Energy density is a big deal because the land close to where people live is expensive, plus you have to deal with the NIMBY-types who don't want 1,000 acre wind farms next to their McMansions. It's true that there is no shortage of empty and cheap land, but the reason that land is empty and cheap is because no one wants to live there. So if you have power plants out in the middle of nowhere, you have the problem of getting the energy to where it will be used. One solution, of course, is to just build more than need and deal with transmission losses. Alternatively, you can use the plants to make hydrogen, and transport the hydrogen around. That's one thing that people don't get about hydrogen - it's not some kind of mythical power source, and it is true that it takes more energy to create it from water than you get from using it. What hydrogen enables us to do is store and transport energy cheaply and cleanly. That's what the big deal is.
We are talking New York here. Buffalo. Northern winters. Gray and cold. Morale sinks when the lights are dimmed.
Atleast in the winter, the energy the indoor lights use isn't completely wasted because it does help heat the building. What I don't get is companies during the summer that still leave everything on while the air conditioning runs at full blast 24/7.
Imagine if this was applied to someone who stole a $1 candy bar: Yes, it only took $1 to replace the candy bar, but we had to spend $10,000 to inventory the whole store.
That's unreasonable because in most cases, the cost of doing the inventory would exceed the value of whatever else the shoplifter could of possibly made off with.
On the other hand, the value of the data on many corporate servers likely greatly exceeds the cost of doing an audit, scanning the servers, restoring from backup "just in case", and what other things might have to be done to make sure they are okay. In which case, doing those things would be a no-brainer, and I don't see why the extra work wouldn't be part of the damages.
How did you reach this conclusion? One doesn't logically follow the other.
I think that was his point. People buy Dells for more reasons than simply because they are cheap, just like people buy Apple for more reasons than them being white.
I bet Michael Dell really hates it every time somebody brings that quote up in conversation and every body starts laughing.
Well, looking at Apple now, it's pretty easy to laugh at Michael Dell's quote. But I will say that when he said it, Apple was in pretty sorry shape and if I ran Apple at the time I would of been looking to jump ship too.
I have always been an x86 guy (though I'll be getting my first mac mini soon), and that is one feature of the Apple boxes that I have always admired. I have looked for an ATX case that copies this features. I have found nothing in all my years of looking.
The late Pentium III era HP Vectra I'm sitting in front of right now does just that. As far as I can tell, It's pretty much a standard ATX case otherwise (some older Vectras are clearly not though). Pretty easy to work on, though not as flashy as the Apple kit. You must not of looked too hard.
Oh, and you'll also find the Mini a bit harder to open than the G4 and G5 towers.
That's not what's coming out of Apple's policy or technical rumor mills, where there are already whispers of various Dell models running 10.4 x86, etc.
Is that the release off of the developer machines, or the release that is intended for the just announced MacTels? It's could be a big difference, being that the developer machines are basically off-the-shelf hardware with all the bits you would expect on generic x86 hardware (like the BIOS). The new MacTels are custom hardware, with EFI. Given that, I would guess that it is probably easier to boot the developer machine version of OSX on generic hardware than the official releases. Given that the developer version will stop being updated when those machines are returned to Apple, it will quickly become out of date and become less and less important. The big question is, will the official version still work (either on its own or hacked) on generic hardware?
Of course, you also have to factor in the value of time and money to people. My guess is that the people who have the money to spend on an expensive, high end portable music player likely have enough money that $1 per track doesn't seem that expensive, and it is worth it to them to avoid the P2P mess. On the other hand, the people running around with the $50 flash/CD based players probably don't have as much money to spend and probably don't mind spending time using P2P programs in order to save a few bucks. Hence, iPod owners tend to have less pirated music.
Using the same arguement, I would guess that Shuffle owners probably pirate more music than owners of the other iPod models.
one click followed by several hours of waiting, yes.
Some of us do have patience. But considering that Apple does seem to like to cater to the instant gratification crowd, I do see where you are coming from.
Besides, you would probably be more suited towards the Yahoo/Napster models: Pay the monthly fee, and all you can eat music. That way you don't actually have to buy that awful John Mayer track she likes.
Honestly, I like WMP...6.4. It comes with XP but you have to go to the program folder to even find it. Then install some codec pack and you're all set.
You might like Media Player Classic, which is basically an open source rewrite of WMP 6.4. It can play a wide variety of files, including ones that you have a codec installed for but other players like Winamp and Zoom player still like to choke on. Media Player Classic and VLC are two must-have programs for any Windows user if you ask me.
