Yes, that's my point: there is strong but elusive and allusive evidence that manufacturing processes are nasty across the board, except for companies like Apple who publish audits (and that is suspect, given some of last years' events).
Yet Apple is guilty of IP violations of customers' and developers' rights.
What's an ethical person to do? Buy used, avoid paying the manufacturers directly.
Well, hating Apple for their business practices is really a political decision, not a hardware/software evaluation. Uniquely in the computer world, a Mac is not limiting in any way, because you can literally run any software or OS on a MBP, either natively or through emulation. One also needs to inquire whether HP or Dell or Sony are such great companies from an ethical standpoint (certainly Sony is every bit as perverse and unsavoury as Apple). Basically, when you factor in environmental and labour practices alongside IP, the entire industry is pretty sleazy.
But by all means, if someone here can accurately vote through your wallet using your conscience, do so and share your findings with us.
The other side of the Apple Tax is resale value. Macs hold their value more than any other PC, much like a honda or toyota, and you need to factor that into the equation. Take longevity, quality, and resale prices into consideration, and the mid-to-low end Apple laptops are actually a pretty good value.
More than this: I was annoyed by the lack of a mid-range headless mac, so I set out to build a hackintosh. At the time, the IPS monitor on the iMac 24 was what I was aiming for (1.8 yrs ago, time to upgrade soon), and I needed video editing capabilities with Final Cut.
By the time I'd priced out all the parts (newegg/NCIX, don't say I didn't shop right) to find equivalent function and similar quality, I was $120 under the price of a refurb iMac, except for the crappy video card. I'm not a gamer, so I bought the iMac and saved time and money.
OTOH, I needed a cheap laptop. HP netbook for me, and I never bothered to hackintosh it, because Win7 is just fine (and linux netbook offerings aren't good enough yet).
To be clear, there are only two Mac OS choices: OS X (currently 10.6) and OS X Server, so for a desktop user there's really only one choice. (iOS is mandatory on relevant devices, no choice there.)
OS X is a pretty complete unix install, apple flavoured, with proprietary stuff lathered on top... i.e. the base model is the pro version, not crippled in any way (other than general apple buggy/quirkiness).
Yes, let's just agree that the universe is out to kill us, and that Earth temporarily has very favourable conditions... until the climate flips out, or a big rock comes spinning in.
I say start working on colonizing both. The next few hundred years will be well-spent terraforming, in opposite directions.
It really depends on what group of humans you're talking about. The Pacific Northwest, for instance, was so abundant in biological resources, that the work week was less than 20 hours. That left lots of time for art, showing off, and other social pursuits. It was a pretty comfortable existence.... until the Haida came around to bust your ass and take slaves.
A minority of people are complaining about limitations those of us who are interested in the product either doesn't see as a limitation, or limitations that are outweighed by other benefits of the product.
Sometimes 'good enough' really is. I'm typing on a netbook that I was going to hackintosh, but this model doesn't run snow leopard, and win 7 is good enough for basic web dev. Maybe someday I'll liberate this thing with Mint, but for now it's good to work on a variety of platforms.
You know what? I agree, except for the homework point.
Homework is irrelevant. An inefficient learning environment needs homework to keep up, the kid doesn't need 10 hours of learning a day to learn a few things.
The parents aren't teaching their kids curiosity. They aren't teaching them focus. The kids aren't getting a sense of goals or meaning from the prospect of learning. Likewise, the curriculum fails at this too.
Most homework is obviously make-work or catch-up. It's no wonder it isn't valued. Gatto has a pretty good take on this. Motivation comes from the context as well as from within. There is all kinds of meaning in how work is presented to the kids, and just because they don't put it into words, they can often see through the crap.
The crux is that inefficient learning environment. Blame apathy at home, sure, but blame misguided curriculum too, blame Taylorism that depersonalizes the kid, blame culture, blame admin, but mostly blame the educational system overall, its ideology and inequalities and denial.
Here in British Columbia, the good teachers (who actually manage to get full time work, frak you union/management collusion) generally have to work about a 60-70 hour week, plus be available for phone calls. The work load can get insane, because a good teacher is working HARD during those hours... I've put in long hours at various jobs, but there's usually way more 'down-time' or light load work in a week than a teacher gets.
