You know, as much as I'm pissed about the civil liberties issues going on in the US, I'm kind of sick of this attitude that others seem to have that the US is somehow unique in this regard. There are plenty of examples of other countries repressing free speech rights, etc. (that is, if free speech even is a right that its citizens have), religious freedom rights (muslim headscarf ban in France, for example).
Seriously, plenty of us know the US has a lot of problems right now, but it seems really ignorant to imply that the US is the worst of them, or that the US is the only country where this kind of thing happens.
That's a ridiculous assertion. Certainly MS and Apple have both in many cases been companies who created successful and popular implementations of ideas people had before them, but in the entire history of MS and Apple, they have certainly invented things themselves as well. It seems pretty unfair to both MS and Apple to not give them credit for the things they have invented themselves. And for what it's worth, there is also something to be said for being able to create a popular and usable implementation of an idea that someone else had previously, but which had faults that made it impractical (or with companies who didn't know what to do with what they had, in the case of Xerox).
Not only that, I'm not sure how someone could judge Ocarina of Time based on only 10 minutes of play (if I remember it correctly, it took me 10 minutes just to sort of get used to the environments and just sort of walk around the village and seeing how the game world worked, etc.).
Aside from that, I think it's kind of funny for someone to say that just because they didn't like games like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, that GoldenEye 64 was the ONLY reason to own an N64. Just because YOU didn't like it doesn't mean that other people didn't - thus, it is crazy to say that the worth of the console can only be judged by the one game you did like. Clearly for a lot of people, Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were pretty good reasons to own an N64.
These are the games I personally own and enjoy for the DS. Most of these games are (or were) $30-35 USD, although some have gotten cheaper.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Super Mario Bros. 64 DS
Meteos
Kirby's Canvas Curse
Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows
Mario Kart DS
Super Mario Bros DS
Tetris DS
Metroid Prime Hunters
Animal Crossing: Wild World
I'd definitely recommend any of these...... there are also some other excellent DS games which I don't have, so I can't personally recommend them, but they're worth looking into.
It's also probably worth noting that if you didn't own a GBA, you do have access to some top-notch GBA games as well like:
Astro Boy: Omega Factor (developed by Treasure)
Final Fantasy IV Advance
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem: The Sacret Stones
Golden Sun
Golden Sun: The Lost Age
Gunstar Super Heroes
Metroid Fusion
Metroid Zero Mission
WarioWare
WarioWare: Twisted
I see what you're saying, but I still really don't think that's the same thing. It does mean that Apple is maintaining control of their own products, but that is not the same as forcing their products on others. Keeping other companies from being able to play their proprietary formats on the iPod and not allowing their own music to play on other players is not quite the same as forcing a standard on others (in fact, it is the opposite of this). Now, again, the abuse of a monopoly (or near monopoly) would come into play if Apple was doing something like forcing another company to use the FairPlay DRM, or forcing them to install iTunes, or forcing them to go through iTMS. Apple hasn't done any of these things, and again in fact has done quite the opposite.
The end result of this has been that companies making other subscription or pay music services and other mp3 players have had to set up their own standards and compete separately.
Really, say that Apple licensed the FairPlay DRM to Real, but said "You can only use FairPlay, but only if that is ALL you use." In essence, Apple would create a situation where even more people were required to buy iPods. If Apple really wanted to be hypocritical and abuse the monopoly powers like you're suggesting, all they would need to do is open up the iPod to PlaysForSure and other music services. This would take what is already a dominant market position for the iPod and make it almost a stranglehold on the industry - right now, probably a big thing keeping iPod competitors afloat is that they are the only options right now if you do have a subscription music service.
So again, I see what you're trying to hint at with Apple and their positions on the iPod and iTMS, but the reality is that they are really doing the opposite of what they could be doing if they really wanted to create a completely dominant stranglehold on the market for mp3 players. Seriously, like I said above, if the iPod was opened up to Real's system, and even made PlaysForSure compatible, you would have a ton of people who would now be able to just go ahead and buy an iPod instead of another mp3 player compatible with those services.
Apple has chosen instead to keep iTMS and the iPod as their own platforms, and rather than try to make them the only platforms on the market, they have basically taken a stance of just competing head-on with the other music players and music services.
