Actually, the only apple product I own is an ipod. And I didn't even buy it new. I don't own a sandisk player, although I've looked at a couple of reviews. Most of them conclude that it was a generally mediocre ipod imitator with a couple of nifty features.
Music player reviews are generally meaningless since most reviewers do not know what to listen for and do not even have a good pair of headphones. In fact, almost every review is gushing with excitement even if the product has serious flaw. This happens because review sites get free products and advertising from manufacturers. They almost never say "this product sucks", they just give it a lukewarm review.
While I haven't listened to the sandisk player, I have a pretty good idea how they get it to have an FM tuner and 20 hours of battery life -- by cutting every corner they can on the DAC and analog section. I am an electrical engineer, and I have a pretty good idea of what all the compromises are. A craptastic DAC will have very low power consumption, but it will also sound rather mediocre on a hi-fi system or a pair of good headphones. If you want an FM tuner, you also need an analog switch and a separate headphone amp chip, which further reduces sound quality (all of these components are bottom-shelf to keep cost down). By eliminating useless features, Apple can significantly improve the sound quality while maintaining low cost.
The iPod is the only portable player I've used that is good enough to plug into a good stereo system. This includes a fairly large number of portable CD and MP3 players that I've been unfortunate enough to own. I know why this is the case -- unlike many no-name players, they actually use fairly decent DAC chips from Wolfson Microelectronics. Most other players use much cheaper DACs that are far inferior, to say nothing of the rest of the analog circuitry.
Uh, no. That is coddling. I've known people with helicopter parents, and they grow up to be seriously fucked up. There is a time to let go, and 16-18 years old is that time. If you raised your kids properly, they won't be doing stupid shit. If not, this device isn't going to solve anything. Besides, "speeding" does not cause or increase accidents. Lack of attention does. It doesn't matter whether you are going at 20 or 80 miles per hour, if you regularly talk on a cellphone you will get into an accident because of it.
By that logic, any type of advertising should be outlawed. While I am not disagreeing with your argument, privacy laws are not that effective for protecting consumers from abusive marketing. Drug commercials would not be effective if doctors cared more about what the hell they were doing. It's far too easy to walk in to a doctor's office and get an antibiotic prescription for a cold or an SSRI prescription for "depression" (caused by an unhealthy lifestyle rather than a chemical imbalance). Doctors do this because it's easy, it's what the patient wants, and because they often get a kickback from drug companies. Even if drug commercials were banned, the problem would not go away.
Not to mention, you have to suffer from a poorly-engineered interface, a larger physical size, and far inferior sound quality. Apple tries very hard to get excellent sound from the iPod. That's why they avoid putting in an FM tuner -- that is simply impossible to do without significantly compromising sound quality.
Excuse me, but what makes you think search engine queries are private or confidential, or must be treated as such? When you type stuff into a search engine, it is no longer private. Last I checked, AOL never promised to keep search queries confidential anywhere in your contract with them. In fact, I am sure they have the right to sell them (complete with identifying information) to various marketing and database companies. There is nothing ethically or legally wrong with releasing this data, so your analogy is complete bullshit.
Viruses mutate very easily. Where do you think the human viruses came from? Bacteria viruses. This may present a danger to people with weak immune systems (such as those with AIDS) and possibly even healthy people (large concentrations of viruses could cause allergic reactions or something). In short, I think it's rather irresponsible for the FDA to approve this kind of thing with so few studies being done.
OSHA doesn't give a shit. There was an article in the New York Times about a year ago about industrial accidents. Generally, even if a worker dies due to gross safety violations, OSHA will just fine the employer something like $5000, which is pennies. And they were talking about 30-50 deaths a year in that article.
Considering that most Macs are either laptops or iMacs (both with relatively slow Intel graphics chips), I don't think the slight performance hit is going to be substantial. You won't be playing anything that demands a fast videocard, anyway. And hey, spending 50% more resources to get an extra 2% of the market is not exactly a great idea.
Yeah, as if Dell doesn't have massive quality problems. Several Optiplex models have horrendously bad motherboards that fail within 2-3 years, Dell's warranty support is a real pain to deal with, and they never acknowledge quality problems. At least with Apple, you don't have to speak to Indian tech support who really doesn't give a shit.
Well, if the cops don't care, you don't need to stick to legal means. I hear BB guns work pretty well for destroying plastic things. Paintball markers are also quite excellent for this purpose. Or use a nice big water gun on it. Of course, I recommend you just call the cops again. There are plenty of cops under 40.
Uh, no. This would be considered theft of service and/or hacking, and you can get in some _VERY_ serious trouble if you connect to other people's networks. As in, 10 years or so in a PMITA prison.
Bullshit. Even a 200 MHz MIPS chip gives pretty shitty routing performance -- just look at a WRT54G router. Mine goes up to 100% cpu usage with a single SIP call. That router of yours would choke if you had more than one or two users or you were running BitTorrent or something. A Cisco 2500 won't. That's the real difference.
