That's what I thought before I started using a Mac. Believe me, you have no idea just how broken your machine is until you use OS X for a length of time. Kind of like you'd never think your Porsche was slow until you've ridden a GSXR. Or like crazy people never think they're crazy.
Dunno why you Mac guys have so many problems running Windows, but I bet it's user error.
I wish you would, because I'd make a killing. I've used Windows since 3.1, and it worked all right for me until the advent of the Internet. I can still make it work, but instead of being productive (or posting on Slashdot), I'm spending a chunk of time running Spybot S&D, ZoneAlarm, and Lord know what else making sure I'm keeping my head above water. I've got too many other things to think about without worring over a high-maintenance "tool".
Oh yeah, Apple uses intel now too.. So in the future, just bash "Win", leave the "tel" part out of it - MacTel has the same "flaws" now.
Kind of like how BSD has the same "flaws" since it's running on Intel hardware? Nice try, Captain Logic.
Failures to understand things like this will ensure that Microsoft never turns a profit in their gaming hardware division and why Nintendo will keep going. Nintendo provides me with an appliance that just works for what it was designed for.
Sounds an awful lot like another argument I've been hearing: ...this will ensure that [...] Apple will keep going. Apple provides me with an appliance that just works for what it was designed for.
Yet, Microsoft/WinTel still hold the lion's share of the market. I don't think anyone really cares if it Just Works, only 1) if their buddies think it's cool, and 2) if everyone else has one. It's all marketing and 0 substance.
"The I.T. chief controls the information architecture of the firm and can conceal a fraudulent transaction by circumventing controls and safeguards," says Joseph Anastasi
Maybe I'm a nerd, but the very first thing I thought of was the ST:TNG episode "Brothers" where Data circumvents the Enterprise's safeguards and takes over the ship.
backup data, have spare tires, insurance of any kind or disaster recovery plans. Because, after all, those are just measures that ignore the problems.
This is why argument by analogy is so stupid. Disaster recovery plans, for example: what about natural disasters? Are we ignoring the problems of earthquakes/hurricanes/other acts of God? Of course not. We just haven't developed to a stage where we can control the weather to this extent (isn't this a level 1 civilization, or something along those lines?)
I won't bother to debunk the rest, but you get what I'm saying. The fact the parent is modded +5 insightful shows just how powerful false analogy can be.
You know what would reduce the instance of teen pregnancy? Accepting (teen) sex as natural and unavoidable, and educating teens on the use of contraceptives. If we try to hide sex from teens, they'll be exceptionally eager to have it.
And if we want people to use condoms, we should teach girls how to put them on for guys. Guys don't have a stake in the matter; they don't get pregnant. Therefore the decision should not be left to them.
...and this is where you missed the boat. What we need to accept, in reality, is that being 1) willing and 2) able does not make you 3) ready.
That is fact.
Birth control is a boon for mature, ready couples who would prefer not to have a child at the moment but could handle it if they did. It shouldn't be a license to have sex at whatever age you're physically able.
And then you claim that girls should be responsible for condoms, to the point of forcibly wrapping their partner's meat? (At least, that's how it reads...) Give. Me. A. Break. If a guy isn't mature enough to protect both himself and his partner, he shouldn't be having sex. Period.
It's called "doing the right thing," and "being responsible". I realize in America we're accustomed to doing whatever the hell we want, consequences and preparedness be damned, but we're talking about human lives. If all parents were to heed your advice, not only would we be seeing an influx of teenage pregnancies, we would be training our young men that it's ok to be irresponsible because someone else will look out for their safety.
Please, please re-think your position here. If not for my kids, then for yours.
If I had points today, you, sir, would get one of them.
My conservative parents have baffled me all my life. They home schooled us kids, went to church, all that stuff, and always ripped on the Government when they would try and meddle in church or homeschooling. "Let us decide what's best for our own!" they would say.
I grew up, went away to college, and started smoking and gambling. "Smoking's bad for you, look at these Government studies!" Right, the Government studies. The same Government that doesn't know what's best for you, that you've been putting down all these years, suddenly they know what's best for me and have my best interests at heart. Right.
One thing drives the Government: Money.
Let me say it again: Money.
Oh, sure, they're after power, too; but power's only a means to an end... and what do you think that end is?
