Hmmm... I find it difficult to quantify your 'only 5 pieces of software claim' when faced with this.
I'm counting now and it's gone way beyond two hands... iMovie, iTunes, iCal, iWeb, AddressBook, Mail, Safari, iDVD, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Aperture, Logic, Final Cut Pro, iChat, TextEdit, Preview, FrontRow. That's just the out-of-the-box installed software that Apple write themselves... not counting the numerous utils and other bits n pieces. The there's some of the other 300+ apps I have installed to use on a daily basis (GIMP, Inkscape, NeoOffice, M$Office, Creative Suite, Stuffit, Toast, Jam, Reason, Cubase, ProTools, VLC, Real, WinMediaSlayer, MPlayer, Hammer, VPC, Recycle, Rebirth, Repacker, ReMote Editor, SoundStudio, EyeTV, Radiolover, BitTorrent, Azureus, Firefox, Opera, MSN, AIM, iTheatre, Centerstage, ArtRage, ARD, Audio Hijack, Wiretap, Fission, Audacity, Miro, and on and on and on....
...of course, they're just some of the more widely used day to day essentials, but then there are many obscure bits n pieces. Not sure if I'd class each Dashboard widget as an app - but I have hundreds... sooooo, you were saying?
But this is only relevant if you ALREADY have a BT line. If, however, you're with Virgin in a cabled area (I am, and I am... so to speak) your phone service comes through the optical cabling along with the TV service and broadband. So if I decide to switch ISP's I'm looking at a fair old price hike to get the equivalent 10Mb+ connection. It means paying an install charge for a BT line, and then line rental on top of the ISP charge each month. At the moment the line rental is ZERO and the downstream bandwidth is the most solid and stable of any ISP I've used, so I'm not too enthralled about the expense of trying a different ISP just to avoid adverts I don't fscking want in the first place. Grrrr... this makes me so mad!
The problem is : you develop all your photos. You put them in an album perhaps. You most likely then put that album on a shelf where you promptly forget about it. You never look through those pictures again.
Digital picture frame solution : display all your photos on a rotational basis so you see different pictures all the time - even those you'd forgotten about, bringing back memories of the event/place/people. It makes taking all those pictures in the first place have a point... for a lot of people.
I don't have one myself as I use a screensaver on the machine hooked up to the TV to do the same thing, so I don't necessarily need one, but many people can see the benefit. And for those people (probably less tech-savvy than an original luddite) the autorun idea means it's one less thing to do (when they don't even know what all that 'install' and 'driver' nonsense really means/does anyway). You have to remember, most people FEAR their computer - it's alien to them, and they refuse to attempt anything until someone's shown them how to do it first. It's sad, but it's true.
You may have been hearing it for 20 years, but you've obviously not been watching as well.
Who holds the greater economic balance of power now? The people doing all the spending, or the people making the crap we spend on AND buying up our debt at the same time?
It would seem to be a bad situation to be buying off someone on credit that they control - you are de facto "in their pocket". hmmmm....
Actually (and this is drifting even FURTHER off topic, heh), America wasn't named after Amerigo Vespucci. For a long time it's thought it was that way, but unless someone is a royal or a leader then a place they discover is named after their LAST name (so it would have been named Vespuccia if it was named after he) - take a look at other examples... Cook Straits, Magellan Straits etc.
The man they think America was actually named after was Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol in the UK who traded and shipped supplies to people in Newfoundland.
I'm sure under UK law there are provisions to fight 'unfair contracts'. So even if you do sign an agreement to a company's T's & C's you can later take that company to court to overturn the contract if it's patently unfair (and the ISP would then be liable for all legal costs and possibly compensation to the tune of the cost of your service for the whole contractual term plus any losses you may have incurred if, for instance, you use the service for business purposes). In a situation where you have been disconnected for no legal infraction, I'm sure a court would agree that the Terms and Conditions of the contract were unfair (you have no way of knowing what legally downloadable material might be misconstrued as a breach of copyright beforehand) and you'd win the case.
I'm not a legal expert in this field, but if anyone knows someone who is it might be interesting to hear their point of view.
As a 'Createch' (designer who codes/coder who designs) and having personal experience of trying to sort out the visual mess most geeks create when they have a go (in the same way that geeks have to sort out the code mess when designers have a go), I'd definitely suggest using a designer to conjure something up for you.