This may or may not turn out well. Perhaps this new "Urge" music service that MS and MTV are doing, combined with Windows Media Player 11, will finally offer a compelling competitor. And the fact that Apple has made it so that you NEED another mp3 player besides an iPod to use that music is a huge bonus for other mp3 makers like Samsung, Sansa and Toshiba. So the competition will come down to which music service and music player in combination can provide a better experience. What it won't come down to is one company being able to force their single platform or combination across the entire market, since it is now clearly defined.
When did I mention Microsoft specifically? I see the point you are making, but it doesn't fly. What specifically has Apple done with the iPod or iTunes that would actually fit the definition of a monopoly? Microsoft did actually have a sort of de facto OS monopoly (even though there were other OS vendors) precisely because of their arrangements with PC manufacturers. Apple on the other hand does not have anything comparable; that is, it's not like Apple has forced their iPod/iTunes platform onto every other mp3 player manufacturer out there (in fact, they've been criticized for keeping the iPod and iTunes Music Store constrained just within their own products).
Even then though, MS wasn't really found to have a true monopoly; they had a near monopoly, which isn't really the same thing. MS's problem was more the abuse of that monopoly power in terms of pricing, bundling, and using methods to prevent other OS's from gaining a foothold.
But Apple hasn't done anything along those lines. They haven't tried to do anything to force out other players...... if Apple really wanted to exert some sort of monopoly control over mp3 players, they would lower prices on iPods and make them PlaysForSure compatible, to give people even less of a reason to buy the competition.
Also, note that a big part of monopoly power rests on controlling prices, and Apple doesn't specifically do that. Apple has no control over overall pricing of mp3 players, and they also have actually had to fight to keep prices lower on music from the iTMS. The success of the iTMS does allow Apple a lot of leeway in arguing to keep music prices at 99 cents, but this didn't specifically stop other music stores from setting their own prices, or even setting entirely different pricing models (subscriptions).
Apple's situation with the iPod right now would be more like if Microsoft made PC's as well, and only made Windows and DOS for their own line of PC's, and let competing PC manufacuters use whatever other OS's and software they wanted. In that case, they would truly let the market decide (sort of like Apple and their own OS X/Mac combination).
The fact that the iPod and iTMS have been very successful and control a large part of the marketplace does not make them close a monopoly, however.
Again, it was always a niche number though. Mac marketshare wasn't always a super small number like 3-5%, but it was definitely not more than 15-20%. Again, this is why I'm saying comparing Mac marketshare to iPod marketshare doesn't make sense; the Mac was never dominant enough to really command so much control of the market as a whole (i.e. it's not like there was a time where you were doomed if you didn't have a Mac version of your software). The Mac never was in a position that the iPod is in right now. Really, the iPod's position is a lot more like IBM PCs and PC clones, frankly. Really, with the IBM PC, it was basically DOS (and later Windows) and then everything else. You certainly had some niche players doing interesting things with their own loyal followings (Mac, Amiga, Atari, Commodore, etc.) but if you wanted to get the platform that most people were using, it was an IBM PC (or a clone).
This is sort of the position the iPod has found itself in. It's certainly not a monopoly, and there are other players out there who are having varying degrees of success (and of course, given MS's power, you can never count them out....... this is part of where the analogy breaks down, as the IBM PC and clones never had a rival with the kind of power MS does). The iPod has sort of gotten to a point where it is actually really difficult to compete with, no matter WHAT you do. You could have someone come out with a better mp3 player technically (just as you had alternative OS's like DR-DOS which were better than MS-DOS), but it is less relevant now. You would need to do something extraordinary to get people as a whole to think of another player in the same way they think of the iPod. Again, it's not that there aren't good rival players out there; there are..... but none of them really have the overall mindshare that the iPod does. Generally speaking, so many people just fundamentally know about the iPod now, it is a lot like something like the Walkman. It's just such an engrained brand that it automatically has a leg-up on any competitor now. This is not to say that the iPod is bad, or that DOS or Windows were bad........ but the reality is, when you do get this kind of position in the market, where most anyone could probably tell you what an iPod was whether they liked it or not, but could probably not rattle off the individual mp3 players from Creative, Toshiba, SanDisk, Samsung, etc. etc..... that is a lot to overcome.
