...The point of the legislation is to encourage (or force if you prefer) a switch to renewable energy and/or CO2 sequestering. If we do the green revolution in earnest we'll get a lot of our energy from green sources which will fall well under the CO2 limits thereby not succumbing to the tax hits. Today's conventional energy production facilities should be working on CO2 sequestering and by 2020 (when the really strict CO2 limits come into effect) they should be under as well. Energy moguls don't want to change because it costs them money. Average Americans don't want to change because they don't see why they should, don't really understand the effects of the legislation and don't want to pay a cent more...
Although I agree that we need to be looking toward more renewable energy I disagree with Cap & Trade. First of all, I don't want to pay more for my energy than I absolutely have to. If I see my bills go up and know that it is simply a tax-grabbing shell-game in Washington that's behind it, I'm going to be mighty pissed. There is a very good reason we don't have solar panels and windmills and algae everywhere: they aren't cost-effective yet! And if the only way to make them cost effective is to artificially jack up the price of the current energy sources, it will destroy our economy. Sure, a devastated economy will certainly result in reduced energy consumption, but at what cost?
Our Great Leader has already boasted that he will drive coal plants out of business and that our energy prices will "skyrocket". Well, guess what? If gas and electricity is expensive, everything else will be expensive too. Anything that has to be transported, stored and sold will skyrocket in price right along with it. People won't be able to afford it. Less will be sold. Stores will buy less from producers. Producers and retailers will lay people off and close. People will be out of a job and stick their hand out for the Fatherland to feed and clothe them. Our Great Leader will remind us that we are all out of work and prices are so high because of the evil rich people and their greedy profiteering stores. He will raise taxes on them so that the wealth will be properly distributed. More companies will close, more people lose their jobs...
I am a personal believer in "Peak Oil". I believe we are in dire need for alternative energy and alternative means to get it. I do NOT believe the "evil energy companies" are hiding miraculous technology for cheap energy just to prop up their current business model. If there were an economically and environmentally viable alternative to oil, gas and coal today, the company that was providing it would be trumpeting it from the rooftops and would be the darling of Wall Street. It's just not there yet. How do we get there? We give incentives and rewards to those who are looking for the answers. We don't punish their competitors!!!
Punishing those companies who are already providing America with as cheap an energy source as they can will finish off this economy. The downward spiral will result in so many people out of work that the only solution will be to socialize everything or start a revolution. Whichever the end result is, it won't have cheap, renewable energy. It will be chaos.
In two months my family's income will be taking a 25% hit. I'm fortunate that I've gotten that much warning, many others have not. We have already cut our spending to the bone in preparation for that. It also means we've put off upgrading our home heating system and purchasing new vehicles. We simply can't afford the extra monthly payments no matter how much it might save us "in the long run". If, on top of all that, my electric bill goes up and the price of food goes up and my taxes go up, we will be in a world of trouble. Our belt is already so tight it hurts. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Obama has gotten himself in a bind. He's committed this country to a course of action that has resulted in unimaginable debt. He is counting on the income from this C
in spite of doubling my net worth in the last decade - I am still struggling to afford the basic necessities of life. It means little to be able to buy that killer laptop when I can't afford to put a roof over my head. This isn't an education problem; it isn't a problem of productivity. It is a problem of economics and of corporate greed.
Although I can sympathize with the frustration and apparent hopelessness of your situation, I have to disagree. The reason our parents had a better standard of living is that they did not live in the same "credit-based" society. In fact, my parents were still very much influenced by the great depression and the frugality that entailed.
Disclaimer: I was struggling under a huge load of debt that I'm still crawling out of, but have come to realize a few things as I have become debt-free and a master of my own destiny.
A vast percentage of our income goes to taxes and covering our debt-load. There is little I can do about my taxes, but I can have an impact on my debt and the interest I pay on it. Look at it this way: Last year I paid over $20,000 in interest on my mortgage. The year before that I paid almost that much interest on my credit card debt. Those two things were basically eating up a whole person's income in our household budget. That isn't even considering the interest we were paying on student loans, car loans, personal lines of credit, etc.
Two years ago I realized I was spending so much of my time working to just pay interest on my lifestyle that I wasn't able to make any headway. So my family went cold turkey. We went to a cash basis. We scraped together $1,000.00 cash that we locked in our safe for emergencies and put every other penny we could scrape together into paying off our debt. We sold our toys. We worked extra hours. We stopped eating out. We turned down the heat and bought second-hand sweaters. We made a strict written budget and stuck with it.
Over the last two years we've been able to pay off almost $90,000 in debt. Debt! Money we were borrowing to help us live the lifestyle we deserved but were unwilling to pay for up front. Had we lived this frugally from the beginning we would have just put that same $90,000.00 to use working for us and investing in our future. In two more years we could have paid cash for a $180,000.00 house and not had a house-payment! When I see that, it makes me sick to realize how much money I've been wasting on interest and "toys" that could have gone toward giving my family the lifestyle they really deserve. We've been living on a borrowed lifestyle. Well, no more!
We should be completely debt-free in about another year if things were to stay the same. However, we just learned that my wife will be taking a huge pay-cut in order to keep her job (to the tune of $30,000.00 a year). It terrifies me to think what sort of financial position we'd have been in if we hadn't started paying off debt two years ago. Back then, we were "doing fine" in that we were easily able to make our monthly payments and have some left over for "fun". But had we kept on that path a $30K reduction in income would have bankrupted us. Now it just means it will take us a little longer to get out of debt. But get out we will and I will never borrow another cent from anyone in my life.
Just thinking about the sort of life I could have had for my family had I lived the way my parents did and followed their example. Instead I criticized them for being so "stingy" and not getting the things they could "afford" and not "leveraging" their assets. Well, looks like the laughs on me. They are retired now. Last year they paid cash for a house. Paid cash to fix it up. and now have it rented out. Their money is working for them. They have no debt. They are taking their profits and looking for the next good opportunity to come along. They are positioned well to take advantage of the many deals this economy has for them.
I've sat both my kids down (they're 19, and 20) and laid out to them w
Are those recent prices? And, is any of this gear actually "enterprise" level quality, or just expensive crap you can get for cheaper down at the best buy? Either way, that is some fucked up shit.
As far as I'm concerned, its all a big scam. The only thing I can really compare apples to apples is the hard drives. The hard drives that they put in those FND SANs cost something like $1500 for a 500GB SATA (these prices were from like 1-2 years ago). They say that the drives are certified, but as far as I'm concerned, if they don't last for 20+ years and go 10 times faster (which they don't) then they are not worth that price. Unfortunately, I guess if you want to get support and the whole 9 yards on support, you have to go through them. You can't just buy your own hard drives from DEX or something. So yeah, its a big scam. When we spent the million on a 40TB SAN (included large switches too, etc.) I sat down and calculated how much it would cost to buy some 15 bay chasis with fiber channel cards and fill those up like DAEs. For 1 million, we could have had a 1PB SAN. Or we could have had 40TB for like $40,000.