Okay, you tell me what video format sites should adopt that: 1. streams 2. has affordable, easy-to-use authoring tools available 3. has ubiquitous browser support 4. is not a dumbass proprietary format
I'll wait.
I don't know of any that can even do 1-3, let alone all four.
Unfortunately, Apple isn't a big fan of bloat. While OO 2 has come a long way over 1, it's still huge and unsightly.
Bloated, huge and unsightly? You mean like iTunes?
In all seriousness, I don't see OpenOffice as an Apple product anytime soon. It's just too complex, ugly, and kitchen-sink like. Maybe something a bit more lightweight like KOffice. Maybe.
What the heck is a PCI slot useful for these days?
I dunno. Better sound card? Firewire card? USB card? 2nd ethernet card? GPIB card? SCSI card? TV Tuner? Raid card? SATA card? Another video card (admittedly, PCI video kind of sucks nowadays, nevertheless, budget PCI video cards do exist). There are lots of things you can do with just a PCI slot. Many popular PCI cards are not going to benefit from PCI-Express anyway. And besides, even one PCI slot is infinently better than nothings.
You actually said that Apple's high-end machines include expansion slots. How does the xistence of an expansion slot on a crappy Dell make the G5 tower more difficult to upgrade? Who is going to upgrade a machine except high-end users, anyway?
Actually, my point was more that something PC users take for granted on even the most basic, stripped down PC doesn't exist on Apple except for the high end ($2000+ machines).
Upgrades? I dunno, I've installed many USB2.0 cards into older Pentium II, Pentium III, and early P4 class machines - which is a useful addition to any computer with the older USB1.1. Kind of nice to be able to do that, and not end up screwed like all those Apple users with Firewire 400 and USB 1.1 non-upgradable Macs when Apple went USB 2.0 only with the newer iPod. Raid cards and extra ethernet cards can turn that old PC into a fileserver or a router. A cheap PCI video card can add dual head (something you don't get on the iMac due to Apple intentionally crippling its video) or be an easy upgrade to those cheap ass Dells to get them to play games.
A cheap IDE/RAID card in an older computer will also make a great file server with a bunch of drives.
Fine with me. Not sure why you want to sacrifice quality to make some marginal cost savings (which might not even exist) - but whatever floats your boat.
Because I can build a better computer, paying for just what I want in it, for less money. Not everyone who builds their own buys the cheapest shit they can find on pricewatch, you know.
Why wouldn't you want to dual boot? Why would you rather spend an extra $400 for a worse computer than the one you already have?
Because dual booting is a pain. Hence my dual boot machines (other than ones with multiple OSes for testing purposes) tend to get booted into the most useful OS most of the time. Sadly, for desktop machines, that seems to be Windows. For servers and the like, it would be Linux of course, but servers tend to not be dual boot machines anyway.
This could be bad for Apple. If OSX can't do everything the user needs, so they install Windows - which will do the things they need it to do, but at the same time will still do everything they do in OSX (perhaps not as well, but good enough), it could cause quite a few people to "switch" to Windows in the sense that they would be spending more time in Windows than OSX.
Okay: Apple iMac is $1700. 20" widescreen monitors go for $400 each on Newegg (holy crap that's cheap)
Now, we have spent $800. We have $900 left to build two computers. Okay...
Motherboard: $80 Chip: $120 Ram: $70 Case & Power supply: $75 Video card: $60 Harddrive: $50 DVD-RW: $40 Case fan: $5
That should get me a Pentium 4 system (2.4-2.8Ghz), name brand motherboard, 1GB ram, a nice power supply and a somewhat cheesy but servicable case, a budget dual head video card, a 80-120GB drive, and the DVD burner. Yeah, I did go a bit over the budget (by about $50 each), and these systems certainly aren't going to be as powerful as the iMac, but the original poster said "nice Intel system" and not "an Intel system just like the iMac". And I would consider a system like this "nice" as in it is fast, inexpensive, expandable, and reliable. And I have two of them.
Macs easy to upgrade? Yeah right. You're talking about a computer company that doesn't include expansion slots AT ALL except in their high end machines. Even the crappiest low end Dell comes with atleast a free PCI slot. You're also talking about the company that currently sells the PowerMac G5 is a rather large case, but only has room for one more harddrive. And while your G4 tower may have easy to replace harddrives, I'd like to see you upgrade the processor or replace a faulty motherboard without spending a lot of money. I think I'll stick with my PC built from inexpensive standard parts that can are sold everywhere.