I believe you're talking about the marketshare of the Apple II, which probably did command a pretty large share of the market at one time (certainly before IBM launched their PC). That of course has nothing to do with Mac marketshare, which was being compared to the iPod.
I'm not sure what Apple can do to "fix" the integrated graphics issue. I mean, looking at almost every PC laptop in that $1000-1500 price range, which the MacBook exists in, the Intel Integrated Graphics 950 chip seems to be one of the most common graphics chipsets available.
Apple is currently using the ATI X1600 (in 128 or 256 meg variants) in the MacBook Pro and the iMac, and seem to basically be on par with the PC version (although the MBP X1600 is dramatically underclocked, apparently for heat and battery life reasons..... a number of MBP owners have clocked it back up to normal speeds though without too much problem). Given the MBP form factor the ATI X1600 is one of the better cards you can even get right now (and similar offerings from Asus and Acer use a similar video card...... it's really only when you get to the 17" behemoths that the competition is offering stuff like the 7900GS and 7900GTX, which Apple isn't yet offering anything to compete with).
That really doesn't have anything to do with it. In particular, what makes a platform very good for professional graphics work (technologies like ColorSync, etc.) don't really have much to do with what makes it good for gaming. I wouldn't really say that the lack of Mac gaming software really means that the platform's suitability for graphics work is "hooey", as you put it.
The fact that PC's have been such a great gaming platform has a lot more to do with PC hardware and DOS and Windows being standard platforms to develop games for. You can also look to Microsoft's DirectX.
It isn't to say that the Mac has never been a capable platform for gaming. A few companies like Blizzard have long supported the Mac. On a related note, NextStep (which is the predecessor to OS X) was actually the OS of choice for the original development of Doom.
OpenGL games are a different matter, of course. But really, with the Mac's small marketshare, most game development companies just don't have the time or interest in doing direct Mac games development - and especially if you are making a DirectX game, a port to the Mac is a lot more difficult. There are some companies out there who specialize in porting PC games over to the Mac though.
-Zadillo
Apple controls 100% of the mp3 player market? Or 100% of the digital music market? Wow, I didn't realize that. That is what you were saying when you said there was an Apple monopoly, right?
The Macintosh never dominated the market or was so firmly established in the way the iPod is though, so it is a bit hard to compare the two. A lot of what helps the iPod right now is the fact that it is so widespread, and thus has a lot more than the competition in the way of third party support, third party accessories, etc. This is something the Mac never had, and thus it was always fighting the accurate perception that it was a lot easier to get a variety of hardware and software for your PC that wasn't available for the Mac.
Ahh, nice. Yeah, pretty funny...... and it does still sort of hold up well. Kind of funny to think that Windows 95 is 11 years old now though..... also forgot about laptops that had the little scrollball stuck on to the side of the laptop like that.
Yeah....... I only vaguely remember the commercial, but I seem to recall it being Windows (3.1 I assume) since I remember part of the joke had him switching around a bunch of active windows or something, or a bunch of windows tiling up).
I think you're actually thinking of a PowerBook commercial from the 90's - the premise is pretty much as you described though. Someone is using their Windows laptop to give a presentation and having all sorts of trouble, and people in the audience start shouting out typical PC instructions of the time to try and resolve it, and the punchline is someone shouting out "Get a Mac!" at the end.
I might be missing it, but what specifically is your complaint about Drudge on this one? There's plenty of bad things about Drudge, but in this case it seems like he got that from the headline of the original article - the only embellishment I see to the original headline was the bit about it being the world's largest.
I think I see why they brought it up though. It's been a while since I've seen Gattaca, but as I recall, it did sort of make the point about where things would eventually go once you started doing this kind of thing. Gattaca seemed to propose a future where the initial genetic identification and modification was relatively harmless (using it for pretty good things like getting rid of diseases and genetic defects, etc.), which eventually led to a society built around getting rid of defective people as a whole or making life difficult for them. I think the point the above poster was making would be that you can start out with just one piece of the puzzle (i.e. a genetic database of every worker in the US), and it could end up being the framework for something much worse.
