My property goes to my heirs at my death. My body is my property.
Slavery is illegal. No-one else can own your body except you.
Correct on the former, totally incorrect on the latter.
In many places, your will should include leaving your remains to an heir, to ensure that your funeral wishes will be carried out.
If you don't leave your body to someone, in many jurisdictions it goes to the State.
You can also leave your remains to research, for example. You don't think all those cadavers that medical students disect still own themselves, do you?
Re-buyers already have it on CD, so why bother?
on
The Beatles On iTunes
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That...doesn't make any sense.
Having a band like The Beatles on iTunes should send their stock skyrocketing. The amount of money all parties involved are going to make is going to be huge. If there's one band that people rebuy over and over again, it's The Beatles.
Except that many of their first-generation fans are now retirement age and just don't care to buy it in a new format.
If those folks had already re-bought it on every new format, then it follows that they already have it on CD.
Seriously, if you already had something on CD, why would you re-buy it on iTunes?
Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!
Oh come on.
To be fair, Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica, Firefly, Babylon 5, Dr. Who, Space: 1999, and a host of other shows all featured those characteristics.
It's not because the shows' makers were unimaginative, it's because they are television shows.
It's difficult to find actors who don't look like humans; audiences in the countries where these shows were produced mainly understand only English (there are no native Klingon speakers, no matter how many nerds learn the Klingon language); and sex keeps stupid people watching the show, helping the ratings. Ok, Dr. Who hasn't featured much, if any, sex, but that's because it was a BBC production aimed at families.
It seems it still applies to the USA only. You can probably blame region-based content licensing for all these artificial limitations.
Just like how we can't pay a British TV license fee and watch iPlayer content in the USA.
This is a US-based website. A few people need to realize that and get over it.
The tagline wording could have been better - ie. "Hulu Plus no longer invitation-only", but this is Slashdot - it's not like people expect (or ever see) high journalistic standards applied here.
Using this fucking hardware any goddamn way we see fit, even if it makes no sense, is what I demand. Crack open that fucking thing and fuck Microsoft in their stupid asses with a Sony Move stick!
You know somewhere in North Hollywood, they're making that porno right now.
Of course, it'll be gay porn, but you weren't specific enough (assuming that's not what you're looking for, which I could be totally wrong about).
Emissions have been reduced. In fact, a catalytic converter is no longer required on the new Mazda rotary motors. What they did is they run the motor a little rich so that some fuel makes it through the engine (but only a little). After the combustion cycle they add air to the exhaust and burn a second time to ensure all the fuel is burned. The second burn does not generate any power - this is why the fuel efficiency of the motor is lacking. But for the market they are designed for, it does not matter.
Well, actually it does. Fuel economy is important because a car maker's entire product fleet has to average a certain fuel economy level. Wasted fuel is never a good thing, although Mazda's fleet does mostly consist of smaller cars, so that helps.
The exhaust burn was so hot on the system you describe that the exhaust pipes had to be made of a very expensive grade of stainless steel, not usually used for automotive exhaust tubing, which pushed the cost of the car up. The energy required to pump air into the exhaust is also wasteful.
74kwh supercapacitors are damned expensive, so I doubt if anyone would put one in their house.
Actually, what's more correct is that 74kWH supercapacitors are damned expensive now, because they're not being produced on a huge scale for deployment in every home garage. Maybe they'd be a lot cheaper, if they were.
I remember a project review I sat in on some time around 2000, when someone was getting raked over the coals for buying a 42 inch plasma TV for some project. It cost over $16,000. I just bought a 42 inch plasma TV last month for my bedroom. It cost $489, uses less power, doesn't burn in as easily and has a better picture.
Isn't it likely that once something becomes a commodity product, the cost is going to be engineered out?
This car, assuming that it really can absorb 150 kW, will need a charging station with a few megawatts of electrical service.
If only they made some kind of device that could store a large amount of electrical energy, which could be slowly charged from a house's normal electric supply but then deliver a high amount of current over a shorter period of time to charge the car.
