Speaking practically, this whole argument is irrelevent. Since FileVault is closed-source, there is NO WAY WHATSOEVER that you can PROVE to me that there are no backdoors. There may not be any, but maybe there are. YOU CAN'T PROVE IT EITHER WAY. And if there are, who else besides the user has full and complete access to your data? Apple? NSA? Smart and devious hackerz? If I'm doing business on this machine, putting all my financial data on it, I can't go on faith in a company. I'm not that trusting, and you shouldn't be either. A backdoor takes ONE LINE of code. ONE.
I accept that Apple will never open-source their OS, but how do they expect any *serious* user to TRUST them with this? Your faith in Apple Corporation would have to be absolute and eternal! Look, I wouldn't trust Microsoft in the same situation; it's only fair and logical to use the same standards when dealing with Apple.
Parent may be a troll (definitely is, in my mind), but the point is valid - the mods are extremely biased concerning Apples. See my journal for more. Oh, wait, what was I thinking? You're a troll too, Anonymous Coward. Well, this thread features even worse moderating than the one I used as an example in my journal. Open your eyes and you will see - if you aren't blinded by zealotry.
Also there's a pretty nice discount for government employees (federal, state and local).
I'm "technically" a federal government employee (for the next 3-5 years with good behavior). I make license plates and package Microsoft products, but I can't find a discount structure that applies to *me*. What should I do? And would it be possible for some kind soul to hide an iBook in a cake and hand-deliver it to me?
Also, I *may* be eligible for the student discount. I'm learning a trade in here, but I can't really give more details.
Slashdot used to be a Gnu/Linux haven, where any pro-Linux argument was modded up and any pro-Microsoft argument was immediately attacked and debunked (as many of them deserved to be, I might add, just as SCO's current position seems to be underhanded and hold no water whatsoever). This debunking of the competition is acceptable. Forums are meant to facilitate the open exchange of ideas and opinions, usually with the intent of better informing the participants and arriving at tentative middle-ground conclusions. Evidence that is not backed up with links is usually discarded, or should be.
The personal attacks, however, are not acceptable. They are outside of the realm of good debate and ARE a sign of zealotry and foolishness. Not just Gates/Hitler comparisons, but ESR/gun-toting Psychopath, RMS/dirty Gnu hippie hung up on one word, Ballmer/sweating monkeyboy, etc. These weak tactics are meant to discredit the message or works because the bearer is discredited, and is a cornerstone of PROPAGANDA.
I have noticed that the Slashdot culture has largely been usurped by Mac OSX. The real zealots here are no longer the Linux fans, but the Mac pushers. The linux fans have largely grown up, while the mac pushers have not. They seem to be just getting started. Read any apple.slashdot.org article to see what I mean. Browse at -1 and tell me the moderating is fair. It can't be 100% fair, of course, but on average, the moderation is of a lower quality than other sections of Slashdot, primarily due to many many good posts being modded down for political reasons. The moderators have a SERIOUS bias towards promoting the "Apple Party Line" at the expense of reality. Excellent arguments against the Apple position are effectively being censored by aggressive and intentional negative moderation. It makes me wonder whether Apple has a room filled with astroturfers much like the one Microsoft reportedly has (no link; hearsay), or does their OS just transmit subliminal messages? (again, no link; hearsay). I know, however, that Mac OSX is by far the favored ("sanctified and holy") OS here. If Linux dies, it won't be Microsoft or SCO who kills it, but Apple.
I use and love Apple computers. I think they have good enough qualifications to STAND ON THEIR OWN. If you have faith in Apple's products, you shouldn't have to lie in order to promote them. You shouldn't have to try to discredit those who disagree with you. It's not possible that Apples are the fastest, freest, best networking, most standards-oriented, best GUI, easiest to use, least expensive, coolest, etc. but that is *exactly* what I'd gather from reading Slashdot. This place is a paid advertisement for Macs. Apple's zealous followers REFUSE to believe that they can be second best in ANY area, though historically, they always have been. Zealotry is deceptive, but it's not the Linux fans who are doing it.
Attention Apple Paid Shills: Flame Away and Mod me down. I don't care.
