So you need to add 750MB to the mini to make it work? I have not found that to be true. You only get 256MB with the Dell. I have found 256 MB on a PC to be next to useless also.
Want to play a DVD on the Dell nope sorry that is extra and you can't even add it in a custom build so you have to buy a 3rd party one and throw your CD-RW away because there is only one bay.
Your Dell breaks on the 91st day sorry not covered only a 90 day warranty.
You want to hook your Dell to you plasma TV sorry can't no DVI port. You want to hook your Dell to your Sony camcorder nope sorry no Firewire.
Did you get your spyware and virus protection for the mini oops not needed but you better add that to the Dell.
You want to toss your Dell in your carry on bag so you can work at a remote site oops can't it is bigger then the size of a carry on bag.
You want to connect your Dell to a Windows network sorry you can't you only have XP Home I guess you have to pay for XP Pro upgrade.
I won't even mention the software that comes free on the mini that isn't available on the PC.
Your right I can see where I would save so much more running a Dell then a mini. I can tell every one sorry I can't do that on my Dell because I didn't pony up an additional $500 which means no work I can look at more p0rn sites with the extra time I have.
I can buy a shit monitor for like the Dell for $107 at Sam's Club. I can buy a wireless USB mice and keyboard for $20 all day long. I can see where you equate a monitor, mouse and keyboard with doubling the price of a mini.
I know this is/. and everything is redundant but go spec out your $299 Dell with firewire, antivirus software, DVI, 1 year warranty, and XP Pro and come back with a total showing how much you saved including your @3%**/&&@@# time fighting to get your no name ebay junk cards and software to work. Apple isn't building a computer for the special needs of one person but a wide selection of needs.
You might be suffering from that terrible disease that has inflicted PC people for years If-I-Buyitias.
The sure signs of If-I-Buyitias
1. My PC is cheaper then a Mac 2. My PC can do that too if I buy x hardware. 3. My PC can do that too if I buy x software. 4. I need the expansion of my PC incase I ever need to add something that is built into the Mac. 5. Na uh my PC is better as you are running fdisk for the 3rd time this year cuz you was 0wned again.
Maybe you can see if this is a chronic disease and get a disability from the Social Security Administration.
How can you be sure? What if the GUI won't load unless there is a custom chip on the motherboard? What if during the boot process a there is a token that is generated by a chip and the operating system and it needs to match. Or possibly there is a token from the chip sent to the operating system then the operating system generates a different token that is passed back and needs to match a token generated internal to the chip and never leaves the chip. No match no GUI only Darwin loads no OS X.
I truly doubt he got into any classified systems. From my 7 years of working in military intell and then 13 years of installing networks for the military I have never worked on a classified system that was connected to the internet. There are red and black networks to keep the traffic separated. You can't even run a CAT 5 red network wire down the same wall as the black network wires. There is never an intermingling of wires let alone traffic. The DOD has its own world wide network to run classified traffic over. This is like a person breaking into a bank lobby and saying it is the same thing as breaking into the vault. lobby != vault. Internet servers != NSA servers not even close not even on a bet.
Everyone keeps saying that someone will just hack anything Apple can do to try and stop them from running OS X on commodity hardware. What if Apple keys the GUI to a special chip on the motherboard. No chip and OS X boots into single user mode no graphical interface or apps at all. It is easy to replace Darwin with a hacked version it is much harder to hack the proprietary interface. If it was easy to hack the GUI then there would be a version running on Linux.
The reason it says drag this to the hard drive is because is a mounted image that won't be there after the next reboot. I have found 99% of the programs will operate from the image file. The few that won't generally tell you that they won't in the readme. I generally test shareware by running it from the image file and if I don't like it I blow it away if I do like it I move it to my hard drive.
I like you have been a Mac user since 1984 and I don't see this as the end of the world. I welcome the faster notebook computers this brings. Just like there is a Mac-On-Linux there can be a WinBlows-On-Mac.
Some of the neat tricks like wrapping binary i386 drivers so they can be used under Linux can also be applied to Mac Os X.
I buy Apple products because I like the software. All of these people screaming they will never buy a Mac get real. If you are an OS X user go back and try and use a OS 9 or OS 8 version of a Mac. I would rather use XP then go back to OS 9 and I hate Micro$oft.
