While it may do things somewhat differently, owing to the black-box copying, it does effectively the same things, which I believe was the poster's point.
unless you expect your first-born to be either masculine or feminine. English grammar does not have genders, which is why most people don't realize how screwed up this sounds (because they don't know what the word gender means). In many (most?) other languages words have geneders, e.g. in French a table is of feminine gender and in Russian it's masculine. Gender is purely a grammar term. Confusing the words "gender" and "sex" is equivalent to using "it" when referring to a person.
That's true for other languages, but you might have consulted a dictionary before attempting (incorrectly and pedantically) to correct the poster regarding English usage. As seen from definitions 2-3, gender is an acceptable term in English to refer to a male/female distinction for humans.
Other languages can do what they like, but simply because English is different from other languages doesn't make it wrong. Many languages use one word for two usages that are split in other languages See below. Sex and gender in this usage are accepted synonyms.
*****************
gender ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jndr)
n.
1. Grammar.
1. A grammatical category used in the classification of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers, referents, or grammatical forms.
2. One category of such a set.
3. The classification of a word or grammatical form in such a category.
4. The distinguishing form or forms used.
2. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.
3. a) The condition of being female or male; sex.
b) Females or males considered as a group: expressions used by one gender.
I hope Doom 3 will be able to stand out on its own, even without the support of its line of predecessors, but even if it turns out to be "just another sequel" as far as plot and gameplay, lets not forget its merit as a techdemo.
This effect is getting so bad that we're not only seeing sequels, we're seeing *remakes*! Doom 3 is just a graphical upgrade of the original. You're right, Doom3 is *definitely* a graphics engine show-off.
Apple has made no false claims... The G5 is claimed to be the worlds first 64 bit Desktop . Common arguments such as "Sun was there first!" or "Alpha has been around..." are not accurate, since both of those product lines were marketed as servers or workstations . A workstation is not the same as a Desktop PC, at least as far as marketing is concerned.
I've never seen a workstation personally that didn't fit on a desk. Most are typical ATX-size or smaller. So what Apple really said is "We're the first 64-bit desktop...except for all the other ones." Or, since they don't sell for research purposes generally, maybe they're "the first 64-bit desktop marketed to idiots."
As far as claims about 'Fastest'... people... please please please learn what marketing is. "Fastest" is a subjective term, becuase no reference is made to the scale of measurement. If I strap a TI-80 to the fuselage of the X-43 being tested today, then that TI-80 would be the worlds fastest computer.
Legally, that's not even remotely true. That would never get past a judge.
And really, 99c for a song isn't even that great of a deal. That makes a 15 song cd = $15.... Which essencially is the same price it was before.
And as everyone has discovered who uses the service, iTMS isn't for buying albums. It's for buying singles. This way you get the one song you wanted on the album for $0.99 instead of $15, and that *is* a hell of a discount. Even if you find CD singles, they're much more than $0.99.
So for the majority of the world that (by definition) buys pop, iTMS makes sense. My wife just got 12 songs for $12 that would have cost over $100 in a store. I don't use it because I like older rock where 90% of an album didn't suck, but the service helps a large segment of the population.
the Pacific ocean or the Bering land bridge, those explorers were risking their lives routinely.
Even then, most people as a whole weren't willing to. Also, the risk was lessened relatively because the life expectancy wasn't high anyway.
Are we, today, so squeamish and pathetically cowardly that we can't emulate the feats of our forefathers (and foremothers)??
Who's this "we" shit? Again, until I see a rocket strapped to your ass, you're in the same boat as the rest of us non-space-going people. I respect the decisions of the crazy bastards that do it, but I think we as a society have a responsibility to make sure this is as safe as possible and not to perform a lot of pointless missions.
You are entirely corrrect. Yet, how many lives have been lost in the space race? Very, very few. If I recall, the US has lost 17 and the Former Soviet Union lost either 3 or 6. That is a remarkable safety record for such an achievement
And compared to how many people have flown in space, that's a lot. And your sov. figures are low. And it's easy for you to say, not your ass on the line.
