I bet you also subscribe to the "if only we spent the space program money on solving poverty/homelessness/starving people in Africa!" line of thought.
The ISS was put up a few years ago piece by piece and cost over a hundred billion dollars just in construction; NASA allocates another $10-20BN a YEAR for it. What did it get us? A plaything for the world's richest people, something for space fetishists to admire ("the sense of WONDER!") and something to put in our kids textbooks (which even in the US, they're starting to have to share because school budgets are getting slashed.)
A hundred billion dollars buys a lot of cement, plywood, 2x4's, and tin roofing. Buys a lot of wheat/rice/corn. It also buys a lot of tractors, schoolbooks, etc. To put things in perspective: the US's largest construction project, The Big Dig in Boston, MA, was unbelievably extensive and complex; 10 years, countless engineering challenges, and they overhauled Boston's inner highways and tunnels while keeping the city (mostly) moving. Despite the problems with cost overruns and fraud on the part of various contrators, it came in at about $15BN for a decade of work.
The 2005 Federal budget included about $65B for the department of Health and Human services, $53B for the department of Education, $50B for the Department of Transportation, $30B for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That's pretty much the meat and potatoes of all the major social things (well, except law enforcement). It totals $150B, and that is to handle the needs of about $230M people in one of the better-off nations in the world. The cost of "doing business" government-wise in Africa is probably a fraction of that; you don't need 5 tomes of federal highway standards, for example, to build a road from A to B. You just grade things, put down some tar, and stick some signs in the ground, and you're 75% there.
Given what a Billion Dollars can do in terms of basic human necessities and a country's infrastructure...yeah, I do get really pissed off every time I think about the International Space Station. Tom Toles, a Washington Post cartoonist, drew up this great comic on the endless circular nature of NASA.
ICM Registry says the e-mails show how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was subjected to intense pressure to intervene on behalf of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two socially conservative lobbying organizations.
"Intense pressure?" Big guys named Guido and Luigi showed up at the reception desk and asked politely that they pressure ICANN? Concerned mothers sent them very sternly worded letters with comments like "I would send you to bed without dinner"?
The US Government does whatever the hell it wants to, generally. Especially branches nobody's ever heard about, unless someone threatens their budget. We generally term that "extortion", and that's certainly not very family-friendly. Nevermind that it seems absurd that some goofy little branch of the department of Commerce holds -any- sway over ICANN whatsoever; they're also fantastically good at ignoring people and doing whatever the hell they please.
I guess ideally, it would get saved somewhere for recycling - but presuming that doesn't happ
en - is it going to be OK to breath microsopic bits of that stuff?
The technology is probably similar to current "sponge" type hydrogen tanks; right now you can buy a hydrogen storage tank that uses some sort of metal hydride (I forget which) that can soak up a huge amount of hydrogen, similar to this. You heat it up to release the hydrogen stored or to recharge it, similar to how you 'recharge' that volcanic rock that absorbs odors.
The stuff theoretically wouldn't leave the "tank"; this wouldn't be like going to the gas station and filling up with little 'balls' of hydrogen. Still, I agree, it's worrying. What happens when a car is involved in a serious accident that breaches the tank, and the stuff gets all over the place? Or the stuff gets contaminated with impurities and needs to be recycled?
Carbon fiber seemed like a great idea for race cars, until track workers had to start picking up bits of the stuff. Guess what? It's the same color as asphalt, and it tends to break into very sharp shards, and the particles are really nasty if you breathe them in. Ask any track worker- the stuff is a BITCH to clean up, and if you miss any, it -will- cause someone to blow out a tire.
Hydrogen is often promoted as an ideal clean fuel for cars. But the explosive stuff is also darned dangerous to transport and store.
Actually, it is far safer than gas to transport and store compared to gasoline. Why? A)It requires a stronger fuel:air mixture than gas to ignite B)It is incredibly light, so except in buildings with sealed ceilings, the stuff just isn't very dangerous (gasoline vapors are heavier than air, hence why you should NEVER store it indoors) C)It is 100% non-toxic and disperses instantly (say, in an accident.) If a tanker full of gasoline crashes- you've got a HUGE fire hazard, a major environmental disaster so you have to do something about it fast (especially if the gas contains MTBE), and the fumes are pretty toxic (and flammable, and hug the ground.) If a hydrogen tanker cracks open on the highway, the fire department just has to stand around and watch until the stuff finishes leaking out. No fire hazard since the stuff rises away almost instantly.
The biggest technical hurdle for hydrogen in a distribution network is with seals and hoses; H2 is so damn small that keeping it from escaping through seals and the walls of hoses is very difficult (same reason helium escapes so quickly from balloons, except H2 is even smaller.)
The REAL problem with hydrogen, which everyone loves to ignore, is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts; current methods either involve hideously inefficient electrolysis, toxic catalysts, or non-renewable resources. Guess why Bush is so hot to trot on Hydrogen? Natural gas is the current "favorite" source. Except you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen, and you have to do something with the carbon leftover when you remove all the hydrogen atoms. The whole point of going OFF hydrocarbon fuels is to get off the CARBON which usually ends up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide! Not to mention, natural gas is NOT RENEWABLE!
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
How ironic this should be on slashdot, given that slashdot story submitters have a nasty habit of simply quoting an entire block of text for the article summary.
For example:
the story directly below this one on Python programming
The story about nuclear reactors
The story about Wired Magazine's release of AT&T stuff
Sometimes the block of text is preceeded by "from the article:", but half the time, it is presented as comments from the story submitter, and the Story Approvers (I refuse to call them editors) do absolutely squat to correct it.
*Femto*second laser spectroscopy has been available for some time now to investigate chemical reactions that happen much faster than nanoseconds. Got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for Zewail.
Yes, but that didn't get our favorite re-hash submitter Roland Piquepaille some hits to his web log.
This is pointless, the screen on the macbook displays at a resolution of 1280 x 800. At this resolution, a 720p HD movie would fill almost the whole screen. 1080i would be pointless since the screen cannot even display a movie that big. If it can play 720p it is golden.
So what's worse? Integrated graphics or an underclocked Radeon X1600?
That's a pretty stupid question. The builtin chipset used sucks; it uses system ram, for starters. That is -really- going to hurt when you're mucking about in Aperture or iPhoto, or go to play a video and the whole system becomes slow as a dog.