I know that, at least with NetApp, they flash the drives with their own, proprietary firmware. That's what you're paying for. I'm not sure if the firmware actually makes them more reliable or allows tighter integration with their controllers or something. The cynical side of me wouldn't be surprised if it is only to keep cheaper drives from working with their controllers and actually does nothing for performance or reliability.
The saddest thing about NetApp is, they have a great product! However, the pain of being sold on their product based on what we were demoed it can do only to discover after it was installed that EVERY SINGLE IMPORTANT FEATURE required a frickin' fortune to separately enable makes me unable to recommend them to anyone else. We actually rolled out two OpenFiler boxes right next to it that have performed admirably and can do almost everything the NetApp does for about 5% the price. Basically, the only stuff we run off the NetApp are the "politically sensitive" systems. If the NetApp bites it we can raise our hands, point and say "Hey, it was on the expensive 'enterprise' system..." Otherwise, we've seen just as mush reliability out of the open source OpenFiler systems.
No, thank them. Obama, being a fool, is about to learn why those loopholes exist. We put them in to keep some of the multinationals headquartered here in the US in practice by allowing them to headquarter on paper somewhere else and we all agreed to ignore the oddities that followed from that. Forced to actually choose many will opt to close up the skyscraper here and open one up in a more business friendly climate. Then profits from US operations will flow OUT instead of overseas profits flowing IN. I'm failing to see how the US wins.
This trend is going to be accelerated by the overthrow of the rule of law implied in the auto bailouts, etc. When the workers are running around seizing the means of production smart people start looking to get out while they can.
OTOH, don't try too hard. Mind the business. Some customers
are inherently problematic and nearly impossible to deal
with. Leave them to Dell.
Exactly! Those who buy based on price alone are NOT the quality of customer Apple wants. I'm loving these ads - they're separating the wheat from the chaff. MS and Dell can lead the race straight to the bottom and I'll applaud them the whole way.
I buy and use what I like and what I feel lets me work best.
And the sheeple also buy and use what they believe to be the best. This marketing initiative didn't backfire, it was never aimed at Apple users. Instead, it confirms all the rumors that Apple sucks and you're on the "right team" by sticking with Microsoft.
Amen. I'm loving these ads! The types of people who will be persuaded by these ads, instead of making an intelligent, independent decision are exactly the type of people who need and deserve to be running windows on a $350 Dell. They are exactly the type that would eventually destroy Apple with their ignorance and mindset.
The same is true for Linux. In order for someone to use Linux they need to make a conscious decision about their computing environment. They have to make the deliberate choice to not just use the "default" but to seek out something better. Those people who are discerning, "thinking" computer users are the ones we want on Linux. Leave the lowest-common-denominator crowd on windows where they belong and are happy and stop bothering them about switching - "casting pearls before swine" and all that.
Over time the non-MS market shares will steadily grow, but they will overwhelmingly consist of the best, thinking, knowledgeable computer users, while MS will be overwhelmingly left with the idiocracy. It's hard to understand from this side of the tracks, but the superior product is often not the best choice for most people. If making the best use of a superior product requires an intelligent, motivated, discerning person, then it most certainly is not suited for those who watch these ads and change their buying habits based on them.
I don't know. At the risk of being branded by knee jerk reactionaries, I have a hard time with the concept that the photo itself is the illegal part. Simply seeing the photo is deemed to have committed the crime whether or not you keep it, distribute it, etc. If, for God knows what reason, have a collection of photos of murder victims, torture victims, what-have-you, somehow they are perfectly fine. It's the original act that is abhorrent and illegal. Yet somehow if I even *see* a picture of a 14 year old's naked form I'm committing one of the most heinous crimes you can commit today.
*IF* a child was exploited or harmed in the making of the photo the exploitation or harming of the child is what should be deemed illegal. If someone paid someone else to assault the child they should be tried under that crime. Everyone goes on and on about how they are just trying to kill the "market" for this material. Yeah, right. First of all that argument is very tenuous in 99% of the cases and second, we've seen what that kind of tactic has had with the drug wars.
Listen, whether they admit it or not, almost everyone on slashdot knows how and where to get CP. If we do, don't you think the authorities do? If we can track down the hosters and owners of these websites why can't the feds? I get the impression that a lot of this brouhaha is hand-waving and a smoke screen for a different agenda. (see my sig)
I think child exploitation is abhorrent, but in this sexting case and in may other cases like it the only ones doing any exploiting are the prosecutors. I wonder sometimes if they don't get so light-headed and guiltily excited at seeing those pictures that they feel there must be something wrong with the pictures - otherwise they'd have to admit there might be something wrong with them.
While that is definitely true, and an important caveat, the fact that there is a connection at all between electromagnetism and gravity was somewhat unexpected - physicists did expect to eventually unify the theories, but probably not in a way where one affects the other like this.
I don't see why a connection bewtween the two would be unexpected. We know of particles that have the properties mass and electric charge at the same time hence are coupled to the electromagnetic and gravitatioinal field at the same time. And AFAICS that's exactly what TFA is talking about: gravitational waves change the position of ions in a lattice which has an effect on the electromagnetic field.
To put it simply: As soon as we apply a field, we couple to a state, it is radiatively coupled to the ground state. I figure we can extract at least ten to the twenty-first photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
Since 42 is 7 times 9, you can also make jokes based on those two numbers.
Uhhh... Whaaa? Looks like the economy is affecting *everything*! Even the products of math problems are losing value it seems. I can still remember the days when 7 x 9 was 63. Ah, nostalgia...
There is absolutely no legal or accounting reason they have to charge for anything. Anything any Apple employee says to the contrary is a bald-faced lie.
This. Just to offer an example, Creative announced that they would add certain features to the Zen Vision MP3 series including a 'DJ' feature and the ability to record from the radio.
It's funny how I didn't have to pay for that.
Wow. Perhaps the fact that Creative is based in Singapore has some bearing on whether they need to follow American SOX accounting rules? Funny how companies in other countries get to play by other rules.
Too advanced a concept for you? Or are you just bitching and whining for the sake of bitching an whining like all the other losers on Slashdot?
And no if Word is the baseline then OO Writer is not feature complete. Once I learnt to use it the outline view in Word was the killer feature, which made editing large documents doable. Without outline view I could not imagine working on documents of a comparable size.
"Outline view" in OOo is known as "Navigator". Not a feature-for-feature match but in many ways better and more powerful. It's too bad that OOo did not make this feature more apparent to those searching the help system for "outline"...
The monoculture strikes again! My heart is bleeding peanut-butter right now. Having all your eggs in one basket (especially Microsoft's) is never a good idea.