Umm, presumably, this will help to get some people to help buy some of these OLPC's. Someone paying $300 to get one for themselves, and 2 for children would be someone paying for 2 OLPC's that otherwise weren't paid for. I don't see a reason to say "screw that". I'm sure they will be more than happy if you want to donate $300 to buy 3 OLPC's for children, but I don't see a reason to say "screw that" to something that probably will help drive some donations too.
Vista and OSX won't let you play MP3's, etc. and other non-DRM files? That is news to me. Just because there are efforts to use DRM for protected content, etc. I don't think it means that they are specifically trying to make non-DRM's files unusable. So if you have a bunch of people with OLPC's sharing non-DRM'd files, they would presumably not be any different from all the people with Vista and OSX also using non-DRM'd files.
"Survival of the fittest is a phrase which is a shorthand for a concept relating to competition for survival or predominance. Originally applied by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, Spencer drew parallels to his ideas of economics with Charles Darwin's theories of evolution by what Darwin termed natural selection.
The phrase is a metaphor, not a scientific description; and it is not generally used by biologists, who almost exclusively prefer to use the phrase "natural selection".
The general explanation I've heard is that Apple is pricing the black model higher to try and control demand for it, since they apparently realize that if they made the black version the same price, they would have trouble meeting demand. I guess the question would be "why not just make more black macbooks?", but presumably there is some reason or some difficulty with making the black version (which apparently is not the same kind of glossy surface as the white ones).
You know, no matter how many times I keep hearing people say that music-playing cellphones are the future and dedicated music players will become extinct, I just don't buy it. Personally, I'm not breathlessly waiting for some system where I can stream the music from my home computer; this would require that my cellphone is in an area where it gets service, and there are still places where that isn't the case, and it would require leaving my computer on all the time. Why exactly is this more convenient than having my music stored on my local music player? Battery life is also iffy enough as it is, what's it going to be like when streaming it over a wireless network connection?
I don't mean to be completely dismissive of it, as I'm sure that if someone did a really great device it might do most of what you say. But even if they do, which phone company is even going to want to offer this? They seem a lot more obsessed with charging $2-3 a song to download over the air.
I don't. I have a Sony Vaio s360 which has a similar 13.3 inch widescreen, and a 1280x800 resolution. It works perfectly fine for me, and I don't find it ridiculous.
This sort of reminds me of the special fabric Ozymandias developed in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" (which was used by Rorschach for his mask).... although in that case, I think the fabric just randomly changed patterns, it didn't provide a way to control what patterns were being shown at any one time. It does seem like the Rorschach-style mask would be pretty simple to do with this though, all you'd have to do presumably is set it up to randomly change patterns.
Only the top-of-the-line ATI cards can do this, but not the NVidia cards? You're saying that an Nvidia 7900GT or 7900GTX can't play it completely smoothly with 1600x1200 with everything activated?
I have to say, I'd be pretty ticked off if I spent $600 on a 7900GTX and I noticed even some slight amount of jerkiness in Oblivion.
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Seriously, plenty of us know the US has a lot of problems right now, but it seems really ignorant to imply that the US is the worst of them, or that the US is the only country where this kind of thing happens.
That's a ridiculous assertion. Certainly MS and Apple have both in many cases been companies who created successful and popular implementations of ideas people had before them, but in the entire history of MS and Apple, they have certainly invented things themselves as well. It seems pretty unfair to both MS and Apple to not give them credit for the things they have invented themselves. And for what it's worth, there is also something to be said for being able to create a popular and usable implementation of an idea that someone else had previously, but which had faults that made it impractical (or with companies who didn't know what to do with what they had, in the case of Xerox).
Aside from that, I think it's kind of funny for someone to say that just because they didn't like games like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, that GoldenEye 64 was the ONLY reason to own an N64. Just because YOU didn't like it doesn't mean that other people didn't - thus, it is crazy to say that the worth of the console can only be judged by the one game you did like. Clearly for a lot of people, Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were pretty good reasons to own an N64.