"international law" is practically non-existant. On the other hand I can tell you that under US law copyrights are definitely revokable when a court rules that that copyright has been abused. The material in question then falls back to the public domain.
International copyright treaties are not so insignificant. Also, there is a difference between a judge ruling a copyright invalid and approving its seizure.
I've yet to see anything that suggests this is even rempotely possible, and there is good reason to assume it's not.
Leveraging copyright powers as part of illegal anti-trust violations could certainly qualify as abuse of copyright, and refusing to pay lawfully ordered court damages could certainly escalate the damages to to full blown revokation.
That may be common sense, but it's completely unsupported legally. This court deals with monopolistic violations. Nonpayment of the fine would land MS in debtors' court or some analog. The two matters wouldn't even be overseen by the same judge, and a civil judge in a debt matter certainly wouldn't have the power to revoke a copyright.
And again, international copyright is governed by treaty anyway, which does not to my knowledge make such provisions for nonpayment of fines in a completely unrelated matter.
I'm pretty sure that at least one of the European Union countries is involved in Microsoft's Shared Source program. If they don't pay the fine, the European Union could seize the copyright (in lieu of payment of the fine), get a copy of the code, and sell the source code to one of their own software companies. That would presumably be worth the 500 million euros, even ignoring any other assets that may exist.
I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of international law. I don't believe there's anything in international law that allows governments to seize copyrights as remediation in lieu of fines. I'm also pretty sure that MS made it so that no one who participates in Shared Source can do anything worth a damn for similar reasons as you outline.
I should have more properly put the cost of college at $100k, not the price. There is the price itself and the opportunity costs associated with not working a full time position. Yes, I know some of you had full time jobs in addition to college but if you did, then you could have had 2 full time jobs without college.
No, I mean no one pays that even with jobs. Grants almost always make up the lion's share of tuition costs at such schools, unless you're filthy rich, at which point I've no pity anyway!
In that sense a lot of the low end programmers are comparable to factory workers.
I really do think so. And I'm seeing a TON of job openings that require an array of computer skills. But they aren't for people that only know how to program OK. You have to be trained in something else too (like say, image analysis, or a science). I think what's happening is that, given a glut of programmers (due to everyone majoring in it in the mid-late 90's), the weakest ones don't get jobs. This is to be expected.
The problem seems to be that the individual risks time and money to train in something that may or may not be there years down the road. Perhaps some sort of insurance is needed rather than government action.
Certainly is tough, and I have no idea how that problem's solved! I would say, though, that everyone will have to retrain sometime in their life, probably more than once. Well, some programmers are getting it a bit early.
I think we should build a big wall. Not necessarily to keep anyone out, I just think a big wall would look cool. That and those Canadians have been putting American comedians out of work for years.
;) I think becoming a comedian in Canada is the only alternative to suicide during the winter.
And what about the various benefits that Western laborers take for granted? Heck, the ability to eliminate and/or severely reduce those is probably the biggest reason why outsourcing takes place.
Then perhaps organized labor and politicians should think about the laws they pass that force American companies to solve social problems. Businesses are reacting to conditions, they didn't create them.
Not to mention the fact that various regulations regarding, for instance, pollution, are more often than not less strict in the poorer countries. Result: Less cost for the corp at the expense of less clean air/water/armpits/etc. in your back yard. And guess what; the resulting increase in employment at home means you can cut wages and benefits there too! Yeehaw!
I'll grant that, but it's the price we're going to have to be willing to pay. But this is more a factor for industrial jobs. I know programmers can have some stank BO, but I wouldn't go so far as to call that pollution.;)
Of course, good ol' Trickle Down will make sure that the money eventually goes back to the bottom again, right?:P
I don't know about that, but as outsourcing develops an economy, it develops the country. Japan and Taiwan and S. Korea being prime examples. Believe it for no other reason than that other governments are just as eager as ours to get a piece of that pie. So it's more like trickle sideways. The corp rips off the people, the government rips off the corp, the people rip off the government. Fun huh?
And the one argument I keep making that I've never heard rebutted: every job created overseas is a potential consumer for American goods and services. So in a way, outsourcing is a natural step like recession: assuming the American economy is generally strong, it strengthens the stronger parts of the economy and kills the weaker.
