Not in North America, (and eventually, India, Russia, China). The average distance between cities is over 100 miles. At those ranges mass transit is not feasible and people HAVE to drive.
How often do you drive to other cities? The majority of the miles put on my car are from going to and from work, followed by running errands and chores and other stuff around town. I don't care about cutting out long trips because that isn't going to save me much. It's all the little stuff that adds up, and that's where public transportation will help.
I used to build my own PCs... about 10 years ago. Then I grew up, got a life, and stopped spending my personal time fritzing around with hardware. I may work in the software industry, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my free time doing IT work. Give me a Mac any day.
And I guess you must bring in hundreds or dollars an hour to justify that arguement? Spending a few hours of free time getting a PC to run from a pile parts is easily justifiable by me saving hundreds of dollars by doing it, not to mention getting what I wanted in terms of hardware. And as you said, building a PC nowadays is easy - I can go from a bunch of components in their shipping box to installing the OS in less than 2 hours.
I still think the simpliest way to do things is that you get to vote for as many canidates as you want on the ballot. Whoever gets the most votes will win. You can vote for just one canidate (no different than now), or you can vote for several canidates that you like. You can also vote for every other canidate but one if you really dislike a canidate. This system will likely have the effect of voting in more moderate canidates, but I don't really see that as a bad thing.
I usually don't tell them. It's listed right there in the start menu, and most of the time they'll notice it on their own while doing other stuff. Nowadays with ATX and soft off I can also tell them to just hit the button they used to turn the computer on - doesn't get much simplier than that. AT power supplies and hard power switches are so 1996.
Yeah... back in OS9. Ever since 2000, the trash changes to an eject icon when you drag a disk. It hasn't had that "but I don't want to trash my disk" problem in 6 years.
Yeah, but in order to see that icon you have to click and start dragging the disk. If the user didn't think to do that, they'll never see the eject icon.
Well, who knows, who cares, but its a total turn off.
I agree. Macs are pretty slick machines, but I just can't buy into the whole "Cult of Apple" thing. I'd rather just blend into the crowd with my "boring" PC.
Just to play devils advocate here, reviews have been coming around showing as much as a 30% speed increase for common tasks if you install Windows on your Intel mac.
30% faster than what? Running OSX on the same hardware? The new Intel Macs are nothing but standard PC parts in shiny Apple boxes, for running Windows there isn't anything that is going to make them 30% faster than the same hardware in a generic box.
The only people I have seen having trouble with the idea of having to hit the Start button to shutdown the computer are Mac users. I actually never gave it any thought until some Mac user pointed out, and I was like "I guess that is kind of odd."
Of course, it's not the Mac OS doesn't have some oddities that are just as bad, such as dragging a disk to the trash to eject it.
You guys can stop complaining about.99 being too much. It's obviously far out of Apple's hands. I think we should put our hands together than thank Steve for fighting The Man. (And don't stay Steve is The Man... because he is, but he damn well isn't, too)
Just because it's not Apple's fault means that people should complaining about the price? What kind of logic is that? And if it's really the record label's fault as you have implied, that's an even better reason to complain!
This is a big barrier--not impossible, but a big one to get past. The Apple "limited-Administrator" model is vastly preferable to the "Everybody is totally-Administrator with no checks ever" model in Windows. Don't underestimate the efficacy of a simple mechanism like verifying an admin password to do "admin" things. Who's going to put in their Admin password to visit CNN.com? If it pops up at an unexpected time, the user becomes suspicious, and the machine is less likely to be exploited.
Of course, people will get used to having to put in a password to install something, or to change some setting. When a free screensaver wants the admin password so it can install itself and set itself to be the default screensaver (amonst other things), a pop up would not be unexpected, so why would the user get suspecious? Sure, the limit-administrator does throw up a barrier, but done right it won't be hard to get past it.
Choosing to use a Mac is a conscious decision. One of the main reasons people use Macs is because the trojan/virus threat is significantly lower.
Bullshit. There is no shortage of clueless Mac users out there. As a matter of fact, I have seen countless examples here on slashdot where people have advocated getting a Mac as the easy solution to the spyware/virus problem, as opposed to the more difficult solution of actually educating the users. The only reason this works is due to the lack of malware for the Mac, so when said clueless users do stuff they shouldn't like open email attachments or try to download free screen savers, it fails. If and when Mac malware starts showing up, there are going to be no shortage of owned Mac users, believe me.
Windows can't write to an HFS partition, so no matter what is installed under Windows I don't believe it can touch the OSX part of that hard drive.
Windows has FDISK, which can easily destroy a HFS partition. You might be relatively secure from code running on Windows from writing to the filesystem on the HFS partition, but that doesn't mean your data is completely safe.
-Noone- tries to steal my old piece of s**t. And I do not even have an alarm system. And I leave the keys -in- it.