Okay guys, Live from the front line of this historic battle, here's an update:
It's been like 5 hours of just straight on hardcore one-man Slashdotting of their iTunes website, but they just keep on serving the damn songs! I just don't know how they're doing it. Someone must have tipped them off and gave them a chance to bolster their servers...maybe even ONE OF YOU. "Don't trust anyone", my Pastor always said as he chatted with me as he took up collection Sunday morn. I should have listened, but I had long since trained myself to ignore everything he said, just to nod and smile and say, "Praise Jesus". But I should have listened. One of my fellow Slashdotters must have tipped Apple off, because all night long I've been downloading everything from Ozzy to Sabbath, but NOTHING. Once, about 7:15, as I was downloading the complete discography of the Flaming Lips, it slowed a bit for just a second, and I thought I finally had them, but then it went back to normal as if my mind-blowing spending wasn't even phasing them!
That's when I called Chris, my secret weapon. He's a BIG Stones fan, and he started downloading every Stones song ever, one at a time. "Just keep dropping those quarters in the slot machine, Bolt", he said stoically over his crumbling VoIP phone to me, "and this puppies' gonna HAVE to pay out sometime!"
And so we did keep pumping the quarters in that accursed slot machine I like to call the iTunes Music Store, but it never did pay out with a crashing jackpot. Never. Chris fought the good fight, deleting the songs off his hard drive right after downloading them, but it was no use. Our little 400meg drives were filling up faster than we could empty the Recycle Bin. We had lost. So now, in shame, I must come to you with a humiliating request. We're out of funds, our clicking fingers are sore, and our hard drives have filled up and are getting funky (it's time for a format again). We've done all we could do, and now it's YOUR TURN. Help us in this noble quest, in the hour of our greatest need. Please, there are children in Africa who have no music, and some of them don't even HAVE iPods. Do it for them, the children. We need your help to take down this decadent website, this "iTunes Music Store", this brushed metal glory that taunts all the little children of the world with dirt-cheap Pink Floyd and Christina Aquilera tracks. Just a dollar a day can make a real difference. We CAN take this site down. I've also emailed Apple with a request to switch their site over to IIS to make it easier for us, but it doesn't look good (they said "Nuh-uh" and then started laughing, which sounds like a "No" to me). As usual, Apple is insensitive to the demands of their customers (although I did request the cool glowy keyboard in 1997 and they did finally come through with that, and the recording iPod thingy I requested too, and a few changes to OS X were my ideas). Okay, so they usually listen. But not this time. No, not this time. They're playing hardball. And so are we. Give to the fund. Let's take down this site once and for all. I can't do it alone. I need your help.
Please help,
I beg of you
a broken and pathetic hacker named
hackmaster fred
The good publicity Apple's sure to get from this would almost make it worth their while to buy those songs themselves...
...hmm... wait a minute...
No, sorry, my bad. It wasn't Apple. It was me. I admit it. I was the one who bought those songs. I just wanted to see if their servers could withstand a vicious one-man slashdotting...
It can - apparently the iTunes server's not running Windows. But I'll try again tonight, this time with my friend Chris buying the same songs simultaneously. Then I'll get Greg and Dave to help me buy whole albums at a time, and pretty soon, Steve Jobs will crumble in terror and BEG us to stop our vicious assault on their site!
Steve Jobs, I warned you - I've got my VISA, and I'm ready to
take.
you.
down.
You didn't care when I started buying iPod after iPod in an attempt to exhaust your assembly line workers in a one-man iPod Slashdotting. Well this is different. This time, I'm serious and I've upped my VISA limits. Your site is toast. Get ready to rumble!
LOL!!! Too bad you're not logged in, AC - that disclaimer's hilarious. I'd add you to my friends list in a snap so I can be sure to catch your p2p (prison2prison) comedy tour dates.
... since the last I heard, Stereophile Magazine guys was still ranting about the "demonic hell" that is CD-quality sound as opposed to LP's "glorious clarity"!
Well, I guess standards slip as time goes on, I know mine have - I'm HERE aren't I?
