You'll concede that both parties commit election fraud via various means, but still want to think of what one party does as "worse".
This is exactly the kind of problem I'm talking about.
I'll answer your question: NEITHER is "worse". I'm not talking about it from a scientific or statistical or emotional standpoint. They're both bad, and they're both dirty tricks.
And for what it's worth, I don't believe that people are flat-out denied their rights to vote en masse. I believe that there are hundreds of examples of isolated incidents, and also things like people believing legitimately long lines or legitimate road construction are actually parts of a carefully coordinated conspiracy to prevent people from voting, and the like. Humorously, where people claim the most "disenfranchisement" are in Democratically-controlled counties. This is a county issue, and ones that Democratic and bipartisan initiatives mandating electronic voting machines was ironically intended to solve.
"Axis of evil" is rhetoric, just as much now as it was then. Accurate? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that it's just political rhetoric, not a conspiracy theory.
As for WMD, to requote something I've said before, which applies here:
To quote something I've said before, but which applies here:
[w]hile I agree that there isn't going to be an Islamic ICBM delivering a nuclear weapon anytime soon, there were *hundreds of tons* of WMD unaccounted for in Iraq, post-1998. The intelligence capabilities of most western European nations, notably the UNSEC members, the UN as an organization, the US, UK, and so on, all believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of the WMD that were unaccounted for after 1998 when the inspectors left. After 7 years of utter lack of cooperation, deception, and all manner of lies from Iraq about its WMD programs, there was zero reason to believe anything changed for the better once it was left unsupervised. Over 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were found in Iraq since March 2003. Entire fleets of fighter aircraft were found *completely buried* in remote areas of the desert. There is no reason to believe the hundreds of tons of remaining WMD that was unaccounted for with absolutely no acceptable proof of its disposition, combined with Iraq's lies and deception, didn't remain in Iraq's possession. Likely, it is now in the hands of nations like Syria.
The Iraq strategy isn't about "Iraq". It was about picking a nation for which a case could be expeditiously made to the American people, allowing a great number of resources, both monetary and military, to be brought to bear, on an omnibus strategy of political change in the mideast. It was a VERY RISKY proposition, but the threat of Panislamic radicalism is a very, very real one. And no, it's not something we "created". It's something that has come to this point for a variety of reasons, but the US and/or West isn't exclusively or even mostly to blame. (Is it impossible for people to believe that there are factions of people in the world who disagree about a great many things and who desire to kill those who don't agree with them?) And, FYI, we know we have problems with Saudi Arabia, but we hope for a domino affect, and also, we don't overtly attack official allies (for those who ask "Why don't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq, then?").
The big differences are intent. E.g., intent to kill innocent civilians vs not. Intent to allow people to live in a free(r) society vs not. These are very important distinctions to people who aren't pure moral relativists who think that everyone is just as "right" or justified in doing something as someone else.
While WMD wasn't the real "reason" we went to Iraq - the reasons were MUCH broader and not about "Iraq" per se - it's quite reasonable that the administration and planners would expect to find caches of WMD there, thus justifying the action on its face.
I realize you're talking more about nuclear, here, but if you're going to make incorrect claims about Iraq with regard to WMD, you should take a look at the following and educate yourself:
And as for nuclear problems, we now have Iran to worry about as well. If you choose to "blame" the US or US policy on any troubles we have with Iran, feel free. I'm just somewhat dumbfounded by the view that others outside the US are apparently incapable of doing "bad" things on their own without provocation of the evil US, especially given the thousands of years of human history.
As for "secret prisons", again, to requote something I said a couple of days ago for the sake of expediency:
I believe there are extraordinary circumstances where military or intelligence components may want to keep the capture of an enemy completely secret, and that this need
Sorry to disappoint, but all of the words are my own, and were written in the 15 minutes or so before the story became public. Slashdot subscribers see stories a bit early.
No, counting ballots doesn't have to be hard. What's extremely hard is:
- Making sure everyone only votes once - Keeping the entire process anonymous
If you only had to to either instead of both, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, having to do both is hard, and with each and every county running their own elections for tens of millions of people, all with different aims, populations, budgets, and so on, it's a lot harder than you think.
This isn't even about paper versus electronic (because we can make 100% trusted electronic systems, with a permanent voter-verified audit trail being present - but even with a paper trail, a lot of people seriously believe there will still be ways to rig the elections...and beyond that, there will still be claims of long lines, voter threats, and so on). It's about the intrinsic difficulties in doing a one-vote election while maintaining anonymity, and disallowing any external entity to find out who any particular person voted for.
Remember, too, that the voting acts (e.g., HAVA) were designed to allow fair and uniform access to ballots and polling places, while taking advantage of streamlining things with technology - something we have done in every other sector of society. Unfortunately, any federal, state, or local initiatives recommending or mandating electronic voting machines are incomplete without a permanent voter-verified paper trail. With that piece, it doesn't matter how complex it is, whether or not the systems are open source or proprietary, or anything else. But even with a paper trail, there will still be the increasing calls of fraud and disenfranchisement, as people who want to believe that will continue to organize and reinforce each other via the internet. Yes, some of the fraud and disenfranchisement is real. But there are people, as I said, who will continue to believe that any Republican victory is stolen, as if Democrats can't game the system (and make no mistake, they do).
I also don't know what you're talking about when you say that the "GOP" wants a complicated system, when the voting initiatives that mandated and extended things like electronic voting were either solidly Democratic or bipartisan.
There has been fraud, corruption, and all manner of crap going on in elections in the US since the beginning of time. (And, might I add, consider the source.)
This hasn't change since Bush took office, and won't be any different in 2008. It's not just Republicans that do it, nor is is just Democrats. (Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters.")
As dirty and reeking of conflict-of-interest as it is, when Diebold's CEO said he was committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, he meant it as a Republican corporate leader and campaigner; not in the context of "rigging" an election.
No, the disenfranchisement that happens now and will continue to happen is the same disenfranchisement and dirty tricks that always happens: the rise of the internet for the general population, particularly since the last pre-Bush presidential election, has enabled the kinds of incredible information exchange on all manner of topics that we've seen in the last two elections. That will only increase, and it cuts both ways: as much as it allows the exchange of legitimate information, it acts as a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, some wacky, some not-so-wacky, some with elements of truth, but still serving to subvert any faith we ever had in our system.
The worst part is so many people believe that not one, but two, elections were actively and intentionally "stolen"/rigged exclusively by Republicans, that anytime any Republican/conservative candidate ever wins an election from this point forward, it will always be doubted. Even recounts will be doubted. People want to believe, well, what they want to believe.
All of the political, governmental, financial, famous and otherwise, and other powerhouse figures in the United States on the anti-Republican/conservative side(s) didn't just stand idly by while not one, but *two* elections were stolen.
Nothing new has happened on either side in 2000 or 2004 that hasn't ever happened before. That's just a fact of life. These are the same county election entities that have run elections in locales for generations. Yes, things change a bit, especially with the introduction of electronic voting machines (which, ironically, were the result of various Democratic and bipartisan initiatives designed to allow more equal and consistent management of and access to polling places). But all e-voting vendors offer permament voter-verified receipt options on current and some previous models of machines - but these additions cost even more money; money that many municipalities weren't willing to spend.
Worse still, we're talking about it two (or six, depending) years later. Not only do we have people who believe firmly that both elections were stolen, but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power. To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.
Our restrictions for the residence halls really just come down to bandwidth restrictions.
Residents get 5GB/week off-campus (unlimited on-campus). If they go over this limit, their off-campus connectivity speed is reduced until their traffic usage goes below a 4GB for the previous 7 day period. Campus traffic is never affected.
We haven't had any complaints about usability of the residence hall connections. All other connections on campus (non-residence halls) are generally unrestricted, and almost all are 100mbit.
BitTorrent, like any other technology, protocol, or tool, can be used for things that are legal, illegal, or questionable in various jurisdictions. Are you prepared to continue quashing a protocol or service simply because it may be abused?
On the other hand, almost all (or at least a great deal) of the BitTorremt traffic may be currently used for sharing copyrighted materials. We all know that to be the case. Is it responsible to open up the pipes for what you know is almost exclusively illegitimate usage, within the context of the law (regardless of how you or anyone else feels about copyright infringement, and so on)?
On yet another hand, what happens if BitTorrent usage becomes largely legitimate because some large legitimate service begins using it? (And yes, to those reading this, I'm more than aware BitTorrent is used for a variety of legitimate large downloads.) In that event, can you afford to continue treating any protocol or service as if it's illegitimate, just because some level of it is now?
During the heyday of Napster (1999-2000), UW-Madison estimated that Napster accounted for over half (!) of our inbound and outbound traffic. There was a lot of talk about how to deal with this. Ultimately, UW-Madison decided that as a large public research university, we can't afford to police a particular kind of traffic wholesale: any network protocol can be abused, used for illegal purposes, and so on. We felt that the academic arguments and responding to usage demands of the campus trumped making judgment calls about the appropriateness of the use. Granted, the appropriate use policy of the university forbade some of the things people were using the network for, but we didn't actively police (or restrict) traffic. In the end, this provided the university with the impetus to examine ways of meeting increased demand and come up with novel solutions to our neverending bandwidth needs. One interesting example is that we now locally host a collection of Akamai's servers on our own network, which serves UW-Madison, the 25 other UW System Schools, and WiscNet. However, some of the smaller schools couldn't afford to make those same determinations: they either restricted or blocked Napster (and other things, like Gnutella) completely.
Today, the university does shape and restrict traffic to the residence halls in various ways; but it's designed to do so in a way such that users almost always won't notice any impact and allows equal access for all. All of our residence halls feature 100mbit ethernet, and that full pipe may be taken advantage of. Some users do use the network for inappropriate purposes, and those cases are dealt with individually when needed. Still, there is no proactive policing unless there are clear abuse/misuse issues. For what it's worth, BitTorrent (and all other protocols) are fully usable here.