How much easier will it be to get a Mac into a corporate environment if you can say we can also run WinBlows on it. This way there is no loss of hardware $$$.
I have been using my 3 G4 Macs for a long time and wasn't in any hurry to buy a G5 but now I can't wait to get ahold of a new Mac and will be placing my order the 1st day they are available to order.
So why kill a flea with a hammer and block port 25? Chances are all you have done is stopped one of many problems. If the machine is compromised chances are it is doing more then just spewing email. IMHO it is far better to block all compromised machines , help the customer clean them up, and teach them about safe computing i.e. don't use IE.
I think you misunderstand what the parent was trying to say. He was saying it was very easy for an end user to block the spam from his account that other end users can do this too. I don't think he was saying he did it on his own rather then standing on the backs of giants. This is/. so I could be wrong.
That is basically what happened to my oldest son when he was 18. He went to a college party and was served alcohol and got wasted. He was walking back to his friend's apartment and stopped and pissed on a bush and a girl in the apartment complex saw him pissing and called the cops. He is now a registered sex offender. He may not have to wear a GPS tracker but he is on the sex offender list.
You being a student must be a young person and we should forgive you but this is/. Why in the hell would anyone want to speak only on the things they know? That would amount to the same thing as actually reading the article before you comment.
If Word just could create PDF files there would be no need for Acrobat is not true.I have done some support of print companies and one of the problems with many 3rd party PDF creation tools is that they don't output a pure black but a composite black in PDFs. This might not mean anything to a person viewing a PDF on a computer screen but makes a whole lot of difference to a printing company that is printing the PDF file.
Another area is the content provider and printing companies mostly use Macs. Do you think all the printing companies and creative departments are going to throw out their Macs and replace them with these wonderful WinBlows machines not at gun point. What will happen is either Adobe or some other 3rd party company will come up with a Mac version to open the file. Just like everybody in the professional world uses FrontPage to design their documents. Brrrrrr next answer. All of the printing companies I have done work for has a single PC in the corner to open the perverted PC files to move them to a Mac and then charge an up charge to convert and pervert them to be manipulated on a Mac.
Companies will also use this new perverted version until they find out a bulk of the people can't use it. This would be fine maybe for business to business communications except for the fact there are an extremely large number of companies running older versions of Office that have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. How many offices save their Word documents in Office 97 format so they have no problems distributing the files.
The parent is projecting according to you and I am calling BS on your statement 70% of the applications on Macs "you have supported" need repurchased due to system updates. Have you actually ever even seen a Mac besides in a store or on TV? You are projecting FUD.
I have some apps on my computer that are over 10 years old and still function under OS X 10.3.8. I just downloaded some shareware that runs under system on a 68k system. This software was written for an operating system that is what 13 years old and a totally different processor family yet still works.
Please post a list of major commercial applications that needed to be repurchased, not patched, not updated, but forced to be repurchased. Where did you get the 70% was there math involved or did you just pull 70% out of your ass? I would like to see the math involved 1 application != 70%. I think you had a division by zero problem and got a 70% error number.
I am sure you will not be able to come up with a list of 2 major commercial applications that require repurchase. I am sure a lot of other/. readers would like to see the list of OS X apps that need to be repurchased with each upgrade.
Going from OS 9 to OS X is like going to a totally different processor architecture. I would rather have a company totally rewrite something to improve it then patching a 10 year old monster charging $299 and calling it all new like most of the MS versions of operating systems.
By the way what Win 98 app won't work under XP because of NTFS? Did you try installing XP on top of Fat32 to ensure the problem was with the file system rather then XP itself? I have tried programs with XP on Fat32 and programs that won't work with XP NTFS also don't seem to work with XP on Fat32.
Hey at least your Beta Max had more then 10 movies for it. I bought an RCA video disk. Remember those?? The movie players with a needle and grooved record in a case. I think RCA made them for about 6 months and I paid $800 for the privilege to be screwed. *Bangs head on desk*
Why does everyone spread FUD over the size of the porno industry? This is from
an earlier post
I made on the same subject.
Nice to have 11000 titles but what is the volume per title? For years I have
read so many articles that companies made so much money off of porn. The largest
porno movie company is Vivid
Entertainment Group [hoovers.com] their volume was $150 million for 2003.