I'm sure I'm about to show my ignorance here (and the fact that I did not RTFA) but couldn't this approach work against anything the body needs to fight? I'm thinking HIV/AIDS, hospital drug-resistant bacteria, Ebola, etc.? Although, in the case of AIDS, I guess the immune system itself is already ineffective. I can see this as a much better alternative to the current method of introducing toxins into the body in the hopes that it kills the disease before the host.
Do you suppose it might be someone like Dell interested in testing the waters anonymously?
Not saying it's Dell or HP but I know they are in a bit of a pinch lately and I'd bet they believe they could out-compete Apple on margins and use their name-recognition to get the unwashed masses to switch. Imagine a Dell that could run Linux, Windows and OS X out of the box for $500.00. People would be switching left and right. Many Windows users could give a crap about aesthetics or build-quality so they'd not hesitate to go with Dell. Also, Pystar is selling servers, which is another area Dell is big in that could benefit from a broader selection. Apple would lose for sure unless they started selling OS X client for $500.00 a pop and server for $1000.00. But Dell would never risk "testing the waters" themselves, so when they see this little upstart come along, it's in their best interests to support them and help them succeed.
Support PyStar quietly in the background
if they gain traction "buy" Pystar
diversify their offerings so as not to miss the mac surge and have leverage with MS
When I was still an hourly employee we used an electronic timecard--you couldn't "clock in" until the computer was booted and ready. Usually took a really long time...30 minutes in total. You didn't even have the option until your machine was booted and workable...God forbid you have issues starting up.
WTF!? I didn't RTFA (of course) but even using Windows, what computer takes 15 minutes to boot? One minute I could understand, 15 minutes? Even my big SQL servers don't take that long to boot the OS and then bring the DB online. If you are fiddle-farting around before logging in then no, you shouldn't get paid. If you are bitching about not getting paid for the 1 or 2 minutes it takes to boot and log in to the system then I submit the boss has the obligation to put a camera on you to make sure you don't answer your personal cell phone or text message anything personal or chat up a colleague about non-work-related stuff or otherwise waste a minute or two of his time.
If it truly takes 15 minutes to boot your system then your IT guy should not be getting paid at all.
Nobody pays much attention to TV commercials anymore, and haven't for some time. Have advertisers markedly decreased their buying of TV commercial time? No, because you don't have to pay attention for it to work.
Well I'm definitely an exception but I get *NO* TV at my house (for a lot of reasons - most beyond my control). For the last year and a half (since I moved) my only exposure to TV content has been PodCasts, iTunes (TV and Movies), iTunesU and Bit-torrent (for shows not on iTunes or ones that are inexplicably priced - I'm looking at *you* NOVA). So, I don't ever see a commercial outside of product placement in the shows.
This technology would be a great way to *subtly* advertise to me and would also be great for re-runs where the product placement and ads could be updated where appropriate. I could even see this technology being useful on-the-fly. Imagine being able to download a show for free online that contains strategically-placed "placeholders" that as you play it are filled in with product placements which change every time you play it. This might be a compromise with content producers.
However they do it - It'd better be unobtrusive and not distract me from the show.
The roads you drive on, the police that protect you, the power grid, the phone network, are all examples of publicly funded projects which enabled you to make money. I don't know about your educational background but mine was also largely publicly funded and so I owe society a great debt for allowing me to be making more money at 25 than my parents do after 40 years of working. This is why I pay the loans my parents took out to help get me education and why I have no problem paying taxes.
Yes, but I'm already paying for "more" of the roads and "more" of the schools and "more" of the police than most of the people you are talking about. Does that mean I should be able to use more of the roads? How about more of the public school system? Should the police preferentially come quicker to my calls? I'd be willing to bet I'm making a whole lot less use of the police than those in the demographic who don't pay any taxes and are on the dole. Granted, that's an over-generalization, but on the whole I'd bet I'm right. I'm also making a whole lot less use of the schools then those who drop their kids off early to have free breakfast (at my expense) and free lunches; those who get course fees waived for them and then again those who get scholarships to go to college because they're "needy".
Listen, I don't begrudge those in need a helping hand. But that hand is no longer out, it's actively digging in my pockets and on top of that, I'm being made to feel guilty for not doing more. I'm not just paying more dollars for those things "we all share", I'm paying a higher *percentage*. If everyone "donated" 20% of their income "for the good of all" fine. I make more, I give more. But when 10% of the people are paying more than the other 90% of the population combined, that's wrong. Those 10 percent are carrying us. And I say *us* because I'm not in the top 10% (yet) but I'm working hard, investing wisely and someday I hope to.
Since the rest of the 90% aren't ever going to say it, I will: "Thank you. Thank you for what you have contributed. You shouldn't have to."
In short, we're a community of people and most everything is connected so while your money is yours, it's not your's alone. I don't think you should be forced to give up all the hard earned cash or even most of it, right now millions are in need of a little extra and those millions aren't in some far away place, they are right next door or in the next town over.
Yeah, well, I would rather they stayed in my paycheck so that I could support the economy by voting with my dollars, like being able to put some construction workers to work putting new windows in my house and putting window-makers to work while they're at it. Not handed over to you because you know so much better that me where my money should be spent!
I was asked about Opera not being allowed on the iPhone yesterday. My immediate gut reaction was that Apple was being a douche. All my instincts cry out that programmers should be able to put anything they want out there and let the market decide.
I got to thinking about it though. To the best of my knowledge, there is no global preference in place to set which apps respond to which data sources. What I mean is, when I click on a link in an email, Safari opens the page. When I click on a phone number in google maps, an email or a web page, the phone app opens it. Same thing for music, podcasts, videos, etc. You get the idea.
This keeps the phone simple, intuitive and predictable. All the other apps I install are all for doing some *other* specific task than what is provided by the core applications/functionality. What would happen then if I loaded Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, etc. on the phone. Which one would open my web links? Obviously the one specified in my preferences (which don't exist). What if I wanted to open this particular link with FireFox this time? I can't right-click and say open link with. Do I have to quit the program, open preferences and temporarily select Firefox?
I realize that it would be rather simple for Apple to address these issues and add this functionality, but once that camel's nose is under the tent you are now dealing with people demanding a preference and underlying mechanism for modifying the behavior of all the core functionalities. I want Skype to open when I touch a phone number in an email or on a web page (or in my address book), but I only want it to come up when I'm not connected to wireless. When I'm on wireless I want MyVOIP to make the calls. This also applies to which app you want sending emails, text messages, etc.
While the geek in me can get into this sort of configurability, I've already seen the whole other level of complexity added to the preference system with just the addition of push and Exchange connectivity. If users had to go through page after page of preferences just to find the right place to indicate which app they wanted to store their contacts in and have that tie into their Exchange push connection, it would be a nightmare.
I don't think the masses are ready for that or even really want it. That sort of complexity will make the iPhone just like every other smart phone out there. My coworker was bragging up his WinMobile-based smartphone at lunch the other day. He was saying it could do so much more than the iPhone. I don't doubt it, but my god, the gyrations he had to go through to tweak a setting to get it to do things. Just setting up a new wireless connection or a new IMAP email account seemed ridiculously complex. He said it was just due to the fact that he'd downloaded other email apps and tools and that each one had a different place to set up some of the preferences.