Since these devices are preferably low noise, low power, and small in size...
Um...preferred by whom? I work in media and I can tell you, space is preferred, period. Nobody cares about the power draw of one more drive or the whirling of another disk.
Of course, if you're working with a lot of video media, you're probably not storing it locally, anyway. In fact, we don't even store our audio locally.
So your roomate and you dont know what [you're] doing....
What you're saying is that simply because I've had bad luck/a knowledge deficit/whatever with PC hardware doesn't mean I can generalize my experience to everyone. Fair enough.
But I have to make that same claim against you, too.
(and for what it's worth, I've been building PCs for >15 years now, a chunk of that was at an actual shop, building the machines, which we then sold. If anything, that should make my "Dude, just get something that works and stop the insanity" plea carry more weight; I'm still stumped by my roomie's machine though.)
I'm a heavy gamer so I tend to look at the PC market first.
And here's our problem. If you want to run the bleeding-edge games at maximum resolution and bit depth... well, it sounds like you're in exactly the right place.
Weighing the positives and negatives, I prefer console games for this reason. Yes, PCs offer better control. Yes, PCs can be upgraded and modded and tweaked so the game looks JUST how you like it. Yes, internet play is better. But for me, I prefer to go buy a disc, pop it in and play (eg. no installation, no driver upgrades, no patch downloading, no controller configurating, etc). I want maximum play time from the moment I purchase the game to the moment I stand up. Consoles give me that, at the expense of better graphics or customization, or even good controllers. It didn't used to be that way, when I was younger I loved to tinker. Right now though, I'd rather spend my time with family and friends and retreat to an easy game or two on occasion. Others let games play a bigger role in their lives (heck, my brother for one), and that's fine.
I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.
You end up paying one way or another. How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work? I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.
My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks.
By the way, the 17" Powerbook that's on my desk -- picked it up about 5 months ago. Never crashes. Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!). Running an external monitor, and it remembers that if I have my second monitor hooked up, I want the LCD's rez to be lower, but if I don't have that second monitor hooked up, I want full rez on the LCD. Point being -- the stuff just works.
I don't know diddly about Apple...
Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you? (BTW plenty of good resources to answer your questions above on the web).
Um, it's pretty obvious why those sites don't work on a Mac --- wait for it.... DRM.
WMP isn't developed for Mac anymore, thus the DRM wouldn't work.
Maybe I misunderstood your complaint, but you should bitch to media companied that require DRM rather than whine about Macs being incompatible. In this case, the incompatibility saved your ass from supporting DRM!
May I be present when you try to convince a French/German/Dutch... hoster in English to pull an account? Or, even better, a Russian one?
Sure, I'll give you a Babelfish lesson. "Fraud" is a word that's pretty much universal, and pretty easily translated.
Let me put it more plainly. Your argument is illogical. You say, don't bother DDoSing the sender, because it's probably a zombie PC anyway. To generalize, you claim that attacking a third party whose innocence is likely (though not assured) is an incorrect strategy.
Ok, agreed. But then you proceed to advocate DDoSing the hosting company? Another third party whose culpability is FAR less than the person who allowed their machine to become a zombie in the first place?
There's no shame in saying, "Good point, I didn't think of that." For what it's worth, I agree with your first two points.
So, the problem I see in corporations a lot is that there are very few true problem solvers in positions of influence.
This is a great example. Why make the ISPs ("providers of broadband internet service" in TFA) comply with wiretap laws? Why make universities retrofit their data networks?
Ok, so the FCC wants wiretapping to be possible. Here's a novel idea: Make the companies that write the software for VoIP be wiretap-compliant. Write a special wiretap program. Give it to the government. Or, write an interface and let the government access it with a warrant, whatever (please don't critique the privacy issues here, that's not my point).
The point is -- the FCC wants to do something. They have a problem that needs to be solved. Their "solution" is retarded. There are no true problem solvers here.
3. DDoS the spammers and linkfarmers. Yes, it's illegal. Yes, I don't give a fuck. No, not the sender. It's more likely than not a hijacked PC. DDoS the linked page. Blow the one who decided that spam is the way to advertize his service off the net. Don't worry, you won't start a war. That's already running. Needn't do it right away, but I'd reserve that as an option if the rest fails.