On the Mac, I often run six or eight applications at once, including OS 9 and Windows 2000 in Virtual PC. Three open OS's at once plus playing music, downloading files and running updates is an amazing feat. Having a PowerBook has made work fun again.::
BANG! Fired!
It's bad enough I'm on Slashdot multiple times during the day during slumps; if I turn my box into a porn downloading MP3 party machine, I'm SURE there will be objections.... and then my life will be one big permanent slump.
This WON'T stop piracy one bit, we all know that. These business dinosaurs deserve extinction, and the sooner the better.
This WON'T kill the Indy movies, because whether or not it wins an Oscar doesn't matter to 90% of the people who rent movies. Word of mouth is king with Indy movies; it's icing on the cake if one wins an award. It MAY affect how wide the distribution of the movie is, which may hurt. But it will still be sought out due to word of mouth.
Which brings us to point three, and the REAL reason this is all irrelevant, which is that APPLE is going to start selling streaming Quicktime Movies over iTunes for $2 - and then screeners, little video stores, and even the Oscars themselves, will be moot. I'll stream a movie based on the fact that my friends have set up an iTunes Awards show online and have given it 5 iPods or something. And with the crazy online selection, I'll go back and watch 1988's "Wall Street" again, or "Shawshank Redemption", or "Evil Dead 2", rather than watching Ashton Kutcher be a complete ass in some moronic lowest-common-denominator romantic comedy swill that Valenti et al thought would hit the spot of the addlepated masses.
I figured that I could either make a Cowboy Neal joke, or a Natalie Portman hot grits joke; I settled on the Cowboy because "the classics never die".
And I still don't get why they dropped that poll option - just because Chris DiBona quit doesn't mean the new guy can't add in that one random option just for fun.
In my experience, MOST if not ALL of the young people I know DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL NAPSTER IS! I'm not kidding. It was big 5 years ago, but Kazzaa is the only name the teenyboppers know now.
Napster has virtually NO brand name value with the demographic that counts, kids aged 15-25.
As an aside, the same kids knew Nirvana, but had no idea who Alice In Chains or Soundgarten were, and these were headbanging Korn/Limp Bizkit dudes. Sad... Actually, they didn't know who the President of the USA was, or the Prime Minister of Canada, so take heart, the cuts in education are working wonders.
My OPINION, which is irrefutable because it is SOLELY MINE, is that 2000 is superior to XP (and it still SUCKS). Many of the points you made were not valid in cases that occurred around me. As always, the slogan of Microsoft is "Your Mileage May Vary". Nice quality control by your favorite monopoly. And you complain about Linux. Shame shame little troll.
But WHY am I talking to you? You ARE a troll, despite your impotent and desperate protests on your journal. I've read your journal, and your noble crusade to expose the bias and zealotry of the "Slashbots", and it's irrelevant. Your reasons are no justification for your pathetic and uber-patronizing posting history. You're better than a paid Microsoft apologist, you whore yourself for them for free. Nearly every post is flamebait, as you haunt areas known for harboring fans of an operating system, then puke out poisonous bile which cannot seriously be intended to provoke intelligent conversation. You're looking for flames. That makes you a flamer.
When is Bruce Campbell going to get his own topic here? Zoom up to the top of this page, look at the icons they're using: "Movies", "It's funny. Laugh", "Entertainment", *AND* "Media". Bruce Campbell is too awesome to fit in any one topic, just like Beef flavored Cheezy Jello sticks don't fit into any one food group.
What a waste of icons when one "BRUCE CAMPBELL IS GOD" icon would replace all these others!
It's time to RISE UP AND DEMAND A BRUCE CAMPBELL TOPIC!
Yeah, I've tried it, but it didn't sound the same. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but the analog version was really nice, and the digital one sounded kinda "off".... Sadly, it's irrelevant for me now, since my cousins have taken my Fostex to Toronto Canada with them on their trek to become jazz superstars or something.
You should see how cool and gothy Britney Spears sounds at half speed. She should release a half-speed album....
I've recently switched to an all digital setup - kickass M-Audio soundcard, PC for recording, synth, sampler, effects racks, guitars, amps, blah blah blah...