And another thing: how many/.'ers are willing to pay $2000/car more to subsidize American steelworkers? Or is it just coders who deserve protection? I realize these last two points aren't addressed to you, but to the general/. community.
I just love the past performance guarantees future performance argument.
It's better than rampant speculation. There is nothing to suggest that offsourcing of low-end programming jobs is bad for the economy. It's just saying that so many people worldwide are learning to code that 500 people can now replace a bad programmer.
How many college grads were getting displaced 50 years ago? How many of them had spent $100k and 4 years of their lives to have their jobs moved offshore?
How many people HAD college degrees then? And it's not like that degree is worthless now - in fact, you'll still need it if you don't want to start in construction. And no one ends up with $100,000 of college debt except doctors. And for people that went to places that even cost that much before grants and such, well, I bet it isn't generally those people being laid off.
I think the real status of the economy in the US isn't so gloomy though. It seems to me like people don't want a good economy, they are yearning for 1999 all over again.
Hit the nail on the head there! Couldn't say it better myself. 1999 is NOT happening again. And if it does, it means the SEC turned blind.
Why does everyone else think that Americans should be altruistic to the point of extinction, but of course they can be protectionist and xenophobic.
It's not altruistic if someone outcompetes you for a job.
Then why don't they make games for themselves? Why does everyone want in on the American economy?
First, many great games are created by foreign developers. Second, there is no such thing as an "American" economy. There is only a world economy.
That's why this "chicken little" crap doesn't make sense. People predicted that Japan would kill us back in the 60's. They didn't. The fact is, that as a foreign economy steals jobs, it also adds consumers. This is an overall GOOD THING for the total world economy. And it's mainly the shittiest jobs getting outsourced anyway.
I've said this many times on slashdot, but as long as America innovates and steals talent from overseas through our university system, we'll be fine. If not, we'll fail.
People used your same arguments in the 50's to argue that textiles and manufacturing jobs needed to stay in America. Today, if our economy was based on that, we'd be decadeds behind Asia and Europe.
America's economy is a constant process of innovating new high-paying jobs and exporting of old, no longer "cool" jobs. Anyone who can't see this has neither a historical perspective nor grasp of basic macroeconomics.
Let's see how much money they make when they wipe out the American middle class. How many games are the CEOs going to buy? There's also a wonderful concept to business called: Not shooting yourself in the foot for the sake of a temporary increase in profits.
Why do Americans think they're the only ones who deserve decent jobs? Is the rest of the world supposed to sit in poverty forever while America maintains its enormous salaries? I don't think so. The rest of the world is becoming educated, becoming skilled, and deserves good jobs just as much as America. And another hint - there are a lot of gamers in foreign countries too.
Geeks in Russia are more like Americans than American geeks are to other Americans. People are people, and there's no sense in this mindless nationalism and xenophobia.
Uhh, no. The Fed will be more than pleased to drive a stake through SCO. Most corporations like to flex their muscles. The Government is probably the worst about this.
We're talking about national labs here, not the FBI. National labs don't have any such power.
You don't know many people then. There are just as many if not more PC Zealots. And while, the PC Zealot "group" can be divided into several camps: Windows R0xx0rz j00
I would love to see any evidence of that statement. In fact, I just did a Google search for it, and came up empty. So I am most strenuously calling bullshit on that one.
Anti-Mac (These are the most prevelent),
Admittedly. But as I said, this isn't because they care about their windows box so much, most of those are trolls because our Mac community is such an easy troll target.
Pro-Performance
Back to the troll, and also this actually having been completely true until the G5 (arguably). Most non-delusional mac owners admit the performance gap for one-chip setups until g5.
here is nonetheless just the same kind of fanaticism on both sides
Not even remotely close. The fractional number of mac users vs. windows users flaming, trolling message boards, etc. isn't even in the ballpark. Put it this way - if there's the same number of fanatics, there are 20 times as many mac zealots on a per-machine basis.
The two sides, driven by whatever motivation serves to feed the other's passion
And I'm saying there is little passion regarding the windows OS. Nobody tricks out their windows. No one cares about the windows OS.
