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User: crmarvin42

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  1. Re:No. on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    How do you know that your machine could handle it? Did you somehow install snow leopard onto you PPC machine and see what the performance was?

    Feel free to believe what you want, but unless you've got data to back up the claim of forced obsolescence instead of genuine obsolescence I'm not buying it. I cheated and installed Leopard on my wife's laptop that was 67mhz shy of the official cut off (by using target disk mode and a mac that made the cut exactly). The machine ran like crap because Leopard expected certain things of the hardware that it was incapable of doing acceptably. I ended up restoring the machine to its pre-Leopard state and she's been much happier. Leopard was originally set to have a cut off of 800mhz, but shortly before release the minimum clock was bumped to 867. I was unhappy at first, but saw the sense after my experience.

    I actually had a lot of problems with the machine that did make the cut, although it never got to the point of restoring to the older install because I used the machine primarily as a server and it performed well enough in that limited capacity.

    You've got to remember that while Intel was putting the pedal to the medal as far as chip performance, Motorola was dragging its feet on the PPC chips for Apple. As much as I hate to admit it, the Mac hardware was not comparable to the top end PC hardware of the same manufacture date. Prior to Motorola getting sidetracked with game consoles Apple hardware had a comparable, and in some cases longer half-life than it's PC peers.

  2. Re:that's my big gripe with the Mac on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    Ok, for starters you are complaining about the browser not being the latest and greatest on a machine running an OS that is now 3 versions out of date as if that is a big surprise. What hardware could you possibly be using? I had 10.4 running on a 400 MHz machine for quite a while before replacing it with the MDD tower.

    Also, I haven't personally owned a PC in years, but it was my impression based on comments of my PC using Peers that in order to run recent Windows versions the hardware needed to be less than a year old when the new OS came out (with the exception of the top of the line machines that were probably too powerful when first bought). I guess your mileage was different than my friends, sorry to hear that. However, your PC being able to run a more recent web browser is a small part of what goes into determining the lifespan of different computers.

    Finally, using "QED" after giving a single piece of anecdotal evidence to support such a broad claim on a message board is incredibly pretentious.

  3. Re:Wait a minute on AT&T To Allow VoIP On iPhone · · Score: 2, Informative

    They played a role in the writing the EULA to prohibit the use of VoIP, but the decision to pull apps that shouldn't have been approved in the first place based on the EULA was Apples decision. At least that's how I understand the situation. While I think most posters are being a little hypocritical "AT&T is evil for prohiting VoIP and evil for allowing it". I do agree that this is probably an effort to avoid regulation and stay competetive with Verizon.

  4. Re:that's my big gripe with the Mac on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    I really have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe I'm missing something, but my browser has never "announced" that I have to run anything. My wife's laptop (10.4) is running the latest version of Safari. In fact, she avoided updating for almost a month after it was released because she really liked the Tabs On Top arrangement.

    Opera might dictate higher OS, but AFAIK the latest and greatest version of Safari runs fine on a machine in 1/3rd the clockspeed of current models and 10.4. It's possible that you are visiting sites with higher requirements than my wife is because if her sites were not rendering correctly I'm sure I'd have heard about it by now.

  5. Re:that's my big gripe with the Mac on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    It really pisses me off that a computer that's otherwise fine is doomed to obsolescence years before it either became too slow to use or physically broke.

    Sooo, your trying to tell me that all macs not running snow leopard are going to stop working? Of so it's news to me.

    Because I've got an 800 MHz TiBook running 10.4(wife's machine), and a MDD G4 tower running 10.5(iTunes media server) in addition to my MBP running 10.6(primary machine) and none of them have exploded because they're not all running the latest and greatest.

    Would I prefer it if they all ran 10.6? Of course, but I'd prefer it if they ran different versions quickly, which oddly enoAugh they all do!

  6. Re:Here's why on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    More market share is desirable, but not at the expense of profits. Market share matters less than it used to. As long as there are enough macs to keep developers interested, apple can ignore market share If they choose.

    I don't believe that they are ignoring it (they've gained share in the US and global markets) but they don't NEED market share as badly as you seem to believe.