Is there a place for a mobile device that lets a geek configure every possible thing and choose exactly which software performed what tasks? Absolutely. That place should rightly be filled by Android and matched with the particular hardware design that that geek has chosen for their particular needs/fetish. I don't think the iPhone is where it belongs.
It may be the height of irony but I can see the iPhone becoming the phone people refer to when they say "Dammit, all I want in my smart-phone is to be able to make calls, surf the web, email, mapping, music, games and movies! I don't want to have to mess with all that other crap." in the same way purists today say "I just want a phone that makes calls."
And the selfishness of "it is ALL my money I don't want to share it" attitude
You need to look a little closer. The attitude is "it is ALL my money I don't want to share it WITHOUT HAVING ANY CONTROL...why the hell did I work for it otherwise."
Strangely enough, the people who claim you are being selfish for not wanting to share your money are the same people who are hoping they will be given a share of it when it's confiscated by the government.
For the record, I've had similar experiences with beggars. I've offered my freshly purchased sub sandwich to a beggar that had a sign that said "Homeless and hungry" - he asked what kind it was and then asked for money instead. Last fall I pulled up next to a guy with a sign that said "Will work for food" and told him I had a bunch of wood that needed to be split and stacked. I told him that I'd pay him $150 per chord. Now, it takes me about 4 hours to split a chord of wood, but I'm not that "physical" a guy - my neighbor can crank out a chord in just over 2 hours. I have other things I'd rather be doing anyway and figured this guy could put in an 7 or 8-hour day and have about $300 bucks. He looked at me like I was mocking him and said "Dude, split your own fucking wood". Well that's what I did. Took me two 6-hour days to do 3.5 chord and I saved myself $375 and got some good exercise in the process. He didn't want to work - he wanted my charity. I'm more than willing to help those who unable to help themselves. I won't help those who are unwilling and lazy.
One time I heard from my church about a family in a nearby neighborhood that had lost everything they owned in a fire. I had an old car that ran well but burned some oil and had some rust spots on it. I signed it over to them and threw in some extra kitchenware that I had. Now, my critics will say that I obviously didn't need the car and that the pots and pans I gave them were "extra" anyway so it was no big sacrifice. They may be right, but the family receiving it didn't see it that way. In fact I had to go out of my way to explain to them that the car and pans were just taking up space anyway just to quell the protestations and promises to pay me back.
This was a hard-working family that was unaccustomed to getting things they hadn't worked for themselves. They were proud people and were embarrassed at their helplessness and reliance on their community. In don't know about their insurance situation and didn't ask but I suspect they were under-insured if insured at all - that's a big problem in our area where many homes were owner-built or passed down to each generation with no mortgages.
I'm willing to help people of my own accord, you can check my other/. posts where I mention similar, on-going support situations which are really no one's business but mine anyway. But I resent the hell out of someone else dictating to me to whom and how much I "must" contribute - especially when the recipients are able, but unwilling to help themselves. An don't you dare call me selfish because I believe that ALL the money I earned is MINE. It's sure as hell is not yours. You didn't earn any of it and are not entitled to it. It's mine to do with as I determine is best. I worked for it and I earned it.
And I protest every post advocating firearms. Traveling with them is even more unreasonable. Traveling by plane is bad enough without gun-toting pinheads wandering airports (apart from the TSA pinheads).
Oh please, get off it. I travel with firearms regularly and the only time this gun-toting pinhead wanders about the airport with a firearm is during the time before checking baggage. It would be great if I were allowed to carry my pistol behind security and on board, you know, to even the odds a bit. It irks me to no end how people believe a normal person who takes a few classes, shoots a marginal qualification score and obtains a badge or other law enforcement commission is somehow different from a "ordinary" person and is superior or more qualified to carry a weapon.
For the record my firearms have not killed any random people and they have not attempted to maim or kill me. But you never know, I do own assault weapons and high capacity magazines.:o
I protest every post protesting the advocating of firearms. If you don't like firearms more power to you, but your irrational fears should not dictate my life.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity"
Sigmund Freud
Amen brother!!!
As a former police officer all I can say is I agree with you 100%. I pack to exercise my rights as much as to protect myself and my family. It is incumbent on the *citizens* of this great country to ensure that the government understands, in no uncertain terms, that it serves *US*, not the other way around.
Firewire is a "pro" standard. Apple included it on all older computers because at the time the USB 1 standard was worthless for anything but keyboards and mice. Apple was providing a convenient method of importing video from the cameras at that time.
Now, most of the consumer-level video cameras come with a USB connection, leaving the pro-sumer and pro cameras with firewire. Anyone who does any serious video editing is not going to do it on a MacBook. They will upgrade to the MBP. It sucks for all of us who still have perfectly good cameras and external drive enclosures with FireWire, but then again, I believe Apple is targeting the MacBook at *new* users who wouldn't necessarily be burdened with all the FireWire peripherals. They also need to differentiate the MB from the MBP in some meaningful way, otherwise very few will bother to pony up for the MBP - the MacBook is that good.
As far as the existing white MacBooks having it, it's already in their design and manufacturing process, Apple makes a good profit on them without changing the specs. I'll bet that next January we'll see Apple drop FireWire from the white MacBook, maybe make a few other cost-saving tweaks and roll it our at the $899 price-point, especially if the economy turns out to be hitting them harder then they are predicting.
The nice thing about the FireWire spec is that you don't need a computer to manage the transfers. This means we will be seeing more "adapters" with perhaps an intermediate HD in them that provide FireWire-in and USB/FW-out. Not a perfect solution, especially with Final Cut Pro set up to use time-coding for final imports of projects, but then again, if you've sprung for FCP, you're not going to do it on a MacBook and I'm sure USB cameras that are high-end enough to justify editing in FCP will be able to be accurately controlled over USB as well.
This still doesn't address target disk mode, but realistically I've only used that recently to migrate data from an older machine to a newer one. I'm sure there's a way with the migration assistant to use another method to make the transfer (if anybody knows, please reply). I have to admit, I'm typing this on a MacBook Air that I've had since day-one which has no firewire and have never needed target disk mode or to connect to any of my firewire drives. I really haven't missed it in spite of having a lot of FireWire devices (XL1 cameras, FCP, external drives, etc.) I use the Air for "everything else" and my tower for video editing where I can control the lighting, use a big monitor and be connected to my Drobo backup.
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...The point of the legislation is to encourage (or force if you prefer) a switch to renewable energy and/or CO2 sequestering. If we do the green revolution in earnest we'll get a lot of our energy from green sources which will fall well under the CO2 limits thereby not succumbing to the tax hits. Today's conventional energy production facilities should be working on CO2 sequestering and by 2020 (when the really strict CO2 limits come into effect) they should be under as well. Energy moguls don't want to change because it costs them money. Average Americans don't want to change because they don't see why they should, don't really understand the effects of the legislation and don't want to pay a cent more...