Here's a test: why don't you try running Quake 4 at 1280x1024 or higher and tell me how well it works for you. Works FANTASTIC on the MBP (it was a little laggy sometimes, but they've since updated it to be SMP and it FLIES.)
Test number two: try playing the high-definition (1080i) trailers on Apple's website. I'd be absolutely shocked if it manages to do it without dropping frames like crazy. My Macbook Pro barely breaks a sweat.
Nonetheless, the MacBook looks great, and I can't help but feel sorry for the people who rushed out and got a MacBook Pro.
I don't feel sorry for myself or anyone else who bought a MacBook Pro, but I did get a developer discount. The MacBook Pro doesn't have any major faults; I hate the name with a passion, it makes some noises it shouldn't (slightly better after the recent firmware update) and I would have greatly preferred the 15" G4 screen's extra vertical pixels over the blurry, narcissistic iSight...but the thing works just goddamn fine.
I got my money's worth, I assure you. I was surprised at how "Pro" the non-Pro was (and Ars severely underplays the graphics and display differences; a lot of people hate glossy screens and the integrated graphics truly do suck), but whatever. I can't wait for all the "waaah, my graphics really really suck, I thought I was getting a MacBook Pro, how come I can't play any games and all the i-apps are slow as shit" comments over the next few weeks from "early adopters" of the Macbook...
That's a problem, because the insurgents are using throwaway cellphones and anonymous e-mail accounts to stitch together a network of their own.
So...maybe this is just rocket science, but...given the country IS in a war state, how about restricting the cell phone networks to just phones that are registered to residents, and not allowing SIM cards that aren't registered or sold in-country? Anyone who needs a phone for business purposes will have a legitimate address (home or business).
I don't know specifics, but there has got to be SOMETHING they can do to cut down on the ease of getting a cell phone. Hell, here in the US you have to get a credit check, and we're not in the midst of a civil war.
(created with "gpg -a -c"). Just a reminder that if you don't like people reading your email, you and your recipient can rather easily make sure nobody can practically do so.
The NSA could probably break one PGP message's encryption in a matter of hours (or maybe even minutes), but they couldn't break one million. How about we all really press our friends to get PGP keys made+signed and the software installed...and ENCRYPT EVERY SINGLE PERSONAL EMAIL to them? Good luck to the NSA trying to sift through all that crap.
On a related note, what's the law regarding retention of stuff like DNA data, fingerprints, etc? For example, if my next door neighbor got murdered, I might get asked to provide my fingerprints to rule me out as a subject. I might be willing to do this (provided I'm not actually guilty)
"A few people have declined to give samples, according to news reports. Police said investigators will closely watch individuals who fail to "volunteer" their genetic code."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us taking your DNA."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your car."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your house."
Doesn't work that way. NEVER has, NEVER will. If I'm innocent I don't HAVE to give you my DNA, or let you search anything- I'm INNOCENT. If the police or prosecutors of a crime wish to collect evidence from you or your personal property, they need search warrants- and they don't just hand those out for shits and giggles over at the local court. What is frightening is that 5-10% of the population of Truro apparently felt it was OK for the police to just ask for their DNA- and gave it!
Wait... politics aside, are you suggesting Dick Cheney could charm his way into anything?
Ken Lay certainly had his fingers all over Cheney, but even worse, Enron basically gave the job of CA governor to Schwarzenegger. Sit down some time and watch "Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room". Little birdies have told me it is, uh, "readily available" for download.
Basically, think "Iran Contra arms-for-hostages" scandal, only instead of Regan, President, and arms...think Schwarzenegger, CA Governor, and the CA power grid- which Enron was have an absolute joy shutting down (yes, shutting down.)
From Truthout.org:
More important, however, Schwarzenegger still wont respond to questions about why he was at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills two years ago where he, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and junk bond king Michael Milken, met secretly with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay who was touting a plan for solving the states energy crisis. Other luminaries who were invited but didnt attend the May 24, 2001 meeting included former Los Angeles Laker Earvin Magic Johnson and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle.
While Schwarzenegger, Riordan and Milken listened to Lays pitch, Gov. Davis pleaded with President George Bush to enact much needed price controls on electricity sold in the state, which skyrocketed to more than $200 per megawatt-hour. Davis said that Texas-based energy companies were manipulating Californias power market, charging obscene prices for power and holding consumers hostage. Bush agreed to meet with Davis at the Century Plaza Hotel in West Los Angeles on May 29, 2001, five days after Lay met with Schwarzenegger, to discuss the California power crisis.
At the meeting, Davis asked Bush for federal assistance, such as imposing federally mandated price caps, to rein in soaring energy prices. But Bush refused saying California legislators designed an electricity market that left too many regulatory restrictions in place and thats what caused electricity prices in the state to skyrocket. It was up to the governor to fix the problem, Bush said. However, Bushs response appears to be part of a coordinated effort launched by Lay to have Davis shoulder the blame for the crisis. It worked. According to recent polls, a majority of voters grew increasingly frustrated with the way Davis handled the power crisis. Schwarzenegger has used the energy crisis and missteps by Davis to bolster his standing with potential voters. While Davis took a beating in the press (some energy companies ran attack ads against the governor), Lay used his political clout to gather support for deregulation.
...if you have ever had the misfortune of working on phone wiring when someone calls, you know the telephone company already delivers plenty of voltage!
Ring voltage is over 100VAC, which is pretty exciting when you've got your fingers on the wires. Getting the "buzz" in your body and hearing the phones in the house ring at the same time is...well...really...WEIRD!
If you can not make your mortgage and basic bills on a little over 1/2 your income then you are living beyond your means and is a stupid thing to do.
Wow. That's the most uneducated thing I've ever heard in my life; I hate people who have mortgages and whine about how expensive they are or think the rest of the world has it as easy as they do; property owners have always been, are, and always will be, a true privledged class. My boss once complained about his mortgage and I flat out said "how much is your mortgage a month?" "$600 a month." "That's for a 2 bedroom house right?" "Yeah." "Want to switch? I'm paying $1200 a month for half of someone's basement."