Just wait until you come accross the other type of car thief: The kid who wants to go joy riding and will take whatever he can get started. Most of these kids are known to target old, crappy cars because they are easy to get started and less likely to be missed right away.
That won't always help. Say they come in, and say the computer won't boot. You fire it up, and some virus has trashed the harddrive. They may still try to blame you when you have to tell them "Sorry, looks like all your data is gone."
(Ok, I'll grant you, the Win9x series was a joke, but it's dead now; *please* can we trash MS for things they're doing wrong now, rather than last decade?)
Why not? NTFS may have file permissions, but they don't do a whole lot of good if the default settings for the OS means that the user can read and write to the whole disk. Sure, you can lock down Windows XP if you want to with user accounts and file permissions, but most Windows XP boxes run no different than Windows 95/98/ME.
Sorry, you are wrong. DVI is digital, so as long as you're getting all the bits to the monitor, you'll get a crystal clear picture. The cheap DVI cable's performance will be the same as the Monster cable's performance, and that's simply a fact. But if you want the high quality cable anyway, you'll still pay less than half of what Best Buy wants for the same thing online.
He doesn't want a high end laptop, he just wants an inexpensive Intel Mac laptop. So far, Apple hasn't provided one, though I'm sure Apple's $999 price point isn't going anywhere, so it's only a matter of time.
Actually, I feel sorry for the people who built 754 systems back in the day. It seemed that AMD moved onto Socket 939 pretty quickly after that one.
Though I really feel for anyone who has a Socket 423 Pentium IV system. Very short lived standard (1.3-2.0Ghz), expensive rambus memory, 100Mhz bus ("quad pumped" to 400Mhz), and really odd CPU coolers that screw into the motherboard that are virtually impossible to get replacements for.
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Not in North America, (and eventually, India, Russia, China). The average distance between cities is over 100 miles. At those ranges mass transit is not feasible and people HAVE to drive.
How often do you drive to other cities? The majority of the miles put on my car are from going to and from work, followed by running errands and chores and other stuff around town. I don't care about cutting out long trips because that isn't going to save me much. It's all the little stuff that adds up, and that's where public transportation will help.
I used to build my own PCs... about 10 years ago. Then I grew up, got a life, and stopped spending my personal time fritzing around with hardware. I may work in the software industry, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my free time doing IT work. Give me a Mac any day.
And I guess you must bring in hundreds or dollars an hour to justify that arguement? Spending a few hours of free time getting a PC to run from a pile parts is easily justifiable by me saving hundreds of dollars by doing it, not to mention getting what I wanted in terms of hardware. And as you said, building a PC nowadays is easy - I can go from a bunch of components in their shipping box to installing the OS in less than 2 hours.
My only guess is the guys that actually steal the cars can't afford a truck, but your idea is good.
:)
In which case, they would only have to mess with getting a vehicle started once. Then they would have a tow truck
I still think the simpliest way to do things is that you get to vote for as many canidates as you want on the ballot. Whoever gets the most votes will win. You can vote for just one canidate (no different than now), or you can vote for several canidates that you like. You can also vote for every other canidate but one if you really dislike a canidate. This system will likely have the effect of voting in more moderate canidates, but I don't really see that as a bad thing.
Try teaching non-computer users, particularly older people. "Start to shutdown? Huh?"
I usually don't tell them. It's listed right there in the start menu, and most of the time they'll notice it on their own while doing other stuff. Nowadays with ATX and soft off I can also tell them to just hit the button they used to turn the computer on - doesn't get much simplier than that. AT power supplies and hard power switches are so 1996.
Yeah... back in OS9. Ever since 2000, the trash changes to an eject icon when you drag a disk. It hasn't had that "but I don't want to trash my disk" problem in 6 years.
Yeah, but in order to see that icon you have to click and start dragging the disk. If the user didn't think to do that, they'll never see the eject icon.
Well, who knows, who cares, but its a total turn off.
I agree. Macs are pretty slick machines, but I just can't buy into the whole "Cult of Apple" thing. I'd rather just blend into the crowd with my "boring" PC.
Just to play devils advocate here, reviews have been coming around showing as much as a 30% speed increase for common tasks if you install Windows on your Intel mac.
30% faster than what? Running OSX on the same hardware? The new Intel Macs are nothing but standard PC parts in shiny Apple boxes, for running Windows there isn't anything that is going to make them 30% faster than the same hardware in a generic box.
The only people I have seen having trouble with the idea of having to hit the Start button to shutdown the computer are Mac users. I actually never gave it any thought until some Mac user pointed out, and I was like "I guess that is kind of odd."
Of course, it's not the Mac OS doesn't have some oddities that are just as bad, such as dragging a disk to the trash to eject it.