This needn't be too expensive. If the people who hold the purse strings in your company can give you a small budget to play with (you could justify this by explaining that it's not cost effective for you to be spending hours trying to get this right when you've far more important jobs to be working on), you could try running a competition on sitepoint.com.
You just give them a brief (with examples of current company logo/stationery if you wish) and let the competition run - the winning designer gets the booty and you get a whole raft of ideas (quite often some very good designs) to run with. You can ask them to modify elements of the design and develop ideas further as the comp runs (ie: choices of colours/fonts/graphical styles). Be thorough in your brief though - it's easy for someone to misinterpret what you mean if you're a bit vague.
I know many companies who've benefitted from this system if they're on a tight budget, and many of the designers are just looking for a bit of extra cash on the side to supplement the day job so don't mind giving you an hour or two of their free time for the opportunity.
Im a diehard Apple fan (I guess)... I've been using their products for 20+ years so it's probably as apt a description as any (apart from being a Linux fan as well), but to me the MBA does seem like an overpriced and under-equipped machine. I can't really see who it's aimed at truthfully.
The Macbook Pro is not massive in comparison (it's really not - I mean, for years now they've been telling us they're 'x'-inches 'thin') and for a tiny bit more in price you get a LOT more machine. Much faster processor, much better port spec, optical drive etc etc etc.
For most people, an optical drive will be of paramount importance. So much so that a lot of MBA owners will probably buy the additional external optical drive for travelling - hence negating the size saving in the MBA. To rely solely on other people's optical drives could be very tricky unless you know their network settings and all the relevant security info (not always to hand if the IT guys aren't around to tell you) at the company you're visiting.
It's the new '20th Anniversary Mac' or 'Cube'. It looks nice, but it's not very practical for many people. It's a good thing that Apple sometimes take design risks, and it's not surprising that sometimes they don't get it right for the majority, but invariably sometime they do (original iMac with no floppy drive anyone!?).
If it fails, it fails... no biggie. If it succeeds in the market sector Apple are aiming for, then good on them - time will tell.
Apple fans don't always 'shoot their load' over Apple's 'latest and greatest'. They're as vocal as anyone when Apple get it wrong - and they're not afraid to tell Jobs the truth (people still wave Newtons at him from time to time during keynotes).
I beg to differ. My PBook G4 (Aluminium) is filthy - it's a pain to keep clean compared to my wife's old iBook, when you do clean it, it tends to smear. Granted, it doesn't stain so much (apart from some yellowing here and there - after all, its actually sprayed silver as well), it's very easy to scratch that silver if you wear a watch with a metal strap or buckle (or bracelets/jewellery) and Aluminium is a soft metal, which means that it dents VERY easily (mine has a ding where the PSU plugs in, so the plug's not square to the chassis - and that was from a minor 'incident' where it dropped an inch or two onto a desk as I was putting it down). The iBook's strong internal Aluminium chassis and the relative elasticity of it's plastic case make for a much sturdier machine. I had my hands on an iBook G4 that was still running (except for destroyed screen) after it had been run over by a car! I know the PBook wouldn't stand up to that.
Alu has it's uses (heatsink being a major one), but it's not stronger than tough ABS Plastic.
...but I think maybe ZX80, ZX81, VIC20, Dragon32, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga were my favourite gaming computers and perhaps the Atari 2600, NES, PS1 and PS2 on the console side. That said, the Acorn Electron had quite a big userbase in the UK (particularly for playing Elite I remember).
I'd say it's not so much a case of 'which was the best console', rather 'which was the best of it's generation'.
Where the hell does he get off claiming that ISP's are selling their broadband services (and making money) off the back of recording companies' artists!?!? And he wants them to cough up or shut down the file sharers?
This is so backwards I don't know whether to spit or shit! Surely the recording companies are making money off the back of an additional revenue stream which would be less profitable if it wasn't for the ISP's providing their customer base more accessibility to that service. So if you ask me, the recording companies should be paying out to the ISP's!!!
And let's not forget that the 'holier than thou' politics of U2 do not extend to themselves. They are hypocrites of the highest order - they claim to be fighting for debt relief for Africa, with rich nations' populations putting their hands in their pockets (via the individual countries' Tax systems), yet their own accounts are all based offshore, so they pay NO Tax in their native Ireland. How sick, twisted and realpolitick can you get?
Maybe it's about time these moaning fecks should face a sustained campaign to boycott their products through the widespread use of P2P. Then perhaps they might realise just how good they had it beforehand.
