You're not quite correct as to house US law works (and actually, it's hard to say US law because the definitions differ slightly from state to state). As far as I know, in New York, the standard for 1st degree murder is much higher than in some other states. Generally speaking though:
1st degree: Premeditated murder. Also, death caused while in the act of some other criminal activity. If you accidentally kill someone during a bank robbery, it's 1st degree. 2nd degree: Killing someone intentionally, although there's no real premeditation. What separates 2nd degree murder and 1st degree manslaughter in general is the time between the event that would have sparked passion and the execution.
Say your sister's boyfriend beats the hell out of her and she comes to you. Going off, right then and there and killing him could be a crime of passion. Running into him in somewhere else a few days later and just killing him, that's second degree murder. (Although, personally, I'm all for expanding what qualifies as justifiable homicide.)
1st degree manslaughter: (aka voluntary manslaughter) This where a crime of passion kicks in. 2nd degree manslaughter: Accidental death, however gross negligence is involved.
Deaths caused purely by accident where no one was being stupid or careless are, while tragic, just that, accidents. And driving has further muddied the waters because some deaths as a result of accident, at least in Nevada where I live, either can be or the legislature is in the process of creating a law for misdemeanor manslaughter, or something similar.
Oh come on. The only thing worse than the fanboys are the haters that think this is the beginning of Apple becoming like Microsoft in terms of malware and security.
If this was something that could, more or less, install itself purely by going to a website then I'd be worried and wonder what was up with OS X. Seriously though, if I download an rpm or deb in Linux and sudo to install it, there is nothing to stop that program from causing massive havoc if the author was malicious. The only way to secure a machine against this kind of attack is to make sure that you can't install software. That's it.
You can't secure someone's account who freely gives out his password. At some point in any security system, people can and often are the point of failure.
No machine and no OS is immune to someone with admin or root privileges installing bad software. Not Linux and not OpenBSD.
And frankly, anyone who installs any kind of executable from a porn site deserves whatever they get. If you decide to take off your condom and have unprotected sex with someone KNOWN to have herpes and you get herpes... whose fault is it? The condom's? Gimme a break.
Good lord. There's a lot of LOGO bashing around here today and I think it's little more than typical Slashdot elitism. "I was programming straight binary on punch cards when I was in a diaper!" or other such nonsense.
I first played with LOGO in a summer school class when I was six. I didn't even realize we were programming. I was just drawing but as soon as I started playing with Basic and Pascal a few years later, I recognized variables, loop and branch statements for what they were immediately. I was thinking like a programmer without even realizing it.
The nice thing about the turtle and the drawing, to me at least, was that it was a more satisfying result for early programming than textual output. This might be because of my intense interest in drawing as a kid but still... creating a multicolored flower on my Apple IIgs was WAY cooler than pretty much everything I did in QBasic.
As long as it's a private business and NOT a corporation (an entity that by its existence is taking a government benefit). The way a corporation works and the protections and benefits it receives muddy the waters of a "free market" and "private ownership" enough in of it themselves. Private businesses have rights, in a sense, because they are property owned by an individual and individuals have rights and can basically do whatever they want (or in theory that's how it works) within the context of their own property.
Once you incorporate, it's an entirely different matter. Corporations (in theory) have no rights. They are a creation of the government.
This is a good point. I have been a long time AMD user and, with the exception of my various Macs (Intel and PPC), have used AMD exclusively. While the Intel onboard 3D isn't exactly eye popping, it runs WoW reasonably on my MacBook and it has open drivers. The latter alone was enough to make me consider switching to Intel for my next Linux box. On the gaming side, I'm also a long time nVidia user (since the original TNT cards were released), but if this pans out, I'll stick with AMD and ditch nVidia.
Also, this isn't just about gaming as many people seem to be implying. We're seeing 3D accelerated desktops and the like. 3D acceleration is becoming (or some could say HAS become) part of everyday computing. I'm really glad to hear this. If the product is quality, even if nVidia opens up later, it's unlikely I'll go back to using their hardware.
This is one of the few days that I actually want to mod someone and have no points. Seriously though, of everything I have read on this topic, this is the best suggestion and the kind of sound advice that a lot of techies forget. Me included too--kiosks and virtual machines were the first things that came to my mind when this is what should have.
The 7" runs at 800×480 and the 10" is supposed to be around 1280×768.
I was originally hot on the idea of the 7", but the 10" is looking really good now. I wonder if there is going to be a decent after market for better batteries. 3 hours is not very good battery life for a computer with no moving parts. It's using older NiCa batteries though. It'd be nice to get a Lithium Ion replacement. Another cool thing is that the RAM in these babies is easily upgradeable. (Although, precisely what I'd be doing with them that would call for more than 512 is beyond me.)