One would not exist without the other.
Au contraire. The minority, or the underrepresented, or slighted, always cares more. Notice there are many feminists but no masculinists. The fractional membership of the NAACP is far higher than any white-power organization. Just as mac people are always comparing their stuff to the windows hegemony, but windows users could really give a shit.
Hell, even microsoft itself doesn't care about apple. Linux is their target. Same for intel and amd. Again, I say this as a mac owner, but the zealotry is almost completely one-sided.
Not to rain your parade, they could have decreased their marketshare by 25% from 4.49% to 3.51% and you wouldn't be able to tell.
Obviously. I don't have a parade, as I don't care, but I always shake my head at poor use of statistics. I guess I'm the stats version of the ever-present/. grammar nazi.
According to Zeitgeist Apple's marketshare swings between 3 and 4 in recent times and that increases the probability that it is somewhere in the 3.5% region
I wouldn't contend otherwise. Honestly, I had no idea where in the range of 2%-6% apple's marketshare lay, nor the trend. But the interpolation/extrapolation of two points of 1-sigfig data, that gets me going.
...to mod this entire article and discussion -1 Flamebait? Still, I guess Friday is a good day to have the Mac and PC zealots shouting at each other like howler monkeys.
I've often marvelled at statements like that. And let me preface this by declaring that I own a powerbook - but I have *never* met a PC zealot. PC users rarely care that muchabout the branding of their box. Most PC users care about the games on their box, or the GHz it has compared to the PC down the block. But mostly, they don't care about apple. It's always the "little guy" who has the chip on his shoulder, who is always making comparisons to the "big guy" (at least in terms of marketshare here).
These discussions aren't so much PC zealots vs. Mac zealots - it's usually mac zealots vs. the PC users who push their (our?) buttons for fun.
They've said many times, that iTunes makes them almost no profit at all. It pays it's costs, but the real reason behind iTunes is to drive sales of the iPod, which does have a relatively healthy profit margin.
The iPod (and HP branded iPod) are the only devices that currently play iTunes Music Store content without having to format shift the music.\
There's one more device that plays them - the mac. Look at it this way - he used to hate apple, now he thinks they're cool. There's at least a chance he'll drop cash on a powerbook, which make killer margins.
I realize the article claims apple isn't getting much from such promotion, but the analysis was a bit shaky. In general, the only way to get high margins from consumer computer equipment is to be perceived as "cool." And the ipod is really helping with that.
I'm writing this from a Mac myself, but the information you posted is wrong. If you look at the Google reports for Feb 2004, the Mac users are 4%. Now look at report for June 2001. The amount reported for Mac users....... 4%
Not to rain on your parade, but with one sig.fig. data, they could increase their marketshare by over 25% (3.51% to 4.49%) and you wouldn't be able to tell.
Maybe your flaw is in the "I'll do it for him"
Because you have squat to do with this.
It was intended for him, not you.
You don't have shit to do with anything, he didn't even respond to you. You're still an idiot. And trust me, correcting you isn't a flaw, I'll feel free to educate you whenever I choose.
A message which uses pronouns and yet only applies to specific people? Unheard of!
Then you should email him directly, it will save you the embarassment of being a dumbass in public.
Most of the foreigners I deal with are from India and Pakistan and they do work their buts off. Have you ever seen the places they come from? Sometimes they appreciate what we have here more than we do. I understand that this is all part of dealing with employees, but what about employees dealing with managers?
Right, but that's a bit different - you're seeing only those foreigners who were motivated to come here and change their lives. They also have the motivation, many of them, that if you fire them, they get deported. An American worker doesn't have that.
I still think that if you dealt with foreign workers, especially Europeans, on their turf, you wouldn't be all too impressed.
Slashdot Mirror
Fr33 s0ftw4rez kidz spellz 3V3ryth!ng 4ll phucked-up. Scr3w j00z l4m3rz!
While it may do things somewhat differently, owing to the black-box copying, it does effectively the same things, which I believe was the poster's point.