If you can afford it, politically and financially, I'd say you should be looking into opening this up. The school does not bear responsibility for the actions of its users unless there is a lack of good faith attempts to stop abuse when requested by, e.g., copyright holders. There always is the argument of customer satisfaction, as well, that must be responded to - whether some students' use is appropriate or not.
I'm not "scared". This doesn't have anything to do with "fear", and I don't think I'll be the victim of a terrorist attack. In fact, I think I'm far more likely to be killed by far more many mundane things, and I don't think I'm very likely to be killed by any of them either.
I'll concede that fear is used as a tool by many, including politicians and pundits here. But that's not why I wrote what I wrote. There are indeed real threats in the world. Many. The US is a "threat" to some entities. But Panislamic radicalism, Islamofascism, militant Islam, or whatever you want to call it - I realize they're all buzzwords to a certain degree - is a *real threat*.
And the quote at the end about killing and/or winning against Al Qaeda everywhere wasn't from "me" or "GWB". It was from Kerry, which is why I included it. (No doubt some people think Kerry is nothing more than a part of the same political machine, one and the same with Republicans, but the point is that many people would have voted, and in fact did vote, for Kerry simply because he was not Bush, or because liberal/Democrat politics are at least somewhat closer in line with what they think their beliefs are. If they voted for Kerry, then they have to consider exactly what Kerry said in that quote.)
Finally, I didn't say that the current course was the only solution to the problem. Nor did I say that it was desirable or even possible to "kill all terrorists". What it is possible to do is use a multifaceted approach, which MAY include military action and killing, to affect change, over time, such that a preponderance of peoples in the region either themselves live in free or mostly-free societies, or will but pressure on other governments and entities in the area to encourage the adoption of free policies. Some of this process will be bloody. But I firmly believe that the mideast can successfully modernize, and that these militants and radicals can be marginalized and punished within these societies, BY these societies, instead of sympathized with, harbored, and even supported. The more people that live in (quasi-)free societies, with free flows of information, freedom of the press, and free exchanges of ideals, ideas, and goods, the better. That's the neoconservative ideal: not having a McDonalds on every corner in Baghdad or converting everyone to Christianity; but rather, that the US and West can use its position of power and influence to actually cause change for the better in the world, and that free societies are more compatible with our own ideals, and thus will be beneficial to the global community, and to ourselves, not to mention their own societies and happiness. Yes, to a certain extent, they have to want it themselves. But we can also help make it happen.
Further, there are and have been "bad people" (or whatever language that would be acceptable to you to describe them) in this world. I do not believe in moral relativism; I understand with it and agree to certain extents, but I don't subscribe to it wholesale. Some of these people have to be dealt with, some with force. That doesn't mean there aren't all manner of diplomatic and social and other courses that might be taken, including simultaneous with force. Pacifism is all well and good, as long as you're also smart and practical enough to understand that sometimes force is required, or is the most expeditious action. Many, many mistakes have been made in the current US foreign policy course. It was a HUGE gamble to attempt to begin with Iraq in the beginnings of this omnibus strategy to affect change in the region. (For a partial answer to this issue, see answer 2 here.)
Would you have suggested alternate, non-violent course for every instance of violent conflict throughout human history? If so, I'd congratulate you on your internal consistency, even though I'd hugely disagree. If you do agree that war and military force is sometimes necessary, I don't believe you're at all qualified to say that this isn't one of those times (any more than I necessarily am to say that it is).
My own personal belief, and the prevailing belief of many in the intelligence community, is somewhere in the regions surrounding the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
If you mean "where is he" as in "why haven't we captured him yet", well, it's because we haven't found him. As to "why", there are many reasons. I don't blame Clinton, but a general lack of human intelligence is one major reason. Both parties have been guilty of being tempted by the expansion of electronic and satellite surveillance, at the severe detriment of human intelligence.
(Some believe we purposefully have not "found" him, or even that the US was in a relationship of sorts with bin Laden on 9/11, to make it appear that bin Laden was the mastermind when in reality it was Cheney & Co. That, of course, is utter tripe.)
2) Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
To quote something I've said before, but which applies here:
Well, while I agree that there isn't going to be an Islamic ICBM delivering a nuclear weapon anytime soon, there were *hundreds of tons* of WMD unaccounted for in Iraq, post-1998. The intelligence capabilities of most western European nations, notably the UNSEC members, the UN as an organization, the US, UK, and so on, all believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of the WMD that were unaccounted for after 1998 when the inspectors left. After 7 years of utter lack of cooperation, deception, and all manner of lies from Iraq about its WMD programs, there was zero reason to believe anything changed for the better once it was left unsupervised. Over 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were found in Iraq since March 2003. Entire fleets of fighter aircraft were found *completely buried* in remote areas of the desert. There is no reason to believe the hundreds of tons of remaining WMD that was unaccounted for with absolutely no acceptable proof of its disposition, combined with Iraq's lies and deception, didn't remain in Iraq's possession. Likely, it is now in the hands of nations like Syria.
The Iraq strategy isn't about "Iraq". It was about picking a nation for which a case could be expeditiously made to the American people, allowing a great number of resources, both monetary and military, to be brought to bear, on an omnibus strategy of political change in the mideast. It was a VERY RISKY proposition, but the threat of Panislamic radicalism is a very, very real one. And no, it's not something we "created". It's something that has come to this point for a variety of reasons, but the US and/or West isn't exclusively or even mostly to blame. (Is it impossible for people to believe that there are factions of people in the world who disagree about a great many things and who desire to kill those who don't agree with them?) And, FYI, we know we have problems with Saudi Arabia, but we hope for a domino affect, and also, we don't overtly attack official allies (for those who ask "Why don't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq, then?").
The big differences are intent. E.g., intent to kill innocent civilians vs not. Intent to allow people to live in a free(r) society vs not. These are very important distinctions to people who aren't pure moral relativists who think that everyone is just as "right" or justified in doing something as someone else.
While WMD wasn't the real "reason" we went to Iraq - the reasons were MUCH broader and not about "iraq" per se - it's quite reasonable that the administration and planners would expect to find caches of WMD there, thus justifying the action on its face.
I realize you're talking more about nuclear, here, but if you're going to make incorrect claims about Iraq with regard to WMD, you should take a look at the following and educate yourself:
How can the EU continue the cause when it has shown time and again that its not willing to do anything about the radicalism right on its collective doorstep? The threat of real Panislamic radicalism is here and now, and growing. The US and the West was not exclusively or even mostly responsible for its creation. Is trying to stop it now going to "create more terrorists"? Of COURSE. So what's the alternate? Do nothing?
It's so convenient to believe that the US is what's wrong with the world, and that the middle east would just want to live in peace, with no militant radicals wanting to export their beliefs. It's convenient to believe in moral relativism, where someone like Bush == bin Laden, just on different sides (or the same side) of a coin.
There are real threats in this world, as there have been throughout history. Stop thinking the US is the only "threat" for a moment, and consider whether it's possible for anyone, anywhere in the world to want to do something harmful. I'd say an Islamic fundamentalist superstate is pretty harmful. Of course there are many, many, many other issues here...such as access to critical energy resources by the US/West, which is what supports the Western economies (not to mention developing economies all over the world), and the global economy which supports hundreds of millions of people. If all that's important is bodycounts and human calculus, what about all the devastation that would occur without continuing, stable access to resources? This isn't just a US problem or about "oil companies". Consider the scope of what you're talking about. We already have a petroleum economy, and it's not about lazy, fat Americans' SUVs. It's about plastics, and medicine, and fertilizers, and water purification, and food processing, and all of these things that allow our world to support a population that's by all rights probably too large for it. There WILL be solutions to problems of peak oil and alternative energy issues...but it will take time, and right or wrong, it will take the actual absence of those resources. And it's coming. But in the meantime, if we can export free ideals - and contrary to your belief, that's exactly what we're trying to do - WHILE also securing resources, it's all the better.
Neoconservatives *really believe, quite literally*, in free markets and free peoples and in freedom being the most desirable default state. Of course, there are degrees, and freedoms are tempered with laws and security needs. But anyone who thinks the US is a police state or teetering on the brink of a "fascist theocracy" (???), after just a faint few years no less, is quite frankly, deluded. The "fascist theocracies" we have to fear are the ones that WILL grow in the mideast if something isn't done. People in these movements would like *nothing more* than to obtain any and all weapons possible to use against the US and West. And the targets? As many civilians as possible. It boggles my mind that no one can see any distinction between these ideals. There is a long littany of things the US has done "wrong", "evil" things, horrible things, terrible mistakes. There is corruption and greed and ulterior motives on the behalf of human beings everywhere. But that doesn't change the fact that the US has done a lot of good in this world.
In 6 years, the US has not become a police state. Bush won't be declaring martial law and keeping himself installed in 2008. There won't be a draft. This isn't a conspiracy to warmonger and steal oil. This isn't about killing all Muslims. This isn't about converting everyone to Christianity. This isn't about the US becoming a police state so evil neocons can execute their plans for world domination on the backs of a complicit populace. This isn't about the US executing and planning false flag "terrorist attacks" (against ourselves or Western interests) to make it falsely look like radical Islam is a threat. To those of you who believe that it is: get a serious fucking grip on reality, people.
Might I remind something said by a candidate in th
As yet, I have not seen anything telling us definitively whether or not we will be able to rip copys of previously purchased DVD's for playback on an iPod.
That's because it's not "legal" in many jurisdictions, including the US.
I wasn't saying that iTunes or iTV would do this; what I'm saying is that it's definitely going to be technically possible, and in fact it's possible right now, in one step, with tools like:
But it won't be iTunes itself that does it for you; you'll still have to rip it with another tool first, such as HandBrake. But you can then certainly import into iTunes, play via iTV, or put on your iPod (and you can put it into iTunes and sync it to your iPod today).