When I first saw these I knew I wanted one. I HATE PDAs. I don't like input methods that do not involve a keyboard and while the keyboard on this thing is small, it's usable compared to something like a call phone sized on. It's also cheaper than a lot of cell phones. I can tote this around to remodeling jobs and other places that there's no way in hell I'm taking my MacBook to and replace my trusty notepad with something digital.
And Vista isn't always a plus for people. When I first saw the preview for the Eee, my first thought was, "I wonder if the hardware is all Linux compatible." Had I read two more paragraphs, I would have found out.
The biggest problem here is that cops are quite often worse than the criminals they hunt. That and the crime ring the have going with the lower court judges and prosecutors. I am FAR less concerned with my car being stolen than I am about being targeted by the police AGAIN. They will make your life hell and if you stand up to them they will stomp on you.
They say a conservative is a liberal that hasn't been mugged yet and that a liberal is a conservative that hasn't been beaten up by the police yet. However, the sad reality is that most of us harmless people are constantly juggling which criminal is more dangerous. Well, check your pain and suffering count sometime and I think you'll find that government criminals have your average thief and mugger beat by a long shot.
If the police were generally a bunch of guys who really lived to protect and serve and defend the rights of the community, it'd be great. They're not though. A few are, but they're the exception to the bullies or even the average types that have felt the taint of authority and let it go to their heads.
I don't think the ACLU is some bastion of greatness--their stand on gun rights is asinine--but just because something makes it easier to "catch criminals" doesn't mean it's a "good thing" and it doesn't even mean it's going to protect anyone.
Oh yeah, one more thing:
"Let's roll back though. These are license plates. Plates that are government issue, on highways that are government funded (yes by the taxes of the people, but government funded) and a device that is government controlled. So where's the problem?"
I'd say the government issued plates are the first problem. And yeah, the roads are government funded, but who owns the government? They're PUBLIC roads, NOT government roads. They're MY roads as a tenant in common. Why in the hell do I have to ask my SERVANT pretty please to use MY roads and get a plate from them? And roads get paid for if you use them. For the time being gas taxes do a good job of being a fair user fee. The more you use, the more you pay.
I might not have the same expectation of privacy on road as I do in my house, just as there's a big difference between a PUBLIC room like a living room and my bedroom. However, I don't want a camera on every street corner and all my movements tracked just because it might catch a few car thieves. It's just not worth it. Especially given the direction it WILL go and HAS historically gone. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It will ALWAYS be used by whoever is in power to suppress opposition.
I totally agree that this "is an inevitable result of requiring vehicle licenses and driver's licenses." Go sit and watch your local court deal with "traffic" cases sometime (which have become this weird quasi criminal/civil bastard child of law) and it becomes really clear really fast that it has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with extracting additional funds from the public as well as a constant specter of government abuse. It's always been about tracking and about these kinds of things.
A lot of good this stuff would do if I could buy a car and just go driving. I totally oppose registration and drivers' licenses. The slippery slope started there. Who needs a national ID when we have a card that pretends to be voluntary and is tied to a single federal number?
And I'm sure someone will comment with, "Well, I don't want someone just driving! That means any idiot can just get on the road and drive like and idiot." Lemme just head that off at the pass. 1. Traffic safety laws are generally a good thing. If procedure was followed, a cop can't even check to see if you have a license if you're not violating traffic law. 2. Drivers' licenses don't do anything to prevent morons from driving like dangerous morons. A morning commute should demonstrate that well enough.
Please tell me this is a joke. It's a 30MB download and it's not going to get significantly smaller over time if it decreases in size at all.
It's pretty. It has the nicest fonts I've ever seen on a Windows machine. It's not lightweight.
KDE 4, in theory, should make Konq available for Windows, but I doubt that'll qualify as a lightweight browser either considering the overhead required to get it running.
The only problem is that they'd release X-Wing and TIE Fighter "Special Edition" as Lucas originally intended, but couldn't do at the time. I could continue the crack here about adding wooden acting, crappy effects and generally raping a childhood game, but... I'm sure everyone knows where this is going.
(Incidentally, I'd go for an updated TIE Fighter and X-Wing, especially TIE Fighter. Why is this genre so dead? Where's a new Privateer or Descent Freespace game?)
I don't think I've ever seen my fonts look so nice in Windows. I'm a Mac user primarily, but this is sure a boon for wek geeks who don't want to own/set up multiple operating systems. I also hope this spurs some development for Safari and I have a feeling it'll increase its share.
