-old mini-itx server is starting to fulfill fewer and fewer of my needs. I'm just waiting for the next Mini revision before getting one.
But even with a Mini, I'll probably still be encoding everything into h.264, same as I encode all my music as AAC. For me, it's worth the saved space and improved quality over MP3, and I suspect h.264 will be the same small but significant improvement over XviD et al.
Mac mini + eyeTV definitely makes the Apple TV thing pointless, but I can understand its appeal for people who actually use a TV instead of a computer screen for their TV watching, and already have computers they don't want to replace or add to.
I'm a mac user and I don't have any DRM'd files on my hard drive except iTMS TV shows. I have 80GB of music, all Mp3. Apple's mp3 encoder works really well, too.
Most of my music is in iTunes' native AAC format, in M4A files. I don't have any DRM'd files either.
With everything coming out (hardware DIVX players, most phones, etc.) starting to be able to play M4A files, I don't know why anyone would still be using MP3. YMMV, of course;)
You have a point, except I think it's better not to compare it to generic cell phones.
The mp3 market at the time was small because most people didn't know or care about them. However, for geeks, or at least all the ones I knew in the late 90s, they were a hot toy. Everyone else shrugged their shoulders and rolled their eyes, not "getting" it. And then iPod and iTunes hit, and suddenly people started to get it. And the price came down, and they were everywhere.
There was a small market for a high-end geek toy, and Apple took it and made it a huge market for an everyday device.
The iPhone is the same, if you compare it to smartphones. Sure, everyone has a cell phone, but very few have one that does anything close to what the iPhone does. Standard phones have very primitive contacts/calendar/internet features, but smartphones have better capabilities and are the "real deal." They just also happen to be very arcane to use and only geeks and people who absolutely need those features have them. Everyone else shrugs their shoulders, rolls their eyes and keeps using their regular cell phones.
Cell phones are to smartphones what CD players were to early MP3 players.
And the iPhone is to smartphones what the iPod was to early MP3 players. It's going to make everyone look at smartphones and say, "Oh, I get it now, that's what they can do for me, when made right, I want one of those."
I don't know, I'm starting to second-guess all this second-guessing.
See, with the iPod, everybody on the net (forget the print computer mags & professional tech sites) was saying the iPod was surely doomed, and then it exploded everywhere.
But this time everybody on the net (again, forget the pros) is saying "we should learn from the iPod, people will probably buy this and it'll be a hit just like the iPod was."
Which, of course, means the reverse is true, as was the case with the iPod. Everyone said X, but Y happened. This time, everyone says Y, so expect X to happen.
I almost agree except that it's really, really hard to come up with a good "redefining" name. Except for a few almost simultaneously-released & poorly named products (Nomad, Archos), this was a new product giving people capacity, a "one place for all your music" device, and "Pod" really highlighted that selling point.
If the selling point of the iPhone is to be its "one place for all your communication" feature, well, what short, marketing-friendly word embodies communication and hasn't been used for something else?
The good words are all too long and/or boring: Communicate, Socialize, Connect, etc?
You could do something like "iComm" but cutting off a long word makes it bulky and, well, cut-off so it just sort of hangs there. iPad implies writing & drawing, which presumably people wouldn't be doing much. It's not a tablet, it's a communication nexus. (iNexus?) You want something you can imagine people saying in their everyday life, like, "Wait a sec, I have to put on my iPod."
Too bad "iTalk" is kinda spoken for already by AppleTalk. I think "Phone" is just about the best word available for describing a solid communications device.
Frankly, I can't think of, and haven't heard from anyone else, a better-sounding name than iPhone, except one idea, if they'd kept it part of the iPod brand as an "iPod Phone" or something.
Sounds great! But sounds like unless/until even just major cities like New York start having real citywide WiFi (or WiMAX?), VOIP phones are going to be staying indoors.