You're still not saving anything. Plenty of companies offer tested, integrated router solutions for the low end, at a much lower price point than you can get with an x86 box, and with a 10-year warranty. Show me a PC manufacturer that offers a 10-year warranty.
What makes you think the voters that are already at the polls are educated or informed? There is a reason polls are conducted during working hours in the US. The politicians know that the vast majority of people voting are senior citizens. Let's see, we rely on people who are generally uninformed or misinformed, have little remaining intellectual capacity, and generally refuse to alter their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. That sounds just like our political system, doesn't it?
The first Prince of Persia game was released for DOS somewhere in the 80s. Awesome game too; probably, one of the best platformers I've played. I'm pretty sure this was about 3-4 years before the SNES came out.
If you are getting arrested, it means a judge has looked at the evidence the FBI has and decided that it's strong enough to issue an arrest warrant. They don't just arrest people because they feel like it.
Sorry, doesn't work that way. If there's a warrant out for someone's arrest, they are arrested as soon as possible. They aren't going to wait until you get out of work or get home or whatever. If it wasn't urgent, a warrant would not have been issued.
Yeah, gas doesn't burn. You can verify this experimentally. Empty a can on yourself and then have a smoke.
My point is that for an $80k car, it doesn't matter if the batteries cost 50 cents or 55 cents. For $500 Dell laptop with thin margins, that's the kind of thing they worry about.
Well, generally, in an office building, you don't just randomly call security on random people. It may have just been another co-worker, for instance. Hell, maybe it was an upper manager who was in a hurry and didn't want to get out his ID card. Even if it's a data poacher, it's not like they are going to stab you in the middle of a corporate lobby in the middle of the day.
I think batteries are going to be a lot safer than gasoline. Obviously, there would be more measures taken to make them safer. In Dell's case, the reason is because the batteries are designed to be cheap rather than safe.
Sure. But it's extremely easy to conclusively prove whether someone is blind or not. Someone with even partial vision can tell a brightly lit room from a pitch-dark one. In the same vein, telepathy and ESP should be very easy to conclusively prove -- those people would be using that ability to do something that is not possible otherwise. If people with ESP really existed, it would have been proven 200 years ago. I'd say the evidence is overwhelmingly against ESP, and studying it further is an exercise in pointlessness.
eBay owns a lot of patents on online auctions. That's mainly why you see all the other auction sites disappear. Google will have a legal fight either way.
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Actually, the only apple product I own is an ipod. And I didn't even buy it new. I don't own a sandisk player, although I've looked at a couple of reviews. Most of them conclude that it was a generally mediocre ipod imitator with a couple of nifty features.
Music player reviews are generally meaningless since most reviewers do not know what to listen for and do not even have a good pair of headphones. In fact, almost every review is gushing with excitement even if the product has serious flaw. This happens because review sites get free products and advertising from manufacturers. They almost never say "this product sucks", they just give it a lukewarm review.
While I haven't listened to the sandisk player, I have a pretty good idea how they get it to have an FM tuner and 20 hours of battery life -- by cutting every corner they can on the DAC and analog section. I am an electrical engineer, and I have a pretty good idea of what all the compromises are. A craptastic DAC will have very low power consumption, but it will also sound rather mediocre on a hi-fi system or a pair of good headphones. If you want an FM tuner, you also need an analog switch and a separate headphone amp chip, which further reduces sound quality (all of these components are bottom-shelf to keep cost down). By eliminating useless features, Apple can significantly improve the sound quality while maintaining low cost.
The iPod is the only portable player I've used that is good enough to plug into a good stereo system. This includes a fairly large number of portable CD and MP3 players that I've been unfortunate enough to own. I know why this is the case -- unlike many no-name players, they actually use fairly decent DAC chips from Wolfson Microelectronics. Most other players use much cheaper DACs that are far inferior, to say nothing of the rest of the analog circuitry.
Uh, no. That is coddling. I've known people with helicopter parents, and they grow up to be seriously fucked up. There is a time to let go, and 16-18 years old is that time. If you raised your kids properly, they won't be doing stupid shit. If not, this device isn't going to solve anything. Besides, "speeding" does not cause or increase accidents. Lack of attention does. It doesn't matter whether you are going at 20 or 80 miles per hour, if you regularly talk on a cellphone you will get into an accident because of it.
By that logic, any type of advertising should be outlawed. While I am not disagreeing with your argument, privacy laws are not that effective for protecting consumers from abusive marketing. Drug commercials would not be effective if doctors cared more about what the hell they were doing. It's far too easy to walk in to a doctor's office and get an antibiotic prescription for a cold or an SSRI prescription for "depression" (caused by an unhealthy lifestyle rather than a chemical imbalance). Doctors do this because it's easy, it's what the patient wants, and because they often get a kickback from drug companies. Even if drug commercials were banned, the problem would not go away.
Not to mention, you have to suffer from a poorly-engineered interface, a larger physical size, and far inferior sound quality. Apple tries very hard to get excellent sound from the iPod. That's why they avoid putting in an FM tuner -- that is simply impossible to do without significantly compromising sound quality.