Maybe I haven't purchased a PC laptop in a long time but... are there non-Mac laptops where components other than the RAM and HD are easily upgradeable? I suppose some models make it easy to swap the optical drive, but I don't see a lot of people upgrading their video easily (and CPU swaps on laptops are a pain no matter who makes them). Upgrading the wireless is also easy on modern Mac laptops.
With that said, the one area that I've never liked Apple's current product line are the iMacs. I hate integrated monitors and I would like a machine I could tinker with more easily. However, people like me, who regularly do it ourselves (I upgraded the RAM in my Mac Mini and modded another one to use an external SATA drive) are not exactly commonplace and are definitely not Apple's target demographic. A product line for people like us means more manufacturing for a very limited group.
Most people don't upgrade. Not their Macs and not their PCs. When their computer (regardless of platform) slows down, they replace it. Hell, my friend brought her PC over to me last night because it stopped booting. It's just a Windows issue. There's NOTHING wrong with the computer other than that. Sure, it's not greased lightning or anything, but for everything THEY do (internet, music, word processing, email) there's no reason to get anything new. Her boyfriend wanted to just go out and buy a new machine since that one had "only cost $400."
The gamer crowd is not, nor will it ever be, Apple's target. And seriously, by "expandability" it seems like people mean "new video card." HD and RAM upgrades are pretty easy on most computers (laptops included), although the Mini is a little more annoying. CPU upgrades seem to require new motherboards anymore with the obnoxious socket changes. Moving my Athlon 2400+ to a 2800+ was pretty pointless. It wasn't like the days of my K6-2 300 being bumped up to a K6-III 450. I can't remember the last time a mere CPU upgrade created much in the way of a noticeable change in a machine. By the time it is noticeable anymore, your motherboard needs to go too. A la, pretty much a new machine.
Finally, if you can't upgrade your computer yourself, the costs of getting it done generally negate it being cost effective anyway. Hardware is cheap. I realize your article is on a gaming centric site and that's a concern but... gaming is well known not to be Apple's realm anyway so... what does it matter? No one should freak out when their framing hammer isn't great for finishing work.
Yeah, that's an annoying conclusion. I almost never upgrade any of my computers anymore aside from RAM and hard drives, something that's pretty easy to do on Macs and most laptops (PC or Mac). My home PC, which I use to play games mainly, is running some older ASUS board with an Athlon 2400+ (as in the K7 core). I bumped it up to a gig of RAM and put in a GeForce 7600GS a couple months ago, but that's hardly some monster update.
To make the machine modern (PCIe, SATA, etc.) the whole machine has got to get replaced. The case is about the only thing I could keep. With all the CPU socket changes, a motherboard rarely survives more than one or two MINOR upgrades anymore.
In a Mac I can upgrade easily: CPU, video card, RAM, hard drive and optical drives. Oh yeah, and on the laptops at least, the wireless is really easy to upgrade as well.
So what if I can't upgrade the motherboard? Even in the PC world with a new socket coming out all the time, it's just about the same. This argument was much more valid a few years ago. Upgrading was also a much different realm when everything was on a PCI card. But now? My motherboard costs $60 - $120 (even more sometimes) and has everything but video and if I'm not a gamer... everything on it! New motherboard practically = new machine.
And when my machine gets slow? For everything but gaming and video (neither of which are things I do a lot of) how fast does your machine even need to be any more? The ONLY reason I'm not still using my G4 PowerBook is virtualization. That's it. Having quick access to IE6 and IE7 on my work machine is just too convenient to pass up. But, really, that's all.
All in all, the article was weak. Never trust a gaming centric site to give a decent review to anything but Windows based machines with the latest in "penis grade" hardware (like $500 video cards). For those of us who do work on your computers, many understand the relative strengths of Windows, Linux, OS X and whatever else appeals to our needs. Not everyone needs a $2,500 and a video card that requires its own power supply.
Yeah, and I'm sorry... but while I'm kinda middle of the road on abortion (I'm obnoxious about "original intent" and at the time the Constitution was ratified, you weren't "life" until quickening, which is about 3 - 4 months, or after the first trimester), but partial birth abortions are just disgusting. With the ABSOLUTE EXCEPTION of life or health of the mother, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting one in the first trimester. None.
It might be a "woman's body" but when you get to like... 8 months... it's a baby's body too.
It really is too bad I'll never get to vote for him. There's no way in hell he'll get out out of the primary. It's too bad too, I actually met him in 2006. He came to speak at my third party's state convention when I was running for congress since it turns out his brother is my uncle's accountant here in Nevada. He really is top notch. Even if you don't agree with his politics, you cannot cite him for being dishonest.