For $100 more, I'll take the Apple every time if it means I'll be able to fetch more when (and if) I decide to sell it.
I wouldn't count on that anymore. Sure, the resale value of used Macs may still remain high, but I think a used Intel Mac for hundreds of dollars could be a pretty hard sell if the same used Intel PC can be had for free or very cheap.
As far as I know with Virtual PC, you won't get any accelerated video (as the emulated PC doesn't have access to the fancy features of the video card). That pretty much means you're going to have boot Windows if you want to play games.
I think he's making the same point you are. With a joystick or video game controller, it would be much easier to take the car to it's limits (full throttle, etc.) with a flick of the wrist. Hence people are probably going to do things like steer harder and brake faster when driving one these cars, as opposed to a standard car where you have to stomp on the brakes and really crank the wheel to do the same things.
I have no doubt that the camera would continue to work for another 50 years. But it won't be USABLE for more than about 10 at the outside, because you won't be able to get the film developed, except by the same weird hobbiests hanging out in espresso shops in NYC that will develop daguerrotypes for you these days.
I'm sure the artists and hobbiests will keep film and developing services in business until the end of time. You just won't be able to get your film developed at Walmart anymore.
But no wireless, just seems strange (and less useful) to me in this day and age....
Even stranger is that the iBooks they are modifying come with wireless standard. Somehow they must break the wireless when they do their modifications (maybe they have to cover up the antenna)?
Only problem with that is that the 1.8Ghz G5 dates from mid 2004. The 2.6Ghz P4 was released in August 2002. Apple has been lagging behind Intel for quite a while, but that didn't stop Apple from releasing all kinds of benchmarks showing their systems as faster.
Lesson to be learned: Don't believe ANY benchmarks released by a hardware manufacturer. Apple's claims of "4x faster" for the new Intel Macs is total bullshit too.
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Energy density is a big deal because the land close to where people live is expensive, plus you have to deal with the NIMBY-types who don't want 1,000 acre wind farms next to their McMansions. It's true that there is no shortage of empty and cheap land, but the reason that land is empty and cheap is because no one wants to live there. So if you have power plants out in the middle of nowhere, you have the problem of getting the energy to where it will be used. One solution, of course, is to just build more than need and deal with transmission losses. Alternatively, you can use the plants to make hydrogen, and transport the hydrogen around. That's one thing that people don't get about hydrogen - it's not some kind of mythical power source, and it is true that it takes more energy to create it from water than you get from using it. What hydrogen enables us to do is store and transport energy cheaply and cleanly. That's what the big deal is.
We are talking New York here. Buffalo. Northern winters. Gray and cold. Morale sinks when the lights are dimmed.
Atleast in the winter, the energy the indoor lights use isn't completely wasted because it does help heat the building. What I don't get is companies during the summer that still leave everything on while the air conditioning runs at full blast 24/7.
Imagine if this was applied to someone who stole a $1 candy bar: Yes, it only took $1 to replace the candy bar, but we had to spend $10,000 to inventory the whole store.
That's unreasonable because in most cases, the cost of doing the inventory would exceed the value of whatever else the shoplifter could of possibly made off with.
On the other hand, the value of the data on many corporate servers likely greatly exceeds the cost of doing an audit, scanning the servers, restoring from backup "just in case", and what other things might have to be done to make sure they are okay. In which case, doing those things would be a no-brainer, and I don't see why the extra work wouldn't be part of the damages.
How did you reach this conclusion? One doesn't logically follow the other.
I think that was his point. People buy Dells for more reasons than simply because they are cheap, just like people buy Apple for more reasons than them being white.
I bet Michael Dell really hates it every time somebody brings that quote up in conversation and every body starts laughing.
Well, looking at Apple now, it's pretty easy to laugh at Michael Dell's quote. But I will say that when he said it, Apple was in pretty sorry shape and if I ran Apple at the time I would of been looking to jump ship too.
I have always been an x86 guy (though I'll be getting my first mac mini soon), and that is one feature of the Apple boxes that I have always admired. I have looked for an ATX case that copies this features. I have found nothing in all my years of looking.
The late Pentium III era HP Vectra I'm sitting in front of right now does just that. As far as I can tell, It's pretty much a standard ATX case otherwise (some older Vectras are clearly not though). Pretty easy to work on, though not as flashy as the Apple kit. You must not of looked too hard.