That's true for other languages, but you might have consulted a dictionary before attempting (incorrectly and pedantically) to correct the poster regarding English usage. As seen from definitions 2-3, gender is an acceptable term in English to refer to a male/female distinction for humans.
Other languages can do what they like, but simply because English is different from other languages doesn't make it wrong. Many languages use one word for two usages that are split in other languages See below. Sex and gender in this usage are accepted synonyms.
*****************
gender ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jndr) n.
1. Grammar.
2. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.
3. a) The condition of being female or male; sex.
b) Females or males considered as a group: expressions used by one gender.
Like playing the soggy biscuit game, do you? Certainly not a game one wants to lose.
This effect is getting so bad that we're not only seeing sequels, we're seeing *remakes*! Doom 3 is just a graphical upgrade of the original. You're right, Doom3 is *definitely* a graphics engine show-off.
I've never seen a workstation personally that didn't fit on a desk. Most are typical ATX-size or smaller. So what Apple really said is "We're the first 64-bit desktop...except for all the other ones." Or, since they don't sell for research purposes generally, maybe they're "the first 64-bit desktop marketed to idiots."
As far as claims about 'Fastest'... people... please please please learn what marketing is. "Fastest" is a subjective term, becuase no reference is made to the scale of measurement. If I strap a TI-80 to the fuselage of the X-43 being tested today, then that TI-80 would be the worlds fastest computer.
Legally, that's not even remotely true. That would never get past a judge.
And as everyone has discovered who uses the service, iTMS isn't for buying albums. It's for buying singles. This way you get the one song you wanted on the album for $0.99 instead of $15, and that *is* a hell of a discount. Even if you find CD singles, they're much more than $0.99.
So for the majority of the world that (by definition) buys pop, iTMS makes sense. My wife just got 12 songs for $12 that would have cost over $100 in a store. I don't use it because I like older rock where 90% of an album didn't suck, but the service helps a large segment of the population.
...in Soviet Russia.
the Pacific ocean or the Bering land bridge, those explorers were risking their lives routinely.
Even then, most people as a whole weren't willing to. Also, the risk was lessened relatively because the life expectancy wasn't high anyway.
Are we, today, so squeamish and pathetically cowardly that we can't emulate the feats of our forefathers (and foremothers)??
Who's this "we" shit? Again, until I see a rocket strapped to your ass, you're in the same boat as the rest of us non-space-going people. I respect the decisions of the crazy bastards that do it, but I think we as a society have a responsibility to make sure this is as safe as possible and not to perform a lot of pointless missions.
And compared to how many people have flown in space, that's a lot. And your sov. figures are low. And it's easy for you to say, not your ass on the line.
"international law" is practically non-existant. On the other hand I can tell you that under US law copyrights are definitely revokable when a court rules that that copyright has been abused. The material in question then falls back to the public domain.
International copyright treaties are not so insignificant. Also, there is a difference between a judge ruling a copyright invalid and approving its seizure.
I've yet to see anything that suggests this is even rempotely possible, and there is good reason to assume it's not.
Leveraging copyright powers as part of illegal anti-trust violations could certainly qualify as abuse of copyright, and refusing to pay lawfully ordered court damages could certainly escalate the damages to to full blown revokation.
That may be common sense, but it's completely unsupported legally. This court deals with monopolistic violations. Nonpayment of the fine would land MS in debtors' court or some analog. The two matters wouldn't even be overseen by the same judge, and a civil judge in a debt matter certainly wouldn't have the power to revoke a copyright.
And again, international copyright is governed by treaty anyway, which does not to my knowledge make such provisions for nonpayment of fines in a completely unrelated matter.
I'm pretty sure that would be a violation of international law. I don't believe there's anything in international law that allows governments to seize copyrights as remediation in lieu of fines. I'm also pretty sure that MS made it so that no one who participates in Shared Source can do anything worth a damn for similar reasons as you outline.
No, I mean no one pays that even with jobs. Grants almost always make up the lion's share of tuition costs at such schools, unless you're filthy rich, at which point I've no pity anyway!
In that sense a lot of the low end programmers are comparable to factory workers.