Careful, that linked page is 99.9% likely to be a legitimate user's hacked hosting account. What's faaaaaar more effective is a phone call (or even an email!) to the hosting company. When I worked support for a hosting company and I got a call about this, it'd take me all of 2 seconds to suspend the account.
DDoSing the linked page is:
1. no skin off of the spammer's nose
2. a pain in the ass to the hosting company
3. far more time-consuming and less effective than a quick phone call.
We're smarter than those spammers, let's act like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet, Microsoft/WinTel still hold the lion's share of the market. I don't think anyone really cares if it Just Works, only 1) if their buddies think it's cool, and 2) if everyone else has one. It's all marketing and 0 substance.
Right, standards are different in different locales. Clearly, then, the tool should flag depending on what country you're surfing from.
I won't bother to debunk the rest, but you get what I'm saying. The fact the parent is modded +5 insightful shows just how powerful false analogy can be.
Our treatment of sex is what causes problems.
...and this is where you missed the boat. What we need to accept, in reality, is that being 1) willing and 2) able does not make you 3) ready.
This much is true.
You know what would reduce the instance of teen pregnancy? Accepting (teen) sex as natural and unavoidable, and educating teens on the use of contraceptives. If we try to hide sex from teens, they'll be exceptionally eager to have it.
And if we want people to use condoms, we should teach girls how to put them on for guys. Guys don't have a stake in the matter; they don't get pregnant. Therefore the decision should not be left to them.
That is fact.
Birth control is a boon for mature, ready couples who would prefer not to have a child at the moment but could handle it if they did. It shouldn't be a license to have sex at whatever age you're physically able.
And then you claim that girls should be responsible for condoms, to the point of forcibly wrapping their partner's meat? (At least, that's how it reads...) Give. Me. A. Break. If a guy isn't mature enough to protect both himself and his partner, he shouldn't be having sex. Period.
It's called "doing the right thing," and "being responsible". I realize in America we're accustomed to doing whatever the hell we want, consequences and preparedness be damned, but we're talking about human lives. If all parents were to heed your advice, not only would we be seeing an influx of teenage pregnancies, we would be training our young men that it's ok to be irresponsible because someone else will look out for their safety.
Please, please re-think your position here. If not for my kids, then for yours.
If I had points today, you, sir, would get one of them.
My conservative parents have baffled me all my life. They home schooled us kids, went to church, all that stuff, and always ripped on the Government when they would try and meddle in church or homeschooling. "Let us decide what's best for our own!" they would say.
I grew up, went away to college, and started smoking and gambling. "Smoking's bad for you, look at these Government studies!" Right, the Government studies. The same Government that doesn't know what's best for you, that you've been putting down all these years, suddenly they know what's best for me and have my best interests at heart. Right.
One thing drives the Government: Money.
Let me say it again: Money.
Oh, sure, they're after power, too; but power's only a means to an end... and what do you think that end is?
Since these devices are preferably low noise, low power, and small in size...
Um...preferred by whom? I work in media and I can tell you, space is preferred, period. Nobody cares about the power draw of one more drive or the whirling of another disk.
Of course, if you're working with a lot of video media, you're probably not storing it locally, anyway. In fact, we don't even store our audio locally.
I still do, ever since a "friend" sent me that damn joke page that shouts, "HEY EVERYONE! I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!".
I work at a radio station where I can voice things in the studio after-hours. Broadcast quality, obv.
I've never understood the idea that because a tool can be used to commit a crime, that it inherantly makes the tool evil.
Like guns?
So your roomate and you dont know what [you're] doing....
What you're saying is that simply because I've had bad luck/a knowledge deficit/whatever with PC hardware doesn't mean I can generalize my experience to everyone. Fair enough.
But I have to make that same claim against you, too.
(and for what it's worth, I've been building PCs for >15 years now, a chunk of that was at an actual shop, building the machines, which we then sold. If anything, that should make my "Dude, just get something that works and stop the insanity" plea carry more weight; I'm still stumped by my roomie's machine though.)
I'm a heavy gamer so I tend to look at the PC market first.
And here's our problem. If you want to run the bleeding-edge games at maximum resolution and bit depth... well, it sounds like you're in exactly the right place.
