He might have been rather too broad with his statement, but it is not disconnected with reality. It was mainstream in the home market - the business computer market was rather separate back then. Yes, PCs might have sold more, but perhaps so did other office equipment like photocopiers. That doesn't mean I necessarily wanted a photocopier in my home.
Why does that matter? Well, it matters for geeks here I guess as people are more concerned about personal products they use (from the 8-bit computers of the 80s, to their Ipods and phones), whilst we don't care about what make of telephone or photocopier we use at work. Even if the latter sold more overall. So yes, it terms of what people like to use at home for leisure, the Amiga was at one time a major if not in some countries the mainstream platform, something that wasn't true for BeOS (which was always a niche AFAIK, although I did like it myself) or OS/2 and classic MacOS (which were used more in other markets). Indeed, even for OS X and Linux, they've never really achieved that, if you look at it in terms of proportions (not in absolute figures, but another point is that the market as a whole was far smaller in the 80s and early 90s, so again it's unfair to compare).
Painting the Amiga fans as some disconnected fanatical crowd as some do doesn't really make sense, when they were using the mainstream machine for what they wanted (i.e., a home computer), and many if not most of them went on to use other mainstream platforms (i.e., Windows).
You forgot BSD. And Windows. In fact, you're quite right - users of one platform are just as mad as any other.
(PS - the Amiga did once reach "critical mass", in the sense that it was the dominant home computer in many countries for several years, something that certain more well known non-Windows platforms have yet to achieve...)
And yet, for all its hipness, at least the "I'm a Mac" ads gave you reasons why you should purchase a Mac over a PC
No they didn't - they just ridiculed and stereotyped PC users, i.e., their target audience.
Anyhow, Macs are a subset of PCs (even Apple themselves admit this, with their false "first 64 bit PC" claims a few years before), so their advert makes no sense, not to mention that Linux runs on PCs, so their claims about viruses are plain fraudulent advertising. We all know they meant to say Windows, but they were too chicken to say so.
Good adverts promote the product, as opposed to resorting to just slagging off the competition.
I agree - and in general, it seems that Apple adverts focus at solely criticising Windows, as opposed to telling us anything good about Macs. I'm not sure what TFS is on about - the "I'm a Mac" adverts were quite poor, just making petty jabs at Windows, relying on insulting decades old stereotypes of PCs being associated with business users, and failing to promote the Mac in any way.
Good for you. But the argument that the BBC licence fee is great, if you want the BBC and only the BBC, isn't much of an argument when it's compulsory for all.
You said "Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?" - well it sucks even more to have to pay twice to watch TV, as well as adverts, whether you want the BBC or not. How the quality of the BBC compares to other TV companies is a separate issue.
(Not to mention that the only way to get the older classic BBC programmes is on cable/satellite now, so it's not clear how those are "shit", if you like the BBC.)
Yup, no adverts. You know that TV Licence we pay? Well, you know how it's quite a lot less than you pay for cable or satellite in the US? We don't get adverts on our BBC channels. Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?
Whilst the BBC can be pretty good with no adverts (well, if you ignore all the self-promotion for BBC material they still do), the problem is that if you do want other cable or satellite TV channels (since the BBC don't show everything), you still have to pay for them, and watch the adverts - and you have to pay the TV licence fee on top (even if you don't watch the BBC - it's mandatory so long as you watch any TV, even online).
I agree. Another example is the way that the BBC flogs a lot of its classic shows off to other networks like (IIRC) UKTV Gold.
So first I've had to pay my BBC licence, then I have to pay to get UKTV Gold, then I have to watch loads of adverts on top... all this for old content! Shouldn't it get cheaper as it gets older? Instead I'm having to pay three times.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
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He didn't say it should be mandatory, he said it should be the default option. It's optional in Opera - is it even an option in Firefox yet, or do I have to go searching for extensions?
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
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Why would you ever want have a browser NOT open its last state when you open it? (as an example of FireFox & IE default behavior).
Agreed - at the least, it should be an option, rather than having to hunt down an extension (is it in there as standard, yet?)
I mean, surely this was the whole point of tabs, and was why Opera with tabs was so much better than IE, back before Firefox existed. I find it strange, given that Firefox made so much more of a fuss of "Woo, we've got tabs" when it was released, whilst Opera didn't make a big deal out of. I failed to see the point of Firefox's version of tabs, except for saving space on the Task Bar (which is redundant in Windows XP onwards anyway, since it can automatically group similar windows). They don't even have the ability to be moved/resized (e.g., so you can view two tabs side by side) unlike in Opera; they're just fixed to fill the entire window.