I'm an independent recording artist, but I regularly give my music away online for free. Why? Because it's GOOD FOR BUSINESS!!! If someone wants to hear you, but doesn't want to risk laying out loads of wonga, they can get tracks for free. Then if they like you, they can support you financiallly by coming to see you play live (and who knows, maybe buy the odd track here or there too) - that's what musicians are SUPPOSED TO DO - PLAY LIVE!!! Perhaps songwriters should get off their fat arses and get out on the road to make a living like the real songwriter/musicians have to. At least we'd see the back of mindless manufactured pop shite permeating the charts in an endless stream of 'artists' who don't write their own songs... which is a win/win in my books.
Yeah, and let's not forget all the stink that surrounded the fact that the iPhone doesn't have removable storage - so this 'patent' can't apply to Apple either! heh:)
Actually... if this handheld device is just a computer, then a handheld computer is really just a scaled down laptop (which after all you can hold in one hand and use with the other), so who made the first laptop? Now THAT'S prior art.
"having touted this amazing feature of the iPhone as cool and innovative, they now cannot consistently claim that it is obvious..."
Except that that's exactly how they marketed it from the very first developer conference!!! I believe Steve's words were something along the lines of "it's so obvious, we're surprised nobody's done it before".
Given the disproportional amount of media hype over the iPhone - you'd have to have NO access to any kind of technology capable of receiving 'news' to miss the main selling points and 'features' of the iPhone prior to going on sale. This guy had plenty of time to act BEFORE the iPhone went to market and stop this supposed infringement of his patents. However, he didn't. He simply waited until Apple had sold 'x' million units in the US and then launched in more countries (UK, Germany) at which point changing the design of the existing phones would likely cost far more than settling with the plaintiff out of court.
It's a frivolous lawsuit. End of...
Perhaps in cases like this, the court should examine whether the situation for damages has been exacerbated by the plaintiff's failure to act to defend their own patents before a commercial product is widely available and widely owned. There's always the argument that he just didn't know his patents had been infringed until just now, but like I said, he'd have to have been living in a cave for the last year not to know about this 'revolutionary new way of accessing your voicemail'!
Can you believe it? This book is available to uy in the UK through Amazons UK site (amazon.co.uk)!
Does this mean Amazon are sponsoring terrorism? heh;)
Yes, it's part of the UK government's 'War On Islam' - rampantly persued by the British masintream press who salivate over every opportunity to report in the latest 'terror suspect' to be arrested. Of course, this salivation only occurs if the 'suspect' is a British Asian (in Britain 'Asian' denotes people of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi etc decent, not East Asian such as Chinese). A recent conviction of members of the BNP (right wing British National Party - which evolved from the National Front) for offences including having a huge stash of home-made explosives (the largest ever seized in mainland Britain), plus other materials including a rocket launcher of all things, went almost unreported by the MSM. One factor is that they weren't prosecuted under 'anti-terror' laws, they were arrested and charged under the previous existing laws for firearms and explosive materials offences and the whole affair seems to have been quietly ignored by the big news bulletins, because it doesn't fit the racial profile required for sensationalism.
In the case mentioned previously of the Asian lad shot in the shoulder by the police during a raid - yes, he was released without charge, then investigated for 'paedophillia' which the media lapped up and reported ad nauseum, but then quietly 'un-arrested' (released without charge) which the press failed to report when the police found he'd done absolutely nothing wrong.
The interesting thing is that in the BNP case where the police had genuine reason to suspect, and evidence to back it up, and indeed must have planned the raid in advance, there was a 'press blackout' - no media allowed at the scene. Yet in the London incident, there was a huge press presence as the raid took place involving something like 50 officers based on information which apparently came from an anonymous tip-off. How did the press know to be there as it unfolded unless the police and/or Home Office issued a press-release about the raid? It was planned and staged to hype it up through the roof and a blatant example of the propagandist methodology used by our government.
As for the Anarchist Cookbook - I can't see how it could be construed as a piece of 'terrorist' literature. Surely it's a piece of anarchist literature - the clue's in the title!? I think it may be time to think about a print-campaign. Print 50 or 60 million copies and post them through every letterbox in Britain, so that EVERYBODY'S got a copy and then see how the police can possibly enforce this stupid gag of our peaceful freedom's of speech and expression. Otherwise it could be suggested that owning something as benign as a metal tube is a terrorist offence - it COULD be used as a mortar! tsk tsk.
