>...but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied
That's garbage. If you had any proof that the items were not unsolicited (you should've had them faxing in requests for service, not calling them in) then you aren't liable.
Whose garbage it is, I don't know. The judge in a small town is often pretty close friends with all the lawyers...
...and assume that what this gentleman (?) was talking about was a *verbal* fight and not an actual fisticuffs fight.
If so, then it is an interesting point. Should one be fired for forcefully expressing one's opinions? REALLY?
I've been in that situation before: I joined a company as a contract employee (after being out of work for over a year) a little less than a year ago. I was only there for a little under three weeks.
Just before the war in Iraq started, in response to someone's assertion that the rest of the world would back us no matter what they said now, I said that America was currently the most globally feared nation since Nazi Germany. Which, if you listen to non-US sources of news, sure sounds like it was true, is true, and is pretty much going to stay true for the forseeable future.
One of my coworkers took issue with this, telling me (rather loudly) that if I thought that America was just as bad as Nazi Germany, maybe I should move to Iraq so I could get killed when the US bombed 'those fuckers' back to the stone age, or words to that effect. I told him to stop twisting my words, perhaps more loudly than I should have but not as loudly as he did. Then I got up and left the table.
Two days later I had my walking papers. My boss mentioned an 'inability to get along with other workers' as a primary reason. He didn't come out and cite the incident in question, but my team lead did, off the record, saying, "I don't think you should be fired for this but maybe you should watch your mouth at your next job." And then some mumble about everybody having to pull together in wartime and that criticizing the government was pretty unpatriotic. Which is to say, he thought that I was an evil bastard too, he just didn't think that was a firing offense.
Did I mention that this was a publicly traded company? So, really, firing me because of my ideology is ultimately bad for the company, and therefore bad for the shareholders, who of course have no say in this sort of thing. But, in this state (an 'employment at will' state), it is mostly sort of largely legal. Good? Bad? Discuss.
Now, if the above gentleman is talking about a knock-down drag-out fisticuffs fight, then frankly, I'd be the first to show him the door. Although, to be fair, whether the other person started it, and whether both were fired or just one, does play a role in the question as well.
> Terrible. I defiantly would not want my wife to have to ware an abayah just so that we could make "very very good > money" (generally, $120,000 and up, plus signing bonus.).
That's hysterical! So basically, you'd say, 'Honey, from now on you're wearing an abayah so that I can get loads of money!'
See? There ARE some non-religious people who think treating their women like chattel is okay, as long as it is lucrative!
> Oh, the horror. Be polite? Gracious? These people are animals to demand that of foreign guests!
That's right. Because, as everybody with a conscience knows, politely and graciously agreeing with a system of beliefs that encourages the treatment of women as chattel, and going there and helping perpetuate such a system (by contributing to their economic base, etc) is frankly a poor idea, unless you actually do agree with it.
In fact, in my opinion, the only person dramatically worse than the people who believe that this is how women should be treated are the people who don't really believe that, but are so apathetic that they sell what few convictions at the door and allow these people to treat 'their' women this way.
Frankly, I see it as an issue like Apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps you thought Apartheid was great as long as you could make money from it. In that case, I despise you, but it's not like you could possibly care about that. But in any case, perhaps you can at least grasp, with that parallel, why some of us wouldn't go for a chance at a lot of money here.
> You think they're just like us huh? Did the Americans have kamakazi pilots? Suicide bombers?
You're right. Having Timothy McVeigh (sp?) is infinitely better than having a suicide bomber, because after he's killed dozens of people, WE get to kill him back!
> On the other hand, have you ever read slashdot? Look at all the anti-Indian hysteria in any thread about H1-B or off > shoring. It's the same unthinking "us vs. them, they're taking our jobs" attitude that all racism is borne out of. > Maybe they won't take the final step to true racism (i.e. anyone of Indian decent == bad), but it's just as bad (any > Indian == bad job stealer).
What a hideous argument! I don't like having my job exported to India, and therefore I'm a racist? Maybe in some bizarro conservative-world, but not here.
I think that people outside of Sweden should have the same opportunities as those in Sweden. I don't think that the Swedes should be dragged down to the level of the third world.
(I used to say this about the United States, where I live. Since real wage growth for 90% of the people in the US appears to be a thing of the past (and in fact real wages for 90% of the population are going down, it's just that the top 10% are going up fast enough to make the numbers come out positive), and since the United States's numbers on things like poverty, infant mortality, literacy, health care, and public assistance are rapidly devolving toward those of some of the more advanced third world countries, I'd now prefer the US's standard of living were brought UP to that of, say, Sweden.)