How many movies a year have a gross larger then that in US ticket sales? Not
counting world wide ticket sales,DVD and VHS sales. Seems like there are a
zillion porno sites out there. How many of the porno sites are all owned by
the same company on a handful of servers? Porn companies have a virtual presence
more then a real one. I would think one or two block buster movies would sell
more DVD's then the top 10 porno companies combined. They aren't the driving
force that most people think they are.
Other then selling a handful of dirty movies the porno industry is a very minor
economic force. Just wanted to clear up a few misconceptions about the porno
industry.
This is the usual MHz argument. My number is bigger then your number so it is faster. I guess people forget the word "theroretically". It means possible not what necessarily you will get. USB 2.0 is 480 Mbs vs Firewire is 400 Mbs theroretically. Here is an article USB-WARE that shows Firewire is substantially faster for large file transfers. I wonder where one might use large file transfers? Wait I know video. Guess which devices have Firewire, video intensive. USB 2.0 is slower then Firewire 400 no matter how much you play with ensuring USB devices are on separate buses. These are 2 different standards with different purposes and design considerations.
BioDesiel is fine but this process is converting a product that otherwise would be a waste product. There are limited locations to place waste products. If nothing else this would be a good thing for large cities to dispose of their waste other then burying it in the ground, dumping it in the ocean, or burning it up. So if everyone ran off of BioDesiel then you would still have the problem of what to do with waste products this removes that problem from the equation and provides a high quality product to be sold. Also with this process setting up thousands of small processing plants all over the country you remove shipping costs of BioDesiel. Last time I was in NYC I didn't see many soy beans there but did see trash.
Seems to me that if the browser companies ignore XForms it will die a slow death for general use. Specialized applications might require it. Not many users are going to want to use a website if they have to download special software to make a purchase. I go to a website and have to download anything I am gone unless there is a compelling reason why I need what is on that website.
The point your missing is most Mac applications will still work even after you reinstall the operating system. How many of the Windows applications will work after you reinstall Windows? So with a Mac you are just reinstalling the operating system then going to work. With your Windows install if you install the operating system you have to reinstall all the apps you might as well wipe the whole thing and get a clean install of everything.
Brings back memories of back in the day where you didn't even make long distance phone calls. I remember back in the mid 70s being stationed in Korea and using the Mars station to call home. My mother was so confused by the OVERs that I gave up and called collect at $4 something a min because it was cheaper then me paying for it.
Of course, the equivalent PC is only $200 at Walmart. And it includes the keyboard and mouse at that price (Mac Mini doesn't).
Do some/. readers even read the thread before they post their 2 cents. Let me give you an example. The Corvette is an exceptional sports car for the price. Na ah I can buy a Geo for $9995. The Geo isn't a sports car and is not even close in form or intended use. When you are going to argue a point read the posts it will open a whole new world to you. Look at the points below and look at your post and then ask why did you ever speak.
Things people have said about the Mac mini that make it attractive to them
1) A low cost 2) Energy efficient 3) A full measure of ports Firewire, USB, DVI 4) And the big one SMALL SIZE 5) Video card that isn't using shared memory 6) From a tier 1 vendor 7) Well built from a vendor known for quality of their hardware and software 8) High resale value 9) Extremely quiet 10) Looks good
Now lets look at your $200 Wal-mart computer
1) Check it is cheap 2) Nope it is as energy efficient as a 1950 Buick 3) Limited output of non legacy ports. No Firewire No DVI 4) It is the size of a 1950 Buick 5) The video card is a shared memory video card 6) What tier vendor is the Wally World Computer from? Is the company one that anyone other then their customers have heard of? 7) What is the quality? Can the Wally World Computer Company even spell quality? 8) Resale value equal to the box it came in 9) Sounds like a vacuum cleaner 10) Looks like a Yugo
I can see your totally right a Mac mini isn't the same value as your $200 Wally World PC. Now I know why I wonder why there is even a voting process in America.
I don't buy the argument about market share either. How much acclaim would the first person able to write a self propagating worm or virus for Mac OS X get? I get so tired of explaining that there are technical reasons why M$ products suck at security and no magic bullet will fix the problems because they are inherent to the design of Windows.