This may be anecdotal, but the only machines that I've heard have been affected by the BT 'unavailable' issue are the Intel Macs. I have a G4 PBook, as do my wife and several of my friends, also have a G5 iMac all have BT and NONE of them have ever had a pervasive issue like this. I've once had to reset the PMU on the PBook after I got the 'hardware missing' BT icon in the menubar, but never had another issue with it since.
To be honest I don't use BT much, but whenever I've needed it, it's been flawless. Perhaps Apple are using cheaper components on the Intel Macs than previous models, which are prone to receiving interference? Looking at the way they consistently drop prices with new hardware releases they must either have had HUGE profit margins previously or are finding ways to reduce their costs to keep margins higher whilst reducing retail price...
I have an Intel iMac sat here at work, but haven't tried the BT on it - I'll have to try it out with something and see if there are any issues.
>>>>last minute update: just asked my colleague sat across from me if he's ever had issues with his PBook's BT, because he uses it all the time with his mighty mouse. He reports no problems - ever! More fuel for the 'only Intel Mac's affected' theory?
Additioanlly, I've read in some of the posts that people have had endless problems with Apple's updates, including one poster who mentioned that the iLife update completely killed his whole iLife suite. Again this is an issue I've never seen with PPC Macs, so perhaps Apple haven't got their heads fully around writing software for the Intel achitecture yet, or keeping PPC support through 'Universal' binaries is causing probs for Intel users. Been looking at new Apple hardware recently, but I think I might hang fire for another year or so and watch how this plays out! From experience I never buy Apple's 'latest, greatest' hardware... there are ALWAYS problems, I always wait for at least the first revision (been the same story for the past 20+ years)
So you're saying it's Apple's fault that Microsoft won't write compatible software!?!?!?
Even if I had an Intel Mac and COULD run Windows, why should I have to BUY software from M$ in order to run their media-player software to sync to a media device? Apple don't force Windows users to BUY iTunes in order to sync with their iPods... so your argument is moot.
Also - no, it's been less than 2 years since I bought a G4 PowerBook, so in theory (and working off the general pattern of owning a Mac) it's a good 3 years until I need to think about buying anything new... or even as much as 8 years if my old graphite G4 400 tower is anything to go by (still going strong on the latest OS)!!;P
...because if you play a CD in a CD player (even one of Sony's own offerings) you're not actually listening to the disc, you're listening to the decrypted data playing from the RAM buffer of the device that the CD is being read by. Ergo, the CD playback device is ripping the CD on-the-fly to it's RAM buffer to enable inline error correction prior to you hearing the final audio output so this should be equally illegal!!!
Come on Sony - define what constitues 'ripping' and then tell us howw we can listen to our CD's.
Nope, true. But Spotlight does currently allow you to search network drives/mounted volumes, so once Leopard adds searching remote indexes then it'll save a lot of time and energy and might just do the trick.
The Finder can open remote locations as though local... (I presume you mean either FTP/AFP/SMB!?), but perhaps I misunderstand. I'm sure BBedit does syntax highlighting. I find I don't need multiple desktops when I can easily CMD-Tab between apps (or use expose), and 10.5 uses 'spaces' which certainly seem like they're following the Linux 'desktops' idea to a point, whilst keeping the traditional Mac environment. But you're right, it's a matter of preference. I'm liking the look of 'spaces' for 10.5, as it bears a remarkable resemblance to how it was possible to set up the Amiga (a desktop 4 times the size of the physical screen which you could scroll around).
I run Linux under VPC on OS X from time to time, because I like to have it to hand to show WinPC owners what they COULD be using for free:D
But a dual-boot might be the ultimate answer to the problems here I reckon. Replace everything with FOSS where possible, then keep a stripped down OS X boot for those few apps you really can't do without until somthing FOSS turns up.
Hehe... indeedio. I used to feel exceptional anxiety playing Llamatron on the Amiga (or pretty much any Geoff Minter game) - but that deep and overwhelming sense of anxiety was what MADE me smile. Especially in the 3 or 4 seconds of downtime you get as the next of an unending number of levels loads. Perhaps it's the sense of "YES, I'm at level 342" or knowing that what has just passed is only half as hectic as it's about to get, but that rush of relief when the stress is over must be similar to the feeling extreme sports enthusiasts have when they've just base-jumped off some 20 billion metre shear cliff face!!!:D
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Hmmm... I find it difficult to quantify your 'only 5 pieces of software claim' when faced with this.