So clearly I'm a racist, and hate Indians, because I don't think that I want to lose my job to someone who is willing to work for 1/5 my paycheck -- whether they are American or Indian.
Uh huh.
It is, however, a novel argument. I'd say that the American right wing should start using it, except that anything they say about racism tends to boomerang back on them (think about a certain senator's mixed-race bastard child, for example). They're probably better off just denying that it's a problem in any way.
Well, it's nice to know that there aren't any Arabs who hate Jews. I'll sleep a lot better now that I know such an authority as yourself has declared the Arab world free of any such sentiments.
Actually, of course, if you look at any semi-reputable news organization (and by this I mean some news organizations in Europe, because anything in the US, Israel, or most of the Arab world is just organized propoganda) the prejudice of Arabs against Jews, and Jews against Arabs, is quite marked. And equally unfortunate (and unfair) on both sides.
> A racist state set up by terrorists and supported by racists.
There are elements of truth and falsehood in this, as in most statements that are made by fanatics. With most fanatics, the elements of falsehood greatly outweigh the elements of truth. I won't presume to judge in this particular case.
I also except statements made by people like Rush Limbaugh, which, as often as not, actually contain no element of truth what so ever. ("Styrofoam is biodegradable!")
> EVERYONE should hate Israel, just as they shouldn't hate Jews.
I'm always delighted to be told who to hate.
However, I in general like to not actually hate anyone. I know this makes me a lousy American, as well as someone committing the fundamental solicism of disagreeing with you, Mr. Partridge, but I've always found that hating tendes to lead to suffering. On both sides.
But hey, if that's what you're looking for, you have fun.
Quite right... Microsoft isn't a 'monoploy', it has dozens of ploys. All of them designed to destroy the competition in the most direct way possible, while not actually out-competing them in any normal sense of the phrase. And, of course, their most useful ploys all have to do with them taking advantage of their monopoly position in the marketplace.
> None of you whining geeks cared one whit about the livelihoods of the Detroit automakers, American tailors, or > consumer electronics while all THAT was shipped overseas, but now that it might actually affect YOU, it's time > to take a stand and put a stop to it, right?
Why, look, it's mister tar-them-all-with-the-same-brush! Can I be on your team? I bet you win a lot of arguments.
Actually, I am and always have been leery of shipping jobs overseas. I've tried to buy American-made products when I can, because I believe that this country should have a manufacturing base. I've written letters to congressmen since I was under legal voting age.
And now, even though I stood up for other people, it looks like the majority of the tech industry is going to be offshored and I'm going to be called a hypocrite and all sorts of other things for saying that maybe it would be a good idea if the US ended up with some jobs for its populace.
Hooray.
As for you, I'm guessing that you have a secure job (or perhaps are simply independently weathy, probably from money from some startup that bilked the public shareholders and self-destructed) and therefore can afford to feel superior to all those people out there who are poised to be screwed.
So who is the hypocrite? We'll find out when YOUR livlihood is threatened.
My workplace has about 15 Dell Latitude L400s. We got the three year extended warrantee on these things, and let me tell you, it's been well worth it. I believe that 8 of them have had motherboard replacements, 2 of them more than once. The fans have been swapped on every single one. The hard drives have been replaced on at least 7, and that's not counting the ones where people got larger hard drives so it's not on the original hard drive anyway.
There isn't a single week that goes by that I don't have to deal with one of these things shutting down, restarting spontaneously, overheating, making enormous amounts of hideous noise, or basically being contrary.
You know what? I can't find a single angry web site telling people not to buy Dells because of these Latitude L400s. I certainly can't find any lawsuits.
But since it's Apple, people expect the hardware to be absolutely perfect. And when it's not, they expect out of warrantee service for free. ('This product is warranteed against manufacturing defects for the period of one year'. Not 'this product is warranteed against manufacturing defects forever, and for any old way you can fuck it up including dropping it six feet onto concrete for the period of one year'.)
I honestly don't understand it. Are Apple fanatics really just that much more unrealistic than people who buy Windows machines? I mean, I'm a big Apple fan, even worked for them for a while, but I don't expect Apple's stuff to be perfect. And, from my experience, it's definitely better than the alternatives already.