Well, keep in mind that the TV shows all started out at 320x240, and are (along with new video content) now 640x480 with Dolby Surround (when available).
Further, Jobs already demoed an HD version of The Incredibles going to the iTV box. So I imagine improvements are coming, here. Remember the type of people these services are initially targeted at: normal consumers, not people who have already set up HD MythTV Linux boxes in their living room and rip their DVD collections to 2TB media libraries.
It looks like it will be an appliance that will simply stream video wirelessly from any Mac or Windows system with iTunes.
But, since you can absolutely import any video you wish (including, say, ripped DVDs) into iTunes, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to play any media you wished.
This is likely for people that DO NOT already have some kind of media center or EyeTV/EyeHome/DVR setup: the target for this isn't people who already have made the leap to having full-fledged computer systems in their living room. The target for this is the same as for AirPort Express: not people who build an MP3 and media station computer in their living room. People who want to plop down a device, hook the A/V outputs up to their TV and entertainment system, use an assistant (like AirPort Express) to set it up, and it's ready to play media they download/import on their computer/laptop/etc. elsewhere in the house.
No second whole computer in the living room. This is, essentially, an AirPort Express for video (and yes, I know it's not exactly like an AirPort Express, but its functionality in the context of video and the living room can be summed up that way).
There probably will be *some* advanced or interesting functionality, but it looks like this is more or less an appliance designed to play video content downloaded to iTunes on a remote computer via a Front Row-like interface. But yes, you will be able to add your own video content, since you can do that with iTunes now. The only requirement is that it be some format QuickTime understands.
I downloaded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a test.
- The movie is 1.22 GB, and downloaded in about 20 minutes on a 100 Mbps connection (Internet2). - The movie was able to be played before downloading was finished, and could skip to anywhere in the content that was already complete. - The content shows itself as being protected by "FairPlay Version: 2". - The bitrate is 1.5Mbps. - The framerate is 24fps. - The audio on this particular movie is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz. - The video on this particular movie is Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated). - The video looks very good (indeed, "near DVD quality") on a high quality 20" LCD. (I'm not a "videophile", but this is absolutely more than watchable on a nice quality large TV or monitor, and I suspect most consumers would agree). - The video can be played in QuickTime, and uses QuickTime Chapters for DVD chapters; chapters are also accessible in iTunes. - The video file can be burned to a DVD, but you cannot burn the file as a video DVD. - You can play the file on multiple computers (I *believe* up to three as opposed to five for music), or on an unlimited number of iPods (if the usage rights haven't changed with iTunes 7; I haven't looked through the terms - if someone knows this to be different please correct me. In any case, it's already less restrictive than Unbox). - iTunes 7.0 requires QuickTime 7.1.3. - Pretty much every movie I looked at was $9.99; some new releases were up to $14.99, but were cheaper if preordered. - When used on a Mac in a media center configuration, or with the forthcoming iTV solution that will presumably be much like a video AirPort Express (and yes, I know it's not an AirPort Express, but it will probably act a lot like a AirPort Express functionally, except allowing the streaming of video to your TV), this will be a pretty compelling and vertically integrated solution for most consumers.
...no crap about John Titor actually being a real person.
Thanks.
For those who don't know, in the John Titor story, the CERN LHC allegedly lays the groundwork for using artificial black holes as part of a time machine (made for the military by General Electric, of course!).
(And no, John Titor is not a real time traveler.)
For example:
Along with the prediction of World War III, another notable prediction is that of a Civil war in America, which was predicted to begin in 2004, around the time of the presidential election, and would escalate until 2008, which, according to Titor, "[is] a general date by which time everyone will realize the world they thought they were living in was over."
Even statements like this are subjective and many people still choose to believe; I'm sure there are many slashdot readers (judging from the kind of posts I see here) who believe we are currently in a nascent "civil war" and that, indeed, the "world they thought they were living in was over." This is all typical vague crap that can be viewed a variety of different ways, Nostradamus-style, and never soundly disproven, conspiracy-theory-style. Even now, people are arguing that John Titor's visit may have allowed us to "change our future". Yeah, because the mental giants who believe the John Titor story have had a huge impact on things.
...
It's quite impressive how many people actually believe this tripe, though.
Yes, they can do that. And you don't think an already-established monopoly allowing its OS to run on everything but Apple's hardware wouldn't raise the ire of regulators (and consumers!) in various jurisdictions?
It's not something deliberately done to keep it from running on one platform.
Mac OS X has always been tied to the Apple platform. Right now, they do this with TPM. Could Microsoft do this with Windows? Sure. But not in a way that wouldn't be blindingly obvious and raise the ire of regulators the world over.
Mac OS X has always been tied to Apple hardware, and Apple isn't a monopoly. Huge difference between a monopoly allowing Windows to run on anything but Apple hardware, and a company with under 5% marketshare of desktop operating systems keeping its own OS on its own hardware.
Whether you agree with it or not, Microsoft, because of its monopoly status, would be wrong to allow Windows on everything but Apple hardware, but Apple's isn't "wrong" to want Mac OS X to only run on Apple hardware.
And, by the way, Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server *will* run on VMWare Workstation (and possibly Parallels) eventually, and perhaps even ESX Server, but as long as it's on Apple hardware. Apple has already told VMWare that it wants this to happen.
(And yes, I am aware that you can hack Mac OS X and run it on VMWare on other platforms. But because it's hacked, including the kernel, and totally unsupported by Apple, runs in a totally unupdateable state, and is illegal in some jurisdictions, this will always be relegated to the hobbyist/hacker types and never able to be used in any kind of real setting.)
EFI? Future? EFI has been around for years, however microsoft never bothered to support it so no motherboard manufacturers implemented it either. Apple only used it because they had their own OS, and therefore didn't have to wait for microsoft to support anything.
Yes, Apple had the luxury of adopting it more easily because they could support it themselves, and had their own OS they supported EFI with. Not to mention that Apple tends to like to use the latest and greatest standards, abandoning legacy when possible.
It has already been confirmed that vista will not support EFI, so you'l be waiting several years for another version of windows that does.
Only for 32-bit Vista. Either way, the benefits of EFI are still interesting to OEMs, even if they deploy a CSM (Compatibility Support Module for BIOS backward compatibility)...the point is, EFI is the future, and traditional BIOS is on the way out.
Other questions that do arise however, how proprietary is EFI? can other vendors produce clones of it, or are they tied to intel in some way?
EFI came from Intel, but now it's developed and administered by the Unified EFI Forum. The standard is designed to be open and able to be implemented by anyone. There are already PCs from Dell, Gateway, and others using EFI with CSM.
VC-1 is a SMPTE standard. VC-1 is equally open, in that anyone can create a VC-1 compliant codec pursuant to the standard and the terms of the licenses.
As I said in another followup, it's not quite done yet. MPEG LA is the administrator of VC-1 and its licensing, and it's still a program in development. Granted, it will be done soon, likely by the end of the year, but that doesn't change anything I've said: every additional use of VC-1 is a big win for Microsoft.
You've also conveniently forgotten to mention that the authors of H.264 compliant codecs must obtain licenses from two patent pools, including MPEG LA and Via Licensing.
Interesting how when a standard begins life as open, and as a result of the work of many institutions and groups, more people might have to cooperate to create a licensing process. That's just the way it works. The licensing terms for MPEG-4 and H.264 are more than reasonable, and have caps that allow companies to pay relatively low yearly licensing and still allow unlimited use of the codecs for authoring and playback.
"Open" is not a magic word, and H.264 is not "free" in any sense of the term. The two codecs are legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, except for the existence of the open-source and quite probably patent infringing H.264 encoder X264.
"Open" is most certainly magic in the context of standards. And I never said "free" or anything similar. The two codecs will soon be legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, but they definitely won't have started that way: H.264 was the next generation MPEG standard, designed to be cooperatively open from the beginning. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and decided that the only way for it to get some of the commercial, industrial and big OEM groups to consider VC-1 is if it were "open". So it throws Windows Media Video 9 and Windows Media Audio out to SMPTE, says "look, we're open," and gets huge indirect benefits every time someone uses VC-1. Guess where the easiest platform to author, play, and integrate VC-1 will always be? Guess how easy it will be for Microsoft to repurpose existing VC-1 content on Windows platforms?
H.264 started out as open from the beginning, as a follow-on to other open international standards. VC-1 came 100% out of Microsoft, and will still benefit Microsoft each time it is used. You might say "Well, anyone else can develop VC-1 tools if they wish, and whatever the reason, we should be happy it's open." And what, abandon a perfectly good next-generation codec that was the result of countless man-years of work and effort on the part of people who understand the value and benefits of shared open standards and protocols?
I was astounded when VC-1 showed up in Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD. But kudos to Microsoft for being so shrewd that they knew exactly what they had to do to secure Windows Media's future everywhere they possibly could.
MPEG LA are the administrators of the standard and its licensing, and it's still in development. Yes, it will be done soon (probably before the end of 2006), but that still doesn't change the fact that H.264 began as an open MPEG standard (regardless of whether or not Microsoft or any other company made a patent claim during the patent pool process) and has been open for some time, and VC-1 came entirely from Microsoft and represents literally WMV3 and WMA. The standardization of VC-1 was Microsoft's response to concerns that Windows Media wasn't open, so they threw out their olive branch to SMPTE, and now they can tell managers and executives, "Hey, we're open, too," giving Windows Media and Microsoft a distinct advantage every time VC-1 is chosen.
Windows will continue to be able to run on Parallels Desktop, and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X. There's no way that Microsoft or anyone else would be able to stop it (unless they continually broke it intentionally, and were specifically devoting engineering efforts to artificially "breaking" Windows on only Mac OS X versions of Parallels and VMWare products, and only Apple hardware (which contains a *lot* of generic Intel components)). It would have to be extremely targeted and deliberate, and would be a feat in its own rite.