Unless you're operating a public filling (recharging) station, you don't need to get all the electricity from the grid simultaneously with the car charging operation.
Probably something like the type of battery pack used for an electric forklift truck could do the job, coupled with a appropriate electronics.
You made it hard on yourself by starting with a mass-produced vehicle. In that case the State wants to make it hard to make sure you're not trying to pull something like re-titling a stolen vehicle.
In Illinois, it's pretty easy and not expensive at all. It doesn't even cost any more than titling and registering a normal mass-manufactured car.
Here's what you need to title a homebuilt or kit vehicle in Illinois:
Three photos of the completed vehicle showing front, side, and rear views.
Title for the chassis and all bills of sale or other ownership documents for any essential parts of the vehicles, or a certificate of origin from the manufacturer if the vehicle was assembled entirely from a kit. (Now, this could be interesting. Bill of sale for the presumably used engine, or title from an existing car's chassis or floorpan usually works)
Completed title (or title and registration) application. (Same form you use to title and register a normal car)
Check made out to the Secretary of State for $65 (title only) or $143 (title and registration). (Same fees as a titling and registering a normal car)
Sales tax form with a check made out to the Illinois Department of Revenue for the amount of sales tax due. (Presumably this would be $0 for a homebuilt vehicle)
There's also an inspection by the State, which doesn't sound any worse than the normal safety inspection people have in places like NY State. (Illinois doesn't routinely inspect cars)
Yeah, right. Try starting and stopping the engine at every stop light when it's forty below zero outside
It's a trivial engineering task. Prius, for example, has auxiliary electric heaters, and it maintains the engine temperature (and battery charge) automatically. If it's -40C outside the ICE will run a bit more, and that's all. This shouldn't be of any concern to the driver unless he lives in Alaska; then he'd be getting worse MPG than people in California do.
You obviously don't own a hybrid car and live in a cold-weather area.
I live in the Chicago area. I've been told by residents of the Anchorage, AK area, that we get colder low temperatures than they do. I'm not sure I believe them, but we did have a few -16F temps last winter and plenty of sustained below-0F temperatures. I have a number of friends who own hybrids (including a couple of Priuses), and they have told me that the engine basically runs most of the time in extremely cold weather, and on short trips the engine just won't shut off. The Prius does have a thermos-like insulated coolant bottle that keeps the coolant warm between engine runs, but when you are trying to heat -20 air to defrost windows, you need the waste heat from the engine or to have electricity from the engine-driven alternator portion of the hybrid system to provide heat.
Comparing the performance of non-hybrid cars' batteries to the huge battery pack in a hybrid doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure that's worth discussing.
Code fix. If external_temp -20F, don't shutdown. Wow, that was *extremely* difficult.
Which part of 'burning fuel while stopped can never be a good thing' are you having a hard time understanding?
Probably the part where that statement is always true in all situations. Absolutes are rarely correct.
At extremely low temperatures, you need the waste heat from the engine to provide passenger compartment heat for defrosting the windows. If your heater doesn't work correctly around here in the coldest part of winter, it's very possible to have frost form on the inside of the windows as well as the outside.
Battery performance is also lower in extreme cold weather, so you really need the alternator producing power to keep the battery charged. Winter driving here often means your lights are on during the daytime, the heater blower is running at one of the higher speeds and the rear-window is being electrically heated. Without power from the alternator, you wouldn't get very far.
In those cases, turning fuel into electricity is a really good idea.
Because of the short (3 mile) drive to work and back, I had problems the last three winters with the battery not being quite fully charged and I had to put it on charge at home. I'd notice it the next time I'd start the car that the starter would turn the engine a little slower each time. I had the alternator and battery tested and they both were working at their rated capacities (they have some fantastic lead-acid battery analyzers now). This year I changed to an AGM battery that will accept the charge faster (draws more Amperes of current from the alternator), upgraded to a high-output alternator (250A) and changed the wiring between the alternator and battery to heavier gauge wires.
Had the engine shut down at each stop, I'd have either developed hypothermia or just not made it to work.
Unfortunately it seems like the number of submissions that make it to Slashdot's front page is so low that some chaff is let through just to keep from only have one or two articles show up each day.