> What you are trying to say is that regular computer users or nerds or geeks or everything not in the top 1% of the > population aren't gay enough for a Mac, right?
So what you're trying to say is that only the top 1% of the population is gay, right? Which makes all gay people better than you.
I'm not sure about the 1% figure, but I sure do agree that all the gay people I've met are better than you.
If I weren't familiar with how Apple is working, I would have been completely taken in by your bundle of speculation.
> The updates to GCC from Apple don't also reflect the updates that have been made internally to GCC within > Apple. Those updates always trickle down after thorough testing and SQA bug flushings.
You're wrong. Internal Apple developers work with pretty much the same dev tools that people outside of Apple do. At most, they're one set ahead, but even that is rare.
> Unless Apple Engineering has done a 180 degree on this than my comments are moot.
Nope, because as of two years ago your comments were just as wrong as they are now.
> Such would increase costs. Engineering does not want to be dependent upon the time schedules of IBM for the > Compiler, not to mention the politics/business issues involved with Co-licensing and thus increasing the cost of > ownership passed down to the consumer.
They, of course, would not be. In fact, during the MacOS 9 and before days, everything was built using XLC, and once they had a good version, they didn't care when it was updated.
> Now that work has blossomed expect more time spent on making sure if this PowerPC compiler from IBM can reduce > overhead by 50% you can bet GCC will get this as well.
Impossible, and if you knew anything about the situation you'd know why. IBM has quite a number of patents on optimizations of code, and they license a lot more. These could potentially be licensed by Apple, but they most certainly couldn't be used in GCC. This is why gcc is still significantly slower than Apple's own MrC compiler, even after several years of development.
> What would be a big boost in performance would be the eventual EOL (End of Life) support for Classic and Carbon > which means switching to a pure Cocoa environment that supports C/C++/Java/ObjC/ObjC++ and Fortran 77/Ada 95, etc.,.
And, of course, this is garbage too. Removing classic and carbon support would only be a major speed boost if the OS were hideously badly designed, which it's not. However, it might well reduce the memory footprint. But with a gig of RAM hovering around $200, I'd much rather keep classic and carbon in there.
Plus, of course, Carbon is just as valid an API, and just as efficient as well, as Cocoa. Cocoa is much nicer from a developer's point of view, but speed-wise they're not much different, and there are some things that are a lot harder to do in Cocoa than they are in Carbon.
> If you notice O'Reilly is publishing more literature on Cocoa and less on Carbon. Carbon is just a Transitional API. > How long that transition will be in effect only Apple knows.
I'll give you a hint. Apple had a transitional API included in OpenTransport for legacy MacTCP applications which was supposed to go away sometime in MacOS 7-land. As of MacOS 9.2, it's still there.
And that's even assuming you grant that Carbon is some sort of 'transitional' thing. Which it's not.
> The biggest gripe people how about ObjC is the syntax. Ironic since it is quite logical and grammatically more > readable than C++ let alone Java.
Wow. Something I agree with. Although I personally find Java a lot more readable than C++.
> In the end whether or not GCC becomes as fast as XLC is not what will determine the visibility of OS X. Its compelling > third party applications that make equal quality as Apple.
Um. I have the feeling I would disagree, if I knew what you were trying to say.
Anyway. Stop spreading compost when you don't know what you're talking about.
I bought an eBags Downloader Laptop Backpack not long ago (for about $35) and I couldn't be happier. With a 5-lb laptop, and a total of 10 pounds of other stuff in it, I walk a total of 4 miles to and from work. It has all the pockets you'll ever need, the laptop area is well-enough padded that dropping it onto concrete (accidentally) didn't cause me a moment's concern, and I can carry it 4 miles a day at a brisk walk with 15 pounds of stuff in it and not even notice any shoulder or back strain, and all without a waist belt.
Basically, if you are looking for a laptop bag, and you don't *mind* it being a laptop, this is a beautiful thing.
Go to www.ebags.com and search for 'downloader laptop backpack'. I'd give you the URL, but it's longer than my arm.
Yes. If the US thinks that every other country in the world should obey it in all ways at all times, other countries should respect it and get on with it. Or else.
I mean, really. Everyone knows that forcing other people/organizations/countries to do what you want using threats, economic pressure, and rhetoric is the best way to handle interpersonal/international relationships. If you're stronger than everyone else, you should beat them up and take their money.