But the best sound I ever got was from my old Fostex 4track. I'd record a riff at double speed on my four-track, then play it back at regular speed. Dropped an octave and half the speed, the sound was so damn rich and warm it was unbelievable.
That's a trick I got from Trent Reznor from NIN, btw.
Slashdot Mirror
I accept that Apple will never open-source their OS, but how do they expect any *serious* user to TRUST them with this? Your faith in Apple Corporation would have to be absolute and eternal! Look, I wouldn't trust Microsoft in the same situation; it's only fair and logical to use the same standards when dealing with Apple.
Parent may be a troll (definitely is, in my mind), but the point is valid - the mods are extremely biased concerning Apples. See my journal for more. Oh, wait, what was I thinking? You're a troll too, Anonymous Coward. Well, this thread features even worse moderating than the one I used as an example in my journal. Open your eyes and you will see - if you aren't blinded by zealotry.
I'm "technically" a federal government employee (for the next 3-5 years with good behavior). I make license plates and package Microsoft products, but I can't find a discount structure that applies to *me*. What should I do? And would it be possible for some kind soul to hide an iBook in a cake and hand-deliver it to me?
Also, I *may* be eligible for the student discount. I'm learning a trade in here, but I can't really give more details.
Correct Translation: I write what I want when I want and don't care. Last I checked, you can't buy a new Porsche with Slashdot karma dollars.
btw, I see YOU'RE protecting your karma like a gutless little troll, correct me if I'm wrong.
The personal attacks, however, are not acceptable. They are outside of the realm of good debate and ARE a sign of zealotry and foolishness. Not just Gates/Hitler comparisons, but ESR/gun-toting Psychopath, RMS/dirty Gnu hippie hung up on one word, Ballmer/sweating monkeyboy, etc. These weak tactics are meant to discredit the message or works because the bearer is discredited, and is a cornerstone of PROPAGANDA.
I have noticed that the Slashdot culture has largely been usurped by Mac OSX. The real zealots here are no longer the Linux fans, but the Mac pushers. The linux fans have largely grown up, while the mac pushers have not. They seem to be just getting started. Read any apple.slashdot.org article to see what I mean. Browse at -1 and tell me the moderating is fair. It can't be 100% fair, of course, but on average, the moderation is of a lower quality than other sections of Slashdot, primarily due to many many good posts being modded down for political reasons. The moderators have a SERIOUS bias towards promoting the "Apple Party Line" at the expense of reality. Excellent arguments against the Apple position are effectively being censored by aggressive and intentional negative moderation. It makes me wonder whether Apple has a room filled with astroturfers much like the one Microsoft reportedly has (no link; hearsay), or does their OS just transmit subliminal messages? (again, no link; hearsay). I know, however, that Mac OSX is by far the favored ("sanctified and holy") OS here. If Linux dies, it won't be Microsoft or SCO who kills it, but Apple.
I use and love Apple computers. I think they have good enough qualifications to STAND ON THEIR OWN. If you have faith in Apple's products, you shouldn't have to lie in order to promote them. You shouldn't have to try to discredit those who disagree with you. It's not possible that Apples are the fastest, freest, best networking, most standards-oriented, best GUI, easiest to use, least expensive, coolest, etc. but that is *exactly* what I'd gather from reading Slashdot. This place is a paid advertisement for Macs. Apple's zealous followers REFUSE to believe that they can be second best in ANY area, though historically, they always have been. Zealotry is deceptive, but it's not the Linux fans who are doing it.
Attention Apple Paid Shills: Flame Away and Mod me down. I don't care.
Yeah, this totally KILLS the discussions on my favorite WWII forum.
It's been like 5 hours of just straight on hardcore one-man Slashdotting of their iTunes website, but they just keep on serving the damn songs! I just don't know how they're doing it. Someone must have tipped them off and gave them a chance to bolster their servers...maybe even ONE OF YOU. "Don't trust anyone", my Pastor always said as he chatted with me as he took up collection Sunday morn. I should have listened, but I had long since trained myself to ignore everything he said, just to nod and smile and say, "Praise Jesus". But I should have listened. One of my fellow Slashdotters must have tipped Apple off, because all night long I've been downloading everything from Ozzy to Sabbath, but NOTHING. Once, about 7:15, as I was downloading the complete discography of the Flaming Lips, it slowed a bit for just a second, and I thought I finally had them, but then it went back to normal as if my mind-blowing spending wasn't even phasing them!
