I won't pretend to be a Star Wars geek from the outset - I was a Trek nut until Rick Berman & Brannon Braga kicked the living shit out of the franchise just to get one more dying breath out of it, these days for me it's Battlestar Galactica and proudly displaying the Union Jack tattooed on my chest with pride as we Brits proudly reclaim the "best sc-fi series" throne with the revamped Dr Who.
So for me, the original Star Wars trilogy of movies were never something I went nutty over, I just really enjoyed them as good sci-fi entertainment that I occasionally rewatch.
But let me say one thing here - George Lucas is a very, very shrewd businessman for creating Star Wars movies that, by their very nature, have been designed to squeeze as much money out the hands of fans with merchandise; countless vehicles that can be turned into model & Lego kits, loads of characters to write extra novels about, and even three foot high bears for the kiddies, to start them off nice and young...
And that's all fine and dandy except for the fact that having so much crammed into so few films, it is virtually impossible to make it cohesive - at least as much as Gene Roddenberry did as the controlling hand of Star Trek over almost countless series episodes and a handful of the films.
So what I'm really trying to say is that you cannot turn Star Wars into this realistic, cohesive fictional universe because it was never controlled that way by Lucas.
The Star Wars franchise is, essentially, a merchandising platform, more so than ever, albeit a very well made and entertaining one (at least in the first trology anyway).
I 100% agree with you about informed purchases & the fact that most people don't make informed purchases but blindly believe in advertising or just follow the crowd means that the rest of us are also affected because it makes it much easier to throw untested & overpriced products into the marketplace.
Apple products are marketed very carefully to appeal to certain types of people. These are people who want to go against the mainstream but cannot be bothered to put in the time and effort in the research that you and I would do to find the good value-for-money products for ourselves. Therefore they're prepared to part with lots of money to become members of an exclusive little club - at that level it's no different to Rolls Royce owners or people that flew on Concorde.
Whilst I don't own an iPod (I will not support DRM), it's undeniable that it's a neat gadget that appeals to a lot of people. Unfortunately, it's own popularity has meant that the "Apple club" is no longer that exclusive when it comes to owning an iPod.
Therefore, in order to maintain their exclusivity, that subset of Apple users are therefore forced to queue 24 hours outside Apple Stores to be the FIRST to own an Apple product because just owning it won't be good enough. This in turns means that products can be rushed to the stores before testing them properly & that if Apple did once have a reputation for quality products (I wouldn't know because I've never found the need to own one), then that quality is now dropping.
So please don't expect reasoned or rational argument from most of them because most of them don't know how to. For tha majority of them, it's the getting the logo first that's most important, not reading technical reviews and specifications that would allow them to gain some ability to argue at a reasoned level with you.
And the worst thing about it? If Apple had a reputation for quality (again, I wouldn't know), then it's the Apple users own zealousness that's destroying that by allowing Apple to become just another huge profiteering corporation that is just there to leech as much money as possible from its ardently loyal customers.
Firstly, go and take a historical look at the moderation of posts that make a criticism against Apple - you will find that just about all of them (including mine above) are negatively moderated. There can be only one reason for this - namely the Apple crowd feeling threatened by anyone who dares to criticise Apple.
Secondly, if we were responsible Capitalists and all made informed decisions before buying anything, then this kind of issue would never happen because any company would be committing financial suicide releasing a product into the marketplace before testing it to the extent it should have been tested.
If people are truly happy with their branded products then so be it. But blind brand loyalty turns such items into fashion accessories where display of the logo openly becomes more important than the functionaluty of the product itself.
And quite frankly, it's the "brand sheep" who are doing more harm to the rest of us than anyone else - they part with their cash far too easily for nice looking products without considering that also those products may also support the "hidden" features of DRM and vendor lock-in as well.
And if and when DRM gets locked into place, then we ALL suffer!
So please now excuse me while I continue my fight against you Apple people selling MY rights down Swanee River...
That crowd certainly exists, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that everyone who's got an iPhone got it just because it has an Apple logo on the back. That crowd was tapped out in the first couple weeks or so.
If that's the case, then why have Apple not *removed* the Apple logo from the iPhone by now then? In doing so, they could cut down on the manufacturing cost of the phone and pass the savings onto the customer in order to attract those people who, by your argument, have no interest in the logo being there in the first place and are just buying the iPhone on its technical merits.
...you can still sit in Starbucks with your iPhones and your iBooks drinking your iMochachinos & just *pretend* to be having a really important conversation with someone important. Okay?