It's not the default behaviour in Chrome, but at least it's there as an option.
unless you go in to the relationship with the full understanding that you are not completely devoted to each other.
That's a fallacy - devotion is not detracted from by being non-monogamous, anymore than it is by having friends, or spending time on Slashdot...
Presumably, you don't want the other to leave you for some other person, so the amount of trust it takes is enormous.
As much as I would love to brag that poly people are capable of "enormous" amounts of trust, I don't think this is true. People leave monogamous relationships all the time, so you still have to have that trust. Moreover, you are missing the fundamental point that with poly, they don't have to leave you! That's only the option in monogamy - so I would argue that in fact, it's more likely with monogamy, because the person has to leave you if they find someone else and decide to choose them over you (which sometimes can happen as a result of short term infatuation for the other person, even if long term they'd otherwise remain devoted to you).
I think what you really mean is you have to trust that the person won't suddenly switch to monogamy with someone else - well indeed, just as it's also bad if you're monogamous and the other person suddenly decides not to be.
Actually, it's a quadratic relation (triangle numbers), no factorial...
But, you are assuming group relationships - poly relationships include all sorts of arrangements (the simplest would be A in a relationship with B, B in a relationship with C, but where A and C aren't in a relationship). I don't see it as a "problem" as such - obviously one should only enter into any given relationship if the benefits outweight the drawbacks. Otherwise by this reasoning, monogamy is a "problem" compared with being single...
Hence two is the optimum that gives the most payoff for the least amount of work
I'm not sure how you can come to that generalised conclusion - obviously the optimal number of relationships depends on the person. Some people even prefer zero relationships. Also it depends on circumstances - for example, if you're living together, then that relationship requires a lot of time and committment, but other relationships might require les (e.g., dating someone, or maybe a long distance relationship where you only see each other occasionally). Someone might have more than one relationship of that nature, whilst still spending less time and effort on them than someone living together with their monogamous partner.
I don't see why this is "badsummary" - just because they have the same EULA for other things doesn't stop it being true (it just makes it worse).
I can imagine that this was more down to copy-and-paste incompetence rather than malice, but the summary is perfectly accurate. The summary doesn't even make any conclusions - it simply quotes the EULA for all to read.
Yes, but it's not clear that Google have released their binary under the BSD - only the source code.
So sure, you can download the source, and then distribute from that a compiled binary to others. But if you download the binary from Google, then the BSD won't apply if that binary isn't licenced under BSD.
Privacy is not black or white - for most of history, there was a reasonable expectation that, if no one was around, I wouldn't be seen - let alone be permanently recorded. This was not at all "imaginary". Whether this expectation should be changed or not is a matter of opinion.
The problem is not finding random guys on the street - or posting on Slashdot - who say "Yeah, I'd love to go into space!". The problem is finding someone up to the job, the years of training, and the money spent on that training.
I mean, if NASA loses another crew, do you think NASA'll be like "Oh nevermind, let's email some of those guys on Slashdot, we can send them up next week instead"?
But we cannot pretend that risk is a deal-breaker. Going into space is dangerous.
Since I suspect that the Shuttle replacement, as well as the Russian Soyuz, also have greater than zero probability of failure, I doubt anyone is claiming that any risk whatsoever is an automatic deal-breaker. I suspect that people at NASA are well aware that going into space is dangerous, and are not the straw men that posters in this thread make them out to be.
Where in the article is the word "safe" mentioned, or did you just want to make a straw man ready for your +5 first post?
The issue is one of risk, and one should certainly calculate those risks, and weigh that up against the alternatives. By your reasoning, because "Nothing is 'safe'", we might as well not care if something is highly reckless.
Even if we don't care about the people, a Shuttle blowing up costs large amounts of money, both in terms of the physical loss, as well as all the money in training astronauts. That money might be better spent in other ways for space exploration.
War, crab fishing, oil drilling, car driving, and on and on.
If fishing or oil drilling had a 1 in 75 chance of complete failure with loss of all life, it would probably violate safety laws. If a car had 1 in 75 chance of blowing up every journey, you can bet it wouldn't be allowed on the road. And any competent general would be assessing the risk of missions, and not sending his men unnecessarily on reckless missions.
It's a lame argument whining about the fact that it's "your" money too. If you think it isn't worth it, then fine, argue that point - but claiming it's "your" money doesn't make it inherently wrong to spend tax money on things that don't benefit you.
you could just drop both of them and let the average american keep some more of his money.
Right, so let's have a debate about not having taxes because you don't want to pay for things that don't personally benefit you. But let's not have it here, because that applies to any tax spending, and isn't specific to New Orleans.