Not ALL research spending, but how about research spending on project directly related to solving these issue first?
How do you know that they're not doing that?
Just because a story is published about India doing physics research, how does it logically follow that they're not also working on social and economic issues?
You may want to see my earlier post #33973130 where I suggest that another individual who appears to have only a tenuous grip on reality and seems to believe that Apple is out to get him or her may want to seek professional help.
For some reason, there are a number of people who seem to hope that Apple is going to lock down their desktop systems (systems, which I must point out are not the only desktop systems sold in the personal computer market space; there exists a huge number of alternatives) purely so that these individuals can express their outrage at something which is not happening.
Even if it did happen, there are other computer systems available from other manufacturers who have no problem letting you install whatever OS and other software you want on their systems.
This paranoia that Apple somehow defines all that takes place in the personal computer marketplace, coupled with the apparently very realistic hallucination that Apple is locking their desktop systems down and somehow by extension locking all other general-purpose computers down is really ready like mass hysteria, or some kind of shared persecution complex.
Seriously, give it a rest. It's not reality. Apple is not locking down their desktop systems (mobile phones, portable media players, and Internet tablets are not general-purpose computing devices). If Apple did lock down their desktop systems, nothing would prevent end users from obtaining and using other computer systems. In fact, those alternatives are already available - alternatives which would flourish as former Mac users move to more open alternatives.
When will/. readers acknowledge that they're not the entire fucking market for computing devices?
Because we're fucking pissed that corporations keep trying to pull this shit on people.
So why not put your own machine together and install Linux?
Is someone forcing you to buy from Apple? (That's a rhetorical question and most everyone is going to be sure that the answer is 99.999% likely to be "no")
The market is large enough to support a wide range of users from those like my parents, who just want things to work easily (which Apple actually delivers), to users who like to tinker with their systems (which, strangely enough, outside of portable devices, Apple also delivers), to even cranks like yourself who are on some kind of anti-Apple jihad (who can buy a no-name computer and install Linux or even Windows).
Seriously, nobody's requiring that you not go out and buy whatever computer you want and install whatever you want on it. If you truly feel that Apple is trying to persecute you in some way, you should probably seek professional help before you load up your car with explosives and run it into the nearest Apple store. Do you feel like the walls are closing in on you? Do you look over your shoulder when you walk down the street, to make sure that nobody wearing a black turtle-neck is following you? These are symptoms of paranoia, which is very treatable these days.
It's not even like Apple is a very large slice of the "PC" market. Heck, Windows already uses signed installers for some things like device drivers doesn't it? Why aren't you on a rant that they're going to require that only device drivers that are signed by MS will be able to be installed in the future? MS holds a far bigger slice of the OS marketplace than Apple does, and MS seems far more likely to do something like that.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be a market for general-purpose computers that can be used in any way the user wants. As long as the market need is there, computer makers will support it. Relax, and just don't buy anything from people you don't like. Even if they aren't out to get you. Which they could be.
Err, except that your example is exceedingly hyperbolic.
Apple is shipping systems that are locked down now.
No they aren't.
They ship mobile devices that are locked down, but none of their general purpose computers are locked down. Name one that is.
I oversee a bunch of systems, Windows, Linux and Macs - the Macs include Mac Minis, iMacs and Mac Pros. Not one of them is locked down in any way that prevents me from installing anything I want to.
So, I repeat my challenge to you: name a computer system (not a portable phone, tablet or music player, but an actual computer system) sold by Apple that is locked down.
Steve Jobs has just washed* his cereal bowl, a spoon, and what appears to be a small plate.
* You can actually see him, through his kitchen window, doing his dishes if you walk down his street.
If you were talking about bowel movements, well that's not only gross but silly too. Everyone knows the iToilet hasn't been unveiled yet. At least it won't have the buffer overflows that Microsoft's MyToilet prototype suffered from when Steve Ballmer demonstrated it.