This is all for a lower middle class income until your seniority gets big. Time off in the summer amounts to about 3-4 weeks or less since there's always professional development and prep.
The general public just has no idea.
On top of that, a good teacher deals with intense frustrations over curriculum, bureaucracy, feckless parents, and lack of support for special needs... most spend an inordinate time with 'classroom management', meaning discipline.
The thing is, good teachers will work for enough to live on, because they will do the work anyway, that's what makes them a good teacher. What they really want is the ability to properly teach without burning out; i.e. adequate prep time, smaller class sizes, more support staff targeted at the 10% of the class that takes 90% of the attention, and fewer overall hours. Burnout turns good teachers into indifferent, bitter staff working for that pension.
First, just the shred of doubt will have some effect on your well being. Not just through stress, but through placebo effects.
Second, this is a relatively new risk of exposure for the species and investigations into it are relatively weak. Seems like a good time to deploy the Precautionary Principle.
what if a client has another web app they spent big money on that only runs on IE6, what if their worldwide network SOE is based on IE6? your going to just ride in and tell them to update or they can shove their money up their arse?
Browser support is a lot like a warranty condition for the site. Manufacturers/designers have to set the bar somewhere.
I smell a car analogy:
I'm shopping for tires. I can get a 100Km warranty on a new set, so long as I agree to rotate the tires every 10Km, for free. Without some minimal diligence on the part of the user, the warranty is void, as the user has abrogated their duties towards security.
Likewise with a simple free browser upgrade.
If a client has specific needs, that's part of the contract, no? However, since IE6 is demonstrably less safe and secure, technically inferior, and more costly to support, there has to be extra justification and expense to support it... somewhat like an extended warranty.
I know you're trying to be funny, but very few of the not-very-many IE6 users do so voluntarily. Three main types of IE6 surfers:
group 1: corporate drones chained to an intranet app by an IT department that is underfunded or underdeveloped... many of them shouldn't be surfing your site anyway, even on their lunch break, because 'the workplace is not a democracy'
group 2: hapless technophobes who don't have a nerd nephew to replace their winME install with something modern, and since they don't know any better, they just keep browsin' -- and pretending this computer thing is an appliance, the way it was marketed to them
group 3: total douches who mess with the user agent for fun or actually like IE6... or like me, run it in a VM for testing purposes, then browse with it just for kicks
This is my ONLY TELEPHONE LINE, and so I finally do approve of somebody keeping it locked down and pristine.
You contradict yourself. I find this interesting: an abdication of power and responsibility, in an independent minded nerd.
If you have to manually install all apps, why do you need Apple to lock down your phone for you? Wouldn't a thorough and reliable certification process for approved apps be enough? You could simply ignore all the uncertified apps, and only choose the app-store supplied software, and achieve the same result.
The rest of us, who have landlines and can risk hacking around with our handset, could install uncertified apps as we see fit, and risk bricking through our own incompetence, instead of through Overlord Steve's malice.
You can have your lockdown, we can have our limited freedom on what could be a great platform, Apple still gets profits.
sometimes, I would prefer to have simple and limiting to complex and free. I don't *need* to have complete and total control over my phone, my music player, or a simple internet device. These are items that just need to work out of the box, be aesthetically pleasing, and do the job they are intended to do. That doesn't mean that I'm anti-Free Software, but that I don't want to use it for everything that I do.... For that other 5%, jailbreaking is trivial and allows complete control.
Jailbreaking may be trivial to you, but not to most, and not without risk and violation of contract.
To all those (not you) claiming that the Apple appopoly is merely about security and compatibility, imagine a simple system of certification, where apple would put its stamp of approval on apps that meet a certain set of standards, only distribute certified apps, and make it very clear to the customer that it will only honour warranty issues when certified apps are used. Then we could have third party app repositories, with more or less acceptable compatibility and security standards, and a reasonable degree of openness.
Of course, the network carriers have their own concerns here, but they could impose their own restrictions, too, to protect themselves.