And as soon as you realize you want to run BitTorrent, SoulSeek, or some other p2p for all those files you have on your attached storage, and to help fill it up as well, you can just get a Mac Mini et voila, instant server. And there's your scanner sharing, too, if you have a linux or OS X computer that can access shared scanners. AFAIK, there's no (cheap) way to access networked scanners on Windows machines. Someone please correct me?
I'm with you on the driving thing. Hell, people should get out of their cars and walk/bike - but I've seen a person talking on their phone while biking so that doesn't solve that particular problem.
I'm not clear how this works. With spotty wifi coverage & most wifi requiring pay for access, how does Skype/VOIP compare with standard mobile phone coverage?
Oooookaaaay, you're like one of those people who likes to crow about how they don't own a TV.
Totally missing the point on mobile phones. Er, you don't have to answer the thing, you know? So, like, you're not on anyone's beck & call but your own.
Pick up a foreign SIM? If you have a decent international phone you should just be able to use it overseas on the foreign networks. Especially in England! At least that was my experience a year & a half ago with T-Mobile when I was in England.. Maybe Cingular doesn't offer international roaming.
Slashdot Mirror
Does Microsoft give free PR to "security researchers" every time it patches a bug? How about various linux software projects, do they crow openly about those who find bugs in their software? Or do they just patch the bugs?
Everything I've read about this suggests the "security professionals" are looking for fame and Apple doesn't care. I don't either. As long as bugs get patched, and Apple seems to have done so in a timely fashion, at least as much as Microsoft and other software companies do.
This isn't actually an Extreme Tech article, it's a PC Mag article.
A friend of mine sent this to me recently since I'm somewhat active in environmental circles and also a "tech" guy in some senses to my friends. I'll note here the same thing I noted to them:
You may as well just buy a Mac mini. 66% power usage (110 watts for Mac mini vs. 168 for this guy's setup), no Vista (100% better if you ask me), no time spent buying separate components and assembling them (easy!!), and Apple has a nice trade-in/recycling program, not to mention they're compliant with EU environmental standards.
And these days you can even run Windows on it if you really really have to for some strange reason. No, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Greenest, easiest PC you can buy? A Mac. Someone please prove me wrong buy pointing to a "greener" PC from Dell, HP, Gateway or some other major manufacturer.
You're mostly right. My mother? Over 60 years old, and she certainly doesn't edit HD video.
Me? I'm rarely a geek and I mostly just browse the web and play solitaire. But once in a while I find myself needing to do more than that, and that's what I need some power for. HD video still isn't in the cards for me, need-wise, but standard video? Sure, it comes up once in a while. And certainly MP3s and such.
I consider myself slightly above average. I think, judging from YouTube and other data points, that editing video to some extent - and certainly encoding music, etc. - is very average use of computers. A notch or two above "just browsing the web and playing solitaire."
Probably any computer post-2001 or so can accommodate those needs, though, so "old hardware" is still useful.
I think you meant "This isn't even worth picking up a small stool."
Pot? Kettle. But then you aren't trying to take on Microsoft with your comment, so it doesn't much matter
People really need to stop conflating "the government" with "one legislater." One person's stupid idea does not make it "the government."
Yeah, if this were to get passed, that might warrant a "teh guvmint suxors" screed, but as it is it's just a stupid NY State senator who probably got annoyed by some pedestrian delaying his limo ride.
If you read the article you see that "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is no longer used as a test; rather the part I quoted is the new "test" of lawful restrictions on speech.
Whether you agree with it is another thing; I just wanted to make that clear since you quoted the link, which includes the old test, but did not quote what I was referring to, which is the new test.
Regardless, "tyranny" is a word so bandied about by ideological extremists it means little these days. For some (not saying you, necessarily), having someone criticize their grammar is tyranny; I'm not sure being punished by society for inciting riots, presumably after the riots are over and everything has settled, is necessarily a bad thing.
I wonder, perhaps a successful riot is a revolution; an unsuccessful revolution is just a riot. Hmm...