I really do think so. And I'm seeing a TON of job openings that require an array of computer skills. But they aren't for people that only know how to program OK. You have to be trained in something else too (like say, image analysis, or a science). I think what's happening is that, given a glut of programmers (due to everyone majoring in it in the mid-late 90's), the weakest ones don't get jobs. This is to be expected.
The problem seems to be that the individual risks time and money to train in something that may or may not be there years down the road. Perhaps some sort of insurance is needed rather than government action.
Certainly is tough, and I have no idea how that problem's solved! I would say, though, that everyone will have to retrain sometime in their life, probably more than once. Well, some programmers are getting it a bit early.
I think we should build a big wall. Not necessarily to keep anyone out, I just think a big wall would look cool. That and those Canadians have been putting American comedians out of work for years.
;) I think becoming a comedian in Canada is the only alternative to suicide during the winter.
Then perhaps organized labor and politicians should think about the laws they pass that force American companies to solve social problems. Businesses are reacting to conditions, they didn't create them.
Not to mention the fact that various regulations regarding, for instance, pollution, are more often than not less strict in the poorer countries. Result: Less cost for the corp at the expense of less clean air/water/armpits/etc. in your back yard. And guess what; the resulting increase in employment at home means you can cut wages and benefits there too! Yeehaw!
I'll grant that, but it's the price we're going to have to be willing to pay. But this is more a factor for industrial jobs. I know programmers can have some stank BO, but I wouldn't go so far as to call that pollution. ;)
Of course, good ol' Trickle Down will make sure that the money eventually goes back to the bottom again, right? :P
I don't know about that, but as outsourcing develops an economy, it develops the country. Japan and Taiwan and S. Korea being prime examples. Believe it for no other reason than that other governments are just as eager as ours to get a piece of that pie. So it's more like trickle sideways. The corp rips off the people, the government rips off the corp, the people rip off the government. Fun huh?
And the one argument I keep making that I've never heard rebutted: every job created overseas is a potential consumer for American goods and services. So in a way, outsourcing is a natural step like recession: assuming the American economy is generally strong, it strengthens the stronger parts of the economy and kills the weaker.
And another thing: how many /.'ers are willing to pay $2000/car more to subsidize American steelworkers? Or is it just coders who deserve protection? I realize these last two points aren't addressed to you, but to the general /. community.
It's better than rampant speculation. There is nothing to suggest that offsourcing of low-end programming jobs is bad for the economy. It's just saying that so many people worldwide are learning to code that 500 people can now replace a bad programmer.
How many college grads were getting displaced 50 years ago? How many of them had spent $100k and 4 years of their lives to have their jobs moved offshore?
How many people HAD college degrees then? And it's not like that degree is worthless now - in fact, you'll still need it if you don't want to start in construction. And no one ends up with $100,000 of college debt except doctors. And for people that went to places that even cost that much before grants and such, well, I bet it isn't generally those people being laid off.
I think the real status of the economy in the US isn't so gloomy though. It seems to me like people don't want a good economy, they are yearning for 1999 all over again.
Hit the nail on the head there! Couldn't say it better myself. 1999 is NOT happening again. And if it does, it means the SEC turned blind.
It's not altruistic if someone outcompetes you for a job.
Then why don't they make games for themselves? Why does everyone want in on the American economy?
First, many great games are created by foreign developers. Second, there is no such thing as an "American" economy. There is only a world economy.
That's why this "chicken little" crap doesn't make sense. People predicted that Japan would kill us back in the 60's. They didn't. The fact is, that as a foreign economy steals jobs, it also adds consumers. This is an overall GOOD THING for the total world economy. And it's mainly the shittiest jobs getting outsourced anyway.
I've said this many times on slashdot, but as long as America innovates and steals talent from overseas through our university system, we'll be fine. If not, we'll fail.
People used your same arguments in the 50's to argue that textiles and manufacturing jobs needed to stay in America. Today, if our economy was based on that, we'd be decadeds behind Asia and Europe.
America's economy is a constant process of innovating new high-paying jobs and exporting of old, no longer "cool" jobs. Anyone who can't see this has neither a historical perspective nor grasp of basic macroeconomics.