And Windows isn't running on "EFI"; it's running on a Compatibility Support Module, a part of the Intel EFI spec that allows for BIOS backward compatibility. EFI is the future firmware for non-Apple PCs too, so you just showed your ignorance there in spades.
So, I hate to tell you this, but Windows XP and Windows Vista will continue to be able to be run on all Intel-based Macs, all legally and alongside Mac OS X, and on great hardware to boot, making Apple hardware pretty much the best of all worlds for a great many people, more of whom are discovering this every day.
But if you're one of those people who just hates Apple or thinks Apple "sucks", you're probably already too ignorant to understand that no one can "make" Windows unable to run on Apple hardware, since Apple hardware is now, by its very nature and as far as the innards go, nothing more than a high-quality PC.
Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).
While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.
While WMV3 is an arguably good codec, Microsoft worked hard to get it into things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so that it could be in a position to get people to use it as the codec for HD content. Since VC-1 is nothing more than Windows Media Video 9, I guess I don't blame them for wanting it to be everywhere. Then all of a sudden, the same content can easily be repurposed for other things, and work extremely well with other Microsoft- and Windows Media-based products. Genius, on their part.
For what it's worth, H.264 is generally seen as similar in quality and functionality (and better in some ways) than VC-1; it's the official next-generation successor to the MPEG family of video codecs.
And no, to reiterate what's been said elsewhere, H.264 is NOT "Apple's codec". Apple uses and promotes it, but it's hardly "Apple's codec". It's an open international standard that is already heavily used in DTV/HDTV and satellite TV, and is being deployed in more industrial and commercial video equipment every day. Why? Because it's open, and didn't stem from one company. (If anything, Apple's involvement was to pressure MPEG LA to actually have reasonablelicensing, so that it would also be able to actually be useful to individual users instead of just commercial users and equipment OEMs, which was positive for everyone involved.)
If people are switching to VC-1 instead of H.264, given that it's not open and came 100% out of Microsoft (and indeed is nothing more than WMV3 plus Windows Media Audio (WMA), you can believe Microsoft has likely had involvement. Every VC-1 user is a huge win for Microsoft and a blow to already-open MPEG standards.
Submitter seems to have cherry-picked one thing from the article...
1. Vista runs hot on MacBook Pro because he's using a beta OS without hardware drivers, using a mechanism for running it that itself is still beta. (And uh, I got news for you: everything "runs hot" on MacBook Pro.;-)
But:
2. Apple doesn't support Vista on MacBook Pro and doesn't make Vista drivers for Apple hardware, but probably will after Vista and Boot Camp are both, you know, actually shipping, supported products.
Seems like the submitter managed to leave out quite a few things from the article, like the fact that the subtitle is:
Apple's top-end laptop runs Vista better than a high-end Sony Vaio
...and pretty much the entire rest of the article, which is downright positive, and managed to only come up with "Vista runs hot on Macbook (sic) Pro", something only mentioned in a couple of sentences on page 3 of the article.
The author makes claims that while using an unsupported, beta OS on hardware for which driver profiles don't exist in conjunction with another beta, unsupported product (Boot Camp), he wonders whether he's "slowly cooking the motherboard", even given the hardware safeties built in, and then goes on to say that he expects these to be fixed when Apple releases drivers for their hardware that actually work with Vista, and Vista is no longer, oh, I don't know, a beta product, and not even out yet?
So, why does the entire submission revolve around the ONE item that likely won't be news, and indeed will be completely moot, by the time Vista ships and Apple actually supports Boot Camp as a product (when Leopard ships)?
You have to remember that the rumour of the irreplaceable batteries started out as pure thruth. It may not be true anymore, but it should never be forgotten that it was true once.
Even at that time, there were many options from third parties to replace the batteries, including some who would do the replacement for you, and many with batteries better than Apple's own (especially on the first generation iPods).
And while it was true that Apple didn't have its own mechanism for replacement, the battery was still covered under warranty, and all but the very earliest iPods wouldn't have even touched a timeframe, statistically, where they'd start needing their batteries replaced. But yes, customers did start noticing they needed new batteries, and Apple responded.
People payed several hundred dollars for these devices and when the batteries failed, Apple first refused to do anything, even for money. When a battery failed after the warranty, the reply from Apple was "Throw your iPod away and buy a new one. We do not sell or replace batteries."
Ahh, talking about iPod's Dirty Secret, huh? I bet they were glad to get someone from Apple on tape saying that for their little childish video. Yeah. That was true. Then. Three years ago. Not only has it not been true since (and again, ignoring all the numerous third party ways to replace the battery), but Apple's price to do the replacement actually went down by about half.
I'm pretty involved in keeping up on Apple news, products, support issues, and so on, since that's, well, kind of my job. I don't remember ANY outcry or publicity about the battery issue until iPod's Dirty Secret.
Except for one little problem.
Apple had already launched its battery replacement service. A fact that the Neistat brothers refused to acknowledge.
It took a lot of customer pressure to convince Apple to change that policy.
Oh? Where is your evidence of this?
I think Apple was actually caught off-guard by people even needing batteries that soon. Frankly, they may have partly expected/hoped that the batteries would last the lifetime of the product for most people, as it was designed to do. When it became apparent that the lifetime of the battery and the lifetime of the product were divergent, Apple introduced its replacement program. Did some customers get screwed in the meantime? I'm sure they did. But it was a vanishingly small number compared to people who were either never affected, or needed batteries replaced AFTER Apple launched its program (and who
And now you are suggesting that people must be fools if they think that the battery of their iPod is irreplaceable?
Yes. I am. Because the batteries have been replaceable directly through Apple for three years, and have been replaceable by literally dozens of other third parties, including several prominent, established, reputable companies in the Apple product business, many of whom offer mail-in and do-it-yourself service, and some of which will even do the replacement overnight.
So anyone who still thinks - or is just beginning to think, now, according to this survey the Guardian mentions - that the iPod battery isn't replaceable is indeed a fool, and quite a large one at that. (And no, they weren't talking about just user-replaceable: the context gives every indication that people think it can't be replaced at all, which is quite astounding. And not only that, they apparently got a response strong enough to be mentioned from people who not only think that it can't be replaced, but think it was intentionally designed to fail after the warranty expires, which is ridiculous given that they're just normal LiIon cells from the likes of Sanyo, Sony, and LG.)
I agree with you that the batteries aren't "user replaceable".
But look inside those laptops, cameras, and cell phones that use non-standard batteries: the batteries aren't just resting directly against the circuit board or other delicate components; they're in their own little space, partitioned off from other parts of the innards that could be easily damaged, with their own little plastic or metal walls separating them, and clips, doors, springs, or screws controlling access. All of those things must be engineered around, and add size and weight. While none of us our privy to the backroom discussions about the iPod, it was an engineering decision to make it this way. I'm sure Apple doesn't cry itself to sleep at night when someone buys a new iPod, but I'm also equally sure this wasn't a plan to make the iPod completely disposable: indeed, if that were peoples' perception, it would be disastrous for sales and reputation of the product.
Had Apple never launched any type of battery replacement service, I'd also agree that this would be a problem, no matter how many other ways there were to replace the battery.
Third parties and do-it-yourself instructions aside, the ONLY difference with Apple's replacement is that the iPod must be sent away. I personally do not see that as a major hardship to do once every two or three years, and on balance, it may even be a positive, because that might have been what made many people, directly or indirectly, decide to buy an iPod in the first place (a combination of weight, size, and sleek appearance unobstructed with access panels, screws, clips, or the like). While some people don't consider this a benefit, you actually will get a new iPod or an iPod in a completely new enclosure (i.e., looks literally brand new from the outside) with factory-refurbished and -tested internal components, with its own 90-day service warranty (in case some component really is DOA). Judging from the examples of many iPods I've seen, this is actually a huge side benefit for many people who may choose to get their battery replaced.
The process itself is pretty straightforward: you visit Apple's web site, any Apple store, or any Apple service provider. You get a prepaid box sent to you that you drop your iPod in. You wait, and the new iPod shows up. As for the process of "figuring out" how to do it, whether the battery was user-replaceable or not, I imagine most people would go to a search engine, or call the company that made the product, or similar, and pose their query. My FAQ aside, at that point, it's quite obvious how one can go about replacing the battery: they can choose to do it through Apple, a third party, or do it themselves. Not much different than any other product, except that the process of replacing the battery takes 10 or 15 minutes instead of 10 or 15 seconds.
As for sealed battery flashlights, well, some of them had their own benefits: like they could go completely underwater and were relatively cheap for that feature. If you're talking about the ones that were nothing but a ripoff and were designed with being disposable with that end in mind, sure: sometimes people aren't smart. But the goal with the iPod wasn't to pull one over on consumers and hope they didn't figure out that they can't replace the battery while laughing all the way to the bank. The battery is replaceable, and people can choose to do it via various mechanisms, or not. And user-replaceability aside, they'd find out exactly HOW to go about replacing the battery the same way they'd find out how to do so with their cell phone or laptop: consulting the web, the manufacturer, the store at which it was bought, etc.
As for why iPod Battery FAQ exists, well, that was my own personal response to iPod's Dirty Secret, which claimed, through spraypainting half of Manhattan, that "iPod's unreplaceable battery only lasts 18 months". Which, of course, is utterly false. And it wasn't the "bad PR" from that which made Apple introduce its battery replacement programs; they were actually rolled out
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe it.
You'll concede that both parties commit election fraud via various means, but still want to think of what one party does as "worse".
This is exactly the kind of problem I'm talking about.
I'll answer your question: NEITHER is "worse". I'm not talking about it from a scientific or statistical or emotional standpoint. They're both bad, and they're both dirty tricks.