These are the games I personally own and enjoy for the DS. Most of these games are (or were) $30-35 USD, although some have gotten cheaper. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Super Mario Bros. 64 DS Meteos Kirby's Canvas Curse Advance Wars: Dual Strike Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows Mario Kart DS Super Mario Bros DS Tetris DS Metroid Prime Hunters Animal Crossing: Wild World I'd definitely recommend any of these...... there are also some other excellent DS games which I don't have, so I can't personally recommend them, but they're worth looking into. It's also probably worth noting that if you didn't own a GBA, you do have access to some top-notch GBA games as well like: Astro Boy: Omega Factor (developed by Treasure) Final Fantasy IV Advance Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Fire Emblem Fire Emblem: The Sacret Stones Golden Sun Golden Sun: The Lost Age Gunstar Super Heroes Metroid Fusion Metroid Zero Mission WarioWare WarioWare: Twisted
The end result of this has been that companies making other subscription or pay music services and other mp3 players have had to set up their own standards and compete separately.
Really, say that Apple licensed the FairPlay DRM to Real, but said "You can only use FairPlay, but only if that is ALL you use." In essence, Apple would create a situation where even more people were required to buy iPods. If Apple really wanted to be hypocritical and abuse the monopoly powers like you're suggesting, all they would need to do is open up the iPod to PlaysForSure and other music services. This would take what is already a dominant market position for the iPod and make it almost a stranglehold on the industry - right now, probably a big thing keeping iPod competitors afloat is that they are the only options right now if you do have a subscription music service.
So again, I see what you're trying to hint at with Apple and their positions on the iPod and iTMS, but the reality is that they are really doing the opposite of what they could be doing if they really wanted to create a completely dominant stranglehold on the market for mp3 players. Seriously, like I said above, if the iPod was opened up to Real's system, and even made PlaysForSure compatible, you would have a ton of people who would now be able to just go ahead and buy an iPod instead of another mp3 player compatible with those services.
Apple has chosen instead to keep iTMS and the iPod as their own platforms, and rather than try to make them the only platforms on the market, they have basically taken a stance of just competing head-on with the other music players and music services.
This may or may not turn out well. Perhaps this new "Urge" music service that MS and MTV are doing, combined with Windows Media Player 11, will finally offer a compelling competitor. And the fact that Apple has made it so that you NEED another mp3 player besides an iPod to use that music is a huge bonus for other mp3 makers like Samsung, Sansa and Toshiba. So the competition will come down to which music service and music player in combination can provide a better experience. What it won't come down to is one company being able to force their single platform or combination across the entire market, since it is now clearly defined.
When did I mention Microsoft specifically? I see the point you are making, but it doesn't fly. What specifically has Apple done with the iPod or iTunes that would actually fit the definition of a monopoly? Microsoft did actually have a sort of de facto OS monopoly (even though there were other OS vendors) precisely because of their arrangements with PC manufacturers. Apple on the other hand does not have anything comparable; that is, it's not like Apple has forced their iPod/iTunes platform onto every other mp3 player manufacturer out there (in fact, they've been criticized for keeping the iPod and iTunes Music Store constrained just within their own products). Even then though, MS wasn't really found to have a true monopoly; they had a near monopoly, which isn't really the same thing. MS's problem was more the abuse of that monopoly power in terms of pricing, bundling, and using methods to prevent other OS's from gaining a foothold. But Apple hasn't done anything along those lines. They haven't tried to do anything to force out other players...... if Apple really wanted to exert some sort of monopoly control over mp3 players, they would lower prices on iPods and make them PlaysForSure compatible, to give people even less of a reason to buy the competition. Also, note that a big part of monopoly power rests on controlling prices, and Apple doesn't specifically do that. Apple has no control over overall pricing of mp3 players, and they also have actually had to fight to keep prices lower on music from the iTMS. The success of the iTMS does allow Apple a lot of leeway in arguing to keep music prices at 99 cents, but this didn't specifically stop other music stores from setting their own prices, or even setting entirely different pricing models (subscriptions). Apple's situation with the iPod right now would be more like if Microsoft made PC's as well, and only made Windows and DOS for their own line of PC's, and let competing PC manufacuters use whatever other OS's and software they wanted. In that case, they would truly let the market decide (sort of like Apple and their own OS X/Mac combination). The fact that the iPod and iTMS have been very successful and control a large part of the marketplace does not make them close a monopoly, however.