Although I agree that we need to be looking toward more renewable energy I disagree with Cap & Trade. First of all, I don't want to pay more for my energy than I absolutely have to. If I see my bills go up and know that it is simply a tax-grabbing shell-game in Washington that's behind it, I'm going to be mighty pissed. There is a very good reason we don't have solar panels and windmills and algae everywhere: they aren't cost-effective yet! And if the only way to make them cost effective is to artificially jack up the price of the current energy sources, it will destroy our economy. Sure, a devastated economy will certainly result in reduced energy consumption, but at what cost?
Our Great Leader has already boasted that he will drive coal plants out of business and that our energy prices will "skyrocket". Well, guess what? If gas and electricity is expensive, everything else will be expensive too. Anything that has to be transported, stored and sold will skyrocket in price right along with it. People won't be able to afford it. Less will be sold. Stores will buy less from producers. Producers and retailers will lay people off and close. People will be out of a job and stick their hand out for the Fatherland to feed and clothe them. Our Great Leader will remind us that we are all out of work and prices are so high because of the evil rich people and their greedy profiteering stores. He will raise taxes on them so that the wealth will be properly distributed. More companies will close, more people lose their jobs...
I am a personal believer in "Peak Oil". I believe we are in dire need for alternative energy and alternative means to get it. I do NOT believe the "evil energy companies" are hiding miraculous technology for cheap energy just to prop up their current business model. If there were an economically and environmentally viable alternative to oil, gas and coal today, the company that was providing it would be trumpeting it from the rooftops and would be the darling of Wall Street. It's just not there yet. How do we get there? We give incentives and rewards to those who are looking for the answers. We don't punish their competitors!!!
Punishing those companies who are already providing America with as cheap an energy source as they can will finish off this economy. The downward spiral will result in so many people out of work that the only solution will be to socialize everything or start a revolution. Whichever the end result is, it won't have cheap, renewable energy. It will be chaos.
In two months my family's income will be taking a 25% hit. I'm fortunate that I've gotten that much warning, many others have not. We have already cut our spending to the bone in preparation for that. It also means we've put off upgrading our home heating system and purchasing new vehicles. We simply can't afford the extra monthly payments no matter how much it might save us "in the long run". If, on top of all that, my electric bill goes up and the price of food goes up and my taxes go up, we will be in a world of trouble. Our belt is already so tight it hurts. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Obama has gotten himself in a bind. He's committed this country to a course of action that has resulted in unimaginable debt. He is counting on the income from this C
in spite of doubling my net worth in the last decade - I am still struggling to afford the basic necessities of life. It means little to be able to buy that killer laptop when I can't afford to put a roof over my head. This isn't an education problem; it isn't a problem of productivity. It is a problem of economics and of corporate greed.
Although I can sympathize with the frustration and apparent hopelessness of your situation, I have to disagree. The reason our parents had a better standard of living is that they did not live in the same "credit-based" society. In fact, my parents were still very much influenced by the great depression and the frugality that entailed.
Disclaimer: I was struggling under a huge load of debt that I'm still crawling out of, but have come to realize a few things as I have become debt-free and a master of my own destiny.
A vast percentage of our income goes to taxes and covering our debt-load. There is little I can do about my taxes, but I can have an impact on my debt and the interest I pay on it. Look at it this way: Last year I paid over $20,000 in interest on my mortgage. The year before that I paid almost that much interest on my credit card debt. Those two things were basically eating up a whole person's income in our household budget. That isn't even considering the interest we were paying on student loans, car loans, personal lines of credit, etc.
Two years ago I realized I was spending so much of my time working to just pay interest on my lifestyle that I wasn't able to make any headway. So my family went cold turkey. We went to a cash basis. We scraped together $1,000.00 cash that we locked in our safe for emergencies and put every other penny we could scrape together into paying off our debt. We sold our toys. We worked extra hours. We stopped eating out. We turned down the heat and bought second-hand sweaters. We made a strict written budget and stuck with it.
Over the last two years we've been able to pay off almost $90,000 in debt. Debt! Money we were borrowing to help us live the lifestyle we deserved but were unwilling to pay for up front. Had we lived this frugally from the beginning we would have just put that same $90,000.00 to use working for us and investing in our future. In two more years we could have paid cash for a $180,000.00 house and not had a house-payment! When I see that, it makes me sick to realize how much money I've been wasting on interest and "toys" that could have gone toward giving my family the lifestyle they really deserve. We've been living on a borrowed lifestyle. Well, no more!
We should be completely debt-free in about another year if things were to stay the same. However, we just learned that my wife will be taking a huge pay-cut in order to keep her job (to the tune of $30,000.00 a year). It terrifies me to think what sort of financial position we'd have been in if we hadn't started paying off debt two years ago. Back then, we were "doing fine" in that we were easily able to make our monthly payments and have some left over for "fun". But had we kept on that path a $30K reduction in income would have bankrupted us. Now it just means it will take us a little longer to get out of debt. But get out we will and I will never borrow another cent from anyone in my life.
Just thinking about the sort of life I could have had for my family had I lived the way my parents did and followed their example. Instead I criticized them for being so "stingy" and not getting the things they could "afford" and not "leveraging" their assets. Well, looks like the laughs on me. They are retired now. Last year they paid cash for a house. Paid cash to fix it up. and now have it rented out. Their money is working for them. They have no debt. They are taking their profits and looking for the next good opportunity to come along. They are positioned well to take advantage of the many deals this economy has for them.
I've sat both my kids down (they're 19, and 20) and laid out to them w
Are those recent prices? And, is any of this gear actually "enterprise" level quality, or just expensive crap you can get for cheaper down at the best buy? Either way, that is some fucked up shit.
As far as I'm concerned, its all a big scam. The only thing I can really compare apples to apples is the hard drives. The hard drives that they put in those FND SANs cost something like $1500 for a 500GB SATA (these prices were from like 1-2 years ago). They say that the drives are certified, but as far as I'm concerned, if they don't last for 20+ years and go 10 times faster (which they don't) then they are not worth that price. Unfortunately, I guess if you want to get support and the whole 9 yards on support, you have to go through them. You can't just buy your own hard drives from DEX or something. So yeah, its a big scam. When we spent the million on a 40TB SAN (included large switches too, etc.) I sat down and calculated how much it would cost to buy some 15 bay chasis with fiber channel cards and fill those up like DAEs. For 1 million, we could have had a 1PB SAN. Or we could have had 40TB for like $40,000.
I know that, at least with NetApp, they flash the drives with their own, proprietary firmware. That's what you're paying for. I'm not sure if the firmware actually makes them more reliable or allows tighter integration with their controllers or something. The cynical side of me wouldn't be surprised if it is only to keep cheaper drives from working with their controllers and actually does nothing for performance or reliability.