I'm sure the New Orleans residents have paid lots of taxes during their lifetime too. Newsflash: taxes don't always get spent on things that personally benefit you.
Sure, we can argue how money might most effectively be spent. The poster you replied to suggests that spending money on New Orleans is better than spending billions on a war in Iraq.
The point is that if you need more than 16 gb of data storage you're either being really lazy or doing things that put you well outside the needs of a normal user.
Listening to music or watching videos on laptops is normal these days. And if people are taking a laptop with them, no one wants to go back to having to take loads of CDs, DVDs or lug external hard drives around with them! Since large hard drives are common place now, no one is going to take a downgrade.
I've wondered why small PCs aren't more common (though I've seen more of them in mainstream stores than I've seen Mac Minis), but I think another reason is that it's the worst of both worlds: if you want a small PC with laptop-style technology (as is the case with the Mac Mini), people would rather just get a laptop. People who are still buying desktop PCs are doing so because they want the more powerful components, or the flexibility with upgrading hardware.
I also wouldn't discount small PCs even for having a Windows tax - I mean, I don't think you can buy Macs without buying the "OS X tax"?
is what allowed the Mac to be a Mac while PCs were still running DOS.
Well, note that many computers of the 80s had similar, if not far better graphics systems (e.g., the Amiga) - it was just the PC that stood out as a bad exception, so it's not accurate to say that only QuickDraw could allow a computer to be differentiated from PCs running DOS.
It's a disappointing reality that technology, like art, can't sustain itself. It needs marketing and merchandizing. Without Jobs, Apple would have quickly become another dead technology portfolio just like Amiga, OS/2, Taligent, etc.
Furthermore, the technology needs completely replacing - the classic Mac technology is as dead a portfolio as the Amiga technology etc.
Also we shouldn't be comparing companies to specific pieces of technology - Apple are still around whilst the classic Mac technology is dead, just as IBM are still around whilst the OS/2 technology is dead. So both cases are pretty similar, it's just that IBM didn't decide to reuse the OS/2 brandname for newer products.
Slashdot Mirror
He might have been rather too broad with his statement, but it is not disconnected with reality. It was mainstream in the home market - the business computer market was rather separate back then. Yes, PCs might have sold more, but perhaps so did other office equipment like photocopiers. That doesn't mean I necessarily wanted a photocopier in my home.
Why does that matter? Well, it matters for geeks here I guess as people are more concerned about personal products they use (from the 8-bit computers of the 80s, to their Ipods and phones), whilst we don't care about what make of telephone or photocopier we use at work. Even if the latter sold more overall. So yes, it terms of what people like to use at home for leisure, the Amiga was at one time a major if not in some countries the mainstream platform, something that wasn't true for BeOS (which was always a niche AFAIK, although I did like it myself) or OS/2 and classic MacOS (which were used more in other markets). Indeed, even for OS X and Linux, they've never really achieved that, if you look at it in terms of proportions (not in absolute figures, but another point is that the market as a whole was far smaller in the 80s and early 90s, so again it's unfair to compare).
Painting the Amiga fans as some disconnected fanatical crowd as some do doesn't really make sense, when they were using the mainstream machine for what they wanted (i.e., a home computer), and many if not most of them went on to use other mainstream platforms (i.e., Windows).
You forgot BSD. And Windows. In fact, you're quite right - users of one platform are just as mad as any other.
(PS - the Amiga did once reach "critical mass", in the sense that it was the dominant home computer in many countries for several years, something that certain more well known non-Windows platforms have yet to achieve...)
And yet, for all its hipness, at least the "I'm a Mac" ads gave you reasons why you should purchase a Mac over a PC
No they didn't - they just ridiculed and stereotyped PC users, i.e., their target audience.
Anyhow, Macs are a subset of PCs (even Apple themselves admit this, with their false "first 64 bit PC" claims a few years before), so their advert makes no sense, not to mention that Linux runs on PCs, so their claims about viruses are plain fraudulent advertising. We all know they meant to say Windows, but they were too chicken to say so.
Good adverts promote the product, as opposed to resorting to just slagging off the competition.
I agree - and in general, it seems that Apple adverts focus at solely criticising Windows, as opposed to telling us anything good about Macs. I'm not sure what TFS is on about - the "I'm a Mac" adverts were quite poor, just making petty jabs at Windows, relying on insulting decades old stereotypes of PCs being associated with business users, and failing to promote the Mac in any way.
It's not an excuse. You're quite right - the ISPs should be liable under the law, due to their own negligence.
How can they expect users to read the EULs, if they can't even be bothered to read them themselves?