Why do Americans think they're the only ones who deserve decent jobs? Is the rest of the world supposed to sit in poverty forever while America maintains its enormous salaries? I don't think so. The rest of the world is becoming educated, becoming skilled, and deserves good jobs just as much as America. And another hint - there are a lot of gamers in foreign countries too.
Geeks in Russia are more like Americans than American geeks are to other Americans. People are people, and there's no sense in this mindless nationalism and xenophobia.
We're talking about national labs here, not the FBI. National labs don't have any such power.
Thanks /. for the constant hyperbole.
I would love to see any evidence of that statement. In fact, I just did a Google search for it, and came up empty. So I am most strenuously calling bullshit on that one.
Anti-Mac (These are the most prevelent),
Admittedly. But as I said, this isn't because they care about their windows box so much, most of those are trolls because our Mac community is such an easy troll target.
Pro-Performance
Back to the troll, and also this actually having been completely true until the G5 (arguably). Most non-delusional mac owners admit the performance gap for one-chip setups until g5.
here is nonetheless just the same kind of fanaticism on both sides
Not even remotely close. The fractional number of mac users vs. windows users flaming, trolling message boards, etc. isn't even in the ballpark. Put it this way - if there's the same number of fanatics, there are 20 times as many mac zealots on a per-machine basis.
The two sides, driven by whatever motivation serves to feed the other's passion
And I'm saying there is little passion regarding the windows OS. Nobody tricks out their windows. No one cares about the windows OS.
One would not exist without the other.
Au contraire. The minority, or the underrepresented, or slighted, always cares more. Notice there are many feminists but no masculinists. The fractional membership of the NAACP is far higher than any white-power organization. Just as mac people are always comparing their stuff to the windows hegemony, but windows users could really give a shit.
Hell, even microsoft itself doesn't care about apple. Linux is their target. Same for intel and amd. Again, I say this as a mac owner, but the zealotry is almost completely one-sided.
Obviously. I don't have a parade, as I don't care, but I always shake my head at poor use of statistics. I guess I'm the stats version of the ever-present /. grammar nazi.
According to Zeitgeist Apple's marketshare swings between 3 and 4 in recent times and that increases the probability that it is somewhere in the 3.5% region
I wouldn't contend otherwise. Honestly, I had no idea where in the range of 2%-6% apple's marketshare lay, nor the trend. But the interpolation/extrapolation of two points of 1-sigfig data, that gets me going.
I've often marvelled at statements like that. And let me preface this by declaring that I own a powerbook - but I have *never* met a PC zealot. PC users rarely care that muchabout the branding of their box. Most PC users care about the games on their box, or the GHz it has compared to the PC down the block. But mostly, they don't care about apple. It's always the "little guy" who has the chip on his shoulder, who is always making comparisons to the "big guy" (at least in terms of marketshare here).
These discussions aren't so much PC zealots vs. Mac zealots - it's usually mac zealots vs. the PC users who push their (our?) buttons for fun.
The iPod (and HP branded iPod) are the only devices that currently play iTunes Music Store content without having to format shift the music.\
There's one more device that plays them - the mac. Look at it this way - he used to hate apple, now he thinks they're cool. There's at least a chance he'll drop cash on a powerbook, which make killer margins.
I realize the article claims apple isn't getting much from such promotion, but the analysis was a bit shaky. In general, the only way to get high margins from consumer computer equipment is to be perceived as "cool." And the ipod is really helping with that.
Not to rain on your parade, but with one sig.fig. data, they could increase their marketshare by over 25% (3.51% to 4.49%) and you wouldn't be able to tell.
You don't have shit to do with anything, he didn't even respond to you. You're still an idiot. And trust me, correcting you isn't a flaw, I'll feel free to educate you whenever I choose.
A message which uses pronouns and yet only applies to specific people? Unheard of!
Then you should email him directly, it will save you the embarassment of being a dumbass in public.
Right, but that's a bit different - you're seeing only those foreigners who were motivated to come here and change their lives. They also have the motivation, many of them, that if you fire them, they get deported. An American worker doesn't have that.
I still think that if you dealt with foreign workers, especially Europeans, on their turf, you wouldn't be all too impressed.