Well, if you think about needing to absolutely ensure that an audio stream gets a certain number of processor cycles and never gets swapped out no matter what, and the video stream can't have its priority downgraded after hogging the processor for a while (which is what normally happens to a process in the MacOS X multitasking model when it hogs too many resources) and all sorts of other fun stuff......then yes, actually, you DO have to love it. Because it works better that way.
The hard drive alone in the iPod (ALL models) costs more than $100.
You're welcome to wait. As the hard drives get larger, the iPod's capacity will get larger for a while. When Apple decides it's gotten big enough, then the hard drive prices will probably come down, and then the iPod price will come down.
Saying that Apple could sell iPods for $75 -- ASSUMING that Apple could sell iPods for $75 -- is just the usual absolute assumption that Apple is always ripping off all of its customers, brought to such a level that you don't even bother to think before you employ the assumption. I guess that's fine; it's certainly the MO of a lot of Apple-bashers.
It's not because they are peace-loving (France doesn't exactly qualify, historically), and it doesn't even have much to do with them not supporting the war in Iraq, though that made a good litmus test.
Basically, the current US administration wants to hurt, as badly as is conveniently possible, and as often as is conveniently possible, any county that does not cooperate fully with the whims of the US government. Regardless of the convictions and ideals of the populace or the government.
So, since France's people overwhelmingly did not want to be a party to the war in Iraq, and because France's government actually listened to its people, instead of listening primarily to the US and only secondarily to its people, it is clear that France is not sufficiently in thrall to the US, and therefor must be punished.
Yes, I bet they do have a few of those. However, given that at least until six months ago (I have no data for time since then) the Apple Stores all restored their systems to prestine state by plugging an iPod into them, booting off of it, and then restoring the drive from an image on the iPod, I wouldn't take this too seriously.
About 15 years ago, I ran into a problem with strcat stomping all over my variables, and I thought, 'hunh, why didn't I use strncat instead?' And so I used strncat, and have every single time for every program I've ever written since then. And, aside from one time when I accidentally made the array size 2 instead of size 20, I haven't had that particular problem again.
I can imagine if someone were doing a major profiling job, and strcat were 10x faster than strncat and were inside the inner loop of the bottleneck, he might want to use strcat. But in that case, it implies enough attention to the actual code that he'd presumably know how to check for overflows beforehand.
But aside from that, why in the world would anyone with half a brain use strcat when strncat is available? Really... I'm asking. Is there actually some reason?
> You and a band of other gentlemen are though: you seem to have some unsupported notion that violation of laws > regarding the temporary monopoly of ideas is somehow equivalent to stealing real property.
Well, no, actually. And I don't think that an object that makes a loud noise when you push on the steering wheel is identical to an object that adorns the top of the head of a goat. But, WHOA, they're both called horns! Likewise, there are a lot of uses of the word 'theft', and not all of them mean identical things.
Mind you, most of them are considered 'bad'. Maybe that's what you're objecting to, having copyright infringement lumped in there with all those other bad things?
> People can say "you stole my idea" all they want. It still doesn't make you a thief or the act theft.
No, actually, that's exactly what determines the definition of a word: usage. It doesn't conform to YOUR idea of what the word 'theft' means, but it clearly conforms to THEIR idea of what the word 'theft' means, or they wouldn't be using it. And if the majority of people use the word that way, then you are the one who is out of step with reality. And I submit to you that most rational people wouldn't react to the phrase 'you stole my idea' with the clearly unthinking hostility to which you react to it, but would instead accept it as a perfectly reasonable statement. (And the definition of 'thief' in my dictionary is 'one who steals, especially by stealth'.)
As I said, you are perfectly welcome to argue that copyright infringement should not be lumped together with the other things that fall under the common-usage definition of the word theft. But arguing that the word doesn't mean what most English-speakers would agree that it means is ridiculous. Language is defined by consensus, and there aren't a whole lot of people who care that you don't agree.
Slashdot Mirror
> ...but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied
That's garbage. If you had any proof that the items were not unsolicited (you should've had them faxing in requests for service, not calling them in) then you aren't liable.
Whose garbage it is, I don't know. The judge in a small town is often pretty close friends with all the lawyers...
-fred
Hell, there could be a babysitter having sex with your spouse! Or even with your dog!
-fred
Go to http://localhost:631
Try dinking around there.
-fred
Of course, since I was a contractor, firing ME in particular was wholly legal in any state, unless your particular contract stipulates otherwise.
But I meant that last bit more generally, since it's hardly just contractors that this is happening to.