Maybe we can work out some kind of pre-arranged coded signal with you guys? Perhaps give your iMochachino a stir and we mere mortals will all pretend to be suitably impressed by you and in unison all say "Ooooh!"
That's the problem with learning Spanish - it's a great language to learn and 95% of it is covered by some good grammatical rules which you just need to learn.
Unfortunately, it's the 5% of irregular stuff that isn't covered by rules that is best just remembered as a complete phrase rather than trying to slot it together before saying it.
Still, an Englishman has a much easier time of learning Spanish than a Spaniard has of learning English! With my Spanish friends, I always get a kick of showing them English words containing "ough" like "cough", "rough", "bough", "through" and "though" - five different pronunciations of "ough" and not one rule in sight!
Actually, I've used Linux for 10+ years now and I've seen quite a few kernel panics - but just about everyone of them has been at the point of reboot when I've just installed a new kernel and done something stupid it the kernel configuration. But then I just boot the old working kernel again and retry the compilation.
I've also had a couple of freezes while using X-Windows but, again, if you're good enough to be fiddling about with Linux in the first place then you're good enough to retrace your steps back to the point at which your system was stable.
In either case, neither of the above is a particularly difficult issue to at least work around temporarily, unlike trying to decipher what might be causing a BSOD. (And yes, I bow to any more experienced Windows sysadmins than I out there who would disagree with my statement.)
And in almost 30 years of both working and playing with computers, I have always favoured UNIX & Linux, frequently had a need to work with Windows (and indeed need to keep XP around for some stuff I can't do as easily in Linux) but never ONCE had the slightest compulsion or need to even think about using a Mac.
I have never once owned a single Apple product and as long as they continue to lock users in with proprietary formats and DRM more heavily than Microsoft does, then I never will. At least Microsoft have sometimes "forced" me to use Windows, far more than Apple ever will...
Being of the male gender, I doubt I will ever have a need to use the phrase - but as a Spanish student, would pregnant woman not say:
"Yo estoy embarazada"
due to the fact that it is not a "permanent" state of being?
For example "Yo estoy cansado" means "I'm tired" (a "temporary" condition) but "Yo soy alto" means "I am tall" (a "permanent" condition).
Just curious...
I'm no fan of Apple or Microsoft but if the latter did it people on here would be spouting off about "fair usage", "DRM" & "monopolies"... and it would be the self-righteous Apple users shouting the loudest.
You really should consider a job in Apple's marketing department...
A true geek is interested not only in technology but also understanding how something works and how it can be adapted to work even better - even if it means tinkering into the small hours in order to do so.
And if geeks have a reputation for maybe having little fashion sense, why would they rush to buy any Apple product that is (in part) designed to be a fashion accessory? Let alone a product that by it's very closed nature, limits the ability to tinker in the first place?
Let's face it - some people have moved away from Microsoft to Linux or Macs in order to make a political statement about closed source whilst others are geeks who like to tinker and know what's going on in their computers. I would say that true geeks are those who are long-term Open Source software users whilst others who are not prepared to spend time learning how an OS works, or how to embrace the power of command shells have either given up and gone back to Microsoft, or joined the Apple camp instead.
No, I have absolutely no resentment of anyone who finds a computing environment that suits their needs, no matter who makes it. But I do object to the false connection between a geek and an Apple user - if anything, we're constantly having it pounded into us how easy OS X is to use, so why would someone who wants a convenient computer be interested in tinkering with it?
I start of with the premise that I would like every computing device that I own to be open because I do not trust corporate power. That means that my first "port of call" is usually something Linux based (and perhaps BSD as well).
If I can't achieve what I need to on an open platform, then I'll need to choose a closed one. Since most of the world uses a Microsoft-based architecture, then I guess my next port of call is with them, because I also get the additional benefit of widely used file formats, interoperability etc.
And that explains why, in 28 years as a computer hobbyist and 25 years in the telecoms/Internet/security industry, I have never once even found the slightest compulsion to ever buy an Apple product.
If Apple were open in what they did, then I might be inquisitive enough to buy something from them - but they're as closed as Microsoft are (probably even more so) and with me it's a case of "better the devil you know".
... over here, we just *REMOVE OUR LAPTOPS FROM OUR BAGS* and put them in a separate plastic tray as we go through security.