  7. Re:Duh! on Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    I'm a grad student and my wife is a music teacher. Between the two of us we make less than 40k/year, and we own 4 macs and no pc's. Neither of us are from affluent families, but we both feel that the cost benefit ratio for a mac is better than for the alternative in the long run.

    Also, I can't speak for anyone else but 2 of my macs were bought used on eBay so the majority of the depreciation had already taken place

  8. Re:As if any of this will see the light of day. on CA City Mulls Evading the Law On Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 1

    They co-developed a project that was spearheaded by IBM, Windows NT was stolen IP from DEC (they later settled out of court with DEC by promising to support DEC's hardware with NT), but you are correct that they did develop CE.

  9. Re:As if any of this will see the light of day. on CA City Mulls Evading the Law On Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 1

    You are correct, but eventually something needs to make it out the door in some shape so as to make all of that R & D investment worthwhile.

    This is at least the 3rd experimental OS of theirs that I've heard about. At least one of them has a database filesystem similar to what they were supposed to be building Vista around. Now Windows 7 is coming and they still haven't been able to turn that feature of their experimental OS, a feature they spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince us all was the Bee's Knee's, into a component of a shipping OS.

    R&D shouldn't always have to end up in a shipping product, but announcing that the R&D project has features you've been promising was in the works for your shipping products and never actually delivering is stupid. If you can't build that feature into the shipping OS, then don't tell us all that it's coming, or that you've spent a lot of time and energy getting it to work in a product you never plan on giving us the option to buy.

  10. Re:As if any of this will see the light of day. on CA City Mulls Evading the Law On Red-Light Cameras · · Score: 1

    The big problem with MS's experimental OS's is that they never make it to production. IIRC all of the OS's they've ever actually sold were Purchased from someone else (or outright copied in the case of DOS), and then 'extended'. To my knowledge, none of their experimental OSs have ever actually see production, and I have little reason to believe that they ever will.

  11. Re:apple - the most anti-open company on USB-IF Slaps Palm In iTunes Spat · · Score: 1
    From wikipedia.org

    Elements

    A Section 1 violation has three elements:[17] An agreement

    which unreasonably restrains competition
    and which affects interstate commerce.

    A Section 2 violation has 2 elements:[18]

    (1) the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market and
    (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.

    IANAL, but it looks to me as though simply having a monopoly only violates the first of 2 elements in section 2.

    Besides, I don't believe that Apple has a monopoly in any important market. Sure they've got the lions share of the 'mp3' player market, but that is a smaller portion of the total mobile media player market, which includes portable CD and DVD players as well as smart phones.

  12. Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    I do agree that the Terminator gene is as evil as DRM, but from a humanity/political point of view, not from a scientific view.

    I fail to see why the Terminator gene is evil at all. Sounds to me like the judge would have ruled the other way if these modified sugar beets had a terminator gene in them. His main complaint is that people not wanting to eat GMO crops could potentially be eating them without realizing it.

    Of course I don't know anyone that actually eats sugar beets. Sugar beet pulp is an animal feed byproduct of sugar extraction and I can tell you it is not appetizing at all. I can't imagine that any of the genetic material from the beets actually stays with the sugar, intact, and capable of being incorporated into another genome. As a result I can't see who would be hurt by GMO sugar beets that don't have any sort of negative impact on the environment (as the USDA has already determined).

  13. Re:You can't inherit sterility on Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets · · Score: 1

    Farmer A plants seeds with a GURT trait like Terminator (nevermind where he got it since the technology was never commericalized).

    If it was never commercialized I fail to see how it could be a problem. Experimental plants are planted in fields specifically used for testing experimental plants. There are SOP's for this kind of work that involved having buffer zones surrounding the test plot to avoid exactly this kind of scenario.

    Those few seeds obviously won't germinate.

    Ok I'll bite, how does a sterile plant (ignoring that it has never actually existed outside of a lab) fertilize another plant?

  14. Re:apple - the most anti-open company on USB-IF Slaps Palm In iTunes Spat · · Score: 1

    monopolies are not in and of themselves ilegal!

    MS's monopoly was aquired by breaking the law, thus it is ilegal. Also, they then used their monopoly to try and stifle competition in another market which is also ilegal.