Totally agree. What I'd like to know is, what does a service like Yahoo! stand to gain by letting dummies post garbage under their news items? It seems like they stand to lose readership, and not gain anything. Why let it continue? These aren't even anonymous comments - the person's Yahoo! ID is posted right along with their wackadoo rantings.
Take a look at the comments under any Yahoo! News article. They are 99.999% cranks, nutjobs, idiots and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. That and spam for "Get an iPad/iPod/iPhone for free" or dating sites.
I sent an email to Yahoo! corporate asking why they are letting idiots crap all over their product. I didn't get any response, nor did I expect one, but it's a question worth asking. What does Yahoo! gain by having every news item be followed up with "It's all Obama's fault" (seriously, he even gets the blame for the weather now) and "Why aren't these people working on a cure for cancer?"-type comments?
Seriously, why doesn't paste work in this stupid box any more? (Google Chrome 6.0.472.63, btw)
Anyway
Negroponte says he has a new model for getting XO laptops to kids in Gaza and Afghanistan
Now you see why the US didn't sign on to the treaty banning cluster bombs - they are planning to use them to deliver XO laptops.
It's cheaper, faster, and much safer for the delivery person.
Why not run Boxee on the old Apple TV?
on
Apple vs. Google TVs
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Or buy a device that actually fits your needs, right out of the box?
I just bought a second Apple TV (the old model, it's only $149 on clearance with a 160GB hard drive)*.
The first thing I did was patch it using the readily-available patchstick software and it now has Boxee and XBMC on it. I get way more usage out of XBMC than Boxee, but that's just me. Presumably the new Apple TV will have similar hacks available for it real soon now.
The thing is, our main use for the Apple TV boxes is to use them as designed - to play our iTunes library of music, and look at our pictures from iPhoto. Honestly I've never even tried to watch anything other than a music video via the Apple software on the box. We have a library of videos and movies on a 1TB WD MyBook World Edition on our network, and we use XBMC to watch those.
The Apple TV is a great product, if you want to use it for what it's designed for. If, on the other hand, you want an open, hackable device, look elsewhere.
I have never understood why people think it's worthwhile to complain that a product that is marketed as a closed box, is actually a closed box, especially when there are other alternatives out there. It's like if I went out and bought a really expensive electronic toothbrush and then complained to everyone that it can't be easily modified to wash my car or polish furniture.
* I wanted the older model of the Apple TV because it actually stores all of your iTunes/iPhoto content on its internal hard drive, so you don't need a computer to be on in order to watch that content.
Or is it just Americans who can't recognize some sounds properly (the way they think us Canucks say "oot and aboot" which we do not. Up here its "owt and abowt" if anything).
When I used to live close to the Canada - US border, we used to watch CBC, and they did indeed say oot and aboot in a boot, although it may have been as a joke.
I always thought it was odd that no other Russians pronounced V as W as Chekov did. But then, Picard spoke with an English accent but was from France. Patrick Stewart said Picard was more European than French, in that Europe had become united. Perhaps a similar thing happened with Russia and whatever countries are nearby, causing their accents to change over the next couple of hundred years.
Do you think the Russian pronunciations of today are the same is it was a few hundred years ago? English certainly wasn't.
Actually, fifty year old heating systems distributed heat more evenly than modern systems. Back in the '30s-'40s they had "gravity furnaces". There was no blower; convection distributed the heat, which was controlled by an electrical thermostat that varied the furnace's flame. If the power went out because an ice storm took down the electrical wires, you still had heat, because the furnace wasn't connected to the house's electricity. Its thermostat's electricity was generated by a walnut-sized doohickey called a "power pile" that generated electricity from the flame of the pilot light.
I had one in the old house I raised my kids in in the '90s. I loved it, it was way better tech than we have today. Especially when the power went out.
Yes, I've seen diagrams of the old systems that were available in the USA.
I think only rich people in the UK would have had these systems in their homes in the 1930s and 40s though.
My parents' parents' houses were exactly like the house featured in the 1900 House. Central heating would have been a dream for them. Their hot water came from a "back boiler" which was a cast iron thing installed into the back of one of the fireplaces. They had to be careful to open the taps if it got too hot as there was the danger of a steam explosion.