Oh, and we also tend to put *SHIT THAT ISN'T ALLOWED ON THE AIRCRAFT* into a separate bag - for the benefit of you Americans out there I have personally witnessed carrying suitcases into the hold, please read under "Checking in luggage".
Take it from me - I'm slightly overweight, 46 years old & got told on a Health Screen last week that my blood pressure is perfectly normal. That's because I don't live my life so fast that I let standing for 10 minutes by a baggage carousel (or numerous other miniscule issues) get to me.
Still, having bought a new (multi-pocket) Targus bag for my laptop only a few weeks ago, can someone give me the address I need to write to in order to expense a new laptop bag to the US government for the next time I travel over to the US?
I've got a large music CD collection (1000+) which I keep stored in their cases most of the time - since I've ripped all of them, unless I'm spending some time listening on the house hifi, then I generally play the rips rather than the originals.
I do have CDs going back to the mid-80s, I've not yet come across one that has degraded to the point of failure but there are a few of my CDs that have silver-coloured backs (printed with black writing) that are starting to go a pale coppery colour around the circumference. They seem to play just as well though.
A friend of mine (also a CD and hifi buff) did have a problem with one CD where it was starting to develop pinprick faults across the surface of the coating.
Has anyone else ever witnessed a CD failing through "natural" degradation? Now that some of them can be 20+ years old, it's interesting to see how well they stand the ravages of time, even if pretty much unplayed and left in their cases.
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Civilians dying in a potential civil war and all your politicians care about is how they're going to get bloody astronauts up to space station???
Now can you understand why a lot of the rest of the world doesn't like you very much?
I suspect that for "honey bunny", "face.like.a.bulldog.chewing.a.wasp@hotmail.de" might be more appropriate.
Believe me, I have met German women...
We already know that.
Note the ".de" - she's German, she has no sense of humour.
You clearly have far too much spare time & not enough to do.
I won't pretend to be a Star Wars geek from the outset - I was a Trek nut until Rick Berman & Brannon Braga kicked the living shit out of the franchise just to get one more dying breath out of it, these days for me it's Battlestar Galactica and proudly displaying the Union Jack tattooed on my chest with pride as we Brits proudly reclaim the "best sc-fi series" throne with the revamped Dr Who.
So for me, the original Star Wars trilogy of movies were never something I went nutty over, I just really enjoyed them as good sci-fi entertainment that I occasionally rewatch.
But let me say one thing here - George Lucas is a very, very shrewd businessman for creating Star Wars movies that, by their very nature, have been designed to squeeze as much money out the hands of fans with merchandise; countless vehicles that can be turned into model & Lego kits, loads of characters to write extra novels about, and even three foot high bears for the kiddies, to start them off nice and young...
And that's all fine and dandy except for the fact that having so much crammed into so few films, it is virtually impossible to make it cohesive - at least as much as Gene Roddenberry did as the controlling hand of Star Trek over almost countless series episodes and a handful of the films.
So what I'm really trying to say is that you cannot turn Star Wars into this realistic, cohesive fictional universe because it was never controlled that way by Lucas.
The Star Wars franchise is, essentially, a merchandising platform, more so than ever, albeit a very well made and entertaining one (at least in the first trology anyway).
I 100% agree with you about informed purchases & the fact that most people don't make informed purchases but blindly believe in advertising or just follow the crowd means that the rest of us are also affected because it makes it much easier to throw untested & overpriced products into the marketplace.
Apple products are marketed very carefully to appeal to certain types of people. These are people who want to go against the mainstream but cannot be bothered to put in the time and effort in the research that you and I would do to find the good value-for-money products for ourselves. Therefore they're prepared to part with lots of money to become members of an exclusive little club - at that level it's no different to Rolls Royce owners or people that flew on Concorde.
Whilst I don't own an iPod (I will not support DRM), it's undeniable that it's a neat gadget that appeals to a lot of people. Unfortunately, it's own popularity has meant that the "Apple club" is no longer that exclusive when it comes to owning an iPod.
Therefore, in order to maintain their exclusivity, that subset of Apple users are therefore forced to queue 24 hours outside Apple Stores to be the FIRST to own an Apple product because just owning it won't be good enough. This in turns means that products can be rushed to the stores before testing them properly & that if Apple did once have a reputation for quality products (I wouldn't know because I've never found the need to own one), then that quality is now dropping.
So please don't expect reasoned or rational argument from most of them because most of them don't know how to. For tha majority of them, it's the getting the logo first that's most important, not reading technical reviews and specifications that would allow them to gain some ability to argue at a reasoned level with you.
