It is difficult to battle this problem when so many others don't seem to understand or care about it, but I say: Fight the good fight!
I disagree with your use of the term "data mining", though. "Data mining" is a sophisticated statistical analysis of data (see, for instance: http://matlabdatamining.blogspot.com/), whereas what I think you're talking about is "data snooping" or "data theft".
nightcats writes
"According to a story from the Rocky Mountain news, Qwest has received retaliatory action from the NSA for refusing to cooperate in the Bush administration's domestic data-mining activity (i.e., spying on Americans).
Please get the terminology straight! "Data mining" does not mean "spying". Data mining is a sophisticated process of statistical analysis.
The article to which you refer (at RockyMountainNews.com) does not use the term "data mining". Privacy implications arise from the uncontrolled and unmonitored gathering and sharing of private data, not statistical analysis performed afterward.
The author of this blurb terms this gallery "nice", and the author of the Web page itself titles it " The Evolution of Desktops". Huh? At best, it is a collection of Windows and Macintosh screenshots. What's missing? The XEROX object-oriented (old sense) GUI, any version of GEM, TopView, X-Windows, Lisa, the Mach interface, the various commercial non-X-Windows UNIX interfaces and whatever the Amiga used.
... history tells us over and over again that the masses would prefer to buy a broken dysfunctional Windows system, even knowing it to be so, over ANY clearly superior product, so long as they can get the Windows system cheaper.
-constantnormal (512494)
Subtracting the colorful language, I think this is true to some extent. Think about airplane tickets: People always complain about airline service, lack of legroom, shrinking peanut packages, and so forth, but when they go to buy an airplane ticket, their foremost concern is always lowest price. Priceline and its ilk didn't spring into existence to cater to people's interest in better service and more peanuts!
I recently had an acquaintance excitedly show me his new Mac laptop. He, like I, had spent years using Windows, both for work and at home. In showing me the Mac, he paid particular attention to differences between the Mac and Windows- mostly, in his estimate, to the advantage of the Mac.
While some of the differences he noted as benefits of the Mac I interpreted as real, some fraction were trivial (possibly beneficial but not enough for me to care) and some were related to software which comes pre-installed on a Mac (especially multimedia software), which the average user may or may not care about.
Also, many of his complaints about Windows are, in my opinion, about specifically about his Windows box. As the "computer guy" among friends and family, I note that people who complain the most about their Windows PCs are people who bought low-end boxes. For my part, I have been buying from PC "boutiques" for years now and am very happy with them. While really high-end Windows boxes from places like Falcon Northwest are pricey, very good Windows hardware can be obtained from vendors like Velocity Micro for a modest premium over commodity hardware (Dell, HP) prices. Running Windows XP on such hardware, I have experienced very few of the issues featured in typical complaints about Windows (crashing, etc.).
There's a more subtle issue surrounding the lack of Mac software title, though. In the Windows software market, there are many CAD packages available. Competition in the market provides a wide variety of feature mixes and price points. It isn't that one can't find any CAD packages for the Mac, nor that a customer has some strange need for AutoCAD in particular. It's that for every CAD package available for the Mac, there are 10 or more for Windows.
Consider MATLAB, which I use every day for my work. It is currently supported on the Mac, but it wasn't always. What if the vendor decides to drop the Mac platform (again)? What alternatives are there for the Mac? I don't know, but there are direct competitors to MATLAB for Windows which will run my code as is (O-Matrix, GNU Octave and SciLab). Beyond that, there are at least a dozen similar math tools for Windows which are indirect competitors to MATLAB for my statistical analysis budget (Gauss, Mathematica, SPSS, S-Plus, MathCAD, IDL, etc.).
You've "never, ever, ever owned a Mac", yet you're willing to come here to proclaim that "They're right"? I give up... How do you know that Macs don't have any more problems than the ones you've listed for Windows?
I hope you're waiting with bated breath, bu the way...
Hollywood has two major ailments: 1. an astonishing lack of creativity and 2. worship at the alter of a shockingly small pantheon of performers.
For an industry whose very existence would seemingly be based on creativity, Hollywood shows a surprising lack of imagination. I have nothing against translation of television shows to movies, or movie re-makes in principle, but the last 10 years have shown most of them to be little more than missed opportunities and betrayals of the original art. In this, the "Mission: Impossible" movies join a large number of other flawed works.
The other problem is that a very, very small number of actors and actresses appears in movies with such frequency, that many of them can be identified by first-name only ("Sylvester", "Bruce", "Arnold", "Meryl")! Most people cannot remember the names of the characters, only the names of the actors, even in their favorite movies. One major symptom of this pathology can be seen in the "Mission: Impossible" movie posters: Notice the relative size and position of: 1. Tom Cruise's head, 2. Tom Cruise's name and 3. the title of the movie (which you may have forgotten already, owing to the prominence of the previous two items).
Fine. I was using the bar of soap figuratively to represent hygeine in general. My point still stands: cleaning up (ourselves and our immediate environment) has had more effect on human health than medicines, surgery, golf courses, etc.
Is this the level to which we've descended? Argument by analogy? Ugh. Alright, I'll bite: Yes, people buy new cars, but in America (as in most of the world), they still buy them with steering wheels on the left!
It's been the "Year of the Mac" every year for the last 15 years! I have nothing against Macs, but let's be serious for half a moment: any notion that Mac popularity is going to accelerated by some sort of user revolution should be viewed with the same skepticism as the idea that BeOS (UNIX on the desktop, Atari ST, etc.) will do the same. Good luck!
"Antibiotics and modern medicine"? Let's be clear about the real reason that humans today live longer than their predecessors: hygeine. The good, old, mundane bar of soap (and its liberal application to the human body) has had a much more profound effect on human health than all the doctors in history and their medicines combined.