I think under this interpretation of law, astroturfing should be banned. It is most often utilized to protect lawless action (e.g. corporate malfeasances). And to incite the election of Republicans, which should also be illegal.
Oh yes, I know. Click my links and you'll see it's the same thing. In fact, here's the "standard" Weetabix. The company licenses their brand to Barbara's Bakery in the US.
I just prefer the "Crispy Flakes & Fiber" version as it has more fiber & protein. A little more sugar, too, but not much. Sorry to see they don't have this version in the UK. But when I was there I had the biscuit version and it wasn't too much different, flavor-wise, so I still say, bring on the Weetabix in the morning! Great with yogurt.
Are you eff'n kidding me? I live in NYC and eat Weetabix every day! It's awesomely good. Particularly with some lovely Shredded Spoonfuls layered on top. Nice!
Further meaningless iPhone articles do not belong on Slashdot, and neither does Al Gore.
No, among peer-reviewed client scientists, that is not in question. And "it," meaning CO2 levels as high as they are now, has not happened in a long, long, long, long, long time. Small climate shifts have happened in between then and now, which is no doubt what you're referring to, but this is something quite different.
I disagree. "Acting in unbendable ways" is not the defining feature of religion, or else everyone who insisted on the truth of, say, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, would be laughed off as a religious nut because they were being "unbendable."
No - acting so despite reproducible evidence to the contrary is moreso a defining feature of religious behavior. In that case, who's the one who should be laughed off as religious in this case? The one acting "unbendable" due to the weight of the peer-reviewed scientific community? Or the one acting "unbendable" because of what she interprets her bible to mean?
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that - last I heard they were going to offer "dual tuning" by way of a cable-in and a regular antenna-in, which just seemed wholly not worth the effort. Nice to see the Series 3 actually supports dual tuning by way of two cablecards.
Still rather pricey compared with my current solution, but that makes sense since it's HD, which I'm not interested in due to the fact that everything HD-related is still so darn pricey.
You're definitely right about lots of examples of common products not supporting AAC. However, I believe that is changing, which is why I said "starting to be able" - lots still don't, but it's percolating. Certainly any new iPod competitor should be able to play AAC for all the people who've had iTunes for a few years and imported their music with the default settings.
TiVo - meh. I thought they were great at first but couldn't afford or rationalize them, and by the time I could my cable company was already offering a more convenient all-in-one DVR solution so I don't much care what TiVo does anymore. Yeah, I can't get video off the cable company's box, but I can set recordings once instead of twice on two boxes, and I can record two channels at once or watch one while recording another, and I value that more than "owning" the shows I watch.
If they had a proper dual-CableCard solution right now, I might care as that would solve the above problems, but they don't. And by the time they get around to it I expect Elgato or one of the other Mac-compatible TV-tuner companies to have something with dual CableCard abilities, so again I won't care what TiVo does as I'll just replace my cable company's DVR box with a mini + TV tuner. That's the plan, anyway, but things change.
(BTW, don't take any of the above personally, I expect TiVo is a great solution for lots of people!)
Amen - this is the year for me, my 3-year-old mini-itx server is starting to fulfill fewer and fewer of my needs. I'm just waiting for the next Mini revision before getting one.
But even with a Mini, I'll probably still be encoding everything into h.264, same as I encode all my music as AAC. For me, it's worth the saved space and improved quality over MP3, and I suspect h.264 will be the same small but significant improvement over XviD et al.
Mac mini + eyeTV definitely makes the Apple TV thing pointless, but I can understand its appeal for people who actually use a TV instead of a computer screen for their TV watching, and already have computers they don't want to replace or add to.
Most of my music is in iTunes' native AAC format, in M4A files. I don't have any DRM'd files either.
With everything coming out (hardware DIVX players, most phones, etc.) starting to be able to play M4A files, I don't know why anyone would still be using MP3. YMMV, of course
You have a point, except I think it's better not to compare it to generic cell phones.