Did you stop to consider that a huge percentage of people in the US (and the world) lease their home or apartment? A decent one bedroom apartment in Boston, for example, will cost you perhaps $1200 a month; NYC, I'm told studios are something like $1400-1500 a month. That's $14400 a year; figure another $2k in utilities and now you're at $16,400 a year in BASIC living costs. Lets say you need to drive a half hour to work on the highway each way, and you get 30mpg. That's about $1500 in gas a year. Don't forget $1k in insurance. So we're up to $19K.
I've seen companies around here offering about $20-25/hr to techs (basic, ie first-tier jobs from "consulting firms" in the area.) So you're making 40-50k. Let's assume your employer happens to be one of those increasingly rare types that actually "employs" you, so they pay their fair share of taxes and so on. Wellllll...Uncle Sam and his buddy Sammy State still take about 33% of your paycheck. Don't forget health care; that's probably another 1k off. So you take home about $25k-32k. Sounds great, right? Anywhere between 7k and 13k to "play with", right?
EXCEPT YOU HAVEN'T EATEN YET (with apologies to Bill Cosby.) You haven't saved for your "retirement" or short term savings. You haven't bought clothes, or maybe gone to the movies once or twice a month, or spent the weekend somewhere nice to relax, or maybe splurged and bought yourself a new, reasonably priced camera since your current one kicked the bucket after a few years. You haven't moved (perhaps to get cheaper rent or because the cheaper apartment turned out to be in a warzone). You haven't done a lot of things. You're certainly not married, and you sure as hell don't have children.
Maybe you're paying off student debts, or maybe you've got $1200-$3600 in car payments per year. The list goes on, and on, and on in terms of expenses that qualify as several steps below what most people begin to consider luxuries.
Many people drive a BMW that they can not afford and the check engine light has been on for 4 months because they cant afford the service.
Seen a BMW commercial lately? -All- maintenance, down to wiper blades, is free for several years.
There are plenty of people who overspend beyond their means. The rest of the people in debt are there because everyone from the electric company to their landlord is a greedy little shrew and trying to bleed them out of every penny they've made.
Last year, I bought a new Dell workstation for work, the first of several workstations we were going to evaluate to replace our aging machines. Price on website: $1300 and change. But the website was flaky, and I couldn't complete the order. I called, got an "account manager", who took the product numbers I had written down from the website, and we ordered it--only to have the total come to $1400 and change.
I ordered a Dell 20" widescreen display; but I missed a deal posted on hotdeals by a few hours, so I called and placed the order over the phone; said I had it saved in my cart and I kept trying to register but never got the email, and then my cart expired. The sales droid gave me a very similar discount after I played dumb-user-who-is-annoyed and went off on a rant about how their pricing seemed to be all over the place, blah blah, how pricing via the web is different from the phone, etc. etc.
However, I didn't get free shipping. So, after hanging up with her- a day later, I emailed sales support and said "no free shipping? I thought I was getting free shipping!" etc etc. They botched up answering that email (I forget how, but it was comical) and that gave me a whole NEW thing to rant to them about (which actually created a second ticket by mistake.) The SECOND ticket got escalated, and the second rep offered something like either $75 in store-rebates or $50 off the existing purchase. Shipping had been about $20 I think; I took the $50 and 'ran'. So...if you make enough noise, Dell sales support appears to be under a lot of pressure to retain you if you say whatever annoyed you will make you never buy from them again.
Flip side: I would never deal with them as a corporate purchaser if I could avoid it. A company I contracted with bought $270K worth of Dell stuff- via a reseller because they promised they'd babysit the order. Cost them a little bit more, but it was worth the hassle.
Support end? Once you get the machine, if you have on-site support my only experience (which says something given I've been in the industry 6+ years) has been overwhelmingly positive. They dispatched a guy in under 24 hours, he was the cleanest-cut tech I've ever met, knew exactly what the problem was (broken switch contact on the laptop motherboard), and had the laptop completely apart, motherboard replaced, and reassembled in something like 10 minutes- and he didn't object to looking at a weird problem we were having with docking stations.
I've had two dell laptop hard drives die, and in both cases, I called up Dell and they said "oh, clicking noises? Machine keeps hanging? OK, we'll ship you a new one. Send the old one back within the next two weeks please", and the replacement was on my desk the next morning.
"This is a DRM Anti-Piracy Copyright Protection Seal" label on the seam of each case. At that point, the mere discussion of how to circumvent said label & gain unauthorized access to the contents would be a class C felony.
Parrots are mimickers- and not much more; they lack the brain capacity to do most of the things that people claim they can do. Names aren't sounds; they have a lot more meaning if they are truly names. A couple of days ago when this story hit the AP (yes, a few days ago), I read that the researchers went to extensive lengths to see if it was the exact sound, inflection, etc. that dolphins responded to.
My cat comes running (usually) when you call his name (Tucker). When we call him, we all generally do it in the same way- two syllable, certain inflection, etc. However, he'll also come running if you call "Sttuuuuuuuupiiiiddd!" with the same inflection/tone. You could probably sing two notes and he'd come running. That's not a name- that's a "whenever I hear something that sounds sorta like that in tone, something good will be waiting for me" (food, scratch on the ears, or his favorite- the grooming comb.) He's very sensitive to tone; say his name sharply and his body language makes it clear he knows he's in trouble, and even if he sees the grooming comb in my hand, he'll give serious thought to heading for the hills.
If a friend is over and calls his name- not knowing how we call him- he won't come. Period. Even if he's feeling sociable (sometimes he'll show up a few minutes later to check things out, see if he can get a free ear scratch, etc.) Simply put: he doesn't recognize his "name", he recognizes sounds. I'll still recognize my name even if someone with a heavy accent calls my name, etc.
The researchers found the names were used extensively, and more importantly, were not reproduced exactly- each dolphin had its own inflection on each other's names, and dolphins still responded when the inflection was removed.
I really wonder how this is just now making it out to the mass media.
The worst part is that AP covered this story at least 2-3 days ago. Slashdot has turned into "ads for nerds, news that is picked up off the AP wire a couple days late."
What constitutes "permission" to access unpassworded network services? Do you need written permission? If so I guess everyone who accesses public web servers is guilty of cracking them since they didn't get written permission from the server owners.
It may sound silly, but there really isn't a lot of difference between a public unpassworded service and a private service that's been left unpassworded on a public network. It's certainly impossible to tell if it's legitimately public before connecting to it and there's no guarantee you can tell that it's not supposed to be public once you have connected.