I'm counting now and it's gone way beyond two hands... iMovie, iTunes, iCal, iWeb, AddressBook, Mail, Safari, iDVD, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Aperture, Logic, Final Cut Pro, iChat, TextEdit, Preview, FrontRow. That's just the out-of-the-box installed software that Apple write themselves... not counting the numerous utils and other bits n pieces. The there's some of the other 300+ apps I have installed to use on a daily basis (GIMP, Inkscape, NeoOffice, M$Office, Creative Suite, Stuffit, Toast, Jam, Reason, Cubase, ProTools, VLC, Real, WinMediaSlayer, MPlayer, Hammer, VPC, Recycle, Rebirth, Repacker, ReMote Editor, SoundStudio, EyeTV, Radiolover, BitTorrent, Azureus, Firefox, Opera, MSN, AIM, iTheatre, Centerstage, ArtRage, ARD, Audio Hijack, Wiretap, Fission, Audacity, Miro, and on and on and on....
...of course, they're just some of the more widely used day to day essentials, but then there are many obscure bits n pieces. Not sure if I'd class each Dashboard widget as an app - but I have hundreds... sooooo, you were saying?
But this is only relevant if you ALREADY have a BT line. If, however, you're with Virgin in a cabled area (I am, and I am... so to speak) your phone service comes through the optical cabling along with the TV service and broadband. So if I decide to switch ISP's I'm looking at a fair old price hike to get the equivalent 10Mb+ connection. It means paying an install charge for a BT line, and then line rental on top of the ISP charge each month. At the moment the line rental is ZERO and the downstream bandwidth is the most solid and stable of any ISP I've used, so I'm not too enthralled about the expense of trying a different ISP just to avoid adverts I don't fscking want in the first place. Grrrr... this makes me so mad!
The problem is : you develop all your photos. You put them in an album perhaps. You most likely then put that album on a shelf where you promptly forget about it. You never look through those pictures again. Digital picture frame solution : display all your photos on a rotational basis so you see different pictures all the time - even those you'd forgotten about, bringing back memories of the event/place/people. It makes taking all those pictures in the first place have a point... for a lot of people. I don't have one myself as I use a screensaver on the machine hooked up to the TV to do the same thing, so I don't necessarily need one, but many people can see the benefit. And for those people (probably less tech-savvy than an original luddite) the autorun idea means it's one less thing to do (when they don't even know what all that 'install' and 'driver' nonsense really means/does anyway). You have to remember, most people FEAR their computer - it's alien to them, and they refuse to attempt anything until someone's shown them how to do it first. It's sad, but it's true.
Oh the HORROR (MOVIE)!!! ;)
They should be banned...
You may have been hearing it for 20 years, but you've obviously not been watching as well. Who holds the greater economic balance of power now? The people doing all the spending, or the people making the crap we spend on AND buying up our debt at the same time? It would seem to be a bad situation to be buying off someone on credit that they control - you are de facto "in their pocket". hmmmm....
Actually (and this is drifting even FURTHER off topic, heh), America wasn't named after Amerigo Vespucci. For a long time it's thought it was that way, but unless someone is a royal or a leader then a place they discover is named after their LAST name (so it would have been named Vespuccia if it was named after he) - take a look at other examples... Cook Straits, Magellan Straits etc.
The man they think America was actually named after was Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol in the UK who traded and shipped supplies to people in Newfoundland.
More info here
I'm sure under UK law there are provisions to fight 'unfair contracts'. So even if you do sign an agreement to a company's T's & C's you can later take that company to court to overturn the contract if it's patently unfair (and the ISP would then be liable for all legal costs and possibly compensation to the tune of the cost of your service for the whole contractual term plus any losses you may have incurred if, for instance, you use the service for business purposes). In a situation where you have been disconnected for no legal infraction, I'm sure a court would agree that the Terms and Conditions of the contract were unfair (you have no way of knowing what legally downloadable material might be misconstrued as a breach of copyright beforehand) and you'd win the case. I'm not a legal expert in this field, but if anyone knows someone who is it might be interesting to hear their point of view.
As a 'Createch' (designer who codes/coder who designs) and having personal experience of trying to sort out the visual mess most geeks create when they have a go (in the same way that geeks have to sort out the code mess when designers have a go), I'd definitely suggest using a designer to conjure something up for you.
This needn't be too expensive. If the people who hold the purse strings in your company can give you a small budget to play with (you could justify this by explaining that it's not cost effective for you to be spending hours trying to get this right when you've far more important jobs to be working on), you could try running a competition on sitepoint.com.