The mp3 market at the time was small because most people didn't know or care about them. However, for geeks, or at least all the ones I knew in the late 90s, they were a hot toy. Everyone else shrugged their shoulders and rolled their eyes, not "getting" it. And then iPod and iTunes hit, and suddenly people started to get it. And the price came down, and they were everywhere.
There was a small market for a high-end geek toy, and Apple took it and made it a huge market for an everyday device.
The iPhone is the same, if you compare it to smartphones. Sure, everyone has a cell phone, but very few have one that does anything close to what the iPhone does. Standard phones have very primitive contacts/calendar/internet features, but smartphones have better capabilities and are the "real deal." They just also happen to be very arcane to use and only geeks and people who absolutely need those features have them. Everyone else shrugs their shoulders, rolls their eyes and keeps using their regular cell phones.
Cell phones are to smartphones what CD players were to early MP3 players.
And the iPhone is to smartphones what the iPod was to early MP3 players. It's going to make everyone look at smartphones and say, "Oh, I get it now, that's what they can do for me, when made right, I want one of those."
I don't know, I'm starting to second-guess all this second-guessing.
See, with the iPod, everybody on the net (forget the print computer mags & professional tech sites) was saying the iPod was surely doomed, and then it exploded everywhere.
But this time everybody on the net (again, forget the pros) is saying "we should learn from the iPod, people will probably buy this and it'll be a hit just like the iPod was."
Which, of course, means the reverse is true, as was the case with the iPod. Everyone said X, but Y happened. This time, everyone says Y, so expect X to happen.
I almost agree except that it's really, really hard to come up with a good "redefining" name. Except for a few almost simultaneously-released & poorly named products (Nomad, Archos), this was a new product giving people capacity, a "one place for all your music" device, and "Pod" really highlighted that selling point.
If the selling point of the iPhone is to be its "one place for all your communication" feature, well, what short, marketing-friendly word embodies communication and hasn't been used for something else?
The good words are all too long and/or boring: Communicate, Socialize, Connect, etc?
You could do something like "iComm" but cutting off a long word makes it bulky and, well, cut-off so it just sort of hangs there. iPad implies writing & drawing, which presumably people wouldn't be doing much. It's not a tablet, it's a communication nexus. (iNexus?) You want something you can imagine people saying in their everyday life, like, "Wait a sec, I have to put on my iPod."
Too bad "iTalk" is kinda spoken for already by AppleTalk. I think "Phone" is just about the best word available for describing a solid communications device.
Frankly, I can't think of, and haven't heard from anyone else, a better-sounding name than iPhone, except one idea, if they'd kept it part of the iPod brand as an "iPod Phone" or something.
Sounds great! But sounds like unless/until even just major cities like New York start having real citywide WiFi (or WiMAX?), VOIP phones are going to be staying indoors.
And as soon as you realize you want to run BitTorrent, SoulSeek, or some other p2p for all those files you have on your attached storage, and to help fill it up as well, you can just get a Mac Mini et voila, instant server. And there's your scanner sharing, too, if you have a linux or OS X computer that can access shared scanners. AFAIK, there's no (cheap) way to access networked scanners on Windows machines. Someone please correct me?
I'm with you on the driving thing. Hell, people should get out of their cars and walk/bike - but I've seen a person talking on their phone while biking so that doesn't solve that particular problem.
I'm not clear how this works. With spotty wifi coverage & most wifi requiring pay for access, how does Skype/VOIP compare with standard mobile phone coverage?
Oooookaaaay, you're like one of those people who likes to crow about how they don't own a TV.
Totally missing the point on mobile phones. Er, you don't have to answer the thing, you know? So, like, you're not on anyone's beck & call but your own.
Pick up a foreign SIM? If you have a decent international phone you should just be able to use it overseas on the foreign networks. Especially in England! At least that was my experience a year & a half ago with T-Mobile when I was in England.. Maybe Cingular doesn't offer international roaming.