The saddest thing about NetApp is, they have a great product! However, the pain of being sold on their product based on what we were demoed it can do only to discover after it was installed that EVERY SINGLE IMPORTANT FEATURE required a frickin' fortune to separately enable makes me unable to recommend them to anyone else. We actually rolled out two OpenFiler boxes right next to it that have performed admirably and can do almost everything the NetApp does for about 5% the price. Basically, the only stuff we run off the NetApp are the "politically sensitive" systems. If the NetApp bites it we can raise our hands, point and say "Hey, it was on the expensive 'enterprise' system..." Otherwise, we've seen just as mush reliability out of the open source OpenFiler systems.
> Blame congress for leaving the loop holes.
No, thank them. Obama, being a fool, is about to learn why those loopholes exist. We put them in to keep some of the multinationals headquartered here in the US in practice by allowing them to headquarter on paper somewhere else and we all agreed to ignore the oddities that followed from that. Forced to actually choose many will opt to close up the skyscraper here and open one up in a more business friendly climate. Then profits from US operations will flow OUT instead of overseas profits flowing IN. I'm failing to see how the US wins.
This trend is going to be accelerated by the overthrow of the rule of law implied in the auto bailouts, etc. When the workers are running around seizing the means of production smart people start looking to get out while they can.
Meh. Who is John Gault?
OTOH, don't try too hard. Mind the business. Some customers are inherently problematic and nearly impossible to deal with. Leave them to Dell.
Exactly! Those who buy based on price alone are NOT the quality of customer Apple wants. I'm loving these ads - they're separating the wheat from the chaff. MS and Dell can lead the race straight to the bottom and I'll applaud them the whole way.
I buy and use what I like and what I feel lets me work best.
And the sheeple also buy and use what they believe to be the best. This marketing initiative didn't backfire, it was never aimed at Apple users. Instead, it confirms all the rumors that Apple sucks and you're on the "right team" by sticking with Microsoft.
Amen. I'm loving these ads! The types of people who will be persuaded by these ads, instead of making an intelligent, independent decision are exactly the type of people who need and deserve to be running windows on a $350 Dell. They are exactly the type that would eventually destroy Apple with their ignorance and mindset.
The same is true for Linux. In order for someone to use Linux they need to make a conscious decision about their computing environment. They have to make the deliberate choice to not just use the "default" but to seek out something better. Those people who are discerning, "thinking" computer users are the ones we want on Linux. Leave the lowest-common-denominator crowd on windows where they belong and are happy and stop bothering them about switching - "casting pearls before swine" and all that.
Over time the non-MS market shares will steadily grow, but they will overwhelmingly consist of the best, thinking, knowledgeable computer users, while MS will be overwhelmingly left with the idiocracy. It's hard to understand from this side of the tracks, but the superior product is often not the best choice for most people. If making the best use of a superior product requires an intelligent, motivated, discerning person, then it most certainly is not suited for those who watch these ads and change their buying habits based on them.
I don't know. At the risk of being branded by knee jerk reactionaries, I have a hard time with the concept that the photo itself is the illegal part. Simply seeing the photo is deemed to have committed the crime whether or not you keep it, distribute it, etc. If, for God knows what reason, have a collection of photos of murder victims, torture victims, what-have-you, somehow they are perfectly fine. It's the original act that is abhorrent and illegal. Yet somehow if I even *see* a picture of a 14 year old's naked form I'm committing one of the most heinous crimes you can commit today.
*IF* a child was exploited or harmed in the making of the photo the exploitation or harming of the child is what should be deemed illegal. If someone paid someone else to assault the child they should be tried under that crime. Everyone goes on and on about how they are just trying to kill the "market" for this material. Yeah, right. First of all that argument is very tenuous in 99% of the cases and second, we've seen what that kind of tactic has had with the drug wars.
Listen, whether they admit it or not, almost everyone on slashdot knows how and where to get CP. If we do, don't you think the authorities do? If we can track down the hosters and owners of these websites why can't the feds? I get the impression that a lot of this brouhaha is hand-waving and a smoke screen for a different agenda. (see my sig)
I think child exploitation is abhorrent, but in this sexting case and in may other cases like it the only ones doing any exploiting are the prosecutors. I wonder sometimes if they don't get so light-headed and guiltily excited at seeing those pictures that they feel there must be something wrong with the pictures - otherwise they'd have to admit there might be something wrong with them.
While that is definitely true, and an important caveat, the fact that there is a connection at all between electromagnetism and gravity was somewhat unexpected - physicists did expect to eventually unify the theories, but probably not in a way where one affects the other like this.
I don't see why a connection bewtween the two would be unexpected. We know of particles that have the properties mass and electric charge at the same time hence are coupled to the electromagnetic and gravitatioinal field at the same time. And AFAICS that's exactly what TFA is talking about: gravitational waves change the position of ions in a lattice which has an effect on the electromagnetic field.
To put it simply: As soon as we apply a field, we couple to a state, it is radiatively coupled to the ground state. I figure we can extract at least ten to the twenty-first photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
Because he mentioned the number 42 in a book!
Since 42 is 7 times 9, you can also make jokes based on those two numbers.
Uhhh... Whaaa? Looks like the economy is affecting *everything*! Even the products of math problems are losing value it seems. I can still remember the days when 7 x 9 was 63. Ah, nostalgia...
There is absolutely no legal or accounting reason they have to charge for anything. Anything any Apple employee says to the contrary is a bald-faced lie.
This. Just to offer an example, Creative announced that they would add certain features to the Zen Vision MP3 series including a 'DJ' feature and the ability to record from the radio.
It's funny how I didn't have to pay for that.
Wow. Perhaps the fact that Creative is based in Singapore has some bearing on whether they need to follow American SOX accounting rules? Funny how companies in other countries get to play by other rules.
Too advanced a concept for you? Or are you just bitching and whining for the sake of bitching an whining like all the other losers on Slashdot?
And no if Word is the baseline then OO Writer is not feature complete. Once I learnt to use it the outline view in Word was the killer feature, which made editing large documents doable. Without outline view I could not imagine working on documents of a comparable size.
"Outline view" in OOo is known as "Navigator". Not a feature-for-feature match but in many ways better and more powerful. It's too bad that OOo did not make this feature more apparent to those searching the help system for "outline"...
Three reasons spring to mind:
Three? I gotta admit, this is the first baker's-trio I've seen.
The monoculture strikes again! My heart is bleeding peanut-butter right now. Having all your eggs in one basket (especially Microsoft's) is never a good idea.
I'm sure I'm about to show my ignorance here (and the fact that I did not RTFA) but couldn't this approach work against anything the body needs to fight? I'm thinking HIV/AIDS, hospital drug-resistant bacteria, Ebola, etc.? Although, in the case of AIDS, I guess the immune system itself is already ineffective. I can see this as a much better alternative to the current method of introducing toxins into the body in the hopes that it kills the disease before the host.