Oh, and you'll also find the Mini a bit harder to open than the G4 and G5 towers.
...why do we then use them ?
Simple really. Because while they don't really excel at any of those categories, they are "good enough" in most of them.
That's not what's coming out of Apple's policy or technical rumor mills, where there are already whispers of various Dell models running 10.4 x86, etc.
Is that the release off of the developer machines, or the release that is intended for the just announced MacTels? It's could be a big difference, being that the developer machines are basically off-the-shelf hardware with all the bits you would expect on generic x86 hardware (like the BIOS). The new MacTels are custom hardware, with EFI. Given that, I would guess that it is probably easier to boot the developer machine version of OSX on generic hardware than the official releases. Given that the developer version will stop being updated when those machines are returned to Apple, it will quickly become out of date and become less and less important. The big question is, will the official version still work (either on its own or hacked) on generic hardware?
Of course, you also have to factor in the value of time and money to people. My guess is that the people who have the money to spend on an expensive, high end portable music player likely have enough money that $1 per track doesn't seem that expensive, and it is worth it to them to avoid the P2P mess. On the other hand, the people running around with the $50 flash/CD based players probably don't have as much money to spend and probably don't mind spending time using P2P programs in order to save a few bucks. Hence, iPod owners tend to have less pirated music.
Using the same arguement, I would guess that Shuffle owners probably pirate more music than owners of the other iPod models.
one click followed by several hours of waiting, yes.
Some of us do have patience. But considering that Apple does seem to like to cater to the instant gratification crowd, I do see where you are coming from.
Besides, you would probably be more suited towards the Yahoo/Napster models: Pay the monthly fee, and all you can eat music. That way you don't actually have to buy that awful John Mayer track she likes.
Honestly, I like WMP...6.4. It comes with XP but you have to go to the program folder to even find it. Then install some codec pack and you're all set.
You might like Media Player Classic, which is basically an open source rewrite of WMP 6.4. It can play a wide variety of files, including ones that you have a codec installed for but other players like Winamp and Zoom player still like to choke on. Media Player Classic and VLC are two must-have programs for any Windows user if you ask me.
Okay, you tell me what video format sites should adopt that:
1. streams
2. has affordable, easy-to-use authoring tools available
3. has ubiquitous browser support
4. is not a dumbass proprietary format
I'll wait.
I don't know of any that can even do 1-3, let alone all four.
Unfortunately, Apple isn't a big fan of bloat. While OO 2 has come a long way over 1, it's still huge and unsightly.
Bloated, huge and unsightly? You mean like iTunes?
In all seriousness, I don't see OpenOffice as an Apple product anytime soon. It's just too complex, ugly, and kitchen-sink like. Maybe something a bit more lightweight like KOffice. Maybe.
You could of course try one of the free alternative players that do give you full screen:
I think you missed one: Windows Media Player for Mac. Sure, not my first choice either, but it does work.
What the heck is a PCI slot useful for these days?
I dunno. Better sound card? Firewire card? USB card? 2nd ethernet card? GPIB card? SCSI card? TV Tuner? Raid card? SATA card? Another video card (admittedly, PCI video kind of sucks nowadays, nevertheless, budget PCI video cards do exist). There are lots of things you can do with just a PCI slot. Many popular PCI cards are not going to benefit from PCI-Express anyway. And besides, even one PCI slot is infinently better than nothings.
You actually said that Apple's high-end machines include expansion slots. How does the xistence of an expansion slot on a crappy Dell make the G5 tower more difficult to upgrade? Who is going to upgrade a machine except high-end users, anyway?
Actually, my point was more that something PC users take for granted on even the most basic, stripped down PC doesn't exist on Apple except for the high end ($2000+ machines).
Upgrades? I dunno, I've installed many USB2.0 cards into older Pentium II, Pentium III, and early P4 class machines - which is a useful addition to any computer with the older USB1.1. Kind of nice to be able to do that, and not end up screwed like all those Apple users with Firewire 400 and USB 1.1 non-upgradable Macs when Apple went USB 2.0 only with the newer iPod. Raid cards and extra ethernet cards can turn that old PC into a fileserver or a router. A cheap PCI video card can add dual head (something you don't get on the iMac due to Apple intentionally crippling its video) or be an easy upgrade to those cheap ass Dells to get them to play games.
A cheap IDE/RAID card in an older computer will also make a great file server with a bunch of drives.