And for what it's worth, I don't believe that people are flat-out denied their rights to vote en masse. I believe that there are hundreds of examples of isolated incidents, and also things like people believing legitimately long lines or legitimate road construction are actually parts of a carefully coordinated conspiracy to prevent people from voting, and the like. Humorously, where people claim the most "disenfranchisement" are in Democratically-controlled counties. This is a county issue, and ones that Democratic and bipartisan initiatives mandating electronic voting machines was ironically intended to solve.
Well, those aren't conspiracy theories.
"Axis of evil" is rhetoric, just as much now as it was then. Accurate? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that it's just political rhetoric, not a conspiracy theory.
As for WMD, to requote something I've said before, which applies here:
To quote something I've said before, but which applies here:
[w]hile I agree that there isn't going to be an Islamic ICBM delivering a nuclear weapon anytime soon, there were *hundreds of tons* of WMD unaccounted for in Iraq, post-1998. The intelligence capabilities of most western European nations, notably the UNSEC members, the UN as an organization, the US, UK, and so on, all believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of the WMD that were unaccounted for after 1998 when the inspectors left. After 7 years of utter lack of cooperation, deception, and all manner of lies from Iraq about its WMD programs, there was zero reason to believe anything changed for the better once it was left unsupervised. Over 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were found in Iraq since March 2003. Entire fleets of fighter aircraft were found *completely buried* in remote areas of the desert. There is no reason to believe the hundreds of tons of remaining WMD that was unaccounted for with absolutely no acceptable proof of its disposition, combined with Iraq's lies and deception, didn't remain in Iraq's possession. Likely, it is now in the hands of nations like Syria.
The Iraq strategy isn't about "Iraq". It was about picking a nation for which a case could be expeditiously made to the American people, allowing a great number of resources, both monetary and military, to be brought to bear, on an omnibus strategy of political change in the mideast. It was a VERY RISKY proposition, but the threat of Panislamic radicalism is a very, very real one. And no, it's not something we "created". It's something that has come to this point for a variety of reasons, but the US and/or West isn't exclusively or even mostly to blame. (Is it impossible for people to believe that there are factions of people in the world who disagree about a great many things and who desire to kill those who don't agree with them?) And, FYI, we know we have problems with Saudi Arabia, but we hope for a domino affect, and also, we don't overtly attack official allies (for those who ask "Why don't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq, then?").
The big differences are intent. E.g., intent to kill innocent civilians vs not. Intent to allow people to live in a free(r) society vs not. These are very important distinctions to people who aren't pure moral relativists who think that everyone is just as "right" or justified in doing something as someone else.
While WMD wasn't the real "reason" we went to Iraq - the reasons were MUCH broader and not about "Iraq" per se - it's quite reasonable that the administration and planners would expect to find caches of WMD there, thus justifying the action on its face.
I realize you're talking more about nuclear, here, but if you're going to make incorrect claims about Iraq with regard to WMD, you should take a look at the following and educate yourself:
http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/
And as for nuclear problems, we now have Iran to worry about as well. If you choose to "blame" the US or US policy on any troubles we have with Iran, feel free. I'm just somewhat dumbfounded by the view that others outside the US are apparently incapable of doing "bad" things on their own without provocation of the evil US, especially given the thousands of years of human history.
As for "secret prisons", again, to requote something I said a couple of days ago for the sake of expediency:
I believe there are extraordinary circumstances where military or intelligence components may want to keep the capture of an enemy completely secret, and that this need
Sorry to disappoint, but all of the words are my own, and were written in the 15 minutes or so before the story became public. Slashdot subscribers see stories a bit early.
No, counting ballots doesn't have to be hard. What's extremely hard is:
- Making sure everyone only votes once
- Keeping the entire process anonymous
If you only had to to either instead of both, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, having to do both is hard, and with each and every county running their own elections for tens of millions of people, all with different aims, populations, budgets, and so on, it's a lot harder than you think.
This isn't even about paper versus electronic (because we can make 100% trusted electronic systems, with a permanent voter-verified audit trail being present - but even with a paper trail, a lot of people seriously believe there will still be ways to rig the elections...and beyond that, there will still be claims of long lines, voter threats, and so on). It's about the intrinsic difficulties in doing a one-vote election while maintaining anonymity, and disallowing any external entity to find out who any particular person voted for.
Remember, too, that the voting acts (e.g., HAVA) were designed to allow fair and uniform access to ballots and polling places, while taking advantage of streamlining things with technology - something we have done in every other sector of society. Unfortunately, any federal, state, or local initiatives recommending or mandating electronic voting machines are incomplete without a permanent voter-verified paper trail. With that piece, it doesn't matter how complex it is, whether or not the systems are open source or proprietary, or anything else. But even with a paper trail, there will still be the increasing calls of fraud and disenfranchisement, as people who want to believe that will continue to organize and reinforce each other via the internet. Yes, some of the fraud and disenfranchisement is real. But there are people, as I said, who will continue to believe that any Republican victory is stolen, as if Democrats can't game the system (and make no mistake, they do).
I also don't know what you're talking about when you say that the "GOP" wants a complicated system, when the voting initiatives that mandated and extended things like electronic voting were either solidly Democratic or bipartisan.
There has been fraud, corruption, and all manner of crap going on in elections in the US since the beginning of time. (And, might I add, consider the source.)
This hasn't change since Bush took office, and won't be any different in 2008. It's not just Republicans that do it, nor is is just Democrats. (Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters.")
As dirty and reeking of conflict-of-interest as it is, when Diebold's CEO said he was committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, he meant it as a Republican corporate leader and campaigner; not in the context of "rigging" an election.
No, the disenfranchisement that happens now and will continue to happen is the same disenfranchisement and dirty tricks that always happens: the rise of the internet for the general population, particularly since the last pre-Bush presidential election, has enabled the kinds of incredible information exchange on all manner of topics that we've seen in the last two elections. That will only increase, and it cuts both ways: as much as it allows the exchange of legitimate information, it acts as a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, some wacky, some not-so-wacky, some with elements of truth, but still serving to subvert any faith we ever had in our system.
The worst part is so many people believe that not one, but two, elections were actively and intentionally "stolen"/rigged exclusively by Republicans, that anytime any Republican/conservative candidate ever wins an election from this point forward, it will always be doubted. Even recounts will be doubted. People want to believe, well, what they want to believe.
All of the political, governmental, financial, famous and otherwise, and other powerhouse figures in the United States on the anti-Republican/conservative side(s) didn't just stand idly by while not one, but *two* elections were stolen.
Nothing new has happened on either side in 2000 or 2004 that hasn't ever happened before. That's just a fact of life. These are the same county election entities that have run elections in locales for generations. Yes, things change a bit, especially with the introduction of electronic voting machines (which, ironically, were the result of various Democratic and bipartisan initiatives designed to allow more equal and consistent management of and access to polling places). But all e-voting vendors offer permament voter-verified receipt options on current and some previous models of machines - but these additions cost even more money; money that many municipalities weren't willing to spend.
Worse still, we're talking about it two (or six, depending) years later. Not only do we have people who believe firmly that both elections were stolen, but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power. To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.
Our restrictions for the residence halls really just come down to bandwidth restrictions.
Residents get 5GB/week off-campus (unlimited on-campus). If they go over this limit, their off-campus connectivity speed is reduced until their traffic usage goes below a 4GB for the previous 7 day period. Campus traffic is never affected.
We haven't had any complaints about usability of the residence hall connections. All other connections on campus (non-residence halls) are generally unrestricted, and almost all are 100mbit.
More info: http://www.housing.wisc.edu/resnet/aup.php
BitTorrent, like any other technology, protocol, or tool, can be used for things that are legal, illegal, or questionable in various jurisdictions. Are you prepared to continue quashing a protocol or service simply because it may be abused?
On the other hand, almost all (or at least a great deal) of the BitTorremt traffic may be currently used for sharing copyrighted materials. We all know that to be the case. Is it responsible to open up the pipes for what you know is almost exclusively illegitimate usage, within the context of the law (regardless of how you or anyone else feels about copyright infringement, and so on)?
On yet another hand, what happens if BitTorrent usage becomes largely legitimate because some large legitimate service begins using it? (And yes, to those reading this, I'm more than aware BitTorrent is used for a variety of legitimate large downloads.) In that event, can you afford to continue treating any protocol or service as if it's illegitimate, just because some level of it is now?
During the heyday of Napster (1999-2000), UW-Madison estimated that Napster accounted for over half (!) of our inbound and outbound traffic. There was a lot of talk about how to deal with this. Ultimately, UW-Madison decided that as a large public research university, we can't afford to police a particular kind of traffic wholesale: any network protocol can be abused, used for illegal purposes, and so on. We felt that the academic arguments and responding to usage demands of the campus trumped making judgment calls about the appropriateness of the use. Granted, the appropriate use policy of the university forbade some of the things people were using the network for, but we didn't actively police (or restrict) traffic. In the end, this provided the university with the impetus to examine ways of meeting increased demand and come up with novel solutions to our neverending bandwidth needs. One interesting example is that we now locally host a collection of Akamai's servers on our own network, which serves UW-Madison, the 25 other UW System Schools, and WiscNet. However, some of the smaller schools couldn't afford to make those same determinations: they either restricted or blocked Napster (and other things, like Gnutella) completely.
Today, the university does shape and restrict traffic to the residence halls in various ways; but it's designed to do so in a way such that users almost always won't notice any impact and allows equal access for all. All of our residence halls feature 100mbit ethernet, and that full pipe may be taken advantage of. Some users do use the network for inappropriate purposes, and those cases are dealt with individually when needed. Still, there is no proactive policing unless there are clear abuse/misuse issues. For what it's worth, BitTorrent (and all other protocols) are fully usable here.
If you can afford it, politically and financially, I'd say you should be looking into opening this up. The school does not bear responsibility for the actions of its users unless there is a lack of good faith attempts to stop abuse when requested by, e.g., copyright holders. There always is the argument of customer satisfaction, as well, that must be responded to - whether some students' use is appropriate or not.