That's when I called Chris, my secret weapon. He's a BIG Stones fan, and he started downloading every Stones song ever, one at a time. "Just keep dropping those quarters in the slot machine, Bolt", he said stoically over his crumbling VoIP phone to me, "and this puppies' gonna HAVE to pay out sometime!"
And so we did keep pumping the quarters in that accursed slot machine I like to call the iTunes Music Store, but it never did pay out with a crashing jackpot. Never. Chris fought the good fight, deleting the songs off his hard drive right after downloading them, but it was no use. Our little 400meg drives were filling up faster than we could empty the Recycle Bin. We had lost. So now, in shame, I must come to you with a humiliating request. We're out of funds, our clicking fingers are sore, and our hard drives have filled up and are getting funky (it's time for a format again). We've done all we could do, and now it's YOUR TURN. Help us in this noble quest, in the hour of our greatest need. Please, there are children in Africa who have no music, and some of them don't even HAVE iPods. Do it for them, the children. We need your help to take down this decadent website, this "iTunes Music Store", this brushed metal glory that taunts all the little children of the world with dirt-cheap Pink Floyd and Christina Aquilera tracks. Just a dollar a day can make a real difference. We CAN take this site down. I've also emailed Apple with a request to switch their site over to IIS to make it easier for us, but it doesn't look good (they said "Nuh-uh" and then started laughing, which sounds like a "No" to me). As usual, Apple is insensitive to the demands of their customers (although I did request the cool glowy keyboard in 1997 and they did finally come through with that, and the recording iPod thingy I requested too, and a few changes to OS X were my ideas). Okay, so they usually listen. But not this time. No, not this time. They're playing hardball. And so are we. Give to the fund. Let's take down this site once and for all. I can't do it alone. I need your help.
Please help,
I beg of you
a broken and pathetic hacker named
hackmaster fred
RIAA's getting 70 cents per song. I googled it, so can you.
No, sorry, my bad. It wasn't Apple. It was me. I admit it. I was the one who bought those songs. I just wanted to see if their servers could withstand a vicious one-man slashdotting...
It can - apparently the iTunes server's not running Windows. But I'll try again tonight, this time with my friend Chris buying the same songs simultaneously. Then I'll get Greg and Dave to help me buy whole albums at a time, and pretty soon, Steve Jobs will crumble in terror and BEG us to stop our vicious assault on their site!
Steve Jobs, I warned you - I've got my VISA, and I'm ready to
take.
you.
down.
You didn't care when I started buying iPod after iPod in an attempt to exhaust your assembly line workers in a one-man iPod Slashdotting. Well this is different. This time, I'm serious and I've upped my VISA limits. Your site is toast. Get ready to rumble!
Signed, your pal
Hackmaster Fred
LOL!!! Too bad you're not logged in, AC - that disclaimer's hilarious. I'd add you to my friends list in a snap so I can be sure to catch your p2p (prison2prison) comedy tour dates.
... since the last I heard, Stereophile Magazine guys was still ranting about the "demonic hell" that is CD-quality sound as opposed to LP's "glorious clarity"!
Well, I guess standards slip as time goes on, I know mine have - I'm HERE aren't I?
just kidding.
On the Mac, I often run six or eight applications at once, including OS 9 and Windows 2000 in Virtual PC. Three open OS's at once plus playing music, downloading files and running updates is an ::
amazing feat. Having a PowerBook has made work fun again.
BANG! Fired!
It's bad enough I'm on Slashdot multiple times during the day during slumps; if I turn my box into a porn downloading MP3 party machine, I'm SURE there will be objections.... and then my life will be one big permanent slump.
... and here's why.
This WON'T stop piracy one bit, we all know that. These business dinosaurs deserve extinction, and the sooner the better.