You just give them a brief (with examples of current company logo/stationery if you wish) and let the competition run - the winning designer gets the booty and you get a whole raft of ideas (quite often some very good designs) to run with. You can ask them to modify elements of the design and develop ideas further as the comp runs (ie: choices of colours/fonts/graphical styles). Be thorough in your brief though - it's easy for someone to misinterpret what you mean if you're a bit vague.
I know many companies who've benefitted from this system if they're on a tight budget, and many of the designers are just looking for a bit of extra cash on the side to supplement the day job so don't mind giving you an hour or two of their free time for the opportunity.
Hope that helps...
Im a diehard Apple fan (I guess)... I've been using their products for 20+ years so it's probably as apt a description as any (apart from being a Linux fan as well), but to me the MBA does seem like an overpriced and under-equipped machine. I can't really see who it's aimed at truthfully. The Macbook Pro is not massive in comparison (it's really not - I mean, for years now they've been telling us they're 'x'-inches 'thin') and for a tiny bit more in price you get a LOT more machine. Much faster processor, much better port spec, optical drive etc etc etc. For most people, an optical drive will be of paramount importance. So much so that a lot of MBA owners will probably buy the additional external optical drive for travelling - hence negating the size saving in the MBA. To rely solely on other people's optical drives could be very tricky unless you know their network settings and all the relevant security info (not always to hand if the IT guys aren't around to tell you) at the company you're visiting. It's the new '20th Anniversary Mac' or 'Cube'. It looks nice, but it's not very practical for many people. It's a good thing that Apple sometimes take design risks, and it's not surprising that sometimes they don't get it right for the majority, but invariably sometime they do (original iMac with no floppy drive anyone!?). If it fails, it fails... no biggie. If it succeeds in the market sector Apple are aiming for, then good on them - time will tell. Apple fans don't always 'shoot their load' over Apple's 'latest and greatest'. They're as vocal as anyone when Apple get it wrong - and they're not afraid to tell Jobs the truth (people still wave Newtons at him from time to time during keynotes).
I beg to differ. My PBook G4 (Aluminium) is filthy - it's a pain to keep clean compared to my wife's old iBook, when you do clean it, it tends to smear. Granted, it doesn't stain so much (apart from some yellowing here and there - after all, its actually sprayed silver as well), it's very easy to scratch that silver if you wear a watch with a metal strap or buckle (or bracelets/jewellery) and Aluminium is a soft metal, which means that it dents VERY easily (mine has a ding where the PSU plugs in, so the plug's not square to the chassis - and that was from a minor 'incident' where it dropped an inch or two onto a desk as I was putting it down). The iBook's strong internal Aluminium chassis and the relative elasticity of it's plastic case make for a much sturdier machine. I had my hands on an iBook G4 that was still running (except for destroyed screen) after it had been run over by a car! I know the PBook wouldn't stand up to that. Alu has it's uses (heatsink being a major one), but it's not stronger than tough ABS Plastic.
Here here :)
He wouldn't be where he was today if he'd relied solely on contributions from non-gigging songwriters.
...but I think maybe ZX80, ZX81, VIC20, Dragon32, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga were my favourite gaming computers and perhaps the Atari 2600, NES, PS1 and PS2 on the console side. That said, the Acorn Electron had quite a big userbase in the UK (particularly for playing Elite I remember).
I'd say it's not so much a case of 'which was the best console', rather 'which was the best of it's generation'.
I think you meant 'He sucks at anal orgies'
Where the hell does he get off claiming that ISP's are selling their broadband services (and making money) off the back of recording companies' artists!?!? And he wants them to cough up or shut down the file sharers? This is so backwards I don't know whether to spit or shit! Surely the recording companies are making money off the back of an additional revenue stream which would be less profitable if it wasn't for the ISP's providing their customer base more accessibility to that service. So if you ask me, the recording companies should be paying out to the ISP's!!! And let's not forget that the 'holier than thou' politics of U2 do not extend to themselves. They are hypocrites of the highest order - they claim to be fighting for debt relief for Africa, with rich nations' populations putting their hands in their pockets (via the individual countries' Tax systems), yet their own accounts are all based offshore, so they pay NO Tax in their native Ireland. How sick, twisted and realpolitick can you get? Maybe it's about time these moaning fecks should face a sustained campaign to boycott their products through the widespread use of P2P. Then perhaps they might realise just how good they had it beforehand. I'm an independent recording artist, but I regularly give my music away online for free. Why? Because it's GOOD FOR BUSINESS!!! If someone wants to hear you, but doesn't want to risk laying out loads of wonga, they can get tracks for free. Then if they like you, they can support you financiallly by coming to see you play live (and who knows, maybe buy the odd track here or there too) - that's what musicians are SUPPOSED TO DO - PLAY LIVE!!! Perhaps songwriters should get off their fat arses and get out on the road to make a living like the real songwriter/musicians have to. At least we'd see the back of mindless manufactured pop shite permeating the charts in an endless stream of 'artists' who don't write their own songs... which is a win/win in my books.