I'm not "scared". This doesn't have anything to do with "fear", and I don't think I'll be the victim of a terrorist attack. In fact, I think I'm far more likely to be killed by far more many mundane things, and I don't think I'm very likely to be killed by any of them either.
I'll concede that fear is used as a tool by many, including politicians and pundits here. But that's not why I wrote what I wrote. There are indeed real threats in the world. Many. The US is a "threat" to some entities. But Panislamic radicalism, Islamofascism, militant Islam, or whatever you want to call it - I realize they're all buzzwords to a certain degree - is a *real threat*.
And the quote at the end about killing and/or winning against Al Qaeda everywhere wasn't from "me" or "GWB". It was from Kerry, which is why I included it. (No doubt some people think Kerry is nothing more than a part of the same political machine, one and the same with Republicans, but the point is that many people would have voted, and in fact did vote, for Kerry simply because he was not Bush, or because liberal/Democrat politics are at least somewhat closer in line with what they think their beliefs are. If they voted for Kerry, then they have to consider exactly what Kerry said in that quote.)
Finally, I didn't say that the current course was the only solution to the problem. Nor did I say that it was desirable or even possible to "kill all terrorists". What it is possible to do is use a multifaceted approach, which MAY include military action and killing, to affect change, over time, such that a preponderance of peoples in the region either themselves live in free or mostly-free societies, or will but pressure on other governments and entities in the area to encourage the adoption of free policies. Some of this process will be bloody. But I firmly believe that the mideast can successfully modernize, and that these militants and radicals can be marginalized and punished within these societies, BY these societies, instead of sympathized with, harbored, and even supported. The more people that live in (quasi-)free societies, with free flows of information, freedom of the press, and free exchanges of ideals, ideas, and goods, the better. That's the neoconservative ideal: not having a McDonalds on every corner in Baghdad or converting everyone to Christianity; but rather, that the US and West can use its position of power and influence to actually cause change for the better in the world, and that free societies are more compatible with our own ideals, and thus will be beneficial to the global community, and to ourselves, not to mention their own societies and happiness. Yes, to a certain extent, they have to want it themselves. But we can also help make it happen.
Further, there are and have been "bad people" (or whatever language that would be acceptable to you to describe them) in this world. I do not believe in moral relativism; I understand with it and agree to certain extents, but I don't subscribe to it wholesale. Some of these people have to be dealt with, some with force. That doesn't mean there aren't all manner of diplomatic and social and other courses that might be taken, including simultaneous with force. Pacifism is all well and good, as long as you're also smart and practical enough to understand that sometimes force is required, or is the most expeditious action. Many, many mistakes have been made in the current US foreign policy course. It was a HUGE gamble to attempt to begin with Iraq in the beginnings of this omnibus strategy to affect change in the region. (For a partial answer to this issue, see answer 2 here.)
Would you have suggested alternate, non-violent course for every instance of violent conflict throughout human history? If so, I'd congratulate you on your internal consistency, even though I'd hugely disagree. If you do agree that war and military force is sometimes necessary, I don't believe you're at all qualified to say that this isn't one of those times (any more than I necessarily am to say that it is).
1) Where is Osama?
My own personal belief, and the prevailing belief of many in the intelligence community, is somewhere in the regions surrounding the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
If you mean "where is he" as in "why haven't we captured him yet", well, it's because we haven't found him. As to "why", there are many reasons. I don't blame Clinton, but a general lack of human intelligence is one major reason. Both parties have been guilty of being tempted by the expansion of electronic and satellite surveillance, at the severe detriment of human intelligence.
(Some believe we purposefully have not "found" him, or even that the US was in a relationship of sorts with bin Laden on 9/11, to make it appear that bin Laden was the mastermind when in reality it was Cheney & Co. That, of course, is utter tripe.)
2) Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
To quote something I've said before, but which applies here:
Well, while I agree that there isn't going to be an Islamic ICBM delivering a nuclear weapon anytime soon, there were *hundreds of tons* of WMD unaccounted for in Iraq, post-1998. The intelligence capabilities of most western European nations, notably the UNSEC members, the UN as an organization, the US, UK, and so on, all believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of the WMD that were unaccounted for after 1998 when the inspectors left. After 7 years of utter lack of cooperation, deception, and all manner of lies from Iraq about its WMD programs, there was zero reason to believe anything changed for the better once it was left unsupervised. Over 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were found in Iraq since March 2003. Entire fleets of fighter aircraft were found *completely buried* in remote areas of the desert. There is no reason to believe the hundreds of tons of remaining WMD that was unaccounted for with absolutely no acceptable proof of its disposition, combined with Iraq's lies and deception, didn't remain in Iraq's possession. Likely, it is now in the hands of nations like Syria.
The Iraq strategy isn't about "Iraq". It was about picking a nation for which a case could be expeditiously made to the American people, allowing a great number of resources, both monetary and military, to be brought to bear, on an omnibus strategy of political change in the mideast. It was a VERY RISKY proposition, but the threat of Panislamic radicalism is a very, very real one. And no, it's not something we "created". It's something that has come to this point for a variety of reasons, but the US and/or West isn't exclusively or even mostly to blame. (Is it impossible for people to believe that there are factions of people in the world who disagree about a great many things and who desire to kill those who don't agree with them?) And, FYI, we know we have problems with Saudi Arabia, but we hope for a domino affect, and also, we don't overtly attack official allies (for those who ask "Why don't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq, then?").
The big differences are intent. E.g., intent to kill innocent civilians vs not. Intent to allow people to live in a free(r) society vs not. These are very important distinctions to people who aren't pure moral relativists who think that everyone is just as "right" or justified in doing something as someone else.
While WMD wasn't the real "reason" we went to Iraq - the reasons were MUCH broader and not about "iraq" per se - it's quite reasonable that the administration and planners would expect to find caches of WMD there, thus justifying the action on its face.
I realize you're talking more about nuclear, here, but if you're going to make incorrect claims about Iraq with regard to WMD, you should take a look at the following and educate yourself:
http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/ [iraqwatch.org]
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/ [globalsecurity.org]
And as for nuclear
How can the EU continue the cause when it has shown time and again that its not willing to do anything about the radicalism right on its collective doorstep? The threat of real Panislamic radicalism is here and now, and growing. The US and the West was not exclusively or even mostly responsible for its creation. Is trying to stop it now going to "create more terrorists"? Of COURSE. So what's the alternate? Do nothing?
It's so convenient to believe that the US is what's wrong with the world, and that the middle east would just want to live in peace, with no militant radicals wanting to export their beliefs. It's convenient to believe in moral relativism, where someone like Bush == bin Laden, just on different sides (or the same side) of a coin.
There are real threats in this world, as there have been throughout history. Stop thinking the US is the only "threat" for a moment, and consider whether it's possible for anyone, anywhere in the world to want to do something harmful. I'd say an Islamic fundamentalist superstate is pretty harmful. Of course there are many, many, many other issues here...such as access to critical energy resources by the US/West, which is what supports the Western economies (not to mention developing economies all over the world), and the global economy which supports hundreds of millions of people. If all that's important is bodycounts and human calculus, what about all the devastation that would occur without continuing, stable access to resources? This isn't just a US problem or about "oil companies". Consider the scope of what you're talking about. We already have a petroleum economy, and it's not about lazy, fat Americans' SUVs. It's about plastics, and medicine, and fertilizers, and water purification, and food processing, and all of these things that allow our world to support a population that's by all rights probably too large for it. There WILL be solutions to problems of peak oil and alternative energy issues...but it will take time, and right or wrong, it will take the actual absence of those resources. And it's coming. But in the meantime, if we can export free ideals - and contrary to your belief, that's exactly what we're trying to do - WHILE also securing resources, it's all the better.
Neoconservatives *really believe, quite literally*, in free markets and free peoples and in freedom being the most desirable default state. Of course, there are degrees, and freedoms are tempered with laws and security needs. But anyone who thinks the US is a police state or teetering on the brink of a "fascist theocracy" (???), after just a faint few years no less, is quite frankly, deluded. The "fascist theocracies" we have to fear are the ones that WILL grow in the mideast if something isn't done. People in these movements would like *nothing more* than to obtain any and all weapons possible to use against the US and West. And the targets? As many civilians as possible. It boggles my mind that no one can see any distinction between these ideals. There is a long littany of things the US has done "wrong", "evil" things, horrible things, terrible mistakes. There is corruption and greed and ulterior motives on the behalf of human beings everywhere. But that doesn't change the fact that the US has done a lot of good in this world.
In 6 years, the US has not become a police state. Bush won't be declaring martial law and keeping himself installed in 2008. There won't be a draft. This isn't a conspiracy to warmonger and steal oil. This isn't about killing all Muslims. This isn't about converting everyone to Christianity. This isn't about the US becoming a police state so evil neocons can execute their plans for world domination on the backs of a complicit populace. This isn't about the US executing and planning false flag "terrorist attacks" (against ourselves or Western interests) to make it falsely look like radical Islam is a threat. To those of you who believe that it is: get a serious fucking grip on reality, people.
Might I remind something said by a candidate in th
Yes, the Do Not Call system works. I'm on the national and state registries, and haven't gotten any telemarketing calls.
e mptOrg
I wouldn't say that any of these other calls are "excuses"; they're classes of calls that are exempt.
It's pretty clear what's exempt:
https://www.donotcall.gov/FAQ/FAQBusiness.aspx#Ex
Surveys, among other things, are one of the things that's exempt. "Telemarketing" is "telemarketing". Not someone calling you that you don't want to.
As yet, I have not seen anything telling us definitively whether or not we will be able to rip copys of previously purchased DVD's for playback on an iPod.
That's because it's not "legal" in many jurisdictions, including the US.