You had wood? Spoiled kid.
Are you kidding? When I was a kid I had wood constantly. Now that I'm [much] older I can only dream...
Do you suppose it might be someone like Dell interested in testing the waters anonymously?
Not saying it's Dell or HP but I know they are in a bit of a pinch lately and I'd bet they believe they could out-compete Apple on margins and use their name-recognition to get the unwashed masses to switch. Imagine a Dell that could run Linux, Windows and OS X out of the box for $500.00. People would be switching left and right. Many Windows users could give a crap about aesthetics or build-quality so they'd not hesitate to go with Dell. Also, Pystar is selling servers, which is another area Dell is big in that could benefit from a broader selection. Apple would lose for sure unless they started selling OS X client for $500.00 a pop and server for $1000.00. But Dell would never risk "testing the waters" themselves, so when they see this little upstart come along, it's in their best interests to support them and help them succeed.
When I was still an hourly employee we used an electronic timecard--you couldn't "clock in" until the computer was booted and ready. Usually took a really long time...30 minutes in total. You didn't even have the option until your machine was booted and workable...God forbid you have issues starting up.
WTF!? I didn't RTFA (of course) but even using Windows, what computer takes 15 minutes to boot? One minute I could understand, 15 minutes? Even my big SQL servers don't take that long to boot the OS and then bring the DB online. If you are fiddle-farting around before logging in then no, you shouldn't get paid. If you are bitching about not getting paid for the 1 or 2 minutes it takes to boot and log in to the system then I submit the boss has the obligation to put a camera on you to make sure you don't answer your personal cell phone or text message anything personal or chat up a colleague about non-work-related stuff or otherwise waste a minute or two of his time.
If it truly takes 15 minutes to boot your system then your IT guy should not be getting paid at all.
Nobody pays much attention to TV commercials anymore, and haven't for some time. Have advertisers markedly decreased their buying of TV commercial time? No, because you don't have to pay attention for it to work.
Well I'm definitely an exception but I get *NO* TV at my house (for a lot of reasons - most beyond my control). For the last year and a half (since I moved) my only exposure to TV content has been PodCasts, iTunes (TV and Movies), iTunesU and Bit-torrent (for shows not on iTunes or ones that are inexplicably priced - I'm looking at *you* NOVA). So, I don't ever see a commercial outside of product placement in the shows.
This technology would be a great way to *subtly* advertise to me and would also be great for re-runs where the product placement and ads could be updated where appropriate. I could even see this technology being useful on-the-fly. Imagine being able to download a show for free online that contains strategically-placed "placeholders" that as you play it are filled in with product placements which change every time you play it. This might be a compromise with content producers.
However they do it - It'd better be unobtrusive and not distract me from the show.
The roads you drive on, the police that protect you, the power grid, the phone network, are all examples of publicly funded projects which enabled you to make money. I don't know about your educational background but mine was also largely publicly funded and so I owe society a great debt for allowing me to be making more money at 25 than my parents do after 40 years of working. This is why I pay the loans my parents took out to help get me education and why I have no problem paying taxes.
Yes, but I'm already paying for "more" of the roads and "more" of the schools and "more" of the police than most of the people you are talking about. Does that mean I should be able to use more of the roads? How about more of the public school system? Should the police preferentially come quicker to my calls? I'd be willing to bet I'm making a whole lot less use of the police than those in the demographic who don't pay any taxes and are on the dole. Granted, that's an over-generalization, but on the whole I'd bet I'm right. I'm also making a whole lot less use of the schools then those who drop their kids off early to have free breakfast (at my expense) and free lunches; those who get course fees waived for them and then again those who get scholarships to go to college because they're "needy".
Listen, I don't begrudge those in need a helping hand. But that hand is no longer out, it's actively digging in my pockets and on top of that, I'm being made to feel guilty for not doing more. I'm not just paying more dollars for those things "we all share", I'm paying a higher *percentage*. If everyone "donated" 20% of their income "for the good of all" fine. I make more, I give more. But when 10% of the people are paying more than the other 90% of the population combined, that's wrong. Those 10 percent are carrying us. And I say *us* because I'm not in the top 10% (yet) but I'm working hard, investing wisely and someday I hope to.
Since the rest of the 90% aren't ever going to say it, I will: "Thank you. Thank you for what you have contributed. You shouldn't have to."
In short, we're a community of people and most everything is connected so while your money is yours, it's not your's alone. I don't think you should be forced to give up all the hard earned cash or even most of it, right now millions are in need of a little extra and those millions aren't in some far away place, they are right next door or in the next town over.
Yeah, well, I would rather they stayed in my paycheck so that I could support the economy by voting with my dollars, like being able to put some construction workers to work putting new windows in my house and putting window-makers to work while they're at it. Not handed over to you because you know so much better that me where my money should be spent!
I was asked about Opera not being allowed on the iPhone yesterday. My immediate gut reaction was that Apple was being a douche. All my instincts cry out that programmers should be able to put anything they want out there and let the market decide.
I got to thinking about it though. To the best of my knowledge, there is no global preference in place to set which apps respond to which data sources. What I mean is, when I click on a link in an email, Safari opens the page. When I click on a phone number in google maps, an email or a web page, the phone app opens it. Same thing for music, podcasts, videos, etc. You get the idea.
This keeps the phone simple, intuitive and predictable. All the other apps I install are all for doing some *other* specific task than what is provided by the core applications/functionality. What would happen then if I loaded Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, etc. on the phone. Which one would open my web links? Obviously the one specified in my preferences (which don't exist). What if I wanted to open this particular link with FireFox this time? I can't right-click and say open link with. Do I have to quit the program, open preferences and temporarily select Firefox?
I realize that it would be rather simple for Apple to address these issues and add this functionality, but once that camel's nose is under the tent you are now dealing with people demanding a preference and underlying mechanism for modifying the behavior of all the core functionalities. I want Skype to open when I touch a phone number in an email or on a web page (or in my address book), but I only want it to come up when I'm not connected to wireless. When I'm on wireless I want MyVOIP to make the calls. This also applies to which app you want sending emails, text messages, etc.
While the geek in me can get into this sort of configurability, I've already seen the whole other level of complexity added to the preference system with just the addition of push and Exchange connectivity. If users had to go through page after page of preferences just to find the right place to indicate which app they wanted to store their contacts in and have that tie into their Exchange push connection, it would be a nightmare.
I don't think the masses are ready for that or even really want it. That sort of complexity will make the iPhone just like every other smart phone out there. My coworker was bragging up his WinMobile-based smartphone at lunch the other day. He was saying it could do so much more than the iPhone. I don't doubt it, but my god, the gyrations he had to go through to tweak a setting to get it to do things. Just setting up a new wireless connection or a new IMAP email account seemed ridiculously complex. He said it was just due to the fact that he'd downloaded other email apps and tools and that each one had a different place to set up some of the preferences.