And the worst thing about it? If Apple had a reputation for quality (again, I wouldn't know), then it's the Apple users own zealousness that's destroying that by allowing Apple to become just another huge profiteering corporation that is just there to leech as much money as possible from its ardently loyal customers.
Firstly, go and take a historical look at the moderation of posts that make a criticism against Apple - you will find that just about all of them (including mine above) are negatively moderated. There can be only one reason for this - namely the Apple crowd feeling threatened by anyone who dares to criticise Apple. Secondly, if we were responsible Capitalists and all made informed decisions before buying anything, then this kind of issue would never happen because any company would be committing financial suicide releasing a product into the marketplace before testing it to the extent it should have been tested. If people are truly happy with their branded products then so be it. But blind brand loyalty turns such items into fashion accessories where display of the logo openly becomes more important than the functionaluty of the product itself. And quite frankly, it's the "brand sheep" who are doing more harm to the rest of us than anyone else - they part with their cash far too easily for nice looking products without considering that also those products may also support the "hidden" features of DRM and vendor lock-in as well. And if and when DRM gets locked into place, then we ALL suffer! So please now excuse me while I continue my fight against you Apple people selling MY rights down Swanee River...
That crowd certainly exists, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that everyone who's got an iPhone got it just because it has an Apple logo on the back. That crowd was tapped out in the first couple weeks or so.
If that's the case, then why have Apple not *removed* the Apple logo from the iPhone by now then? In doing so, they could cut down on the manufacturing cost of the phone and pass the savings onto the customer in order to attract those people who, by your argument, have no interest in the logo being there in the first place and are just buying the iPhone on its technical merits.
Just curious...
So you're laughing at him because he chooses to stick with his older Nokia 6220 that entirely suits his needs, despite being an older product.
So that means you *do* consider a phone to be a fashion accessory then?
...you can still sit in Starbucks with your iPhones and your iBooks drinking your iMochachinos & just *pretend* to be having a really important conversation with someone important. Okay?
Maybe we can work out some kind of pre-arranged coded signal with you guys? Perhaps give your iMochachino a stir and we mere mortals will all pretend to be suitably impressed by you and in unison all say "Ooooh!"
That's the problem with learning Spanish - it's a great language to learn and 95% of it is covered by some good grammatical rules which you just need to learn. Unfortunately, it's the 5% of irregular stuff that isn't covered by rules that is best just remembered as a complete phrase rather than trying to slot it together before saying it. Still, an Englishman has a much easier time of learning Spanish than a Spaniard has of learning English! With my Spanish friends, I always get a kick of showing them English words containing "ough" like "cough", "rough", "bough", "through" and "though" - five different pronunciations of "ough" and not one rule in sight!
Actually, I've used Linux for 10+ years now and I've seen quite a few kernel panics - but just about everyone of them has been at the point of reboot when I've just installed a new kernel and done something stupid it the kernel configuration. But then I just boot the old working kernel again and retry the compilation.
I've also had a couple of freezes while using X-Windows but, again, if you're good enough to be fiddling about with Linux in the first place then you're good enough to retrace your steps back to the point at which your system was stable.
In either case, neither of the above is a particularly difficult issue to at least work around temporarily, unlike trying to decipher what might be causing a BSOD. (And yes, I bow to any more experienced Windows sysadmins than I out there who would disagree with my statement.)
And in almost 30 years of both working and playing with computers, I have always favoured UNIX & Linux, frequently had a need to work with Windows (and indeed need to keep XP around for some stuff I can't do as easily in Linux) but never ONCE had the slightest compulsion or need to even think about using a Mac.
I have never once owned a single Apple product and as long as they continue to lock users in with proprietary formats and DRM more heavily than Microsoft does, then I never will. At least Microsoft have sometimes "forced" me to use Windows, far more than Apple ever will...
And with all the unpatched DNS and Safari holes, it will also "just work" for just about any cracker as well.
Being of the male gender, I doubt I will ever have a need to use the phrase - but as a Spanish student, would pregnant woman not say: "Yo estoy embarazada" due to the fact that it is not a "permanent" state of being? For example "Yo estoy cansado" means "I'm tired" (a "temporary" condition) but "Yo soy alto" means "I am tall" (a "permanent" condition). Just curious...
Apple wants its product to behave this way, and I purchase their devices knowing they want to control everything.
Please send me your name and address. I'd like to serve you with a court order for selling my personal freedoms down the Swanee as well as your own.