This WON'T kill the Indy movies, because whether or not it wins an Oscar doesn't matter to 90% of the people who rent movies. Word of mouth is king with Indy movies; it's icing on the cake if one wins an award. It MAY affect how wide the distribution of the movie is, which may hurt. But it will still be sought out due to word of mouth.
Which brings us to point three, and the REAL reason this is all irrelevant, which is that APPLE is going to start selling streaming Quicktime Movies over iTunes for $2 - and then screeners, little video stores, and even the Oscars themselves, will be moot. I'll stream a movie based on the fact that my friends have set up an iTunes Awards show online and have given it 5 iPods or something. And with the crazy online selection, I'll go back and watch 1988's "Wall Street" again, or "Shawshank Redemption", or "Evil Dead 2", rather than watching Ashton Kutcher be a complete ass in some moronic lowest-common-denominator romantic comedy swill that Valenti et al thought would hit the spot of the addlepated masses.
I figured that I could either make a Cowboy Neal joke, or a Natalie Portman hot grits joke; I settled on the Cowboy because "the classics never die".
And I still don't get why they dropped that poll option - just because Chris DiBona quit doesn't mean the new guy can't add in that one random option just for fun.
... where is the "Cowboy Neal" option? THAT'S my favorite in ANY category!
LOL! Good point. My bad.
Napster has virtually NO brand name value with the demographic that counts, kids aged 15-25.
As an aside, the same kids knew Nirvana, but had no idea who Alice In Chains or Soundgarten were, and these were headbanging Korn/Limp Bizkit dudes. Sad... Actually, they didn't know who the President of the USA was, or the Prime Minister of Canada, so take heart, the cuts in education are working wonders.
Your points were lame and refuted by others.
My OPINION, which is irrefutable because it is SOLELY MINE, is that 2000 is superior to XP (and it still SUCKS). Many of the points you made were not valid in cases that occurred around me. As always, the slogan of Microsoft is "Your Mileage May Vary". Nice quality control by your favorite monopoly. And you complain about Linux. Shame shame little troll.
But WHY am I talking to you? You ARE a troll, despite your impotent and desperate protests on your journal. I've read your journal, and your noble crusade to expose the bias and zealotry of the "Slashbots", and it's irrelevant. Your reasons are no justification for your pathetic and uber-patronizing posting history. You're better than a paid Microsoft apologist, you whore yourself for them for free. Nearly every post is flamebait, as you haunt areas known for harboring fans of an operating system, then puke out poisonous bile which cannot seriously be intended to provoke intelligent conversation. You're looking for flames. That makes you a flamer.
Have a nice day, flamer. You are what you eat.
Wow. Nice sense of humor there. I see you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I feel so dirty...
Except that you could hardly call going from Win2000 to WinXP an "upgrade".
When is Bruce Campbell going to get his own topic here? Zoom up to the top of this page, look at the icons they're using: "Movies", "It's funny. Laugh", "Entertainment", *AND* "Media". Bruce Campbell is too awesome to fit in any one topic, just like Beef flavored Cheezy Jello sticks don't fit into any one food group.
What a waste of icons when one "BRUCE CAMPBELL IS GOD" icon would replace all these others!
It's time to RISE UP AND DEMAND A BRUCE CAMPBELL TOPIC!
It deleted itself.
Yeah, I've tried it, but it didn't sound the same. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but the analog version was really nice, and the digital one sounded kinda "off".... Sadly, it's irrelevant for me now, since my cousins have taken my Fostex to Toronto Canada with them on their trek to become jazz superstars or something.
You should see how cool and gothy Britney Spears sounds at half speed. She should release a half-speed album....
I've recently switched to an all digital setup - kickass M-Audio soundcard, PC for recording, synth, sampler, effects racks, guitars, amps, blah blah blah...
But the best sound I ever got was from my old Fostex 4track. I'd record a riff at double speed on my four-track, then play it back at regular speed. Dropped an octave and half the speed, the sound was so damn rich and warm it was unbelievable.
That's a trick I got from Trent Reznor from NIN, btw.