-fred
...and assume that what this gentleman (?) was talking about was a *verbal* fight and not an actual fisticuffs fight.
If so, then it is an interesting point. Should one be fired for forcefully expressing one's opinions? REALLY?
I've been in that situation before: I joined a company as a contract employee (after being out of work for over a year) a little less than a year ago. I was only there for a little under three weeks.
Just before the war in Iraq started, in response to someone's assertion that the rest of the world would back us no matter what they said now, I said that America was currently the most globally feared nation since Nazi Germany. Which, if you listen to non-US sources of news, sure sounds like it was true, is true, and is pretty much going to stay true for the forseeable future.
One of my coworkers took issue with this, telling me (rather loudly) that if I thought that America was just as bad as Nazi Germany, maybe I should move to Iraq so I could get killed when the US bombed 'those fuckers' back to the stone age, or words to that effect. I told him to stop twisting my words, perhaps more loudly than I should have but not as loudly as he did. Then I got up and left the table.
Two days later I had my walking papers. My boss mentioned an 'inability to get along with other workers' as a primary reason. He didn't come out and cite the incident in question, but my team lead did, off the record, saying, "I don't think you should be fired for this but maybe you should watch your mouth at your next job." And then some mumble about everybody having to pull together in wartime and that criticizing the government was pretty unpatriotic. Which is to say, he thought that I was an evil bastard too, he just didn't think that was a firing offense.
Did I mention that this was a publicly traded company? So, really, firing me because of my ideology is ultimately bad for the company, and therefore bad for the shareholders, who of course have no say in this sort of thing. But, in this state (an 'employment at will' state), it is mostly sort of largely legal. Good? Bad? Discuss.
Now, if the above gentleman is talking about a knock-down drag-out fisticuffs fight, then frankly, I'd be the first to show him the door. Although, to be fair, whether the other person started it, and whether both were fired or just one, does play a role in the question as well.
-fred
> Terrible. I defiantly would not want my wife to have to ware an abayah just so that we could make "very very good
> money" (generally, $120,000 and up, plus signing bonus.).
That's hysterical! So basically, you'd say, 'Honey, from now on you're wearing an abayah so that I can get loads of money!'
See? There ARE some non-religious people who think treating their women like chattel is okay, as long as it is lucrative!
> Oh, the horror. Be polite? Gracious? These people are animals to demand that of foreign guests!
That's right. Because, as everybody with a conscience knows, politely and graciously agreeing with a system of beliefs that encourages the treatment of women as chattel, and going there and helping perpetuate such a system (by contributing to their economic base, etc) is frankly a poor idea, unless you actually do agree with it.
In fact, in my opinion, the only person dramatically worse than the people who believe that this is how women should be treated are the people who don't really believe that, but are so apathetic that they sell what few convictions at the door and allow these people to treat 'their' women this way.
Frankly, I see it as an issue like Apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps you thought Apartheid was great as long as you could make money from it. In that case, I despise you, but it's not like you could possibly care about that. But in any case, perhaps you can at least grasp, with that parallel, why some of us wouldn't go for a chance at a lot of money here.
-fred
> You think they're just like us huh? Did the Americans have kamakazi pilots? Suicide bombers?
You're right. Having Timothy McVeigh (sp?) is infinitely better than having a suicide bomber, because after he's killed dozens of people, WE get to kill him back!
-fred
> On the other hand, have you ever read slashdot? Look at all the anti-Indian hysteria in any thread about H1-B or off
> shoring. It's the same unthinking "us vs. them, they're taking our jobs" attitude that all racism is borne out of.
> Maybe they won't take the final step to true racism (i.e. anyone of Indian decent == bad), but it's just as bad (any
> Indian == bad job stealer).
What a hideous argument! I don't like having my job exported to India, and therefore I'm a racist? Maybe in some bizarro conservative-world, but not here.
I think that people outside of Sweden should have the same opportunities as those in Sweden. I don't think that the Swedes should be dragged down to the level of the third world.
(I used to say this about the United States, where I live. Since real wage growth for 90% of the people in the US appears to be a thing of the past (and in fact real wages for 90% of the population are going down, it's just that the top 10% are going up fast enough to make the numbers come out positive), and since the United States's numbers on things like poverty, infant mortality, literacy, health care, and public assistance are rapidly devolving toward those of some of the more advanced third world countries, I'd now prefer the US's standard of living were brought UP to that of, say, Sweden.)