Again, it was always a niche number though. Mac marketshare wasn't always a super small number like 3-5%, but it was definitely not more than 15-20%. Again, this is why I'm saying comparing Mac marketshare to iPod marketshare doesn't make sense; the Mac was never dominant enough to really command so much control of the market as a whole (i.e. it's not like there was a time where you were doomed if you didn't have a Mac version of your software). The Mac never was in a position that the iPod is in right now. Really, the iPod's position is a lot more like IBM PCs and PC clones, frankly. Really, with the IBM PC, it was basically DOS (and later Windows) and then everything else. You certainly had some niche players doing interesting things with their own loyal followings (Mac, Amiga, Atari, Commodore, etc.) but if you wanted to get the platform that most people were using, it was an IBM PC (or a clone). This is sort of the position the iPod has found itself in. It's certainly not a monopoly, and there are other players out there who are having varying degrees of success (and of course, given MS's power, you can never count them out....... this is part of where the analogy breaks down, as the IBM PC and clones never had a rival with the kind of power MS does). The iPod has sort of gotten to a point where it is actually really difficult to compete with, no matter WHAT you do. You could have someone come out with a better mp3 player technically (just as you had alternative OS's like DR-DOS which were better than MS-DOS), but it is less relevant now. You would need to do something extraordinary to get people as a whole to think of another player in the same way they think of the iPod. Again, it's not that there aren't good rival players out there; there are..... but none of them really have the overall mindshare that the iPod does. Generally speaking, so many people just fundamentally know about the iPod now, it is a lot like something like the Walkman. It's just such an engrained brand that it automatically has a leg-up on any competitor now. This is not to say that the iPod is bad, or that DOS or Windows were bad........ but the reality is, when you do get this kind of position in the market, where most anyone could probably tell you what an iPod was whether they liked it or not, but could probably not rattle off the individual mp3 players from Creative, Toshiba, SanDisk, Samsung, etc. etc..... that is a lot to overcome.
I believe you're talking about the marketshare of the Apple II, which probably did command a pretty large share of the market at one time (certainly before IBM launched their PC). That of course has nothing to do with Mac marketshare, which was being compared to the iPod.
I'm not sure what Apple can do to "fix" the integrated graphics issue. I mean, looking at almost every PC laptop in that $1000-1500 price range, which the MacBook exists in, the Intel Integrated Graphics 950 chip seems to be one of the most common graphics chipsets available. Apple is currently using the ATI X1600 (in 128 or 256 meg variants) in the MacBook Pro and the iMac, and seem to basically be on par with the PC version (although the MBP X1600 is dramatically underclocked, apparently for heat and battery life reasons..... a number of MBP owners have clocked it back up to normal speeds though without too much problem). Given the MBP form factor the ATI X1600 is one of the better cards you can even get right now (and similar offerings from Asus and Acer use a similar video card...... it's really only when you get to the 17" behemoths that the competition is offering stuff like the 7900GS and 7900GTX, which Apple isn't yet offering anything to compete with).
That really doesn't have anything to do with it. In particular, what makes a platform very good for professional graphics work (technologies like ColorSync, etc.) don't really have much to do with what makes it good for gaming. I wouldn't really say that the lack of Mac gaming software really means that the platform's suitability for graphics work is "hooey", as you put it. The fact that PC's have been such a great gaming platform has a lot more to do with PC hardware and DOS and Windows being standard platforms to develop games for. You can also look to Microsoft's DirectX. It isn't to say that the Mac has never been a capable platform for gaming. A few companies like Blizzard have long supported the Mac. On a related note, NextStep (which is the predecessor to OS X) was actually the OS of choice for the original development of Doom. OpenGL games are a different matter, of course. But really, with the Mac's small marketshare, most game development companies just don't have the time or interest in doing direct Mac games development - and especially if you are making a DirectX game, a port to the Mac is a lot more difficult. There are some companies out there who specialize in porting PC games over to the Mac though. -Zadillo
Apple controls 100% of the mp3 player market? Or 100% of the digital music market? Wow, I didn't realize that. That is what you were saying when you said there was an Apple monopoly, right?