Is there a place for a mobile device that lets a geek configure every possible thing and choose exactly which software performed what tasks? Absolutely. That place should rightly be filled by Android and matched with the particular hardware design that that geek has chosen for their particular needs/fetish. I don't think the iPhone is where it belongs.
It may be the height of irony but I can see the iPhone becoming the phone people refer to when they say "Dammit, all I want in my smart-phone is to be able to make calls, surf the web, email, mapping, music, games and movies! I don't want to have to mess with all that other crap." in the same way purists today say "I just want a phone that makes calls."
And the selfishness of "it is ALL my money I don't want to share it" attitude
You need to look a little closer. The attitude is "it is ALL my money I don't want to share it WITHOUT HAVING ANY CONTROL...why the hell did I work for it otherwise."
Strangely enough, the people who claim you are being selfish for not wanting to share your money are the same people who are hoping they will be given a share of it when it's confiscated by the government.
For the record, I've had similar experiences with beggars. I've offered my freshly purchased sub sandwich to a beggar that had a sign that said "Homeless and hungry" - he asked what kind it was and then asked for money instead. Last fall I pulled up next to a guy with a sign that said "Will work for food" and told him I had a bunch of wood that needed to be split and stacked. I told him that I'd pay him $150 per chord. Now, it takes me about 4 hours to split a chord of wood, but I'm not that "physical" a guy - my neighbor can crank out a chord in just over 2 hours. I have other things I'd rather be doing anyway and figured this guy could put in an 7 or 8-hour day and have about $300 bucks. He looked at me like I was mocking him and said "Dude, split your own fucking wood". Well that's what I did. Took me two 6-hour days to do 3.5 chord and I saved myself $375 and got some good exercise in the process. He didn't want to work - he wanted my charity. I'm more than willing to help those who unable to help themselves. I won't help those who are unwilling and lazy.
One time I heard from my church about a family in a nearby neighborhood that had lost everything they owned in a fire. I had an old car that ran well but burned some oil and had some rust spots on it. I signed it over to them and threw in some extra kitchenware that I had. Now, my critics will say that I obviously didn't need the car and that the pots and pans I gave them were "extra" anyway so it was no big sacrifice. They may be right, but the family receiving it didn't see it that way. In fact I had to go out of my way to explain to them that the car and pans were just taking up space anyway just to quell the protestations and promises to pay me back.
This was a hard-working family that was unaccustomed to getting things they hadn't worked for themselves. They were proud people and were embarrassed at their helplessness and reliance on their community. In don't know about their insurance situation and didn't ask but I suspect they were under-insured if insured at all - that's a big problem in our area where many homes were owner-built or passed down to each generation with no mortgages.
I'm willing to help people of my own accord, you can check my other /. posts where I mention similar, on-going support situations which are really no one's business but mine anyway. But I resent the hell out of someone else dictating to me to whom and how much I "must" contribute - especially when the recipients are able, but unwilling to help themselves. An don't you dare call me selfish because I believe that ALL the money I earned is MINE. It's sure as hell is not yours. You didn't earn any of it and are not entitled to it. It's mine to do with as I determine is best. I worked for it and I earned it.
So, what were you doing with your gun when the government was taking away your other rights?
In that order. I'm between of Ballot Box and Jury Box now. We'll see where it leads from there...
So why do you "pack" for steps 1 through 4? Isn't the whole point of those to make sure you don't have to resort to 5?
If I don't exercise my right to pack for 1-4, I won't have it when it becomes time for 5.
So, what were you doing with your gun when the government was taking away your other rights?
In that order. I'm between of Ballot Box and Jury Box now. We'll see where it leads from there...
And I protest every post advocating firearms. Traveling with them is even more unreasonable. Traveling by plane is bad enough without gun-toting pinheads wandering airports (apart from the TSA pinheads).
Oh please, get off it. I travel with firearms regularly and the only time this gun-toting pinhead wanders about the airport with a firearm is during the time before checking baggage. It would be great if I were allowed to carry my pistol behind security and on board, you know, to even the odds a bit. It irks me to no end how people believe a normal person who takes a few classes, shoots a marginal qualification score and obtains a badge or other law enforcement commission is somehow different from a "ordinary" person and is superior or more qualified to carry a weapon. For the record my firearms have not killed any random people and they have not attempted to maim or kill me. But you never know, I do own assault weapons and high capacity magazines. :o
I protest every post protesting the advocating of firearms. If you don't like firearms more power to you, but your irrational fears should not dictate my life.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity"
Sigmund Freud
Amen brother!!!
As a former police officer all I can say is I agree with you 100%. I pack to exercise my rights as much as to protect myself and my family. It is incumbent on the *citizens* of this great country to ensure that the government understands, in no uncertain terms, that it serves *US*, not the other way around.
Firewire is a "pro" standard. Apple included it on all older computers because at the time the USB 1 standard was worthless for anything but keyboards and mice. Apple was providing a convenient method of importing video from the cameras at that time.
Now, most of the consumer-level video cameras come with a USB connection, leaving the pro-sumer and pro cameras with firewire. Anyone who does any serious video editing is not going to do it on a MacBook. They will upgrade to the MBP. It sucks for all of us who still have perfectly good cameras and external drive enclosures with FireWire, but then again, I believe Apple is targeting the MacBook at *new* users who wouldn't necessarily be burdened with all the FireWire peripherals. They also need to differentiate the MB from the MBP in some meaningful way, otherwise very few will bother to pony up for the MBP - the MacBook is that good.
As far as the existing white MacBooks having it, it's already in their design and manufacturing process, Apple makes a good profit on them without changing the specs. I'll bet that next January we'll see Apple drop FireWire from the white MacBook, maybe make a few other cost-saving tweaks and roll it our at the $899 price-point, especially if the economy turns out to be hitting them harder then they are predicting.
The nice thing about the FireWire spec is that you don't need a computer to manage the transfers. This means we will be seeing more "adapters" with perhaps an intermediate HD in them that provide FireWire-in and USB/FW-out. Not a perfect solution, especially with Final Cut Pro set up to use time-coding for final imports of projects, but then again, if you've sprung for FCP, you're not going to do it on a MacBook and I'm sure USB cameras that are high-end enough to justify editing in FCP will be able to be accurately controlled over USB as well.
This still doesn't address target disk mode, but realistically I've only used that recently to migrate data from an older machine to a newer one. I'm sure there's a way with the migration assistant to use another method to make the transfer (if anybody knows, please reply). I have to admit, I'm typing this on a MacBook Air that I've had since day-one which has no firewire and have never needed target disk mode or to connect to any of my firewire drives. I really haven't missed it in spite of having a lot of FireWire devices (XL1 cameras, FCP, external drives, etc.) I use the Air for "everything else" and my tower for video editing where I can control the lighting, use a big monitor and be connected to my Drobo backup.