Good for you. But the argument that the BBC licence fee is great, if you want the BBC and only the BBC, isn't much of an argument when it's compulsory for all.
You said "Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?" - well it sucks even more to have to pay twice to watch TV, as well as adverts, whether you want the BBC or not. How the quality of the BBC compares to other TV companies is a separate issue.
(Not to mention that the only way to get the older classic BBC programmes is on cable/satellite now, so it's not clear how those are "shit", if you like the BBC.)
Yup, no adverts. You know that TV Licence we pay? Well, you know how it's quite a lot less than you pay for cable or satellite in the US? We don't get adverts on our BBC channels. Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?
Whilst the BBC can be pretty good with no adverts (well, if you ignore all the self-promotion for BBC material they still do), the problem is that if you do want other cable or satellite TV channels (since the BBC don't show everything), you still have to pay for them, and watch the adverts - and you have to pay the TV licence fee on top (even if you don't watch the BBC - it's mandatory so long as you watch any TV, even online).
I agree. Another example is the way that the BBC flogs a lot of its classic shows off to other networks like (IIRC) UKTV Gold.
So first I've had to pay my BBC licence, then I have to pay to get UKTV Gold, then I have to watch loads of adverts on top... all this for old content! Shouldn't it get cheaper as it gets older? Instead I'm having to pay three times.
He didn't say it should be mandatory, he said it should be the default option. It's optional in Opera - is it even an option in Firefox yet, or do I have to go searching for extensions?
Why would you ever want have a browser NOT open its last state when you open it? (as an example of FireFox & IE default behavior).
Agreed - at the least, it should be an option, rather than having to hunt down an extension (is it in there as standard, yet?)
I mean, surely this was the whole point of tabs, and was why Opera with tabs was so much better than IE, back before Firefox existed. I find it strange, given that Firefox made so much more of a fuss of "Woo, we've got tabs" when it was released, whilst Opera didn't make a big deal out of. I failed to see the point of Firefox's version of tabs, except for saving space on the Task Bar (which is redundant in Windows XP onwards anyway, since it can automatically group similar windows). They don't even have the ability to be moved/resized (e.g., so you can view two tabs side by side) unlike in Opera; they're just fixed to fill the entire window.
It's not the default behaviour in Chrome, but at least it's there as an option.
unless you go in to the relationship with the full understanding that you are not completely devoted to each other.
That's a fallacy - devotion is not detracted from by being non-monogamous, anymore than it is by having friends, or spending time on Slashdot...
Presumably, you don't want the other to leave you for some other person, so the amount of trust it takes is enormous.
As much as I would love to brag that poly people are capable of "enormous" amounts of trust, I don't think this is true. People leave monogamous relationships all the time, so you still have to have that trust. Moreover, you are missing the fundamental point that with poly, they don't have to leave you! That's only the option in monogamy - so I would argue that in fact, it's more likely with monogamy, because the person has to leave you if they find someone else and decide to choose them over you (which sometimes can happen as a result of short term infatuation for the other person, even if long term they'd otherwise remain devoted to you).
I think what you really mean is you have to trust that the person won't suddenly switch to monogamy with someone else - well indeed, just as it's also bad if you're monogamous and the other person suddenly decides not to be.
Actually, it's a quadratic relation (triangle numbers), no factorial...
But, you are assuming group relationships - poly relationships include all sorts of arrangements (the simplest would be A in a relationship with B, B in a relationship with C, but where A and C aren't in a relationship). I don't see it as a "problem" as such - obviously one should only enter into any given relationship if the benefits outweight the drawbacks. Otherwise by this reasoning, monogamy is a "problem" compared with being single...
Hence two is the optimum that gives the most payoff for the least amount of work
I'm not sure how you can come to that generalised conclusion - obviously the optimal number of relationships depends on the person. Some people even prefer zero relationships. Also it depends on circumstances - for example, if you're living together, then that relationship requires a lot of time and committment, but other relationships might require les (e.g., dating someone, or maybe a long distance relationship where you only see each other occasionally). Someone might have more than one relationship of that nature, whilst still spending less time and effort on them than someone living together with their monogamous partner.
I don't see why this is "badsummary" - just because they have the same EULA for other things doesn't stop it being true (it just makes it worse).
I can imagine that this was more down to copy-and-paste incompetence rather than malice, but the summary is perfectly accurate. The summary doesn't even make any conclusions - it simply quotes the EULA for all to read.
Yes, but it's not clear that Google have released their binary under the BSD - only the source code.
So sure, you can download the source, and then distribute from that a compiled binary to others. But if you download the binary from Google, then the BSD won't apply if that binary isn't licenced under BSD.