Yeah, and let's not forget all the stink that surrounded the fact that the iPhone doesn't have removable storage - so this 'patent' can't apply to Apple either! heh :)
Actually... if this handheld device is just a computer, then a handheld computer is really just a scaled down laptop (which after all you can hold in one hand and use with the other), so who made the first laptop? Now THAT'S prior art.
"having touted this amazing feature of the iPhone as cool and innovative, they now cannot consistently claim that it is obvious..." Except that that's exactly how they marketed it from the very first developer conference!!! I believe Steve's words were something along the lines of "it's so obvious, we're surprised nobody's done it before". Given the disproportional amount of media hype over the iPhone - you'd have to have NO access to any kind of technology capable of receiving 'news' to miss the main selling points and 'features' of the iPhone prior to going on sale. This guy had plenty of time to act BEFORE the iPhone went to market and stop this supposed infringement of his patents. However, he didn't. He simply waited until Apple had sold 'x' million units in the US and then launched in more countries (UK, Germany) at which point changing the design of the existing phones would likely cost far more than settling with the plaintiff out of court. It's a frivolous lawsuit. End of... Perhaps in cases like this, the court should examine whether the situation for damages has been exacerbated by the plaintiff's failure to act to defend their own patents before a commercial product is widely available and widely owned. There's always the argument that he just didn't know his patents had been infringed until just now, but like I said, he'd have to have been living in a cave for the last year not to know about this 'revolutionary new way of accessing your voicemail'!
Can you believe it? This book is available to uy in the UK through Amazons UK site (amazon.co.uk)! Does this mean Amazon are sponsoring terrorism? heh ;)
Yes, it's part of the UK government's 'War On Islam' - rampantly persued by the British masintream press who salivate over every opportunity to report in the latest 'terror suspect' to be arrested. Of course, this salivation only occurs if the 'suspect' is a British Asian (in Britain 'Asian' denotes people of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi etc decent, not East Asian such as Chinese). A recent conviction of members of the BNP (right wing British National Party - which evolved from the National Front) for offences including having a huge stash of home-made explosives (the largest ever seized in mainland Britain), plus other materials including a rocket launcher of all things, went almost unreported by the MSM. One factor is that they weren't prosecuted under 'anti-terror' laws, they were arrested and charged under the previous existing laws for firearms and explosive materials offences and the whole affair seems to have been quietly ignored by the big news bulletins, because it doesn't fit the racial profile required for sensationalism. In the case mentioned previously of the Asian lad shot in the shoulder by the police during a raid - yes, he was released without charge, then investigated for 'paedophillia' which the media lapped up and reported ad nauseum, but then quietly 'un-arrested' (released without charge) which the press failed to report when the police found he'd done absolutely nothing wrong. The interesting thing is that in the BNP case where the police had genuine reason to suspect, and evidence to back it up, and indeed must have planned the raid in advance, there was a 'press blackout' - no media allowed at the scene. Yet in the London incident, there was a huge press presence as the raid took place involving something like 50 officers based on information which apparently came from an anonymous tip-off. How did the press know to be there as it unfolded unless the police and/or Home Office issued a press-release about the raid? It was planned and staged to hype it up through the roof and a blatant example of the propagandist methodology used by our government. As for the Anarchist Cookbook - I can't see how it could be construed as a piece of 'terrorist' literature. Surely it's a piece of anarchist literature - the clue's in the title!? I think it may be time to think about a print-campaign. Print 50 or 60 million copies and post them through every letterbox in Britain, so that EVERYBODY'S got a copy and then see how the police can possibly enforce this stupid gag of our peaceful freedom's of speech and expression. Otherwise it could be suggested that owning something as benign as a metal tube is a terrorist offence - it COULD be used as a mortar! tsk tsk.