That is OK except you can by pass the BIOS password too. I have had to do it many times on machines that people set the BIOS password and left the company. I use to have an old DOS utility that would pull the encrypted password string and then it was a simple matter to decrypt the password. Now I can boot the computer from my disk and you can't stop me. The only way to be sure is to use Terminal Server so there is nothing local.
A very secure feature unless one has a live CD that can mount the NTFS file system read only and run a USB driver to copy files to an external device. How does MS Group Policies effect that? People can create an ssh connection to a Linux or Mac OS X box and scp files away to their hearts content.
This manual brings back old memories. Everybody who laughs at this FM seem to know very little about the history of the military and the NSA. I joined the Army in 1975 and was a member of ASA which was the Army Security Agency. I was a traffic analyst MOS (98C) and had add on modifiers for Korean language, Chinese Mandarin language , and T9 which was a code breaking. I went to school to break hand generated codes vs the guys who went to school for machine generated codes i.e. computer generated codes. I worked directly with NSA on a daily basis in the performance of my job. We where the arms, legs, and ears for the NSA in foreign countries. In the 70's I would say we were the bulk of the data collection for the NSA. Ask anyone if they remember the elephant cage in Thailand or a similar structure in Germany. It was a large antenna field that was in a circle that was nicknamed the elephant cage. It was amazing what the military did with them 30 years ago. Also this is an unclassified manual and no where near what the military actually taught just an introductory source of information. Most/. probably aren't aware that the military taught people how to break codes that were written in a foreign language that you didn't know. The military is very good at training no matter what people think of the intelligence level of the members of the military. Not everyone in the world has access to computers in the field and I am willing to bet there are still a lot of hand generated codes used by different militaries in the world. This manual may or may not be of historical value but there were a lot of morse code traffic through the 70's and early 80's using these type of codes. A morse code operator could send traffic around the world with very little wattage. There use to be automated "radio stations" that sent out nothing but endless streams of what appeared to be random numbers and letters for hours at a time. Ever wonder if someone sent a 3 hour stream of traffic and the only portion of any intelligence value was at 2 hours 5 mins 30 seconds for 12 seconds. I wonder how long it would take for a computer to decode the message? Better yet do the same thing except the 12 seconds of intelligence is a book code where it tells you what words in a specified book are the correct ones. How long would it take to brute force that? All an operative needs is a shortwave radio and one of these simple codes to receive information. Don't tell the Dept of Homeland Security that their computers won't help catch an operative that receives instructions by this low tech means. Just because something is low tech doesn't mean it isn't still of a value.
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So you need to add 750MB to the mini to make it work? I have not found that to be true. You only get 256MB with the Dell. I have found 256 MB on a PC to be next to useless also.
/. and everything is redundant but go spec out your $299 Dell with firewire, antivirus software, DVI, 1 year warranty, and XP Pro and come back with a total showing how much you saved including your @3%**/&&@@# time fighting to get your no name ebay junk cards and software to work. Apple isn't building a computer for the special needs of one person but a wide selection of needs.
Want to play a DVD on the Dell nope sorry that is extra and you can't even add it in a custom build so you have to buy a 3rd party one and throw your CD-RW away because there is only one bay.
Your Dell breaks on the 91st day sorry not covered only a 90 day warranty.
You want to hook your Dell to you plasma TV sorry can't no DVI port. You want to hook your Dell to your Sony camcorder nope sorry no Firewire.
Did you get your spyware and virus protection for the mini oops not needed but you better add that to the Dell.
You want to toss your Dell in your carry on bag so you can work at a remote site oops can't it is bigger then the size of a carry on bag.
You want to connect your Dell to a Windows network sorry you can't you only have XP Home I guess you have to pay for XP Pro upgrade.
I won't even mention the software that comes free on the mini that isn't available on the PC.
Your right I can see where I would save so much more running a Dell then a mini. I can tell every one sorry I can't do that on my Dell because I didn't pony up an additional $500 which means no work I can look at more p0rn sites with the extra time I have.
I can buy a shit monitor for like the Dell for $107 at Sam's Club. I can buy a wireless USB mice and keyboard for $20 all day long. I can see where you equate a monitor, mouse and keyboard with doubling the price of a mini.
I know this is
You might be suffering from that terrible disease that has inflicted PC people for years If-I-Buyitias.