Privacy is not black or white - for most of history, there was a reasonable expectation that, if no one was around, I wouldn't be seen - let alone be permanently recorded. This was not at all "imaginary". Whether this expectation should be changed or not is a matter of opinion.
The problem is not finding random guys on the street - or posting on Slashdot - who say "Yeah, I'd love to go into space!". The problem is finding someone up to the job, the years of training, and the money spent on that training.
I mean, if NASA loses another crew, do you think NASA'll be like "Oh nevermind, let's email some of those guys on Slashdot, we can send them up next week instead"?
But we cannot pretend that risk is a deal-breaker. Going into space is dangerous.
Since I suspect that the Shuttle replacement, as well as the Russian Soyuz, also have greater than zero probability of failure, I doubt anyone is claiming that any risk whatsoever is an automatic deal-breaker. I suspect that people at NASA are well aware that going into space is dangerous, and are not the straw men that posters in this thread make them out to be.
Where in the article is the word "safe" mentioned, or did you just want to make a straw man ready for your +5 first post?
The issue is one of risk, and one should certainly calculate those risks, and weigh that up against the alternatives. By your reasoning, because "Nothing is 'safe'", we might as well not care if something is highly reckless.
Even if we don't care about the people, a Shuttle blowing up costs large amounts of money, both in terms of the physical loss, as well as all the money in training astronauts. That money might be better spent in other ways for space exploration.
War, crab fishing, oil drilling, car driving, and on and on.
If fishing or oil drilling had a 1 in 75 chance of complete failure with loss of all life, it would probably violate safety laws. If a car had 1 in 75 chance of blowing up every journey, you can bet it wouldn't be allowed on the road. And any competent general would be assessing the risk of missions, and not sending his men unnecessarily on reckless missions.
And it is a lame argument.
It's a lame argument whining about the fact that it's "your" money too. If you think it isn't worth it, then fine, argue that point - but claiming it's "your" money doesn't make it inherently wrong to spend tax money on things that don't benefit you.
you could just drop both of them and let the average american keep some more of his money.
Right, so let's have a debate about not having taxes because you don't want to pay for things that don't personally benefit you. But let's not have it here, because that applies to any tax spending, and isn't specific to New Orleans.
I'm sure the New Orleans residents have paid lots of taxes during their lifetime too. Newsflash: taxes don't always get spent on things that personally benefit you.
Sure, we can argue how money might most effectively be spent. The poster you replied to suggests that spending money on New Orleans is better than spending billions on a war in Iraq.
The point is that if you need more than 16 gb of data storage you're either being really lazy or doing things that put you well outside the needs of a normal user.
Listening to music or watching videos on laptops is normal these days. And if people are taking a laptop with them, no one wants to go back to having to take loads of CDs, DVDs or lug external hard drives around with them! Since large hard drives are common place now, no one is going to take a downgrade.
If you want Comcast to adopt water billing, it will be $50 for the first 250 GB, then $75 for the next 150, then $125 for the next 100.
If that's what they advertise, then fine.
But if they're advertising "unlimited" for $X, they don't get to say you're only allowed to download so much, or charge you extra for doing so.
I've wondered why small PCs aren't more common (though I've seen more of them in mainstream stores than I've seen Mac Minis), but I think another reason is that it's the worst of both worlds: if you want a small PC with laptop-style technology (as is the case with the Mac Mini), people would rather just get a laptop. People who are still buying desktop PCs are doing so because they want the more powerful components, or the flexibility with upgrading hardware.
I also wouldn't discount small PCs even for having a Windows tax - I mean, I don't think you can buy Macs without buying the "OS X tax"?
is what allowed the Mac to be a Mac while PCs were still running DOS.
Well, note that many computers of the 80s had similar, if not far better graphics systems (e.g., the Amiga) - it was just the PC that stood out as a bad exception, so it's not accurate to say that only QuickDraw could allow a computer to be differentiated from PCs running DOS.
It's a disappointing reality that technology, like art, can't sustain itself. It needs marketing and merchandizing. Without Jobs, Apple would have quickly become another dead technology portfolio just like Amiga, OS/2, Taligent, etc.
Furthermore, the technology needs completely replacing - the classic Mac technology is as dead a portfolio as the Amiga technology etc.
Also we shouldn't be comparing companies to specific pieces of technology - Apple are still around whilst the classic Mac technology is dead, just as IBM are still around whilst the OS/2 technology is dead. So both cases are pretty similar, it's just that IBM didn't decide to reuse the OS/2 brandname for newer products.