I wasn't saying that iTunes or iTV would do this; what I'm saying is that it's definitely going to be technically possible, and in fact it's possible right now, in one step, with tools like:
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
But it won't be iTunes itself that does it for you; you'll still have to rip it with another tool first, such as HandBrake. But you can then certainly import into iTunes, play via iTV, or put on your iPod (and you can put it into iTunes and sync it to your iPod today).
Well, keep in mind that the TV shows all started out at 320x240, and are (along with new video content) now 640x480 with Dolby Surround (when available).
I'd imagine a lot of this is incremental, in part because of delivery concerns and the problems broadband providers have.
Further, Jobs already demoed an HD version of The Incredibles going to the iTV box. So I imagine improvements are coming, here. Remember the type of people these services are initially targeted at: normal consumers, not people who have already set up HD MythTV Linux boxes in their living room and rip their DVD collections to 2TB media libraries.
It looks like it will be an appliance that will simply stream video wirelessly from any Mac or Windows system with iTunes.
But, since you can absolutely import any video you wish (including, say, ripped DVDs) into iTunes, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to play any media you wished.
This is likely for people that DO NOT already have some kind of media center or EyeTV/EyeHome/DVR setup: the target for this isn't people who already have made the leap to having full-fledged computer systems in their living room. The target for this is the same as for AirPort Express: not people who build an MP3 and media station computer in their living room. People who want to plop down a device, hook the A/V outputs up to their TV and entertainment system, use an assistant (like AirPort Express) to set it up, and it's ready to play media they download/import on their computer/laptop/etc. elsewhere in the house.
No second whole computer in the living room. This is, essentially, an AirPort Express for video (and yes, I know it's not exactly like an AirPort Express, but its functionality in the context of video and the living room can be summed up that way).
There probably will be *some* advanced or interesting functionality, but it looks like this is more or less an appliance designed to play video content downloaded to iTunes on a remote computer via a Front Row-like interface. But yes, you will be able to add your own video content, since you can do that with iTunes now. The only requirement is that it be some format QuickTime understands.
I downloaded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a test.
- The movie is 1.22 GB, and downloaded in about 20 minutes on a 100 Mbps connection (Internet2).
- The movie was able to be played before downloading was finished, and could skip to anywhere in the content that was already complete.
- The content shows itself as being protected by "FairPlay Version: 2".
- The bitrate is 1.5Mbps.
- The framerate is 24fps.
- The audio on this particular movie is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz.
- The video on this particular movie is Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated).
- The video looks very good (indeed, "near DVD quality") on a high quality 20" LCD. (I'm not a "videophile", but this is absolutely more than watchable on a nice quality large TV or monitor, and I suspect most consumers would agree).
- The video can be played in QuickTime, and uses QuickTime Chapters for DVD chapters; chapters are also accessible in iTunes.
- The video file can be burned to a DVD, but you cannot burn the file as a video DVD.
- You can play the file on multiple computers (I *believe* up to three as opposed to five for music), or on an unlimited number of iPods (if the usage rights haven't changed with iTunes 7; I haven't looked through the terms - if someone knows this to be different please correct me. In any case, it's already less restrictive than Unbox).
- iTunes 7.0 requires QuickTime 7.1.3.
- Pretty much every movie I looked at was $9.99; some new releases were up to $14.99, but were cheaper if preordered.
- When used on a Mac in a media center configuration, or with the forthcoming iTV solution that will presumably be much like a video AirPort Express (and yes, I know it's not an AirPort Express, but it will probably act a lot like a AirPort Express functionally, except allowing the streaming of video to your TV), this will be a pretty compelling and vertically integrated solution for most consumers.
Thanks.
For those who don't know, in the John Titor story, the CERN LHC allegedly lays the groundwork for using artificial black holes as part of a time machine (made for the military by General Electric, of course!).
(And no, John Titor is not a real time traveler.)
For example:
Along with the prediction of World War III, another notable prediction is that of a Civil war in America, which was predicted to begin in 2004, around the time of the presidential election, and would escalate until 2008, which, according to Titor, "[is] a general date by which time everyone will realize the world they thought they were living in was over."
Even statements like this are subjective and many people still choose to believe; I'm sure there are many slashdot readers (judging from the kind of posts I see here) who believe we are currently in a nascent "civil war" and that, indeed, the "world they thought they were living in was over." This is all typical vague crap that can be viewed a variety of different ways, Nostradamus-style, and never soundly disproven, conspiracy-theory-style. Even now, people are arguing that John Titor's visit may have allowed us to "change our future". Yeah, because the mental giants who believe the John Titor story have had a huge impact on things.
...
It's quite impressive how many people actually believe this tripe, though.
Yes, they can do that. And you don't think an already-established monopoly allowing its OS to run on everything but Apple's hardware wouldn't raise the ire of regulators (and consumers!) in various jurisdictions?
Nope. Not "kind of like that" at all.
It's not something deliberately done to keep it from running on one platform.
Mac OS X has always been tied to the Apple platform. Right now, they do this with TPM. Could Microsoft do this with Windows? Sure. But not in a way that wouldn't be blindingly obvious and raise the ire of regulators the world over.
Mac OS X has always been tied to Apple hardware, and Apple isn't a monopoly. Huge difference between a monopoly allowing Windows to run on anything but Apple hardware, and a company with under 5% marketshare of desktop operating systems keeping its own OS on its own hardware.
Whether you agree with it or not, Microsoft, because of its monopoly status, would be wrong to allow Windows on everything but Apple hardware, but Apple's isn't "wrong" to want Mac OS X to only run on Apple hardware.
And, by the way, Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server *will* run on VMWare Workstation (and possibly Parallels) eventually, and perhaps even ESX Server, but as long as it's on Apple hardware. Apple has already told VMWare that it wants this to happen.
(And yes, I am aware that you can hack Mac OS X and run it on VMWare on other platforms. But because it's hacked, including the kernel, and totally unsupported by Apple, runs in a totally unupdateable state, and is illegal in some jurisdictions, this will always be relegated to the hobbyist/hacker types and never able to be used in any kind of real setting.)
EFI? Future? EFI has been around for years, however microsoft never bothered to support it so no motherboard manufacturers implemented it either.
Apple only used it because they had their own OS, and therefore didn't have to wait for microsoft to support anything.
Yes, Apple had the luxury of adopting it more easily because they could support it themselves, and had their own OS they supported EFI with. Not to mention that Apple tends to like to use the latest and greatest standards, abandoning legacy when possible.
It has already been confirmed that vista will not support EFI, so you'l be waiting several years for another version of windows that does.
Only for 32-bit Vista. Either way, the benefits of EFI are still interesting to OEMs, even if they deploy a CSM (Compatibility Support Module for BIOS backward compatibility)...the point is, EFI is the future, and traditional BIOS is on the way out.
Other questions that do arise however, how proprietary is EFI? can other vendors produce clones of it, or are they tied to intel in some way?
EFI came from Intel, but now it's developed and administered by the Unified EFI Forum. The standard is designed to be open and able to be implemented by anyone. There are already PCs from Dell, Gateway, and others using EFI with CSM.
VC-1 is a SMPTE standard. VC-1 is equally open, in that anyone can create a VC-1 compliant codec pursuant to the standard and the terms of the licenses.
As I said in another followup, it's not quite done yet. MPEG LA is the administrator of VC-1 and its licensing, and it's still a program in development. Granted, it will be done soon, likely by the end of the year, but that doesn't change anything I've said: every additional use of VC-1 is a big win for Microsoft.
You've also conveniently forgotten to mention that the authors of H.264 compliant codecs must obtain licenses from two patent pools, including MPEG LA and Via Licensing.
Interesting how when a standard begins life as open, and as a result of the work of many institutions and groups, more people might have to cooperate to create a licensing process. That's just the way it works. The licensing terms for MPEG-4 and H.264 are more than reasonable, and have caps that allow companies to pay relatively low yearly licensing and still allow unlimited use of the codecs for authoring and playback.
"Open" is not a magic word, and H.264 is not "free" in any sense of the term. The two codecs are legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, except for the existence of the open-source and quite probably patent infringing H.264 encoder X264.
"Open" is most certainly magic in the context of standards. And I never said "free" or anything similar. The two codecs will soon be legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, but they definitely won't have started that way: H.264 was the next generation MPEG standard, designed to be cooperatively open from the beginning. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and decided that the only way for it to get some of the commercial, industrial and big OEM groups to consider VC-1 is if it were "open". So it throws Windows Media Video 9 and Windows Media Audio out to SMPTE, says "look, we're open," and gets huge indirect benefits every time someone uses VC-1. Guess where the easiest platform to author, play, and integrate VC-1 will always be? Guess how easy it will be for Microsoft to repurpose existing VC-1 content on Windows platforms?
H.264 started out as open from the beginning, as a follow-on to other open international standards. VC-1 came 100% out of Microsoft, and will still benefit Microsoft each time it is used. You might say "Well, anyone else can develop VC-1 tools if they wish, and whatever the reason, we should be happy it's open." And what, abandon a perfectly good next-generation codec that was the result of countless man-years of work and effort on the part of people who understand the value and benefits of shared open standards and protocols?
I was astounded when VC-1 showed up in Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD. But kudos to Microsoft for being so shrewd that they knew exactly what they had to do to secure Windows Media's future everywhere they possibly could.
MPEG LA are the administrators of the standard and its licensing, and it's still in development. Yes, it will be done soon (probably before the end of 2006), but that still doesn't change the fact that H.264 began as an open MPEG standard (regardless of whether or not Microsoft or any other company made a patent claim during the patent pool process) and has been open for some time, and VC-1 came entirely from Microsoft and represents literally WMV3 and WMA. The standardization of VC-1 was Microsoft's response to concerns that Windows Media wasn't open, so they threw out their olive branch to SMPTE, and now they can tell managers and executives, "Hey, we're open, too," giving Windows Media and Microsoft a distinct advantage every time VC-1 is chosen.