There could even be caveat emptor warnings included in the app install process that checks on an app's certification status. We'd still have the hardware manufacturer lording it over users and developers through the certification process, but it would be a lot less feudal.
As an IT worker that sounds like the most horrible place on Earth.
Way to keep up the Nerdly stereotypes! But the fact is that the whole future of networked computing is based on designed information, and that's where the liberal arts impacts the future of the web etc.: good design through aesthetics and smart human interfaces. Plus gud grammer and proofreeding.
The raw feature list is less important than the presentation abilities... as they pertain to joe user.
"Magical", though, that's just the Reality Distortion Field in full fail mode.
Using a keyboard while the screen lays flat just seems awkward to me
it probably has a PVA (etc.) screen that has a wide viewing angle so putting it on the desk and typing should be serviceable, but typing on a screen is an enormous compromise anyway
bluetooth = 3rd party devices like a roll-up keyboard, etc.
If an artist signs away their work without understanding the fine print then it's poor judgement on their part..
True, except for the part where the fine print is designed to obfuscate and mislead, and the company's agents recruit under false pretenses, and the negotiations involve all kinds of sleazy practices and misdirection, and the playing field is basically a monopoly.
If we held to a pure 'caveat emptor' line of reasoning then we might as well do away with all fraud laws and similar industry regulation.
The stereotype of the naiive artist is based on the common fact that they (we) have no taste for the implicit corruption and nastiness of business and legalese, instead preferring innuendo, sniping, and petty ego thumping. Money is really just an extension, or symptom, of fame. This means that most artists are the business equivalent of a minor.
Slashdot Mirror
...and conversely, I'm currently seeding some shows that are pretty unusual and definitely no longer on the air or available on disc.
Yes, that's my point: there is strong but elusive and allusive evidence that manufacturing processes are nasty across the board, except for companies like Apple who publish audits (and that is suspect, given some of last years' events).
Yet Apple is guilty of IP violations of customers' and developers' rights.
What's an ethical person to do? Buy used, avoid paying the manufacturers directly.
I too love using my Media Access Controller, without it I would never get online, and even my Mac has one! F'n awesome!
Well, hating Apple for their business practices is really a political decision, not a hardware/software evaluation. Uniquely in the computer world, a Mac is not limiting in any way, because you can literally run any software or OS on a MBP, either natively or through emulation. One also needs to inquire whether HP or Dell or Sony are such great companies from an ethical standpoint (certainly Sony is every bit as perverse and unsavoury as Apple). Basically, when you factor in environmental and labour practices alongside IP, the entire industry is pretty sleazy.
But by all means, if someone here can accurately vote through your wallet using your conscience, do so and share your findings with us.
The other side of the Apple Tax is resale value. Macs hold their value more than any other PC, much like a honda or toyota, and you need to factor that into the equation. Take longevity, quality, and resale prices into consideration, and the mid-to-low end Apple laptops are actually a pretty good value.
More than this: I was annoyed by the lack of a mid-range headless mac, so I set out to build a hackintosh. At the time, the IPS monitor on the iMac 24 was what I was aiming for (1.8 yrs ago, time to upgrade soon), and I needed video editing capabilities with Final Cut.
By the time I'd priced out all the parts (newegg/NCIX, don't say I didn't shop right) to find equivalent function and similar quality, I was $120 under the price of a refurb iMac, except for the crappy video card. I'm not a gamer, so I bought the iMac and saved time and money.
OTOH, I needed a cheap laptop. HP netbook for me, and I never bothered to hackintosh it, because Win7 is just fine (and linux netbook offerings aren't good enough yet).
To be clear, there are only two Mac OS choices: OS X (currently 10.6) and OS X Server, so for a desktop user there's really only one choice. (iOS is mandatory on relevant devices, no choice there.)
OS X is a pretty complete unix install, apple flavoured, with proprietary stuff lathered on top... i.e. the base model is the pro version, not crippled in any way (other than general apple buggy/quirkiness).
Yes, let's just agree that the universe is out to kill us, and that Earth temporarily has very favourable conditions... until the climate flips out, or a big rock comes spinning in.
I say start working on colonizing both. The next few hundred years will be well-spent terraforming, in opposite directions.