Heck, my Mother's childhood room still had a gas light in it.
Slashdot Mirror
My property goes to my heirs at my death. My body is my property.
Slavery is illegal. No-one else can own your body except you.
Correct on the former, totally incorrect on the latter.
In many places, your will should include leaving your remains to an heir, to ensure that your funeral wishes will be carried out.
If you don't leave your body to someone, in many jurisdictions it goes to the State.
You can also leave your remains to research, for example. You don't think all those cadavers that medical students disect still own themselves, do you?
That...doesn't make any sense.
Having a band like The Beatles on iTunes should send their stock skyrocketing. The amount of money all parties involved are going to make is going to be huge. If there's one band that people rebuy over and over again, it's The Beatles.
Except that many of their first-generation fans are now retirement age and just don't care to buy it in a new format.
If those folks had already re-bought it on every new format, then it follows that they already have it on CD.
Seriously, if you already had something on CD, why would you re-buy it on iTunes?
Yes, Star Trek brought to us a vision of the future wherein no matter where one roams in the universe, 1) Everybody looks human, 2) Everybody speaks perfect English, despite never having been contacted before by humans, and 3) Sex with alien species is considered perfectly natural. All I can say is... Ewwwwwwwww!
Oh come on.
To be fair, Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica, Firefly, Babylon 5, Dr. Who, Space: 1999, and a host of other shows all featured those characteristics.
It's not because the shows' makers were unimaginative, it's because they are television shows.
It's difficult to find actors who don't look like humans; audiences in the countries where these shows were produced mainly understand only English (there are no native Klingon speakers, no matter how many nerds learn the Klingon language); and sex keeps stupid people watching the show, helping the ratings. Ok, Dr. Who hasn't featured much, if any, sex, but that's because it was a BBC production aimed at families.
Why doesn't Microsoft just put a container in Windows Update for security companies to rent space to present download links?
How about an App Store?
/cue delusional whining about App Stores being the start of a slippery slope to concentration camps and lockdown.
It seems it still applies to the USA only. You can probably blame region-based content licensing for all these artificial limitations.
Just like how we can't pay a British TV license fee and watch iPlayer content in the USA.
This is a US-based website. A few people need to realize that and get over it.
The tagline wording could have been better - ie. "Hulu Plus no longer invitation-only", but this is Slashdot - it's not like people expect (or ever see) high journalistic standards applied here.
Using this fucking hardware any goddamn way we see fit, even if it makes no sense, is what I demand. Crack open that fucking thing and fuck Microsoft in their stupid asses with a Sony Move stick!
You know somewhere in North Hollywood, they're making that porno right now.
Of course, it'll be gay porn, but you weren't specific enough (assuming that's not what you're looking for, which I could be totally wrong about).
Emissions have been reduced. In fact, a catalytic converter is no longer required on the new Mazda rotary motors. What they did is they run the motor a little rich so that some fuel makes it through the engine (but only a little). After the combustion cycle they add air to the exhaust and burn a second time to ensure all the fuel is burned. The second burn does not generate any power - this is why the fuel efficiency of the motor is lacking. But for the market they are designed for, it does not matter.
Well, actually it does. Fuel economy is important because a car maker's entire product fleet has to average a certain fuel economy level. Wasted fuel is never a good thing, although Mazda's fleet does mostly consist of smaller cars, so that helps.
The exhaust burn was so hot on the system you describe that the exhaust pipes had to be made of a very expensive grade of stainless steel, not usually used for automotive exhaust tubing, which pushed the cost of the car up. The energy required to pump air into the exhaust is also wasteful.
74kwh supercapacitors are damned expensive, so I doubt if anyone would put one in their house.
Actually, what's more correct is that 74kWH supercapacitors are damned expensive now, because they're not being produced on a huge scale for deployment in every home garage. Maybe they'd be a lot cheaper, if they were.
I remember a project review I sat in on some time around 2000, when someone was getting raked over the coals for buying a 42 inch plasma TV for some project. It cost over $16,000. I just bought a 42 inch plasma TV last month for my bedroom. It cost $489, uses less power, doesn't burn in as easily and has a better picture.