So clearly I'm a racist, and hate Indians, because I don't think that I want to lose my job to someone who is willing to work for 1/5 my paycheck -- whether they are American or Indian.
Uh huh.
It is, however, a novel argument. I'd say that the American right wing should start using it, except that anything they say about racism tends to boomerang back on them (think about a certain senator's mixed-race bastard child, for example). They're probably better off just denying that it's a problem in any way.
> Arabs don't hate Jews, they hate Israel.
Well, it's nice to know that there aren't any Arabs who hate Jews. I'll sleep a lot better now that I know such an authority as yourself has declared the Arab world free of any such sentiments.
Actually, of course, if you look at any semi-reputable news organization (and by this I mean some news organizations in Europe, because anything in the US, Israel, or most of the Arab world is just organized propoganda) the prejudice of Arabs against Jews, and Jews against Arabs, is quite marked. And equally unfortunate (and unfair) on both sides.
> A racist state set up by terrorists and supported by racists.
There are elements of truth and falsehood in this, as in most statements that are made by fanatics. With most fanatics, the elements of falsehood greatly outweigh the elements of truth. I won't presume to judge in this particular case.
I also except statements made by people like Rush Limbaugh, which, as often as not, actually contain no element of truth what so ever. ("Styrofoam is biodegradable!")
> EVERYONE should hate Israel, just as they shouldn't hate Jews.
I'm always delighted to be told who to hate.
However, I in general like to not actually hate anyone. I know this makes me a lousy American, as well as someone committing the fundamental solicism of disagreeing with you, Mr. Partridge, but I've always found that hating tendes to lead to suffering. On both sides.
But hey, if that's what you're looking for, you have fun.
-fred
Quite right... Microsoft isn't a 'monoploy', it has dozens of ploys. All of them designed to destroy the competition in the most direct way possible, while not actually out-competing them in any normal sense of the phrase. And, of course, their most useful ploys all have to do with them taking advantage of their monopoly position in the marketplace.
Very important point. Glad you made it.
-fred
> None of you whining geeks cared one whit about the livelihoods of the Detroit automakers, American tailors, or
> consumer electronics while all THAT was shipped overseas, but now that it might actually affect YOU, it's time
> to take a stand and put a stop to it, right?
Why, look, it's mister tar-them-all-with-the-same-brush! Can I be on your team? I bet you win a lot of arguments.
Actually, I am and always have been leery of shipping jobs overseas. I've tried to buy American-made products when I can, because I believe that this country should have a manufacturing base. I've written letters to congressmen since I was under legal voting age.
And now, even though I stood up for other people, it looks like the majority of the tech industry is going to be offshored and I'm going to be called a hypocrite and all sorts of other things for saying that maybe it would be a good idea if the US ended up with some jobs for its populace.
Hooray.
As for you, I'm guessing that you have a secure job (or perhaps are simply independently weathy, probably from money from some startup that bilked the public shareholders and self-destructed) and therefore can afford to feel superior to all those people out there who are poised to be screwed.
So who is the hypocrite? We'll find out when YOUR livlihood is threatened.
-fred
My workplace has about 15 Dell Latitude L400s. We got the three year extended warrantee on these things, and let me tell you, it's been well worth it. I believe that 8 of them have had motherboard replacements, 2 of them more than once. The fans have been swapped on every single one. The hard drives have been replaced on at least 7, and that's not counting the ones where people got larger hard drives so it's not on the original hard drive anyway.
There isn't a single week that goes by that I don't have to deal with one of these things shutting down, restarting spontaneously, overheating, making enormous amounts of hideous noise, or basically being contrary.
You know what? I can't find a single angry web site telling people not to buy Dells because of these Latitude L400s. I certainly can't find any lawsuits.
But since it's Apple, people expect the hardware to be absolutely perfect. And when it's not, they expect out of warrantee service for free. ('This product is warranteed against manufacturing defects for the period of one year'. Not 'this product is warranteed against manufacturing defects forever, and for any old way you can fuck it up including dropping it six feet onto concrete for the period of one year'.)
I honestly don't understand it. Are Apple fanatics really just that much more unrealistic than people who buy Windows machines? I mean, I'm a big Apple fan, even worked for them for a while, but I don't expect Apple's stuff to be perfect. And, from my experience, it's definitely better than the alternatives already.
-fred
> Just to let you know the G5's are made by Intel.
Wow... can I have some of what YOU'RE smoking?
The G5 is made by IBM. But I see your confusion: they both start with the same letter.