>1/3 gravity would be healthier.
Really? Are you so sure? Sounds nice, but also sounds like a recipe for all kinds of bone and muscle problems.
It really depends on what group of humans you're talking about. The Pacific Northwest, for instance, was so abundant in biological resources, that the work week was less than 20 hours. That left lots of time for art, showing off, and other social pursuits. It was a pretty comfortable existence.... until the Haida came around to bust your ass and take slaves.
The link you're looking for is here: cliqueclack.com.
And Nadia was actually a hermaphrodite, haunted by the vision of the man she could have been.
A minority of people are complaining about limitations those of us who are interested in the product either doesn't see as a limitation, or limitations that are outweighed by other benefits of the product.
Sometimes 'good enough' really is. I'm typing on a netbook that I was going to hackintosh, but this model doesn't run snow leopard, and win 7 is good enough for basic web dev. Maybe someday I'll liberate this thing with Mint, but for now it's good to work on a variety of platforms.
You know what? I agree, except for the homework point.
Homework is irrelevant. An inefficient learning environment needs homework to keep up, the kid doesn't need 10 hours of learning a day to learn a few things.
The parents aren't teaching their kids curiosity. They aren't teaching them focus. The kids aren't getting a sense of goals or meaning from the prospect of learning. Likewise, the curriculum fails at this too.
Most homework is obviously make-work or catch-up. It's no wonder it isn't valued. Gatto has a pretty good take on this. Motivation comes from the context as well as from within. There is all kinds of meaning in how work is presented to the kids, and just because they don't put it into words, they can often see through the crap.
The crux is that inefficient learning environment. Blame apathy at home, sure, but blame misguided curriculum too, blame Taylorism that depersonalizes the kid, blame culture, blame admin, but mostly blame the educational system overall, its ideology and inequalities and denial.
Here in British Columbia, the good teachers (who actually manage to get full time work, frak you union/management collusion) generally have to work about a 60-70 hour week, plus be available for phone calls. The work load can get insane, because a good teacher is working HARD during those hours... I've put in long hours at various jobs, but there's usually way more 'down-time' or light load work in a week than a teacher gets.
This is all for a lower middle class income until your seniority gets big. Time off in the summer amounts to about 3-4 weeks or less since there's always professional development and prep.
The general public just has no idea.
On top of that, a good teacher deals with intense frustrations over curriculum, bureaucracy, feckless parents, and lack of support for special needs... most spend an inordinate time with 'classroom management', meaning discipline.
The thing is, good teachers will work for enough to live on, because they will do the work anyway, that's what makes them a good teacher. What they really want is the ability to properly teach without burning out; i.e. adequate prep time, smaller class sizes, more support staff targeted at the 10% of the class that takes 90% of the attention, and fewer overall hours. Burnout turns good teachers into indifferent, bitter staff working for that pension.
You no buy.
First, just the shred of doubt will have some effect on your well being. Not just through stress, but through placebo effects.
Second, this is a relatively new risk of exposure for the species and investigations into it are relatively weak. Seems like a good time to deploy the Precautionary Principle.
Buy an apt exposed to trees or a view, instead.
what if a client has another web app they spent big money on that only runs on IE6, what if their worldwide network SOE is based on IE6? your going to just ride in and tell them to update or they can shove their money up their arse?
Browser support is a lot like a warranty condition for the site. Manufacturers/designers have to set the bar somewhere.
I smell a car analogy:
I'm shopping for tires. I can get a 100Km warranty on a new set, so long as I agree to rotate the tires every 10Km, for free. Without some minimal diligence on the part of the user, the warranty is void, as the user has abrogated their duties towards security.
Likewise with a simple free browser upgrade.
If a client has specific needs, that's part of the contract, no? However, since IE6 is demonstrably less safe and secure, technically inferior, and more costly to support, there has to be extra justification and expense to support it... somewhat like an extended warranty.
Who still uses IE6?