    Apple did not, to my knowledge break any laws to acheive its market position, nor to inhibit competition in another market. What they are doing is preventing Palm from profiting off of the money and time that Apple spent developing the itunes experience.

    Apple never licensed their app (iTunes) for use with other media players, and AFAIK Palm never offered to pay them for the use of their software.

  15. Re:Disappointing though it may be... on Microsoft Tax Dodge At Issue In Washington State · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The system is devised that if you have a lot of money, and know what you're doing, you don't pay a lot of taxes.

    That's because the people that write tax laws are usually pretty wealthy. They write loopholes in for themselves to take advantage of. I'm personally of the opinion that dramatically simplifying the tax code to prevent this is more important than "fixing" health care.

  16. Not sure it's wise on Microsoft Reportedly Poaching Apple Retail Staff · · Score: 1

    I can see why MS would want to poach Apple's managers. Good retail managers are hard to find, but for the actual sales guys I'm a little confused. I had a buddy that worked for the Apples Store in the Westfarms Mall in CT, and I got the impression that the vast majority of the sales force were rediculously qualified Apple fans. I'm sure some knew windows, but most of them were multiple decade Apple users that new the platform backwards and forwards. My guess would be that they sold Macs so well because of what they knew and their passion for the platform. I don't see how that is going to translate to MS simple because of a bigger paycheck.

  17. Re:Wow! on Jack Kirby Heirs Reclaim Marvel/Disney Rights · · Score: 1

    The bottom fell out of the comic book as investment market back in the mid 90's. Essentially as prospectors bought everything and anything, the publishers simply printed more books each month. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that Superman #1 was valuable, not because it was a first edition, but because there were only a couple left in existance. All of the "Golden Age" comics were rare because the kids moms would grab the stack of comic books and bring them down for the local paper to help the war effort and only a handful of any issue managed to avoid recycling. Once everyone realized that they weren't going to be making a fortune off of anything printed in the preceeding 40+ years, everyone stopped collecting unless they were actually intersted the books for themselves.

    I'm not yet 30, although its comming up fast, and I buy 3 or 4 titles a month. None of what I buy is Marvel anymore, but they still have a small fortune in stories that can be made into movies. Hollywood has been long on useless executives and short on actual tallent for years. They've figured out that the stories from comic books are easily adapted for the large screen with a built-in following, and since the stories are already written (or at least at a good starting point for re-writting) there is less risk involved in script development.

    Sounds like Kirby's looking for a little bit more of the pie he helped bake. Depending on what he's getting already, he may be entitled. Could put some excs at Disney and Marvel in hot water for a little while, but I doubt that they'll be unable to make some sort of compromise.

  18. Re:EMP? Impending poverty? on Cursive Writing Is a Fading Skill — Does It Matter? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I either sign my name in cursive thus rendering it illegible, or I print it so that it can be read. For years I only signed my name in print because my cursive handwritting was so horrible. No one ever objected, or even commented on my printed signature. I only changed because I got lazy and it's easier to scribble.

    Most instances where you will be physically writting something for someone else to read you are explicitely prohibited from using cursive, so I don't see the value in it anymore.

    Take the time they used to spend on cursive and teach young kids how to touch type. They still don't offer touch typing classes in my old school system until High School, yet they require 5th - 8th grade students to type their homework on a computer. Touch typing is infinitely more valuable than cursive writting at this point.

  19. Re:HIPAA - SHMIPAA on Spyware Prank Exposes Hospital Medical Records · · Score: 1

    You are correct as far as it goes, but there is no reason they need to allow unfettered internet access on all machines. Any machine connected to medical records should have been locked down. She should have only been able to connect to her webmail account from a machine to which she needed a login and password to access and was wiped clean after every logout. I don't hold her responsible, but the hospital IT is at least guilty of gross incompetence (assuming this policy wasn't forced on them by penny pinching management, in which case the blame rises a couple of notches.)

  20. Re:How does this *free* Mac users? on A Different Perspective On Snow Leopard's Exchange Support · · Score: 1

    And, as I've stated in response to sibling posts, there's little stopping Microsoft from changing the protocol between Outlook and Exchange to make Apple's Mail client obsolete.