-fred
> If all the efforts at the continued Apple project were instead used on PC's, we'd have: [...]
...no alternative to the Wintel lowest-common-demominator trash hardware.
Don't forget the most importing thing we would have:
-fred
> What you are trying to say is that regular computer users or nerds or geeks or everything not in the top 1% of the
> population aren't gay enough for a Mac, right?
So what you're trying to say is that only the top 1% of the population is gay, right? Which makes all gay people better than you.
I'm not sure about the 1% figure, but I sure do agree that all the gay people I've met are better than you.
-fred
If I weren't familiar with how Apple is working, I would have been completely taken in by your bundle of speculation.
> The updates to GCC from Apple don't also reflect the updates that have been made internally to GCC within
> Apple. Those updates always trickle down after thorough testing and SQA bug flushings.
You're wrong. Internal Apple developers work with pretty much the same dev tools that people outside of Apple do. At most, they're one set ahead, but even that is rare.
> Unless Apple Engineering has done a 180 degree on this than my comments are moot.
Nope, because as of two years ago your comments were just as wrong as they are now.
> Such would increase costs. Engineering does not want to be dependent upon the time schedules of IBM for the
> Compiler, not to mention the politics/business issues involved with Co-licensing and thus increasing the cost of
> ownership passed down to the consumer.
They, of course, would not be. In fact, during the MacOS 9 and before days, everything was built using XLC, and once they had a good version, they didn't care when it was updated.
> Now that work has blossomed expect more time spent on making sure if this PowerPC compiler from IBM can reduce
> overhead by 50% you can bet GCC will get this as well.
Impossible, and if you knew anything about the situation you'd know why. IBM has quite a number of patents on optimizations of code, and they license a lot more. These could potentially be licensed by Apple, but they most certainly couldn't be used in GCC. This is why gcc is still significantly slower than Apple's own MrC compiler, even after several years of development.
> What would be a big boost in performance would be the eventual EOL (End of Life) support for Classic and Carbon
> which means switching to a pure Cocoa environment that supports C/C++/Java/ObjC/ObjC++ and Fortran 77/Ada 95, etc.,.
And, of course, this is garbage too. Removing classic and carbon support would only be a major speed boost if the OS were hideously badly designed, which it's not. However, it might well reduce the memory footprint. But with a gig of RAM hovering around $200, I'd much rather keep classic and carbon in there.
Plus, of course, Carbon is just as valid an API, and just as efficient as well, as Cocoa. Cocoa is much nicer from a developer's point of view, but speed-wise they're not much different, and there are some things that are a lot harder to do in Cocoa than they are in Carbon.
> If you notice O'Reilly is publishing more literature on Cocoa and less on Carbon. Carbon is just a Transitional API. > How long that transition will be in effect only Apple
knows.
I'll give you a hint. Apple had a transitional API included in OpenTransport for legacy MacTCP applications which was supposed to go away sometime in MacOS 7-land. As of MacOS 9.2, it's still there.
And that's even assuming you grant that Carbon is some sort of 'transitional' thing. Which it's not.
> The biggest gripe people how about ObjC is the syntax. Ironic since it is quite logical and grammatically more
> readable than C++ let alone Java.
Wow. Something I agree with. Although I personally find Java a lot more readable than C++.
> In the end whether or not GCC becomes as fast as XLC is not what will determine the visibility of OS X. Its compelling
> third party applications that make equal quality as Apple.
Um. I have the feeling I would disagree, if I knew what you were trying to say.
Anyway. Stop spreading compost when you don't know what you're talking about.
-fred
I bought an eBags Downloader Laptop Backpack not long ago (for about $35) and I couldn't be happier. With a 5-lb laptop, and a total of 10 pounds of other stuff in it, I walk a total of 4 miles to and from work. It has all the pockets you'll ever need, the laptop area is well-enough padded that dropping it onto concrete (accidentally) didn't cause me a moment's concern, and I can carry it 4 miles a day at a brisk walk with 15 pounds of stuff in it and not even notice any shoulder or back strain, and all without a waist belt.
Basically, if you are looking for a laptop bag, and you don't *mind* it being a laptop, this is a beautiful thing.
Go to www.ebags.com and search for 'downloader laptop backpack'. I'd give you the URL, but it's longer than my arm.
-fred
Yes. If the US thinks that every other country in the world should obey it in all ways at all times, other countries should respect it and get on with it. Or else.