It's a shame it's not "closed" enough due to the unfixed security holes in DNS and Safari.
mediating the user experience
I'm no fan of Apple or Microsoft but if the latter did it people on here would be spouting off about "fair usage", "DRM" & "monopolies"... and it would be the self-righteous Apple users shouting the loudest.
You really should consider a job in Apple's marketing department...
A true geek is interested not only in technology but also understanding how something works and how it can be adapted to work even better - even if it means tinkering into the small hours in order to do so. And if geeks have a reputation for maybe having little fashion sense, why would they rush to buy any Apple product that is (in part) designed to be a fashion accessory? Let alone a product that by it's very closed nature, limits the ability to tinker in the first place? Let's face it - some people have moved away from Microsoft to Linux or Macs in order to make a political statement about closed source whilst others are geeks who like to tinker and know what's going on in their computers. I would say that true geeks are those who are long-term Open Source software users whilst others who are not prepared to spend time learning how an OS works, or how to embrace the power of command shells have either given up and gone back to Microsoft, or joined the Apple camp instead. No, I have absolutely no resentment of anyone who finds a computing environment that suits their needs, no matter who makes it. But I do object to the false connection between a geek and an Apple user - if anything, we're constantly having it pounded into us how easy OS X is to use, so why would someone who wants a convenient computer be interested in tinkering with it?
I start of with the premise that I would like every computing device that I own to be open because I do not trust corporate power. That means that my first "port of call" is usually something Linux based (and perhaps BSD as well). If I can't achieve what I need to on an open platform, then I'll need to choose a closed one. Since most of the world uses a Microsoft-based architecture, then I guess my next port of call is with them, because I also get the additional benefit of widely used file formats, interoperability etc. And that explains why, in 28 years as a computer hobbyist and 25 years in the telecoms/Internet/security industry, I have never once even found the slightest compulsion to ever buy an Apple product. If Apple were open in what they did, then I might be inquisitive enough to buy something from them - but they're as closed as Microsoft are (probably even more so) and with me it's a case of "better the devil you know".
But in the US, if you can't pay the admission fee of a tertiary care centre through health insurance, then you don't get in.
Yes, our NHS has problems but at least the care is free.
So you "septics" go and sort your health service out first before poking your fat snouts into ours.
... over here, we just *REMOVE OUR LAPTOPS FROM OUR BAGS* and put them in a separate plastic tray as we go through security.
Oh, and we also tend to put *SHIT THAT ISN'T ALLOWED ON THE AIRCRAFT* into a separate bag - for the benefit of you Americans out there I have personally witnessed carrying suitcases into the hold, please read under "Checking in luggage".
Take it from me - I'm slightly overweight, 46 years old & got told on a Health Screen last week that my blood pressure is perfectly normal. That's because I don't live my life so fast that I let standing for 10 minutes by a baggage carousel (or numerous other miniscule issues) get to me.
Still, having bought a new (multi-pocket) Targus bag for my laptop only a few weeks ago, can someone give me the address I need to write to in order to expense a new laptop bag to the US government for the next time I travel over to the US?
My friend's one that degraded was the Paul Rodgers "Muddy Waters Blues" album.
Funnily enough, we both bought it, the same pressings at the same sort of time although from different places and my copy still looks and plays fine.
I've got a large music CD collection (1000+) which I keep stored in their cases most of the time - since I've ripped all of them, unless I'm spending some time listening on the house hifi, then I generally play the rips rather than the originals. I do have CDs going back to the mid-80s, I've not yet come across one that has degraded to the point of failure but there are a few of my CDs that have silver-coloured backs (printed with black writing) that are starting to go a pale coppery colour around the circumference. They seem to play just as well though. A friend of mine (also a CD and hifi buff) did have a problem with one CD where it was starting to develop pinprick faults across the surface of the coating. Has anyone else ever witnessed a CD failing through "natural" degradation? Now that some of them can be 20+ years old, it's interesting to see how well they stand the ravages of time, even if pretty much unplayed and left in their cases.
Please stop with the posing.
Mac users are the ones out to impress everyone else & Windows users run it because they have to.
So let's just run Linux because we WANT to, without giving a toss who is looking over our shoulders, okay?
You're forgetting - he is one of these emotional American types rather than a stiff-upper-lipped Brit like myself.
In all likelihood, he probably bawled out a John McEnroe-like "YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!!" and threw his mouse at his computer screen.