This may be anecdotal, but the only machines that I've heard have been affected by the BT 'unavailable' issue are the Intel Macs. I have a G4 PBook, as do my wife and several of my friends, also have a G5 iMac all have BT and NONE of them have ever had a pervasive issue like this. I've once had to reset the PMU on the PBook after I got the 'hardware missing' BT icon in the menubar, but never had another issue with it since. To be honest I don't use BT much, but whenever I've needed it, it's been flawless. Perhaps Apple are using cheaper components on the Intel Macs than previous models, which are prone to receiving interference? Looking at the way they consistently drop prices with new hardware releases they must either have had HUGE profit margins previously or are finding ways to reduce their costs to keep margins higher whilst reducing retail price... I have an Intel iMac sat here at work, but haven't tried the BT on it - I'll have to try it out with something and see if there are any issues. >>>>last minute update: just asked my colleague sat across from me if he's ever had issues with his PBook's BT, because he uses it all the time with his mighty mouse. He reports no problems - ever! More fuel for the 'only Intel Mac's affected' theory? Additioanlly, I've read in some of the posts that people have had endless problems with Apple's updates, including one poster who mentioned that the iLife update completely killed his whole iLife suite. Again this is an issue I've never seen with PPC Macs, so perhaps Apple haven't got their heads fully around writing software for the Intel achitecture yet, or keeping PPC support through 'Universal' binaries is causing probs for Intel users. Been looking at new Apple hardware recently, but I think I might hang fire for another year or so and watch how this plays out! From experience I never buy Apple's 'latest, greatest' hardware... there are ALWAYS problems, I always wait for at least the first revision (been the same story for the past 20+ years)
So you're saying it's Apple's fault that Microsoft won't write compatible software!?!?!? Even if I had an Intel Mac and COULD run Windows, why should I have to BUY software from M$ in order to run their media-player software to sync to a media device? Apple don't force Windows users to BUY iTunes in order to sync with their iPods... so your argument is moot. Also - no, it's been less than 2 years since I bought a G4 PowerBook, so in theory (and working off the general pattern of owning a Mac) it's a good 3 years until I need to think about buying anything new... or even as much as 8 years if my old graphite G4 400 tower is anything to go by (still going strong on the latest OS)!! ;P
...because if you play a CD in a CD player (even one of Sony's own offerings) you're not actually listening to the disc, you're listening to the decrypted data playing from the RAM buffer of the device that the CD is being read by. Ergo, the CD playback device is ripping the CD on-the-fly to it's RAM buffer to enable inline error correction prior to you hearing the final audio output so this should be equally illegal!!! Come on Sony - define what constitues 'ripping' and then tell us howw we can listen to our CD's.
But if you don't hand over the key, they'll just follow you onto the Tube and shoot you 11 times in the head! ;p
Nope, true. But Spotlight does currently allow you to search network drives/mounted volumes, so once Leopard adds searching remote indexes then it'll save a lot of time and energy and might just do the trick.
The Finder can open remote locations as though local... (I presume you mean either FTP/AFP/SMB!?), but perhaps I misunderstand. I'm sure BBedit does syntax highlighting. I find I don't need multiple desktops when I can easily CMD-Tab between apps (or use expose), and 10.5 uses 'spaces' which certainly seem like they're following the Linux 'desktops' idea to a point, whilst keeping the traditional Mac environment. But you're right, it's a matter of preference. I'm liking the look of 'spaces' for 10.5, as it bears a remarkable resemblance to how it was possible to set up the Amiga (a desktop 4 times the size of the physical screen which you could scroll around). I run Linux under VPC on OS X from time to time, because I like to have it to hand to show WinPC owners what they COULD be using for free :D
But a dual-boot might be the ultimate answer to the problems here I reckon. Replace everything with FOSS where possible, then keep a stripped down OS X boot for those few apps you really can't do without until somthing FOSS turns up.
Hehe... indeedio. I used to feel exceptional anxiety playing Llamatron on the Amiga (or pretty much any Geoff Minter game) - but that deep and overwhelming sense of anxiety was what MADE me smile. Especially in the 3 or 4 seconds of downtime you get as the next of an unending number of levels loads. Perhaps it's the sense of "YES, I'm at level 342" or knowing that what has just passed is only half as hectic as it's about to get, but that rush of relief when the stress is over must be similar to the feeling extreme sports enthusiasts have when they've just base-jumped off some 20 billion metre shear cliff face!!! :D