I mean, really. Everyone knows that forcing other people/organizations/countries to do what you want using threats, economic pressure, and rhetoric is the best way to handle interpersonal/international relationships. If you're stronger than everyone else, you should beat them up and take their money.
-fred
Well, if you think about needing to absolutely ensure that an audio stream gets a certain number of processor cycles and never gets swapped out no matter what, and the video stream can't have its priority downgraded after hogging the processor for a while (which is what normally happens to a process in the MacOS X multitasking model when it hogs too many resources) and all sorts of other fun stuff... ...then yes, actually, you DO have to love it. Because it works better that way.
-fred
The hard drive alone in the iPod (ALL models) costs more than $100.
You're welcome to wait. As the hard drives get larger, the iPod's capacity will get larger for a while. When Apple decides it's gotten big enough, then the hard drive prices will probably come down, and then the iPod price will come down.
Saying that Apple could sell iPods for $75 -- ASSUMING that Apple could sell iPods for $75 -- is just the usual absolute assumption that Apple is always ripping off all of its customers, brought to such a level that you don't even bother to think before you employ the assumption. I guess that's fine; it's certainly the MO of a lot of Apple-bashers.
-fred
It's not because they are peace-loving (France doesn't exactly qualify, historically), and it doesn't even have much to do with them not supporting the war in Iraq, though that made a good litmus test.
Basically, the current US administration wants to hurt, as badly as is conveniently possible, and as often as is conveniently possible, any county that does not cooperate fully with the whims of the US government. Regardless of the convictions and ideals of the populace or the government.
So, since France's people overwhelmingly did not want to be a party to the war in Iraq, and because France's government actually listened to its people, instead of listening primarily to the US and only secondarily to its people, it is clear that France is not sufficiently in thrall to the US, and therefor must be punished.
Iraq was just a test. France failed.
Or passed, depending on your viewpoint.
-fred
Yes, I bet they do have a few of those. However, given that at least until six months ago (I have no data for time since then) the Apple Stores all restored their systems to prestine state by plugging an iPod into them, booting off of it, and then restoring the drive from an image on the iPod, I wouldn't take this too seriously.
-fred
About 15 years ago, I ran into a problem with strcat stomping all over my variables, and I thought, 'hunh, why didn't I use strncat instead?' And so I used strncat, and have every single time for every program I've ever written since then. And, aside from one time when I accidentally made the array size 2 instead of size 20, I haven't had that particular problem again.
I can imagine if someone were doing a major profiling job, and strcat were 10x faster than strncat and were inside the inner loop of the bottleneck, he might want to use strcat. But in that case, it implies enough attention to the actual code that he'd presumably know how to check for overflows beforehand.
But aside from that, why in the world would anyone with half a brain use strcat when strncat is available? Really... I'm asking. Is there actually some reason?
-fred
Bear in mind that at least UNIX was designed with multiple users and administrators in mind, whereas Windows most certainly never was.
-fred
> You and a band of other gentlemen are though: you seem to have some unsupported notion that violation of laws
> regarding the temporary monopoly of ideas is somehow equivalent to stealing real property.
Well, no, actually. And I don't think that an object that makes a loud noise when you push on the steering wheel is identical to an object that adorns the top of the head of a goat. But, WHOA, they're both called horns! Likewise, there are a lot of uses of the word 'theft', and not all of them mean identical things.
Mind you, most of them are considered 'bad'. Maybe that's what you're objecting to, having copyright infringement lumped in there with all those other bad things?
> People can say "you stole my idea" all they want. It still doesn't make you a thief or the act theft.
No, actually, that's exactly what determines the definition of a word: usage. It doesn't conform to YOUR idea of what the word 'theft' means, but it clearly conforms to THEIR idea of what the word 'theft' means, or they wouldn't be using it. And if the majority of people use the word that way, then you are the one who is out of step with reality. And I submit to you that most rational people wouldn't react to the phrase 'you stole my idea' with the clearly unthinking hostility to which you react to it, but would instead accept it as a perfectly reasonable statement. (And the definition of 'thief' in my dictionary is 'one who steals, especially by stealth'.)
As I said, you are perfectly welcome to argue that copyright infringement should not be lumped together with the other things that fall under the common-usage definition of the word theft. But arguing that the word doesn't mean what most English-speakers would agree that it means is ridiculous. Language is defined by consensus, and there aren't a whole lot of people who care that you don't agree.
Cheers.
-fred