There is a huge difference. If you know you were not supposed to be doing it, it's trespassing. Find me a judge that believes a guy "looking for evidence of UFOs" didn't know accessing military networks was getting into places he didn't belong, and I'll show you a pig that flies.
New Hampshire has a very simple definition of trespassing: you're trespassing if you are anywhere you know you shouldn't be. If it is 10PM and a mall is closed and the cops find you wandering around inside- bam, trespassing. Wandering around your neighbors' yard when they aren't home and you don't know them well? Trespassing (as long as "PRIVATE" was posted at some legally defined interval on or near the property line, or it was otherwise obvious.)
The most creative use of this law? A NH sherriff who got tired of the INS telling him to just let illegal aliens go (he'd catch them during traffic stops) because they were too busy. So he charged them with trespassing, successfully- because they knew they didn't belong in New Hampshire. It allowed his department to recoup some of the lost man-hours handling them, and discouraged the illegals from, well, driving everywhere without a license or insurance.
The nice side effect of the definition is that if you are mentally incompetent and like to go on harmless walkabouts, you're not going to get slammed with 50 counts of trespassing (though a judge would probably make sure you had some kind of future supervision.)
The name combines the first human name found in the Bible, Eve, with the 'r' in robot.
I'm hardly Christian, but Eve was also the first MOTHER. Unless this thing cranks out robot babies, they've got a bit of a misnomer.
Also...did anyone else get a wierd feeling looking at the close-up photo of her face? I finally figured it out- she is (or looks) slightly cross-eyed. Took me a while to figure it out, but the second I saw the photo I knew something was "wrong" (a phenomenon special effects guys know all too well. You may not realize it, but your brain immediately picks up on things like shadows that aren't in the right place and stuff.)
I believe we are especially sensitive to the messages the eyes convey. So even if this thing gives the correct answer to "where can I find the Ministry of Whatever" or "have you seen my bento box", maybe it'll really disturb people on a level they won't immediately figure out.
I'd love to hear what all those schoolkids said in the ride home or back at dinner with Mom and Dad...
I don't know why I'm really bothering since you're so unable to express yourself you had to use "fuck" almost a half dozen times in one paragraph, but here goes.
Jeezus, umpty billion people in this thread have pointed out the concept of Fair Use (It's the same as you photocopying one page of a book at a uni library to use in a school assignment), and yet the Apple Fanbois, yes, including you, moron, continue to fucking bleat about how fair and innocent and morally fucking righteous Apple is.
Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials forpurposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work. Unfortunately, if the copyright owner disagrees with your fair use interpretation, the dispute will have to be resolved by courts or arbitration. If it's not a fair use, then you are infringing upon the rights of the copyright owner and may be liable for damages.
The only guidance is provided by a set of fair use factors outlined in the copyright law. These factors are weighed in each case to determine whether a use qualifies as a fair use. For example, one important factor is whether your use will deprive the copyright owner of income. Unfortunately, weighing the fair use factors is often quite subjective. For this reason, the fair use road map is often tricky to navigate.
Mr. Mysterioso will now guess the contents of the review!
Shots of the box and various stages of unpacking.
Inane commentary on the packaging and comments such as "with water it is a few pounds making weight a non-issue".
Middle-school level grammar and punctuation. Awkward sentences abound.
A careful description of the product appearance, directly below several pictures of the product.
Majority of the report filled with useless trivia, such as how long it will take to do each step.
Lightly worded "concerns" which are immediately and extensively devalued.
*clicks link*..."a two-guys-in-a-garage hardware review ladies and gentlemen!"
All jokes aside: "Our findings were confirmed with Corsair in a conference call and we were informed that future units will have this warning updated in their manual."
What the hell? "Conference calls" with the company that made the product they reviewed?
I keep referring to them as being run by a turtlenecked sociopath. This behavior, suing anyone they don't like, control freakery and related things that make you want to scream 'cult' at the top of your lungs comes from one place.
They're not "suing anyone they don't like", they're defending copyrighted material or protecting trademarks- and they are famous for doing so, since long before Jobs was re-hired. Shockingly they HAVE to, or said copyright/trademarks are diluted. If I start using the logo of GrooWanderer, Inc and you know about it but do nothing- and then BigCompany Inc comes along and does it, your case against BigCompany Inc is severely diluted because -I- did it and you didn't seem to care.
Many look at lawsuits as something like the death penalty or a nuclear first-strike. They're not. It is a civil matter taken before authority for resolution. A cease-and-desist is a PRELIMINARY step (MANY steps before a lawsuit) saying "That ain't cool. Do something about it, or we'll have to take it to the courts." The language is written to be clear and unambiguous- and hence valid in court later when the judge says, "Okay, so...did you let them know they were violating your copyright?", you can say "Absolutely and in no uncertain terms." It's not written to impress 15 year old internet commentators.
This isn't about "embarassing photos", and comparing Apple to a genuine cult is a severe dilution of the term "cult"- dangerously so. It is about protecting copyrighted material that is provided exclusively to internal Apple staff and employees of Apple Certified Resellers. I agree that it'd be great if such material were available free, but Apple has made a business decision to leverage "Apple Certified Reseller" qualifications, so they don't want any old Joe Shmoe having access to those manuals. That's their perrogative and their right.
If you don't like it- that's just too bad; don't buy Apple products, speak your mind to your representatives, run for office, whatever you like to try and change the law, or move to a small island with Richard Stallman and enjoy sharing you "copylefted" works- but otherwise, you sound like a guy in court because he punched someone in the face, angry because he doesn't believe in a law against punching people in the face.
I use Apple products (typing this on a Macbook, my 4th powerbook, oops, I mean laptop, oops, I mean "portable.") I have a linux box sitting under an Xserve in the basement. My firewall runs a FreeBSD based distribution. I have a machine under my desk that runs win2k and Ubuntu occasionally, though less-so now that emulation and virtualization work decently on the macbook.
I recognized the strengths of various platforms a decade ago. When someone asks me "should I get a Mac", my answer is a question- "what do you do with your computer?" When they ask "should I install Linux", I judge their experience level and factor that heavily into my answer, because Linux still isn't remotely ready for prime-time desktop use by people who just want their computer to work. I hate Apple fanboys (to paraphrase the author of the "Apple Product Cycle"- I'd love to go to Macworld some time, but strongly suspect I'd end up starting a brawl).