Isn't it likely that once something becomes a commodity product, the cost is going to be engineered out?
This car, assuming that it really can absorb 150 kW, will need a charging station with a few megawatts of electrical service.
If only they made some kind of device that could store a large amount of electrical energy, which could be slowly charged from a house's normal electric supply but then deliver a high amount of current over a shorter period of time to charge the car.
Unless you're operating a public filling (recharging) station, you don't need to get all the electricity from the grid simultaneously with the car charging operation.
Probably something like the type of battery pack used for an electric forklift truck could do the job, coupled with a appropriate electronics.
You made it hard on yourself by starting with a mass-produced vehicle. In that case the State wants to make it hard to make sure you're not trying to pull something like re-titling a stolen vehicle.
In Illinois, it's pretty easy and not expensive at all. It doesn't even cost any more than titling and registering a normal mass-manufactured car.
Here's what you need to title a homebuilt or kit vehicle in Illinois:
There's also an inspection by the State, which doesn't sound any worse than the normal safety inspection people have in places like NY State. (Illinois doesn't routinely inspect cars)
Yeah, right. Try starting and stopping the engine at every stop light when it's forty below zero outside
It's a trivial engineering task. Prius, for example, has auxiliary electric heaters, and it maintains the engine temperature (and battery charge) automatically. If it's -40C outside the ICE will run a bit more, and that's all. This shouldn't be of any concern to the driver unless he lives in Alaska; then he'd be getting worse MPG than people in California do.
You obviously don't own a hybrid car and live in a cold-weather area.
I live in the Chicago area. I've been told by residents of the Anchorage, AK area, that we get colder low temperatures than they do. I'm not sure I believe them, but we did have a few -16F temps last winter and plenty of sustained below-0F temperatures. I have a number of friends who own hybrids (including a couple of Priuses), and they have told me that the engine basically runs most of the time in extremely cold weather, and on short trips the engine just won't shut off. The Prius does have a thermos-like insulated coolant bottle that keeps the coolant warm between engine runs, but when you are trying to heat -20 air to defrost windows, you need the waste heat from the engine or to have electricity from the engine-driven alternator portion of the hybrid system to provide heat.
Comparing the performance of non-hybrid cars' batteries to the huge battery pack in a hybrid doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure that's worth discussing.
Code fix. If external_temp -20F, don't shutdown. Wow, that was *extremely* difficult.
Which part of 'burning fuel while stopped can never be a good thing' are you having a hard time understanding?
Probably the part where that statement is always true in all situations. Absolutes are rarely correct.
At extremely low temperatures, you need the waste heat from the engine to provide passenger compartment heat for defrosting the windows. If your heater doesn't work correctly around here in the coldest part of winter, it's very possible to have frost form on the inside of the windows as well as the outside.
Battery performance is also lower in extreme cold weather, so you really need the alternator producing power to keep the battery charged. Winter driving here often means your lights are on during the daytime, the heater blower is running at one of the higher speeds and the rear-window is being electrically heated. Without power from the alternator, you wouldn't get very far.
In those cases, turning fuel into electricity is a really good idea.
Because of the short (3 mile) drive to work and back, I had problems the last three winters with the battery not being quite fully charged and I had to put it on charge at home. I'd notice it the next time I'd start the car that the starter would turn the engine a little slower each time. I had the alternator and battery tested and they both were working at their rated capacities (they have some fantastic lead-acid battery analyzers now). This year I changed to an AGM battery that will accept the charge faster (draws more Amperes of current from the alternator), upgraded to a high-output alternator (250A) and changed the wiring between the alternator and battery to heavier gauge wires.
Had the engine shut down at each stop, I'd have either developed hypothermia or just not made it to work.
Unfortunately it seems like the number of submissions that make it to Slashdot's front page is so low that some chaff is let through just to keep from only have one or two articles show up each day.
Aren't you anxious to know if a really hot curry actually does emit neutrinos, or if it is hot because it somehow interacts with neutrinos?