The sure signs of If-I-Buyitias
1. My PC is cheaper then a Mac
2. My PC can do that too if I buy x hardware.
3. My PC can do that too if I buy x software.
4. I need the expansion of my PC incase I ever need to add something that is built into the Mac.
5. Na uh my PC is better as you are running fdisk for the 3rd time this year cuz you was 0wned again.
Maybe you can see if this is a chronic disease and get a disability from the Social Security Administration.
How can you be sure? What if the GUI won't load unless there is a custom chip on the motherboard? What if during the boot process a there is a token that is generated by a chip and the operating system and it needs to match. Or possibly there is a token from the chip sent to the operating system then the operating system generates a different token that is passed back and needs to match a token generated internal to the chip and never leaves the chip. No match no GUI only Darwin loads no OS X.
I truly doubt he got into any classified systems. From my 7 years of working in military intell and then 13 years of installing networks for the military I have never worked on a classified system that was connected to the internet. There are red and black networks to keep the traffic separated. You can't even run a CAT 5 red network wire down the same wall as the black network wires. There is never an intermingling of wires let alone traffic. The DOD has its own world wide network to run classified traffic over. This is like a person breaking into a bank lobby and saying it is the same thing as breaking into the vault. lobby != vault. Internet servers != NSA servers not even close not even on a bet.
Everyone keeps saying that someone will just hack anything Apple can do to try and stop them from running OS X on commodity hardware. What if Apple keys the GUI to a special chip on the motherboard. No chip and OS X boots into single user mode no graphical interface or apps at all. It is easy to replace Darwin with a hacked version it is much harder to hack the proprietary interface. If it was easy to hack the GUI then there would be a version running on Linux.
The reason it says drag this to the hard drive is because is a mounted image that won't be there after the next reboot. I have found 99% of the programs will operate from the image file. The few that won't generally tell you that they won't in the readme. I generally test shareware by running it from the image file and if I don't like it I blow it away if I do like it I move it to my hard drive.
I like you have been a Mac user since 1984 and I don't see this as the end of the world. I welcome the faster notebook computers this brings. Just like there is a Mac-On-Linux there can be a WinBlows-On-Mac.
Some of the neat tricks like wrapping binary i386 drivers so they can be used under Linux can also be applied to Mac Os X.
I buy Apple products because I like the software. All of these people screaming they will never buy a Mac get real. If you are an OS X user go back and try and use a OS 9 or OS 8 version of a Mac. I would rather use XP then go back to OS 9 and I hate Micro$oft.
How much easier will it be to get a Mac into a corporate environment if you can say we can also run WinBlows on it. This way there is no loss of hardware $$$.
I have been using my 3 G4 Macs for a long time and wasn't in any hurry to buy a G5 but now I can't wait to get ahold of a new Mac and will be placing my order the 1st day they are available to order.
Back when I was in school we had to break into the teacher's office and change the grade book.
So why kill a flea with a hammer and block port 25? Chances are all you have done is stopped one of many problems. If the machine is compromised chances are it is doing more then just spewing email. IMHO it is far better to block all compromised machines , help the customer clean them up, and teach them about safe computing i.e. don't use IE.
I think you misunderstand what the parent was trying to say. He was saying it was very easy for an end user to block the spam from his account that other end users can do this too. I don't think he was saying he did it on his own rather then standing on the backs of giants. This is /. so I could be wrong.
That is basically what happened to my oldest son when he was 18. He went to a college party and was served alcohol and got wasted. He was walking back to his friend's apartment and stopped and pissed on a bush and a girl in the apartment complex saw him pissing and called the cops. He is now a registered sex offender. He may not have to wear a GPS tracker but he is on the sex offender list.
You being a student must be a young person and we should forgive you but this is /. Why in the hell would anyone want to speak only on the things they know? That would amount to the same thing as actually reading the article before you comment.
If Word just could create PDF files there would be no need for Acrobat is not true.I have done some support of print companies and one of the problems with many 3rd party PDF creation tools is that they don't output a pure black but a composite black in PDFs. This might not mean anything to a person viewing a PDF on a computer screen but makes a whole lot of difference to a printing company that is printing the PDF file.