Fine with me. Not sure why you want to sacrifice quality to make some marginal cost savings (which might not even exist) - but whatever floats your boat.
Because I can build a better computer, paying for just what I want in it, for less money. Not everyone who builds their own buys the cheapest shit they can find on pricewatch, you know.
Why wouldn't you want to dual boot? Why would you rather spend an extra $400 for a worse computer than the one you already have?
Because dual booting is a pain. Hence my dual boot machines (other than ones with multiple OSes for testing purposes) tend to get booted into the most useful OS most of the time. Sadly, for desktop machines, that seems to be Windows. For servers and the like, it would be Linux of course, but servers tend to not be dual boot machines anyway.
This could be bad for Apple. If OSX can't do everything the user needs, so they install Windows - which will do the things they need it to do, but at the same time will still do everything they do in OSX (perhaps not as well, but good enough), it could cause quite a few people to "switch" to Windows in the sense that they would be spending more time in Windows than OSX.
Okay: Apple iMac is $1700. 20" widescreen monitors go for $400 each on Newegg (holy crap that's cheap)
Now, we have spent $800. We have $900 left to build two computers. Okay...
Motherboard: $80
Chip: $120
Ram: $70
Case & Power supply: $75
Video card: $60
Harddrive: $50
DVD-RW: $40
Case fan: $5
That should get me a Pentium 4 system (2.4-2.8Ghz), name brand motherboard, 1GB ram, a nice power supply and a somewhat cheesy but servicable case, a budget dual head video card, a 80-120GB drive, and the DVD burner. Yeah, I did go a bit over the budget (by about $50 each), and these systems certainly aren't going to be as powerful as the iMac, but the original poster said "nice Intel system" and not "an Intel system just like the iMac". And I would consider a system like this "nice" as in it is fast, inexpensive, expandable, and reliable. And I have two of them.
Macs easy to upgrade? Yeah right. You're talking about a computer company that doesn't include expansion slots AT ALL except in their high end machines. Even the crappiest low end Dell comes with atleast a free PCI slot. You're also talking about the company that currently sells the PowerMac G5 is a rather large case, but only has room for one more harddrive. And while your G4 tower may have easy to replace harddrives, I'd like to see you upgrade the processor or replace a faulty motherboard without spending a lot of money. I think I'll stick with my PC built from inexpensive standard parts that can are sold everywhere.
For $100 more, I'll take the Apple every time if it means I'll be able to fetch more when (and if) I decide to sell it.
I wouldn't count on that anymore. Sure, the resale value of used Macs may still remain high, but I think a used Intel Mac for hundreds of dollars could be a pretty hard sell if the same used Intel PC can be had for free or very cheap.
As far as I know with Virtual PC, you won't get any accelerated video (as the emulated PC doesn't have access to the fancy features of the video card). That pretty much means you're going to have boot Windows if you want to play games.
I think he's making the same point you are. With a joystick or video game controller, it would be much easier to take the car to it's limits (full throttle, etc.) with a flick of the wrist. Hence people are probably going to do things like steer harder and brake faster when driving one these cars, as opposed to a standard car where you have to stomp on the brakes and really crank the wheel to do the same things.
I have no doubt that the camera would continue to work for another 50 years. But it won't be USABLE for more than about 10 at the outside, because you won't be able to get the film developed, except by the same weird hobbiests hanging out in espresso shops in NYC that will develop daguerrotypes for you these days.
I'm sure the artists and hobbiests will keep film and developing services in business until the end of time. You just won't be able to get your film developed at Walmart anymore.
But no wireless, just seems strange (and less useful) to me in this day and age....
Even stranger is that the iBooks they are modifying come with wireless standard. Somehow they must break the wireless when they do their modifications (maybe they have to cover up the antenna)?
No, because it was faster than a 2.6 GHz P4
Only problem with that is that the 1.8Ghz G5 dates from mid 2004. The 2.6Ghz P4 was released in August 2002. Apple has been lagging behind Intel for quite a while, but that didn't stop Apple from releasing all kinds of benchmarks showing their systems as faster.
Lesson to be learned: Don't believe ANY benchmarks released by a hardware manufacturer. Apple's claims of "4x faster" for the new Intel Macs is total bullshit too.
yet I can't find an external LCD screen smaller than 21" that offers that resolution
There are 20" and 20.1" screens that are 1600x1200 resolution. They are getting harder to find though, as it seems that widescreen is taking over.