The Macintosh never dominated the market or was so firmly established in the way the iPod is though, so it is a bit hard to compare the two. A lot of what helps the iPod right now is the fact that it is so widespread, and thus has a lot more than the competition in the way of third party support, third party accessories, etc. This is something the Mac never had, and thus it was always fighting the accurate perception that it was a lot easier to get a variety of hardware and software for your PC that wasn't available for the Mac.
Ahh, nice. Yeah, pretty funny...... and it does still sort of hold up well. Kind of funny to think that Windows 95 is 11 years old now though..... also forgot about laptops that had the little scrollball stuck on to the side of the laptop like that.
Yeah....... I only vaguely remember the commercial, but I seem to recall it being Windows (3.1 I assume) since I remember part of the joke had him switching around a bunch of active windows or something, or a bunch of windows tiling up).
I think you're actually thinking of a PowerBook commercial from the 90's - the premise is pretty much as you described though. Someone is using their Windows laptop to give a presentation and having all sorts of trouble, and people in the audience start shouting out typical PC instructions of the time to try and resolve it, and the punchline is someone shouting out "Get a Mac!" at the end.
I might be missing it, but what specifically is your complaint about Drudge on this one? There's plenty of bad things about Drudge, but in this case it seems like he got that from the headline of the original article - the only embellishment I see to the original headline was the bit about it being the world's largest.
I think I see why they brought it up though. It's been a while since I've seen Gattaca, but as I recall, it did sort of make the point about where things would eventually go once you started doing this kind of thing. Gattaca seemed to propose a future where the initial genetic identification and modification was relatively harmless (using it for pretty good things like getting rid of diseases and genetic defects, etc.), which eventually led to a society built around getting rid of defective people as a whole or making life difficult for them. I think the point the above poster was making would be that you can start out with just one piece of the puzzle (i.e. a genetic database of every worker in the US), and it could end up being the framework for something much worse.
Umm, presumably, this will help to get some people to help buy some of these OLPC's. Someone paying $300 to get one for themselves, and 2 for children would be someone paying for 2 OLPC's that otherwise weren't paid for. I don't see a reason to say "screw that". I'm sure they will be more than happy if you want to donate $300 to buy 3 OLPC's for children, but I don't see a reason to say "screw that" to something that probably will help drive some donations too.
Vista and OSX won't let you play MP3's, etc. and other non-DRM files? That is news to me. Just because there are efforts to use DRM for protected content, etc. I don't think it means that they are specifically trying to make non-DRM's files unusable. So if you have a bunch of people with OLPC's sharing non-DRM'd files, they would presumably not be any different from all the people with Vista and OSX also using non-DRM'd files.
The general explanation I've heard is that Apple is pricing the black model higher to try and control demand for it, since they apparently realize that if they made the black version the same price, they would have trouble meeting demand. I guess the question would be "why not just make more black macbooks?", but presumably there is some reason or some difficulty with making the black version (which apparently is not the same kind of glossy surface as the white ones).
I don't mean to be completely dismissive of it, as I'm sure that if someone did a really great device it might do most of what you say. But even if they do, which phone company is even going to want to offer this? They seem a lot more obsessed with charging $2-3 a song to download over the air.
I don't. I have a Sony Vaio s360 which has a similar 13.3 inch widescreen, and a 1280x800 resolution. It works perfectly fine for me, and I don't find it ridiculous.
This sort of reminds me of the special fabric Ozymandias developed in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" (which was used by Rorschach for his mask).... although in that case, I think the fabric just randomly changed patterns, it didn't provide a way to control what patterns were being shown at any one time. It does seem like the Rorschach-style mask would be pretty simple to do with this though, all you'd have to do presumably is set it up to randomly change patterns.
Only the top-of-the-line ATI cards can do this, but not the NVidia cards? You're saying that an Nvidia 7900GT or 7900GTX can't play it completely smoothly with 1600x1200 with everything activated? I have to say, I'd be pretty ticked off if I spent $600 on a 7900GTX and I noticed even some slight amount of jerkiness in Oblivion.