Suspend all research spending?
Not ALL research spending, but how about research spending on project directly related to solving these issue first?
How do you know that they're not doing that?
Just because a story is published about India doing physics research, how does it logically follow that they're not also working on social and economic issues?
You may want to see my earlier post #33973130 where I suggest that another individual who appears to have only a tenuous grip on reality and seems to believe that Apple is out to get him or her may want to seek professional help.
For some reason, there are a number of people who seem to hope that Apple is going to lock down their desktop systems (systems, which I must point out are not the only desktop systems sold in the personal computer market space; there exists a huge number of alternatives) purely so that these individuals can express their outrage at something which is not happening.
Even if it did happen, there are other computer systems available from other manufacturers who have no problem letting you install whatever OS and other software you want on their systems.
This paranoia that Apple somehow defines all that takes place in the personal computer marketplace, coupled with the apparently very realistic hallucination that Apple is locking their desktop systems down and somehow by extension locking all other general-purpose computers down is really ready like mass hysteria, or some kind of shared persecution complex.
Seriously, give it a rest. It's not reality. Apple is not locking down their desktop systems (mobile phones, portable media players, and Internet tablets are not general-purpose computing devices). If Apple did lock down their desktop systems, nothing would prevent end users from obtaining and using other computer systems. In fact, those alternatives are already available - alternatives which would flourish as former Mac users move to more open alternatives.
Because we're fucking pissed that corporations keep trying to pull this shit on people.
So why not put your own machine together and install Linux?
Is someone forcing you to buy from Apple? (That's a rhetorical question and most everyone is going to be sure that the answer is 99.999% likely to be "no")
The market is large enough to support a wide range of users from those like my parents, who just want things to work easily (which Apple actually delivers), to users who like to tinker with their systems (which, strangely enough, outside of portable devices, Apple also delivers), to even cranks like yourself who are on some kind of anti-Apple jihad (who can buy a no-name computer and install Linux or even Windows).
Seriously, nobody's requiring that you not go out and buy whatever computer you want and install whatever you want on it. If you truly feel that Apple is trying to persecute you in some way, you should probably seek professional help before you load up your car with explosives and run it into the nearest Apple store. Do you feel like the walls are closing in on you? Do you look over your shoulder when you walk down the street, to make sure that nobody wearing a black turtle-neck is following you? These are symptoms of paranoia, which is very treatable these days.
It's not even like Apple is a very large slice of the "PC" market. Heck, Windows already uses signed installers for some things like device drivers doesn't it? Why aren't you on a rant that they're going to require that only device drivers that are signed by MS will be able to be installed in the future? MS holds a far bigger slice of the OS marketplace than Apple does, and MS seems far more likely to do something like that.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be a market for general-purpose computers that can be used in any way the user wants. As long as the market need is there, computer makers will support it. Relax, and just don't buy anything from people you don't like. Even if they aren't out to get you. Which they could be.
Err, except that your example is exceedingly hyperbolic.
Apple is shipping systems that are locked down now.
No they aren't.
They ship mobile devices that are locked down, but none of their general purpose computers are locked down. Name one that is.
I oversee a bunch of systems, Windows, Linux and Macs - the Macs include Mac Minis, iMacs and Mac Pros. Not one of them is locked down in any way that prevents me from installing anything I want to.
So, I repeat my challenge to you: name a computer system (not a portable phone, tablet or music player, but an actual computer system) sold by Apple that is locked down.
Steve Jobs has just washed* his cereal bowl, a spoon, and what appears to be a small plate.
* You can actually see him, through his kitchen window, doing his dishes if you walk down his street.
If you were talking about bowel movements, well that's not only gross but silly too. Everyone knows the iToilet hasn't been unveiled yet. At least it won't have the buffer overflows that Microsoft's MyToilet prototype suffered from when Steve Ballmer demonstrated it.
Totally agree. What I'd like to know is, what does a service like Yahoo! stand to gain by letting dummies post garbage under their news items? It seems like they stand to lose readership, and not gain anything. Why let it continue? These aren't even anonymous comments - the person's Yahoo! ID is posted right along with their wackadoo rantings.