Another area is the content provider and printing companies mostly use Macs. Do you think all the printing companies and creative departments are going to throw out their Macs and replace them with these wonderful WinBlows machines not at gun point. What will happen is either Adobe or some other 3rd party company will come up with a Mac version to open the file. Just like everybody in the professional world uses FrontPage to design their documents. Brrrrrr next answer. All of the printing companies I have done work for has a single PC in the corner to open the perverted PC files to move them to a Mac and then charge an up charge to convert and pervert them to be manipulated on a Mac.
Companies will also use this new perverted version until they find out a bulk of the people can't use it. This would be fine maybe for business to business communications except for the fact there are an extremely large number of companies running older versions of Office that have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. How many offices save their Word documents in Office 97 format so they have no problems distributing the files.
The parent is projecting according to you and I am calling BS on your statement 70% of the applications on Macs "you have supported" need repurchased due to system updates. Have you actually ever even seen a Mac besides in a store or on TV? You are projecting FUD.
/. readers would like to see the list of OS X apps that need to be repurchased with each upgrade.
I have some apps on my computer that are over 10 years old and still function under OS X 10.3.8. I just downloaded some shareware that runs under system on a 68k system. This software was written for an operating system that is what 13 years old and a totally different processor family yet still works.
Please post a list of major commercial applications that needed to be repurchased, not patched, not updated, but forced to be repurchased. Where did you get the 70% was there math involved or did you just pull 70% out of your ass? I would like to see the math involved 1 application != 70%. I think you had a division by zero problem and got a 70% error number.
I am sure you will not be able to come up with a list of 2 major commercial applications that require repurchase. I am sure a lot of other
Going from OS 9 to OS X is like going to a totally different processor architecture. I would rather have a company totally rewrite something to improve it then patching a 10 year old monster charging $299 and calling it all new like most of the MS versions of operating systems.
By the way what Win 98 app won't work under XP because of NTFS? Did you try installing XP on top of Fat32 to ensure the problem was with the file system rather then XP itself? I have tried programs with XP on Fat32 and programs that won't work with XP NTFS also don't seem to work with XP on Fat32.
Hey at least your Beta Max had more then 10 movies for it. I bought an RCA video disk. Remember those?? The movie players with a needle and grooved record in a case. I think RCA made them for about 6 months and I paid $800 for the privilege to be screwed. *Bangs head on desk*
<rant>
Why does everyone spread FUD over the size of the porno industry? This is from an earlier post I made on the same subject.
Other then selling a handful of dirty movies the porno industry is a very minor economic force. Just wanted to clear up a few misconceptions about the porno industry.
</rant>
This is the usual MHz argument. My number is bigger then your number so it is faster. I guess people forget the word "theroretically". It means possible not what necessarily you will get. USB 2.0 is 480 Mbs vs Firewire is 400 Mbs theroretically. Here is an article USB-WARE that shows Firewire is substantially faster for large file transfers. I wonder where one might use large file transfers? Wait I know video. Guess which devices have Firewire, video intensive. USB 2.0 is slower then Firewire 400 no matter how much you play with ensuring USB devices are on separate buses. These are 2 different standards with different purposes and design considerations.
BioDesiel is fine but this process is converting a product that otherwise would be a waste product. There are limited locations to place waste products. If nothing else this would be a good thing for large cities to dispose of their waste other then burying it in the ground, dumping it in the ocean, or burning it up. So if everyone ran off of BioDesiel then you would still have the problem of what to do with waste products this removes that problem from the equation and provides a high quality product to be sold. Also with this process setting up thousands of small processing plants all over the country you remove shipping costs of BioDesiel. Last time I was in NYC I didn't see many soy beans there but did see trash.
Seems to me that if the browser companies ignore XForms it will die a slow death for general use. Specialized applications might require it. Not many users are going to want to use a website if they have to download special software to make a purchase. I go to a website and have to download anything I am gone unless there is a compelling reason why I need what is on that website.
The point your missing is most Mac applications will still work even after you reinstall the operating system. How many of the Windows applications will work after you reinstall Windows? So with a Mac you are just reinstalling the operating system then going to work. With your Windows install if you install the operating system you have to reinstall all the apps you might as well wipe the whole thing and get a clean install of everything.
Brings back memories of back in the day where you didn't even make long distance phone calls. I remember back in the mid 70s being stationed in Korea and using the Mars station to call home. My mother was so confused by the OVERs that I gave up and called collect at $4 something a min because it was cheaper then me paying for it.