Sorry, not going to happen.
Windows will continue to be able to run on Parallels Desktop, and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X. There's no way that Microsoft or anyone else would be able to stop it (unless they continually broke it intentionally, and were specifically devoting engineering efforts to artificially "breaking" Windows on only Mac OS X versions of Parallels and VMWare products, and only Apple hardware (which contains a *lot* of generic Intel components)). It would have to be extremely targeted and deliberate, and would be a feat in its own rite.
And Windows isn't running on "EFI"; it's running on a Compatibility Support Module, a part of the Intel EFI spec that allows for BIOS backward compatibility. EFI is the future firmware for non-Apple PCs too, so you just showed your ignorance there in spades.
So, I hate to tell you this, but Windows XP and Windows Vista will continue to be able to be run on all Intel-based Macs, all legally and alongside Mac OS X, and on great hardware to boot, making Apple hardware pretty much the best of all worlds for a great many people, more of whom are discovering this every day.
But if you're one of those people who just hates Apple or thinks Apple "sucks", you're probably already too ignorant to understand that no one can "make" Windows unable to run on Apple hardware, since Apple hardware is now, by its very nature and as far as the innards go, nothing more than a high-quality PC.
Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).
While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.
While WMV3 is an arguably good codec, Microsoft worked hard to get it into things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so that it could be in a position to get people to use it as the codec for HD content. Since VC-1 is nothing more than Windows Media Video 9, I guess I don't blame them for wanting it to be everywhere. Then all of a sudden, the same content can easily be repurposed for other things, and work extremely well with other Microsoft- and Windows Media-based products. Genius, on their part.
For what it's worth, H.264 is generally seen as similar in quality and functionality (and better in some ways) than VC-1; it's the official next-generation successor to the MPEG family of video codecs.
And no, to reiterate what's been said elsewhere, H.264 is NOT "Apple's codec". Apple uses and promotes it, but it's hardly "Apple's codec". It's an open international standard that is already heavily used in DTV/HDTV and satellite TV, and is being deployed in more industrial and commercial video equipment every day. Why? Because it's open, and didn't stem from one company. (If anything, Apple's involvement was to pressure MPEG LA to actually have reasonable licensing, so that it would also be able to actually be useful to individual users instead of just commercial users and equipment OEMs, which was positive for everyone involved.)
If people are switching to VC-1 instead of H.264, given that it's not open and came 100% out of Microsoft (and indeed is nothing more than WMV3 plus Windows Media Audio (WMA), you can believe Microsoft has likely had involvement. Every VC-1 user is a huge win for Microsoft and a blow to already-open MPEG standards.
1. Vista runs hot on MacBook Pro because he's using a beta OS without hardware drivers, using a mechanism for running it that itself is still beta. (And uh, I got news for you: everything "runs hot" on MacBook Pro.
But:
2. Apple doesn't support Vista on MacBook Pro and doesn't make Vista drivers for Apple hardware, but probably will after Vista and Boot Camp are both, you know, actually shipping, supported products.
Seems like the submitter managed to leave out quite a few things from the article, like the fact that the subtitle is:
Apple's top-end laptop runs Vista better than a high-end Sony Vaio
...and pretty much the entire rest of the article, which is downright positive, and managed to only come up with "Vista runs hot on Macbook (sic) Pro", something only mentioned in a couple of sentences on page 3 of the article.
The author makes claims that while using an unsupported, beta OS on hardware for which driver profiles don't exist in conjunction with another beta, unsupported product (Boot Camp), he wonders whether he's "slowly cooking the motherboard", even given the hardware safeties built in, and then goes on to say that he expects these to be fixed when Apple releases drivers for their hardware that actually work with Vista, and Vista is no longer, oh, I don't know, a beta product, and not even out yet?
So, why does the entire submission revolve around the ONE item that likely won't be news, and indeed will be completely moot, by the time Vista ships and Apple actually supports Boot Camp as a product (when Leopard ships)?
You have to remember that the rumour of the irreplaceable batteries started out as pure thruth. It may not be true anymore, but it should never be forgotten that it was true once.
Even at that time, there were many options from third parties to replace the batteries, including some who would do the replacement for you, and many with batteries better than Apple's own (especially on the first generation iPods).
And while it was true that Apple didn't have its own mechanism for replacement, the battery was still covered under warranty, and all but the very earliest iPods wouldn't have even touched a timeframe, statistically, where they'd start needing their batteries replaced. But yes, customers did start noticing they needed new batteries, and Apple responded.
People payed several hundred dollars for these devices and when the batteries failed, Apple first refused to do anything, even for money. When a battery failed after the warranty, the reply from Apple was "Throw your iPod away and buy a new one. We do not sell or replace batteries."
Ahh, talking about iPod's Dirty Secret, huh? I bet they were glad to get someone from Apple on tape saying that for their little childish video. Yeah. That was true. Then. Three years ago. Not only has it not been true since (and again, ignoring all the numerous third party ways to replace the battery), but Apple's price to do the replacement actually went down by about half.
I'm pretty involved in keeping up on Apple news, products, support issues, and so on, since that's, well, kind of my job. I don't remember ANY outcry or publicity about the battery issue until iPod's Dirty Secret.
Except for one little problem.
Apple had already launched its battery replacement service. A fact that the Neistat brothers refused to acknowledge.
It took a lot of customer pressure to convince Apple to change that policy.
Oh? Where is your evidence of this?
I think Apple was actually caught off-guard by people even needing batteries that soon. Frankly, they may have partly expected/hoped that the batteries would last the lifetime of the product for most people, as it was designed to do. When it became apparent that the lifetime of the battery and the lifetime of the product were divergent, Apple introduced its replacement program. Did some customers get screwed in the meantime? I'm sure they did. But it was a vanishingly small number compared to people who were either never affected, or needed batteries replaced AFTER Apple launched its program (and who
And now you are suggesting that people must be fools if they think that the battery of their iPod is irreplaceable?
Yes. I am. Because the batteries have been replaceable directly through Apple for three years, and have been replaceable by literally dozens of other third parties, including several prominent, established, reputable companies in the Apple product business, many of whom offer mail-in and do-it-yourself service, and some of which will even do the replacement overnight.
So anyone who still thinks - or is just beginning to think, now, according to this survey the Guardian mentions - that the iPod battery isn't replaceable is indeed a fool, and quite a large one at that. (And no, they weren't talking about just user-replaceable: the context gives every indication that people think it can't be replaced at all, which is quite astounding. And not only that, they apparently got a response strong enough to be mentioned from people who not only think that it can't be replaced, but think it was intentionally designed to fail after the warranty expires, which is ridiculous given that they're just normal LiIon cells from the likes of Sanyo, Sony, and LG.)
I agree with you that the batteries aren't "user replaceable".
But look inside those laptops, cameras, and cell phones that use non-standard batteries: the batteries aren't just resting directly against the circuit board or other delicate components; they're in their own little space, partitioned off from other parts of the innards that could be easily damaged, with their own little plastic or metal walls separating them, and clips, doors, springs, or screws controlling access. All of those things must be engineered around, and add size and weight. While none of us our privy to the backroom discussions about the iPod, it was an engineering decision to make it this way. I'm sure Apple doesn't cry itself to sleep at night when someone buys a new iPod, but I'm also equally sure this wasn't a plan to make the iPod completely disposable: indeed, if that were peoples' perception, it would be disastrous for sales and reputation of the product.
Had Apple never launched any type of battery replacement service, I'd also agree that this would be a problem, no matter how many other ways there were to replace the battery.
Third parties and do-it-yourself instructions aside, the ONLY difference with Apple's replacement is that the iPod must be sent away. I personally do not see that as a major hardship to do once every two or three years, and on balance, it may even be a positive, because that might have been what made many people, directly or indirectly, decide to buy an iPod in the first place (a combination of weight, size, and sleek appearance unobstructed with access panels, screws, clips, or the like). While some people don't consider this a benefit, you actually will get a new iPod or an iPod in a completely new enclosure (i.e., looks literally brand new from the outside) with factory-refurbished and -tested internal components, with its own 90-day service warranty (in case some component really is DOA). Judging from the examples of many iPods I've seen, this is actually a huge side benefit for many people who may choose to get their battery replaced.
The process itself is pretty straightforward: you visit Apple's web site, any Apple store, or any Apple service provider. You get a prepaid box sent to you that you drop your iPod in. You wait, and the new iPod shows up. As for the process of "figuring out" how to do it, whether the battery was user-replaceable or not, I imagine most people would go to a search engine, or call the company that made the product, or similar, and pose their query. My FAQ aside, at that point, it's quite obvious how one can go about replacing the battery: they can choose to do it through Apple, a third party, or do it themselves. Not much different than any other product, except that the process of replacing the battery takes 10 or 15 minutes instead of 10 or 15 seconds.
As for sealed battery flashlights, well, some of them had their own benefits: like they could go completely underwater and were relatively cheap for that feature. If you're talking about the ones that were nothing but a ripoff and were designed with being disposable with that end in mind, sure: sometimes people aren't smart. But the goal with the iPod wasn't to pull one over on consumers and hope they didn't figure out that they can't replace the battery while laughing all the way to the bank. The battery is replaceable, and people can choose to do it via various mechanisms, or not. And user-replaceability aside, they'd find out exactly HOW to go about replacing the battery the same way they'd find out how to do so with their cell phone or laptop: consulting the web, the manufacturer, the store at which it was bought, etc.
As for why iPod Battery FAQ exists, well, that was my own personal response to iPod's Dirty Secret, which claimed, through spraypainting half of Manhattan, that "iPod's unreplaceable battery only lasts 18 months". Which, of course, is utterly false. And it wasn't the "bad PR" from that which made Apple introduce its battery replacement programs; they were actually rolled out