However, my new hatred is for "Appleworms"; people who spout "I hate apple" followed by some moderately insane rambling. If you've got a legitimate beef, fine- and I have a bunch for Apple. Otherwise, for god sakes, please shut up. Anyone remotely intelligent sees you spouting your "opinion" for attention. I've seen people call Apple computer/iPod owners "sheep". Complain about or "cite" a never-ending stream of problems that don't exist (my favorite: "you can't resize the dock, it takes up a chunk of your screen!") Heard people laugh at Apple's single-digit market share and describe it as a "failure" (ignoring the billion dollars in cash reserves, sales on the uptake, stock that consistently meets or exceeds analyst expectations- or the fact that Apple's market valu
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The ISS was put up a few years ago piece by piece and cost over a hundred billion dollars just in construction; NASA allocates another $10-20BN a YEAR for it. What did it get us? A plaything for the world's richest people, something for space fetishists to admire ("the sense of WONDER!") and something to put in our kids textbooks (which even in the US, they're starting to have to share because school budgets are getting slashed.)
A hundred billion dollars buys a lot of cement, plywood, 2x4's, and tin roofing. Buys a lot of wheat/rice/corn. It also buys a lot of tractors, schoolbooks, etc. To put things in perspective: the US's largest construction project, The Big Dig in Boston, MA, was unbelievably extensive and complex; 10 years, countless engineering challenges, and they overhauled Boston's inner highways and tunnels while keeping the city (mostly) moving. Despite the problems with cost overruns and fraud on the part of various contrators, it came in at about $15BN for a decade of work.
The 2005 Federal budget included about $65B for the department of Health and Human services, $53B for the department of Education, $50B for the Department of Transportation, $30B for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That's pretty much the meat and potatoes of all the major social things (well, except law enforcement). It totals $150B, and that is to handle the needs of about $230M people in one of the better-off nations in the world. The cost of "doing business" government-wise in Africa is probably a fraction of that; you don't need 5 tomes of federal highway standards, for example, to build a road from A to B. You just grade things, put down some tar, and stick some signs in the ground, and you're 75% there.
Given what a Billion Dollars can do in terms of basic human necessities and a country's infrastructure...yeah, I do get really pissed off every time I think about the International Space Station. Tom Toles, a Washington Post cartoonist, drew up this great comic on the endless circular nature of NASA.
"Intense pressure?" Big guys named Guido and Luigi showed up at the reception desk and asked politely that they pressure ICANN? Concerned mothers sent them very sternly worded letters with comments like "I would send you to bed without dinner"?
The US Government does whatever the hell it wants to, generally. Especially branches nobody's ever heard about, unless someone threatens their budget. We generally term that "extortion", and that's certainly not very family-friendly. Nevermind that it seems absurd that some goofy little branch of the department of Commerce holds -any- sway over ICANN whatsoever; they're also fantastically good at ignoring people and doing whatever the hell they please.
No, that is called news commentary. Attend a basic journalism class for a semester and you'll understand how revolting your claim is.
The technology is probably similar to current "sponge" type hydrogen tanks; right now you can buy a hydrogen storage tank that uses some sort of metal hydride (I forget which) that can soak up a huge amount of hydrogen, similar to this. You heat it up to release the hydrogen stored or to recharge it, similar to how you 'recharge' that volcanic rock that absorbs odors.
The stuff theoretically wouldn't leave the "tank"; this wouldn't be like going to the gas station and filling up with little 'balls' of hydrogen. Still, I agree, it's worrying. What happens when a car is involved in a serious accident that breaches the tank, and the stuff gets all over the place? Or the stuff gets contaminated with impurities and needs to be recycled?
Carbon fiber seemed like a great idea for race cars, until track workers had to start picking up bits of the stuff. Guess what? It's the same color as asphalt, and it tends to break into very sharp shards, and the particles are really nasty if you breathe them in. Ask any track worker- the stuff is a BITCH to clean up, and if you miss any, it -will- cause someone to blow out a tire.
Actually, it is far safer than gas to transport and store compared to gasoline. Why? A)It requires a stronger fuel:air mixture than gas to ignite B)It is incredibly light, so except in buildings with sealed ceilings, the stuff just isn't very dangerous (gasoline vapors are heavier than air, hence why you should NEVER store it indoors) C)It is 100% non-toxic and disperses instantly (say, in an accident.) If a tanker full of gasoline crashes- you've got a HUGE fire hazard, a major environmental disaster so you have to do something about it fast (especially if the gas contains MTBE), and the fumes are pretty toxic (and flammable, and hug the ground.) If a hydrogen tanker cracks open on the highway, the fire department just has to stand around and watch until the stuff finishes leaking out. No fire hazard since the stuff rises away almost instantly.
The biggest technical hurdle for hydrogen in a distribution network is with seals and hoses; H2 is so damn small that keeping it from escaping through seals and the walls of hoses is very difficult (same reason helium escapes so quickly from balloons, except H2 is even smaller.)
The REAL problem with hydrogen, which everyone loves to ignore, is that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource, without leaving toxic byproducts; current methods either involve hideously inefficient electrolysis, toxic catalysts, or non-renewable resources. Guess why Bush is so hot to trot on Hydrogen? Natural gas is the current "favorite" source. Except you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen, and you have to do something with the carbon leftover when you remove all the hydrogen atoms. The whole point of going OFF hydrocarbon fuels is to get off the CARBON which usually ends up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide! Not to mention, natural gas is NOT RENEWABLE!
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
For example:
Sometimes the block of text is preceeded by "from the article:", but half the time, it is presented as comments from the story submitter, and the Story Approvers (I refuse to call them editors) do absolutely squat to correct it.
Yes, but that didn't get our favorite re-hash submitter Roland Piquepaille some hits to his web log.
Ever heard of external monitors?
That's a pretty stupid question. The builtin chipset used sucks; it uses system ram, for starters. That is -really- going to hurt when you're mucking about in Aperture or iPhoto, or go to play a video and the whole system becomes slow as a dog.
Here's a test: why don't you try running Quake 4 at 1280x1024 or higher and tell me how well it works for you. Works FANTASTIC on the MBP (it was a little laggy sometimes, but they've since updated it to be SMP and it FLIES.)