Take a look at the comments under any Yahoo! News article. They are 99.999% cranks, nutjobs, idiots and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. That and spam for "Get an iPad/iPod/iPhone for free" or dating sites.
I sent an email to Yahoo! corporate asking why they are letting idiots crap all over their product. I didn't get any response, nor did I expect one, but it's a question worth asking. What does Yahoo! gain by having every news item be followed up with "It's all Obama's fault" (seriously, he even gets the blame for the weather now) and "Why aren't these people working on a cure for cancer?"-type comments?
Seriously, why doesn't paste work in this stupid box any more? (Google Chrome 6.0.472.63, btw)
Anyway
Negroponte says he has a new model for getting XO laptops to kids in Gaza and Afghanistan
Now you see why the US didn't sign on to the treaty banning cluster bombs - they are planning to use them to deliver XO laptops.
It's cheaper, faster, and much safer for the delivery person.
Or buy a device that actually fits your needs, right out of the box?
I just bought a second Apple TV (the old model, it's only $149 on clearance with a 160GB hard drive)*.
The first thing I did was patch it using the readily-available patchstick software and it now has Boxee and XBMC on it. I get way more usage out of XBMC than Boxee, but that's just me. Presumably the new Apple TV will have similar hacks available for it real soon now.
The thing is, our main use for the Apple TV boxes is to use them as designed - to play our iTunes library of music, and look at our pictures from iPhoto. Honestly I've never even tried to watch anything other than a music video via the Apple software on the box. We have a library of videos and movies on a 1TB WD MyBook World Edition on our network, and we use XBMC to watch those.
The Apple TV is a great product, if you want to use it for what it's designed for. If, on the other hand, you want an open, hackable device, look elsewhere.
I have never understood why people think it's worthwhile to complain that a product that is marketed as a closed box, is actually a closed box, especially when there are other alternatives out there. It's like if I went out and bought a really expensive electronic toothbrush and then complained to everyone that it can't be easily modified to wash my car or polish furniture.
* I wanted the older model of the Apple TV because it actually stores all of your iTunes/iPhoto content on its internal hard drive, so you don't need a computer to be on in order to watch that content.
Or is it just Americans who can't recognize some sounds properly (the way they think us Canucks say "oot and aboot" which we do not. Up here its "owt and abowt" if anything).
When I used to live close to the Canada - US border, we used to watch CBC, and they did indeed say oot and aboot in a boot, although it may have been as a joke.
I always thought it was odd that no other Russians pronounced V as W as Chekov did. But then, Picard spoke with an English accent but was from France. Patrick Stewart said Picard was more European than French, in that Europe had become united. Perhaps a similar thing happened with Russia and whatever countries are nearby, causing their accents to change over the next couple of hundred years.
Do you think the Russian pronunciations of today are the same is it was a few hundred years ago? English certainly wasn't.
Actually, fifty year old heating systems distributed heat more evenly than modern systems. Back in the '30s-'40s they had "gravity furnaces". There was no blower; convection distributed the heat, which was controlled by an electrical thermostat that varied the furnace's flame. If the power went out because an ice storm took down the electrical wires, you still had heat, because the furnace wasn't connected to the house's electricity. Its thermostat's electricity was generated by a walnut-sized doohickey called a "power pile" that generated electricity from the flame of the pilot light.
I had one in the old house I raised my kids in in the '90s. I loved it, it was way better tech than we have today. Especially when the power went out.
Yes, I've seen diagrams of the old systems that were available in the USA.
I think only rich people in the UK would have had these systems in their homes in the 1930s and 40s though.
My parents' parents' houses were exactly like the house featured in the 1900 House. Central heating would have been a dream for them. Their hot water came from a "back boiler" which was a cast iron thing installed into the back of one of the fireplaces. They had to be careful to open the taps if it got too hot as there was the danger of a steam explosion.
Heck, my Mother's childhood room still had a gas light in it.
Who else is reminded of this by the description of the "Hook and Line" contest?