    Except for the contract that they signed with Apple so that Apple could develop their own ActiveSync implementation. Apple's Lawyers have made boneheaded mistakes in the past as far as MS is concerned, but I can't see them making the obvious mistake of signing a licensing deal that is useless once MS releases a patch or updates their software.

    I know that MS is not a huge fan of following the spirit, or even the letter of the contracts they sign, but Apple is big enough and wealthy enough to sue the hell out of MS if they try anything funny. Besides, even if MS adds some new feature and fails to document how to access it, all of the other pre-exisiting Exchange features would still be implemented far better in Snow-Leopard and it's decendants than any version of MS Office for Mac has ever done.

    Free may be a poor choice of words due to the different way it can be taken, but the current situation does make it so that Apple no longer has to beg, bribe or otherwise cajole MS to fix Exchange support in MS Office. If they don't, then people will just use a different office suite and Apple's version of ActiveSync. That would cost MS money while simultaniously enriching it's competitors, so I don't see it happening if anyone at the MacBU has half of a brain.

  21. Re:irrelevant on How To Prove Someone Is Female? · · Score: 1

    female, because she is lacking in the full development of any male sexual characteristics outside of cryptic and nonfunctioning testicles. The fetus is female until the actions of an SRY gene and all of the requisite cascades successfully masculinize the fetus. Since she was only marginally masculinized (developed testicles where her ovaries should be and a vagina) as a fetus she is female.

  22. irrelevant on How To Prove Someone Is Female? · · Score: 1

    which is a form of SRY silencing. The gene is being expressed, but ignored due to an inability of the receptor to bind to the relevant gene products. Ultimately it comes down to the same thing. Insensitivity to testosterone is the functional equivalent of not being male.

    If anything I would expect testosterone insensitivity to put her at a disadvantage because normal females do have testosterone and functional testosterone receptors. Testosterone is a anabolic steroid in both sexes. Fetal development and level of testosterone production differ between the sexes but an insensitivity to an anabolic steroid would make her less competitive in physical activities.

    Phenotype is what matters here ultimately. If this woman is genetically male, but some how the machinery involved in developing the male phenotype is not functioning properly, then she will have no competitive advantage over the other contestants based on her "maleness".

    My main point is that the genetics are irrelevant, unless she's undergone sex reassignment surgery in which case she was at one point phenotypically male and simply chopped it off to compete with the girls.

  23. Re:Easy on How To Prove Someone Is Female? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anything that makes her develop into a woman is the result of the SRY gene being silenced.

    In this case Phenotype is more important than genotype. It'd be like a professional body building association requiring all body builders be tested for genes that result in superior muscling, which are very rare. Something like the Double Muscling genes. Ultimatly the Constitution lied and we are all not "Created Equal". Some of us a genetic predispositions to excel in various endeavors. She shouldn't be punished. If she has female phenotype, then she is a female. Regardelss of whether or not the SRY gene is present anywhere, it's not being expressed.

  24. The REAL problem is... on Judge Rules Against RealDVD · · Score: 1

    The law contradicts itself, and judges are not allowed to rewrite the law as they see fit. Only the first part of that is actually a problem. The second half is intentional to prevent judges from "ruining lives" on a whim, since many judges are appointed for indefinite terms of office, and the supreme court judges are appointed for life.

    I would be very surprised if the Judge wouldn't have prefered ruling the other way. However, the law is what it is. Condemning the judge for something they cannot control is myopic. Real is free to appeal the ruling to a higher court, where one of the laws can be struck down, but the court this case was decided in does not have that authority.

    This case was never going to end in this court room. Too much is at stake for all involved.

  25. Re:Don't blame M$ and Bing - blame Apple tRolls on Bing Search Tainted By Pro-Microsoft Results · · Score: 1

    And does anyone even remember that Google gives you more popular choices to your search string first, after a while?

    This is only relevant if MS threw out all of the data they were using to run the search engine before it was Bing

    However, MSN Search from 1998 became Windows Live Search, which became Live Search, which became Bing. Only the Name is New.

    Besides this is the same company that is artificially inflating it's Market Share numbers for Bing by spamming web sites with fake search referrals. Is it really any surprise that they'd manipulate search results for their own advantage as well?

    They can do what they want, it's their search engine, but I won't even be giving the thing a try if I don't believe I can trust the results of their search.