Of course, the equivalent PC is only $200 at Walmart. And it includes the keyboard and mouse at that price (Mac Mini doesn't).
/. readers even read the thread before they post their 2 cents. Let me give you an example. The Corvette is an exceptional sports car for the price. Na ah I can buy a Geo for $9995. The Geo isn't a sports car and is not even close in form or intended use. When you are going to argue a point read the posts it will open a whole new world to you. Look at the points below and look at your post and then ask why did you ever speak.
Do some
Things people have said about the Mac mini that make it attractive to them
1) A low cost
2) Energy efficient
3) A full measure of ports Firewire, USB, DVI
4) And the big one SMALL SIZE
5) Video card that isn't using shared memory
6) From a tier 1 vendor
7) Well built from a vendor known for quality of their hardware and software
8) High resale value
9) Extremely quiet
10) Looks good
Now lets look at your $200 Wal-mart computer
1) Check it is cheap
2) Nope it is as energy efficient as a 1950 Buick
3) Limited output of non legacy ports. No Firewire No DVI
4) It is the size of a 1950 Buick
5) The video card is a shared memory video card
6) What tier vendor is the Wally World Computer from? Is the company one that anyone other then their customers have heard of?
7) What is the quality? Can the Wally World Computer Company even spell quality?
8) Resale value equal to the box it came in
9) Sounds like a vacuum cleaner
10) Looks like a Yugo
I can see your totally right a Mac mini isn't the same value as your $200 Wally World PC. Now I know why I wonder why there is even a voting process in America.
I don't buy the argument about market share either. How much acclaim would the first person able to write a self propagating worm or virus for Mac OS X get? I get so tired of explaining that there are technical reasons why M$ products suck at security and no magic bullet will fix the problems because they are inherent to the design of Windows.
That is OK except you can by pass the BIOS password too. I have had to do it many times on machines that people set the BIOS password and left the company. I use to have an old DOS utility that would pull the encrypted password string and then it was a simple matter to decrypt the password. Now I can boot the computer from my disk and you can't stop me. The only way to be sure is to use Terminal Server so there is nothing local.
A very secure feature unless one has a live CD that can mount the NTFS file system read only and run a USB driver to copy files to an external device. How does MS Group Policies effect that? People can create an ssh connection to a Linux or Mac OS X box and scp files away to their hearts content.
This manual brings back old memories. Everybody who laughs at this FM seem to know very little about the history of the military and the NSA. I joined the Army in 1975 and was a member of ASA which was the Army Security Agency. I was a traffic analyst MOS (98C) and had add on modifiers for Korean language, Chinese Mandarin language , and T9 which was a code breaking. I went to school to break hand generated codes vs the guys who went to school for machine generated codes i.e. computer generated codes. I worked directly with NSA on a daily basis in the performance of my job. We where the arms, legs, and ears for the NSA in foreign countries. In the 70's I would say we were the bulk of the data collection for the NSA. Ask anyone if they remember the elephant cage in Thailand or a similar structure in Germany. It was a large antenna field that was in a circle that was nicknamed the elephant cage. It was amazing what the military did with them 30 years ago. Also this is an unclassified manual and no where near what the military actually taught just an introductory source of information. Most /. probably aren't aware that the military taught people how to break codes that were written in a foreign language that you didn't know. The military is very good at training no matter what people think of the intelligence level of the members of the military. Not everyone in the world has access to computers in the field and I am willing to bet there are still a lot of hand generated codes used by different militaries in the world. This manual may or may not be of historical value but there were a lot of morse code traffic through the 70's and early 80's using these type of codes. A morse code operator could send traffic around the world with very little wattage. There use to be automated "radio stations" that sent out nothing but endless streams of what appeared to be random numbers and letters for hours at a time. Ever wonder if someone sent a 3 hour stream of traffic and the only portion of any intelligence value was at 2 hours 5 mins 30 seconds for 12 seconds. I wonder how long it would take for a computer to decode the message? Better yet do the same thing except the 12 seconds of intelligence is a book code where it tells you what words in a specified book are the correct ones. How long would it take to brute force that? All an operative needs is a shortwave radio and one of these simple codes to receive information. Don't tell the Dept of Homeland Security that their computers won't help catch an operative that receives instructions by this low tech means. Just because something is low tech doesn't mean it isn't still of a value.