Test number two: try playing the high-definition (1080i) trailers on Apple's website. I'd be absolutely shocked if it manages to do it without dropping frames like crazy. My Macbook Pro barely breaks a sweat.
Nonetheless, the MacBook looks great, and I can't help but feel sorry for the people who rushed out and got a MacBook Pro.
I don't feel sorry for myself or anyone else who bought a MacBook Pro, but I did get a developer discount. The MacBook Pro doesn't have any major faults; I hate the name with a passion, it makes some noises it shouldn't (slightly better after the recent firmware update) and I would have greatly preferred the 15" G4 screen's extra vertical pixels over the blurry, narcissistic iSight...but the thing works just goddamn fine.
I got my money's worth, I assure you. I was surprised at how "Pro" the non-Pro was (and Ars severely underplays the graphics and display differences; a lot of people hate glossy screens and the integrated graphics truly do suck), but whatever. I can't wait for all the "waaah, my graphics really really suck, I thought I was getting a MacBook Pro, how come I can't play any games and all the i-apps are slow as shit" comments over the next few weeks from "early adopters" of the Macbook...
So...maybe this is just rocket science, but...given the country IS in a war state, how about restricting the cell phone networks to just phones that are registered to residents, and not allowing SIM cards that aren't registered or sold in-country? Anyone who needs a phone for business purposes will have a legitimate address (home or business).
I don't know specifics, but there has got to be SOMETHING they can do to cut down on the ease of getting a cell phone. Hell, here in the US you have to get a credit check, and we're not in the midst of a civil war.
Dear Narus,
i PxHsoCwtOeytveJ H49A==
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
jA0EAwMCiGG6wLlc/6tgyUeJGySx1Ccd8lGe3ugi35iwgMr2y
r8fdeb237gtWNHzaen4DpYF9ibJ4E6DCxm8+yGpYcoP7bgEnz
=BJEi
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
(created with "gpg -a -c"). Just a reminder that if you don't like people reading your email, you and your recipient can rather easily make sure nobody can practically do so.
The NSA could probably break one PGP message's encryption in a matter of hours (or maybe even minutes), but they couldn't break one million. How about we all really press our friends to get PGP keys made+signed and the software installed...and ENCRYPT EVERY SINGLE PERSONAL EMAIL to them? Good luck to the NSA trying to sift through all that crap.
A woman was raped and killed in a small town on Cape Cod. So what did the police do? Set up DNA collection stations around town and asked men to submit DNA samples. "Well, nobody said 'if you don't submit a sample you must be guilty'"m you say? WRONG.
"A few people have declined to give samples, according to news reports. Police said investigators will closely watch individuals who fail to "volunteer" their genetic code."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us taking your DNA."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your car."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your house."
Doesn't work that way. NEVER has, NEVER will. If I'm innocent I don't HAVE to give you my DNA, or let you search anything- I'm INNOCENT. If the police or prosecutors of a crime wish to collect evidence from you or your personal property, they need search warrants- and they don't just hand those out for shits and giggles over at the local court. What is frightening is that 5-10% of the population of Truro apparently felt it was OK for the police to just ask for their DNA- and gave it!
Ken Lay certainly had his fingers all over Cheney, but even worse, Enron basically gave the job of CA governor to Schwarzenegger. Sit down some time and watch "Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room". Little birdies have told me it is, uh, "readily available" for download.
..or just fire up a google search. Or Check out the PBS Frontline special, Blackout.
Basically, think "Iran Contra arms-for-hostages" scandal, only instead of Regan, President, and arms...think Schwarzenegger, CA Governor, and the CA power grid- which Enron was have an absolute joy shutting down (yes, shutting down.)
From Truthout.org: More important, however, Schwarzenegger still wont respond to questions about why he was at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills two years ago where he, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and junk bond king Michael Milken, met secretly with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay who was touting a plan for solving the states energy crisis. Other luminaries who were invited but didnt attend the May 24, 2001 meeting included former Los Angeles Laker Earvin Magic Johnson and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle.
While Schwarzenegger, Riordan and Milken listened to Lays pitch, Gov. Davis pleaded with President George Bush to enact much needed price controls on electricity sold in the state, which skyrocketed to more than $200 per megawatt-hour. Davis said that Texas-based energy companies were manipulating Californias power market, charging obscene prices for power and holding consumers hostage. Bush agreed to meet with Davis at the Century Plaza Hotel in West Los Angeles on May 29, 2001, five days after Lay met with Schwarzenegger, to discuss the California power crisis.
At the meeting, Davis asked Bush for federal assistance, such as imposing federally mandated price caps, to rein in soaring energy prices. But Bush refused saying California legislators designed an electricity market that left too many regulatory restrictions in place and thats what caused electricity prices in the state to skyrocket. It was up to the governor to fix the problem, Bush said. However, Bushs response appears to be part of a coordinated effort launched by Lay to have Davis shoulder the blame for the crisis. It worked. According to recent polls, a majority of voters grew increasingly frustrated with the way Davis handled the power crisis. Schwarzenegger has used the energy crisis and missteps by Davis to bolster his standing with potential voters. While Davis took a beating in the press (some energy companies ran attack ads against the governor), Lay used his political clout to gather support for deregulation.
...if you have ever had the misfortune of working on phone wiring when someone calls, you know the telephone company already delivers plenty of voltage!
Ring voltage is over 100VAC, which is pretty exciting when you've got your fingers on the wires. Getting the "buzz" in your body and hearing the phones in the house ring at the same time is...well...really...WEIRD!
If you can not make your mortgage and basic bills on a little over 1/2 your income then you are living beyond your means and is a stupid thing to do.
Wow. That's the most uneducated thing I've ever heard in my life; I hate people who have mortgages and whine about how expensive they are or think the rest of the world has it as easy as they do; property owners have always been, are, and always will be, a true privledged class. My boss once complained about his mortgage and I flat out said "how much is your mortgage a month?" "$600 a month." "That's for a 2 bedroom house right?" "Yeah." "Want to switch? I'm paying $1200 a month for half of someone's basement."