Weighing the positives and negatives, I prefer console games for this reason. Yes, PCs offer better control. Yes, PCs can be upgraded and modded and tweaked so the game looks JUST how you like it. Yes, internet play is better. But for me, I prefer to go buy a disc, pop it in and play (eg. no installation, no driver upgrades, no patch downloading, no controller configurating, etc). I want maximum play time from the moment I purchase the game to the moment I stand up. Consoles give me that, at the expense of better graphics or customization, or even good controllers. It didn't used to be that way, when I was younger I loved to tinker. Right now though, I'd rather spend my time with family and friends and retreat to an easy game or two on occasion. Others let games play a bigger role in their lives (heck, my brother for one), and that's fine.
Ok, I'll bite.
he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same,"
Define: straw man
"a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted"
The actual claim was:
"The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows."
Think of it this way:
"The Yugo gives you the same access to the highway system as Porsche."
Pragmatically true. But nobody would claim that "everything works the same".
I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.
You end up paying one way or another. How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work? I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.
My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks.
By the way, the 17" Powerbook that's on my desk -- picked it up about 5 months ago. Never crashes. Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!). Running an external monitor, and it remembers that if I have my second monitor hooked up, I want the LCD's rez to be lower, but if I don't have that second monitor hooked up, I want full rez on the LCD. Point being -- the stuff just works.
I don't know diddly about Apple...
Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you? (BTW plenty of good resources to answer your questions above on the web).
Um, it's pretty obvious why those sites don't work on a Mac --- wait for it.... DRM.
WMP isn't developed for Mac anymore, thus the DRM wouldn't work.
Maybe I misunderstood your complaint, but you should bitch to media companied that require DRM rather than whine about Macs being incompatible. In this case, the incompatibility saved your ass from supporting DRM!
SGI went bankrupt...
It's like the University could have gotten a free ride, but they already paid...
May I be present when you try to convince a French/German/Dutch... hoster in English to pull an account? Or, even better, a Russian one?
Sure, I'll give you a Babelfish lesson. "Fraud" is a word that's pretty much universal, and pretty easily translated.
Let me put it more plainly. Your argument is illogical. You say, don't bother DDoSing the sender, because it's probably a zombie PC anyway. To generalize, you claim that attacking a third party whose innocence is likely (though not assured) is an incorrect strategy.
Ok, agreed. But then you proceed to advocate DDoSing the hosting company? Another third party whose culpability is FAR less than the person who allowed their machine to become a zombie in the first place?
There's no shame in saying, "Good point, I didn't think of that." For what it's worth, I agree with your first two points.
So, the problem I see in corporations a lot is that there are very few true problem solvers in positions of influence.
This is a great example. Why make the ISPs ("providers of broadband internet service" in TFA) comply with wiretap laws? Why make universities retrofit their data networks?
Ok, so the FCC wants wiretapping to be possible. Here's a novel idea: Make the companies that write the software for VoIP be wiretap-compliant. Write a special wiretap program. Give it to the government. Or, write an interface and let the government access it with a warrant, whatever (please don't critique the privacy issues here, that's not my point).
The point is -- the FCC wants to do something. They have a problem that needs to be solved. Their "solution" is retarded. There are no true problem solvers here.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of Googles?
No, but this being Cinco de Mayo and all, I can imagine a cluster of Beer-wulf Goggles!
3. DDoS the spammers and linkfarmers. Yes, it's illegal. Yes, I don't give a fuck. No, not the sender. It's more likely than not a hijacked PC. DDoS the linked page. Blow the one who decided that spam is the way to advertize his service off the net. Don't worry, you won't start a war. That's already running. Needn't do it right away, but I'd reserve that as an option if the rest fails.
Careful, that linked page is 99.9% likely to be a legitimate user's hacked hosting account. What's faaaaaar more effective is a phone call (or even an email!) to the hosting company. When I worked support for a hosting company and I got a call about this, it'd take me all of 2 seconds to suspend the account.
DDoSing the linked page is:
1. no skin off of the spammer's nose
2. a pain in the ass to the hosting company
3. far more time-consuming and less effective than a quick phone call.
We're smarter than those spammers, let's act like it.
9. Why say that in the earnings conference? Sounds like a quick excuse
...
10.
11. Profit?