Excuse me, but what makes you think search engine queries are private or confidential, or must be treated as such? When you type stuff into a search engine, it is no longer private. Last I checked, AOL never promised to keep search queries confidential anywhere in your contract with them. In fact, I am sure they have the right to sell them (complete with identifying information) to various marketing and database companies. There is nothing ethically or legally wrong with releasing this data, so your analogy is complete bullshit.
Heh. Sounds like they just invented the electric generator. Too bad it's already been invented, oh, about 150 years ago?
Viruses mutate very easily. Where do you think the human viruses came from? Bacteria viruses. This may present a danger to people with weak immune systems (such as those with AIDS) and possibly even healthy people (large concentrations of viruses could cause allergic reactions or something). In short, I think it's rather irresponsible for the FDA to approve this kind of thing with so few studies being done.
OSHA doesn't give a shit. There was an article in the New York Times about a year ago about industrial accidents. Generally, even if a worker dies due to gross safety violations, OSHA will just fine the employer something like $5000, which is pennies. And they were talking about 30-50 deaths a year in that article.
Considering that most Macs are either laptops or iMacs (both with relatively slow Intel graphics chips), I don't think the slight performance hit is going to be substantial. You won't be playing anything that demands a fast videocard, anyway. And hey, spending 50% more resources to get an extra 2% of the market is not exactly a great idea.
Yeah, as if Dell doesn't have massive quality problems. Several Optiplex models have horrendously bad motherboards that fail within 2-3 years, Dell's warranty support is a real pain to deal with, and they never acknowledge quality problems. At least with Apple, you don't have to speak to Indian tech support who really doesn't give a shit.
Well, if the cops don't care, you don't need to stick to legal means. I hear BB guns work pretty well for destroying plastic things. Paintball markers are also quite excellent for this purpose. Or use a nice big water gun on it. Of course, I recommend you just call the cops again. There are plenty of cops under 40.
It's not added to firefox, fucktard. Firefox is added to realplayer. Learn to read.
Uh, no. This would be considered theft of service and/or hacking, and you can get in some _VERY_ serious trouble if you connect to other people's networks. As in, 10 years or so in a PMITA prison.
Bullshit. Even a 200 MHz MIPS chip gives pretty shitty routing performance -- just look at a WRT54G router. Mine goes up to 100% cpu usage with a single SIP call. That router of yours would choke if you had more than one or two users or you were running BitTorrent or something. A Cisco 2500 won't. That's the real difference.
You're still not saving anything. Plenty of companies offer tested, integrated router solutions for the low end, at a much lower price point than you can get with an x86 box, and with a 10-year warranty. Show me a PC manufacturer that offers a 10-year warranty.
What makes you think the voters that are already at the polls are educated or informed? There is a reason polls are conducted during working hours in the US. The politicians know that the vast majority of people voting are senior citizens. Let's see, we rely on people who are generally uninformed or misinformed, have little remaining intellectual capacity, and generally refuse to alter their beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence. That sounds just like our political system, doesn't it?
The first Prince of Persia game was released for DOS somewhere in the 80s. Awesome game too; probably, one of the best platformers I've played. I'm pretty sure this was about 3-4 years before the SNES came out.
If you are getting arrested, it means a judge has looked at the evidence the FBI has and decided that it's strong enough to issue an arrest warrant. They don't just arrest people because they feel like it.
Sorry, doesn't work that way. If there's a warrant out for someone's arrest, they are arrested as soon as possible. They aren't going to wait until you get out of work or get home or whatever. If it wasn't urgent, a warrant would not have been issued.
Yeah, gas doesn't burn. You can verify this experimentally. Empty a can on yourself and then have a smoke.
My point is that for an $80k car, it doesn't matter if the batteries cost 50 cents or 55 cents. For $500 Dell laptop with thin margins, that's the kind of thing they worry about.
Well, generally, in an office building, you don't just randomly call security on random people. It may have just been another co-worker, for instance. Hell, maybe it was an upper manager who was in a hurry and didn't want to get out his ID card. Even if it's a data poacher, it's not like they are going to stab you in the middle of a corporate lobby in the middle of the day.
I think batteries are going to be a lot safer than gasoline. Obviously, there would be more measures taken to make them safer. In Dell's case, the reason is because the batteries are designed to be cheap rather than safe.
Sure. But it's extremely easy to conclusively prove whether someone is blind or not. Someone with even partial vision can tell a brightly lit room from a pitch-dark one. In the same vein, telepathy and ESP should be very easy to conclusively prove -- those people would be using that ability to do something that is not possible otherwise. If people with ESP really existed, it would have been proven 200 years ago. I'd say the evidence is overwhelmingly against ESP, and studying it further is an exercise in pointlessness.
Uh, no. See Lexmark vs. SCC.
eBay owns a lot of patents on online auctions. That's mainly why you see all the other auction sites disappear. Google will have a legal fight either way.