Did you stop to consider that a huge percentage of people in the US (and the world) lease their home or apartment? A decent one bedroom apartment in Boston, for example, will cost you perhaps $1200 a month; NYC, I'm told studios are something like $1400-1500 a month. That's $14400 a year; figure another $2k in utilities and now you're at $16,400 a year in BASIC living costs. Lets say you need to drive a half hour to work on the highway each way, and you get 30mpg. That's about $1500 in gas a year. Don't forget $1k in insurance. So we're up to $19K.
I've seen companies around here offering about $20-25/hr to techs (basic, ie first-tier jobs from "consulting firms" in the area.) So you're making 40-50k. Let's assume your employer happens to be one of those increasingly rare types that actually "employs" you, so they pay their fair share of taxes and so on. Wellllll...Uncle Sam and his buddy Sammy State still take about 33% of your paycheck. Don't forget health care; that's probably another 1k off. So you take home about $25k-32k. Sounds great, right? Anywhere between 7k and 13k to "play with", right?
EXCEPT YOU HAVEN'T EATEN YET (with apologies to Bill Cosby.) You haven't saved for your "retirement" or short term savings. You haven't bought clothes, or maybe gone to the movies once or twice a month, or spent the weekend somewhere nice to relax, or maybe splurged and bought yourself a new, reasonably priced camera since your current one kicked the bucket after a few years. You haven't moved (perhaps to get cheaper rent or because the cheaper apartment turned out to be in a warzone). You haven't done a lot of things. You're certainly not married, and you sure as hell don't have children.
Maybe you're paying off student debts, or maybe you've got $1200-$3600 in car payments per year. The list goes on, and on, and on in terms of expenses that qualify as several steps below what most people begin to consider luxuries.
Many people drive a BMW that they can not afford and the check engine light has been on for 4 months because they cant afford the service.
Seen a BMW commercial lately? -All- maintenance, down to wiper blades, is free for several years.
There are plenty of people who overspend beyond their means. The rest of the people in debt are there because everyone from the electric company to their landlord is a greedy little shrew and trying to bleed them out of every penny they've made.
I ordered a Dell 20" widescreen display; but I missed a deal posted on hotdeals by a few hours, so I called and placed the order over the phone; said I had it saved in my cart and I kept trying to register but never got the email, and then my cart expired. The sales droid gave me a very similar discount after I played dumb-user-who-is-annoyed and went off on a rant about how their pricing seemed to be all over the place, blah blah, how pricing via the web is different from the phone, etc. etc.
However, I didn't get free shipping. So, after hanging up with her- a day later, I emailed sales support and said "no free shipping? I thought I was getting free shipping!" etc etc. They botched up answering that email (I forget how, but it was comical) and that gave me a whole NEW thing to rant to them about (which actually created a second ticket by mistake.) The SECOND ticket got escalated, and the second rep offered something like either $75 in store-rebates or $50 off the existing purchase. Shipping had been about $20 I think; I took the $50 and 'ran'. So...if you make enough noise, Dell sales support appears to be under a lot of pressure to retain you if you say whatever annoyed you will make you never buy from them again.
Flip side: I would never deal with them as a corporate purchaser if I could avoid it. A company I contracted with bought $270K worth of Dell stuff- via a reseller because they promised they'd babysit the order. Cost them a little bit more, but it was worth the hassle.
Support end? Once you get the machine, if you have on-site support my only experience (which says something given I've been in the industry 6+ years) has been overwhelmingly positive. They dispatched a guy in under 24 hours, he was the cleanest-cut tech I've ever met, knew exactly what the problem was (broken switch contact on the laptop motherboard), and had the laptop completely apart, motherboard replaced, and reassembled in something like 10 minutes- and he didn't object to looking at a weird problem we were having with docking stations.
I've had two dell laptop hard drives die, and in both cases, I called up Dell and they said "oh, clicking noises? Machine keeps hanging? OK, we'll ship you a new one. Send the old one back within the next two weeks please", and the replacement was on my desk the next morning.
A label isn't "digital rights management"...
Parrots are mimickers- and not much more; they lack the brain capacity to do most of the things that people claim they can do. Names aren't sounds; they have a lot more meaning if they are truly names. A couple of days ago when this story hit the AP (yes, a few days ago), I read that the researchers went to extensive lengths to see if it was the exact sound, inflection, etc. that dolphins responded to.
My cat comes running (usually) when you call his name (Tucker). When we call him, we all generally do it in the same way- two syllable, certain inflection, etc. However, he'll also come running if you call "Sttuuuuuuuupiiiiddd!" with the same inflection/tone. You could probably sing two notes and he'd come running. That's not a name- that's a "whenever I hear something that sounds sorta like that in tone, something good will be waiting for me" (food, scratch on the ears, or his favorite- the grooming comb.) He's very sensitive to tone; say his name sharply and his body language makes it clear he knows he's in trouble, and even if he sees the grooming comb in my hand, he'll give serious thought to heading for the hills.
If a friend is over and calls his name- not knowing how we call him- he won't come. Period. Even if he's feeling sociable (sometimes he'll show up a few minutes later to check things out, see if he can get a free ear scratch, etc.) Simply put: he doesn't recognize his "name", he recognizes sounds. I'll still recognize my name even if someone with a heavy accent calls my name, etc.
The researchers found the names were used extensively, and more importantly, were not reproduced exactly- each dolphin had its own inflection on each other's names, and dolphins still responded when the inflection was removed.
The worst part is that AP covered this story at least 2-3 days ago. Slashdot has turned into "ads for nerds, news that is picked up off the AP wire a couple days late."
What constitutes "permission" to access unpassworded network services? Do you need written permission? If so I guess everyone who accesses public web servers is guilty of cracking them since they didn't get written permission from the server owners.
It may sound silly, but there really isn't a lot of difference between a public unpassworded service and a private service that's been left unpassworded on a public network. It's certainly impossible to tell if it's legitimately public before connecting to it and there's no guarantee you can tell that it's not supposed to be public once you have connected.
There is a huge difference. If you know you were not supposed to be doing it, it's trespassing. Find me a judge that believes a guy "looking for evidence of UFOs" didn't know accessing military networks was getting into places he didn't belong, and I'll show you a pig that flies.
New Hampshire has a very simple definition of trespassing: you're trespassing if you are anywhere you know you shouldn't be. If it is 10PM and a mall is closed and the cops find you wandering around inside- bam, trespassing. Wandering around your neighbors' yard when they aren't home and you don't know them well? Trespassing (as long as "PRIVATE" was posted at some legally defined interval on or near the property line, or it was otherwise obvious.)