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It is difficult to battle this problem when so many others don't seem to understand or care about it, but I say: Fight the good fight! I disagree with your use of the term "data mining", though. "Data mining" is a sophisticated statistical analysis of data (see, for instance: http://matlabdatamining.blogspot.com/), whereas what I think you're talking about is "data snooping" or "data theft".
nightcats writes "According to a story from the Rocky Mountain news, Qwest has received retaliatory action from the NSA for refusing to cooperate in the Bush administration's domestic data-mining activity (i.e., spying on Americans). Please get the terminology straight! "Data mining" does not mean "spying". Data mining is a sophisticated process of statistical analysis. The article to which you refer (at RockyMountainNews.com) does not use the term "data mining". Privacy implications arise from the uncontrolled and unmonitored gathering and sharing of private data, not statistical analysis performed afterward.
The author of this blurb terms this gallery "nice", and the author of the Web page itself titles it " The Evolution of Desktops". Huh? At best, it is a collection of Windows and Macintosh screenshots. What's missing? The XEROX object-oriented (old sense) GUI, any version of GEM, TopView, X-Windows, Lisa, the Mach interface, the various commercial non-X-Windows UNIX interfaces and whatever the Amiga used.
-constantnormal (512494)
Subtracting the colorful language, I think this is true to some extent. Think about airplane tickets: People always complain about airline service, lack of legroom, shrinking peanut packages, and so forth, but when they go to buy an airplane ticket, their foremost concern is always lowest price. Priceline and its ilk didn't spring into existence to cater to people's interest in better service and more peanuts!
While some of the differences he noted as benefits of the Mac I interpreted as real, some fraction were trivial (possibly beneficial but not enough for me to care) and some were related to software which comes pre-installed on a Mac (especially multimedia software), which the average user may or may not care about.
Also, many of his complaints about Windows are, in my opinion, about specifically about his Windows box. As the "computer guy" among friends and family, I note that people who complain the most about their Windows PCs are people who bought low-end boxes. For my part, I have been buying from PC "boutiques" for years now and am very happy with them. While really high-end Windows boxes from places like Falcon Northwest are pricey, very good Windows hardware can be obtained from vendors like Velocity Micro for a modest premium over commodity hardware (Dell, HP) prices. Running Windows XP on such hardware, I have experienced very few of the issues featured in typical complaints about Windows (crashing, etc.).
You mean 2.2%. Oops, wait another week or two: it'll be 2.1%!
Consider MATLAB, which I use every day for my work. It is currently supported on the Mac, but it wasn't always. What if the vendor decides to drop the Mac platform (again)? What alternatives are there for the Mac? I don't know, but there are direct competitors to MATLAB for Windows which will run my code as is (O-Matrix, GNU Octave and SciLab). Beyond that, there are at least a dozen similar math tools for Windows which are indirect competitors to MATLAB for my statistical analysis budget (Gauss, Mathematica, SPSS, S-Plus, MathCAD, IDL, etc.).
"Too much" market share for the Mac? I wouldn't worry about that any time soon... They're presently at 2.2%!
You've "never, ever, ever owned a Mac", yet you're willing to come here to proclaim that "They're right"? I give up... How do you know that Macs don't have any more problems than the ones you've listed for Windows? I hope you're waiting with bated breath, bu the way...
Hollywood has two major ailments: 1. an astonishing lack of creativity and 2. worship at the alter of a shockingly small pantheon of performers. For an industry whose very existence would seemingly be based on creativity, Hollywood shows a surprising lack of imagination. I have nothing against translation of television shows to movies, or movie re-makes in principle, but the last 10 years have shown most of them to be little more than missed opportunities and betrayals of the original art. In this, the "Mission: Impossible" movies join a large number of other flawed works. The other problem is that a very, very small number of actors and actresses appears in movies with such frequency, that many of them can be identified by first-name only ("Sylvester", "Bruce", "Arnold", "Meryl")! Most people cannot remember the names of the characters, only the names of the actors, even in their favorite movies. One major symptom of this pathology can be seen in the "Mission: Impossible" movie posters: Notice the relative size and position of: 1. Tom Cruise's head, 2. Tom Cruise's name and 3. the title of the movie (which you may have forgotten already, owing to the prominence of the previous two items).
I'd say the comparison to BeOS, Atari ST, etc. fits. The downward trend in market share is reminiscent, at least: "...Apple's share of the worldwide PC market has tumbled from 4.6 percent in 1996, the year before Jobs returned, to just 2.2 percent in 2005." http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/bus iness/columnists/mike_langberg/14191452.htm?source =rss&channel=siliconvalley_mike_langberg
Fine. I was using the bar of soap figuratively to represent hygeine in general. My point still stands: cleaning up (ourselves and our immediate environment) has had more effect on human health than medicines, surgery, golf courses, etc.
Is this the level to which we've descended? Argument by analogy? Ugh. Alright, I'll bite: Yes, people buy new cars, but in America (as in most of the world), they still buy them with steering wheels on the left! It's been the "Year of the Mac" every year for the last 15 years! I have nothing against Macs, but let's be serious for half a moment: any notion that Mac popularity is going to accelerated by some sort of user revolution should be viewed with the same skepticism as the idea that BeOS (UNIX on the desktop, Atari ST, etc.) will do the same. Good luck!
"Antibiotics and modern medicine"? Let's be clear about the real reason that humans today live longer than their predecessors: hygeine. The good, old, mundane bar of soap (and its liberal application to the human body) has had a much more profound effect on human health than all the doctors in history and their medicines combined.