You guys can stop complaining about .99 being too much. It's obviously far out of Apple's hands. I think we should put our hands together than thank Steve for fighting The Man. (And don't stay Steve is The Man... because he is, but he damn well isn't, too)
Just because it's not Apple's fault means that people should complaining about the price? What kind of logic is that? And if it's really the record label's fault as you have implied, that's an even better reason to complain!
Try chocolate.
This is a big barrier--not impossible, but a big one to get past. The Apple "limited-Administrator" model is vastly preferable to the "Everybody is totally-Administrator with no checks ever" model in Windows. Don't underestimate the efficacy of a simple mechanism like verifying an admin password to do "admin" things. Who's going to put in their Admin password to visit CNN.com? If it pops up at an unexpected time, the user becomes suspicious, and the machine is less likely to be exploited.
Of course, people will get used to having to put in a password to install something, or to change some setting. When a free screensaver wants the admin password so it can install itself and set itself to be the default screensaver (amonst other things), a pop up would not be unexpected, so why would the user get suspecious? Sure, the limit-administrator does throw up a barrier, but done right it won't be hard to get past it.
Mac users are not complacent. Never have been.
Choosing to use a Mac is a conscious decision. One of the main reasons people use Macs is because the trojan/virus threat is significantly lower.
Bullshit. There is no shortage of clueless Mac users out there. As a matter of fact, I have seen countless examples here on slashdot where people have advocated getting a Mac as the easy solution to the spyware/virus problem, as opposed to the more difficult solution of actually educating the users. The only reason this works is due to the lack of malware for the Mac, so when said clueless users do stuff they shouldn't like open email attachments or try to download free screen savers, it fails. If and when Mac malware starts showing up, there are going to be no shortage of owned Mac users, believe me.
Windows can't write to an HFS partition, so no matter what is installed under Windows I don't believe it can touch the OSX part of that hard drive.
Windows has FDISK, which can easily destroy a HFS partition. You might be relatively secure from code running on Windows from writing to the filesystem on the HFS partition, but that doesn't mean your data is completely safe.
-Noone- tries to steal my old piece of s**t. And I do not even have an alarm system. And I leave the keys -in- it.
Just wait until you come accross the other type of car thief: The kid who wants to go joy riding and will take whatever he can get started. Most of these kids are known to target old, crappy cars because they are easy to get started and less likely to be missed right away.
I wonder if it's profitable to register typo's for DVORAK keyboards or speech recognition systems.
Looks like someone may be trying it: http://www.ebaf.com/
I like the biased poll: "Are you STILL using IE???"
That won't always help. Say they come in, and say the computer won't boot. You fire it up, and some virus has trashed the harddrive. They may still try to blame you when you have to tell them "Sorry, looks like all your data is gone."
Sorry, but since when does dual-boot mean "less secure"?
How many viruses are going to be stopped by preventing dual-booting? How many trojans?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
On the other hand, if you can convince a locked down Windows XP box to boot a Knoppix CD, you now own that box.
I think that is what they mean by "more secure".
People aren't going to stop buying non-DRM hardware without a ban.
Just like how people shunned DVD, and instead stuck with their DRM-free VCRs. Oh wait...
If you havn't heard them yet, you are seriously missing out on some of the best music of this decade. I kid you not.
I can't get behind that!
(Ok, I'll grant you, the Win9x series was a joke, but it's dead now; *please* can we trash MS for things they're doing wrong now, rather than last decade?)
Why not? NTFS may have file permissions, but they don't do a whole lot of good if the default settings for the OS means that the user can read and write to the whole disk. Sure, you can lock down Windows XP if you want to with user accounts and file permissions, but most Windows XP boxes run no different than Windows 95/98/ME.
Sorry, you are wrong. DVI is digital, so as long as you're getting all the bits to the monitor, you'll get a crystal clear picture. The cheap DVI cable's performance will be the same as the Monster cable's performance, and that's simply a fact. But if you want the high quality cable anyway, you'll still pay less than half of what Best Buy wants for the same thing online.
He doesn't want a high end laptop, he just wants an inexpensive Intel Mac laptop. So far, Apple hasn't provided one, though I'm sure Apple's $999 price point isn't going anywhere, so it's only a matter of time.
Actually, I feel sorry for the people who built 754 systems back in the day. It seemed that AMD moved onto Socket 939 pretty quickly after that one.
Though I really feel for anyone who has a Socket 423 Pentium IV system. Very short lived standard (1.3-2.0Ghz), expensive rambus memory, 100Mhz bus ("quad pumped" to 400Mhz), and really odd CPU coolers that screw into the motherboard that are virtually impossible to get replacements for.
Er... Apple displays haven't been white for a long time now
Only if you choose to ignore the iMacs.
http://www.apple.com/imac/