I know you're trying to be funny, but very few of the not-very-many IE6 users do so voluntarily. Three main types of IE6 surfers:
group 1: corporate drones chained to an intranet app by an IT department that is underfunded or underdeveloped... many of them shouldn't be surfing your site anyway, even on their lunch break, because 'the workplace is not a democracy'
group 2: hapless technophobes who don't have a nerd nephew to replace their winME install with something modern, and since they don't know any better, they just keep browsin' -- and pretending this computer thing is an appliance, the way it was marketed to them
group 3: total douches who mess with the user agent for fun or actually like IE6... or like me, run it in a VM for testing purposes, then browse with it just for kicks
This is my ONLY TELEPHONE LINE, and so I finally do approve of somebody keeping it locked down and pristine.
You contradict yourself. I find this interesting: an abdication of power and responsibility, in an independent minded nerd.
If you have to manually install all apps, why do you need Apple to lock down your phone for you? Wouldn't a thorough and reliable certification process for approved apps be enough? You could simply ignore all the uncertified apps, and only choose the app-store supplied software, and achieve the same result.
The rest of us, who have landlines and can risk hacking around with our handset, could install uncertified apps as we see fit, and risk bricking through our own incompetence, instead of through Overlord Steve's malice.
You can have your lockdown, we can have our limited freedom on what could be a great platform, Apple still gets profits.
sometimes, I would prefer to have simple and limiting to complex and free. I don't *need* to have complete and total control over my phone, my music player, or a simple internet device. These are items that just need to work out of the box, be aesthetically pleasing, and do the job they are intended to do. That doesn't mean that I'm anti-Free Software, but that I don't want to use it for everything that I do. ... For that other 5%, jailbreaking is trivial and allows complete control.
Jailbreaking may be trivial to you, but not to most, and not without risk and violation of contract.
To all those (not you) claiming that the Apple appopoly is merely about security and compatibility, imagine a simple system of certification, where apple would put its stamp of approval on apps that meet a certain set of standards, only distribute certified apps, and make it very clear to the customer that it will only honour warranty issues when certified apps are used. Then we could have third party app repositories, with more or less acceptable compatibility and security standards, and a reasonable degree of openness.
Of course, the network carriers have their own concerns here, but they could impose their own restrictions, too, to protect themselves.
There could even be caveat emptor warnings included in the app install process that checks on an app's certification status. We'd still have the hardware manufacturer lording it over users and developers through the certification process, but it would be a lot less feudal.
WASP is "white Anglo-Saxon protestant".
Oh! I always thought that WASP was defined as "someone who gets out of the shower to pee."
As an IT worker that sounds like the most horrible place on Earth.
Way to keep up the Nerdly stereotypes! But the fact is that the whole future of networked computing is based on designed information, and that's where the liberal arts impacts the future of the web etc.: good design through aesthetics and smart human interfaces. Plus gud grammer and proofreeding.
The raw feature list is less important than the presentation abilities... as they pertain to joe user.
"Magical", though, that's just the Reality Distortion Field in full fail mode.
people in black turtlenecks watch movies, not network TV
Teh Cloud is worse than useless in a power outage or road trip or inside a faraday cage-like-room... give me redundancy, please!
Using a keyboard while the screen lays flat just seems awkward to me
it probably has a PVA (etc.) screen that has a wide viewing angle so putting it on the desk and typing should be serviceable, but typing on a screen is an enormous compromise anyway
bluetooth = 3rd party devices like a roll-up keyboard, etc.
Infinite monkeys pounding on keyboards over an infinite span of time would create the
Ah yes, the God is an Infinite Monkey Theorem. I always liked that one.
If an artist signs away their work without understanding the fine print then it's poor judgement on their part..
True, except for the part where the fine print is designed to obfuscate and mislead, and the company's agents recruit under false pretenses, and the negotiations involve all kinds of sleazy practices and misdirection, and the playing field is basically a monopoly.
If we held to a pure 'caveat emptor' line of reasoning then we might as well do away with all fraud laws and similar industry regulation.
The stereotype of the naiive artist is based on the common fact that they (we) have no taste for the implicit corruption and nastiness of business and legalese, instead preferring innuendo, sniping, and petty ego thumping. Money is really just an extension, or symptom, of fame. This means that most artists are the business equivalent of a minor.