The most creative use of this law? A NH sherriff who got tired of the INS telling him to just let illegal aliens go (he'd catch them during traffic stops) because they were too busy. So he charged them with trespassing, successfully- because they knew they didn't belong in New Hampshire. It allowed his department to recoup some of the lost man-hours handling them, and discouraged the illegals from, well, driving everywhere without a license or insurance.
The nice side effect of the definition is that if you are mentally incompetent and like to go on harmless walkabouts, you're not going to get slammed with 50 counts of trespassing (though a judge would probably make sure you had some kind of future supervision.)
I'm hardly Christian, but Eve was also the first MOTHER. Unless this thing cranks out robot babies, they've got a bit of a misnomer.
Also...did anyone else get a wierd feeling looking at the close-up photo of her face? I finally figured it out- she is (or looks) slightly cross-eyed. Took me a while to figure it out, but the second I saw the photo I knew something was "wrong" (a phenomenon special effects guys know all too well. You may not realize it, but your brain immediately picks up on things like shadows that aren't in the right place and stuff.)
I believe we are especially sensitive to the messages the eyes convey. So even if this thing gives the correct answer to "where can I find the Ministry of Whatever" or "have you seen my bento box", maybe it'll really disturb people on a level they won't immediately figure out.
I'd love to hear what all those schoolkids said in the ride home or back at dinner with Mom and Dad...
I don't know why I'm really bothering since you're so unable to express yourself you had to use "fuck" almost a half dozen times in one paragraph, but here goes.
Jeezus, umpty billion people in this thread have pointed out the concept of Fair Use (It's the same as you photocopying one page of a book at a uni library to use in a school assignment), and yet the Apple Fanbois, yes, including you, moron, continue to fucking bleat about how fair and innocent and morally fucking righteous Apple is.
Or I read Standford University's webpage on Fair Use. Emphasis added:
Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials forpurposes of commentary and criticism. For example, if you wish to criticize a novelist, you should have the freedom to quote a portion of the novelist's work without asking permission. Absent this freedom, copyright owners could stifle any negative comments about their work.
Unfortunately, if the copyright owner disagrees with your fair use interpretation, the dispute will have to be resolved by courts or arbitration. If it's not a fair use, then you are infringing upon the rights of the copyright owner and may be liable for damages.
The only guidance is provided by a set of fair use factors outlined in the copyright law. These factors are weighed in each case to determine whether a use qualifies as a fair use. For example, one important factor is whether your use will deprive the copyright owner of income. Unfortunately, weighing the fair use factors is often quite subjective. For this reason, the fair use road map is often tricky to navigate.
Mr. Mysterioso will now guess the contents of the review!
*clicks link*..."a two-guys-in-a-garage hardware review ladies and gentlemen!"
All jokes aside: "Our findings were confirmed with Corsair in a conference call and we were informed that future units will have this warning updated in their manual."
What the hell? "Conference calls" with the company that made the product they reviewed?
They're not "suing anyone they don't like", they're defending copyrighted material or protecting trademarks- and they are famous for doing so, since long before Jobs was re-hired. Shockingly they HAVE to, or said copyright/trademarks are diluted. If I start using the logo of GrooWanderer, Inc and you know about it but do nothing- and then BigCompany Inc comes along and does it, your case against BigCompany Inc is severely diluted because -I- did it and you didn't seem to care.
Many look at lawsuits as something like the death penalty or a nuclear first-strike. They're not. It is a civil matter taken before authority for resolution. A cease-and-desist is a PRELIMINARY step (MANY steps before a lawsuit) saying "That ain't cool. Do something about it, or we'll have to take it to the courts." The language is written to be clear and unambiguous- and hence valid in court later when the judge says, "Okay, so...did you let them know they were violating your copyright?", you can say "Absolutely and in no uncertain terms." It's not written to impress 15 year old internet commentators.
This isn't about "embarassing photos", and comparing Apple to a genuine cult is a severe dilution of the term "cult"- dangerously so. It is about protecting copyrighted material that is provided exclusively to internal Apple staff and employees of Apple Certified Resellers. I agree that it'd be great if such material were available free, but Apple has made a business decision to leverage "Apple Certified Reseller" qualifications, so they don't want any old Joe Shmoe having access to those manuals. That's their perrogative and their right.
If you don't like it- that's just too bad; don't buy Apple products, speak your mind to your representatives, run for office, whatever you like to try and change the law, or move to a small island with Richard Stallman and enjoy sharing you "copylefted" works- but otherwise, you sound like a guy in court because he punched someone in the face, angry because he doesn't believe in a law against punching people in the face.
I use Apple products (typing this on a Macbook, my 4th powerbook, oops, I mean laptop, oops, I mean "portable.") I have a linux box sitting under an Xserve in the basement. My firewall runs a FreeBSD based distribution. I have a machine under my desk that runs win2k and Ubuntu occasionally, though less-so now that emulation and virtualization work decently on the macbook.
I recognized the strengths of various platforms a decade ago. When someone asks me "should I get a Mac", my answer is a question- "what do you do with your computer?" When they ask "should I install Linux", I judge their experience level and factor that heavily into my answer, because Linux still isn't remotely ready for prime-time desktop use by people who just want their computer to work. I hate Apple fanboys (to paraphrase the author of the "Apple Product Cycle"- I'd love to go to Macworld some time, but strongly suspect I'd end up starting a brawl).
However, my new hatred is for "Appleworms"; people who spout "I hate apple" followed by some moderately insane rambling. If you've got a legitimate beef, fine- and I have a bunch for Apple. Otherwise, for god sakes, please shut up. Anyone remotely intelligent sees you spouting your "opinion" for attention. I've seen people call Apple computer/iPod owners "sheep". Complain about or "cite" a never-ending stream of problems that don't exist (my favorite: "you can't resize the dock, it takes up a chunk of your screen!") Heard people laugh at Apple's single-digit market share and describe it as a "failure" (ignoring the billion dollars in cash reserves, sales on the uptake, stock that consistently meets or exceeds analyst expectations- or the fact that Apple's market valu
That you know of.
Who says they don't have a second account they only log into from a friend's house, or at school, or the public library?
Parents who think they know everything about their kids don't remember their own childhood...