I find the general teaching of the holocaust to be bullshit. Not because I don't think it happened, but because of the emphasis on Jews to the point it forgets all the other groups that were targeted. Communists, for example, were specifically targeted.
I also find the emphasis on the holocaust to be very racist in the sense that we talk about it as if nothing worse has EVER happened and that Hitler was the ultimate monster. Don't get me wrong, he was evil and he's responsible for the death of millions. But in the same century, you have Mao Zedong cleansing China which makes Hitler's death count look amateur. Of course, here in the west, we don't much give a shit because they're "just the Chinese." Darfur doesn't count because it's "just a bunch of Africans." Cambodia doesn't count because it's Cambodians. Etc. I mean, we hardly talk about atrocities of Japan toward the Chinese during their occupation of China during that era. Why?
The emphasis on Hitler specifically, when we have so many genocidal lunatics to choose from in this century, is in itself racist. Not only does the teaching generally ignore the other people Hitler butchered, but it also ignores the fact that genocidal maniacs are apparently not a once in a lifetime occurrence and people don't ask the most important question: How the hell do these psychos rise to power SO often? How do people who are clearly evil and insane gain so many followers?
Frankly, I find we have an overemphasis on WWII in general. I guess we love it so much in America because it's been so long since we'd done anything heroic that we have to keep looking back at it. (And then pat ourselves on the back for exercising "restraint" when developing nuclear weapons. Yep... melting thousands of civilians is something to be proud of.)
And one more thing, go back far enough in someone's ethnic history and you'll find that pretty much all of us were victims of terrible crimes by others at some point. If you were personally a victim, you're not some kind of fucking martyr. Get over it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not quite correct as to house US law works (and actually, it's hard to say US law because the definitions differ slightly from state to state). As far as I know, in New York, the standard for 1st degree murder is much higher than in some other states. Generally speaking though:
1st degree: Premeditated murder. Also, death caused while in the act of some other criminal activity. If you accidentally kill someone during a bank robbery, it's 1st degree.
2nd degree: Killing someone intentionally, although there's no real premeditation. What separates 2nd degree murder and 1st degree manslaughter in general is the time between the event that would have sparked passion and the execution.
Say your sister's boyfriend beats the hell out of her and she comes to you. Going off, right then and there and killing him could be a crime of passion. Running into him in somewhere else a few days later and just killing him, that's second degree murder. (Although, personally, I'm all for expanding what qualifies as justifiable homicide.)
1st degree manslaughter: (aka voluntary manslaughter) This where a crime of passion kicks in.
2nd degree manslaughter: Accidental death, however gross negligence is involved.
Deaths caused purely by accident where no one was being stupid or careless are, while tragic, just that, accidents. And driving has further muddied the waters because some deaths as a result of accident, at least in Nevada where I live, either can be or the legislature is in the process of creating a law for misdemeanor manslaughter, or something similar.
Oh come on. The only thing worse than the fanboys are the haters that think this is the beginning of Apple becoming like Microsoft in terms of malware and security.
If this was something that could, more or less, install itself purely by going to a website then I'd be worried and wonder what was up with OS X. Seriously though, if I download an rpm or deb in Linux and sudo to install it, there is nothing to stop that program from causing massive havoc if the author was malicious. The only way to secure a machine against this kind of attack is to make sure that you can't install software. That's it.
You can't secure someone's account who freely gives out his password. At some point in any security system, people can and often are the point of failure.
No machine and no OS is immune to someone with admin or root privileges installing bad software. Not Linux and not OpenBSD.
And frankly, anyone who installs any kind of executable from a porn site deserves whatever they get. If you decide to take off your condom and have unprotected sex with someone KNOWN to have herpes and you get herpes... whose fault is it? The condom's? Gimme a break.
Thank you!
Good lord. There's a lot of LOGO bashing around here today and I think it's little more than typical Slashdot elitism. "I was programming straight binary on punch cards when I was in a diaper!" or other such nonsense.
I first played with LOGO in a summer school class when I was six. I didn't even realize we were programming. I was just drawing but as soon as I started playing with Basic and Pascal a few years later, I recognized variables, loop and branch statements for what they were immediately. I was thinking like a programmer without even realizing it.
The nice thing about the turtle and the drawing, to me at least, was that it was a more satisfying result for early programming than textual output. This might be because of my intense interest in drawing as a kid but still... creating a multicolored flower on my Apple IIgs was WAY cooler than pretty much everything I did in QBasic.
As long as it's a private business and NOT a corporation (an entity that by its existence is taking a government benefit). The way a corporation works and the protections and benefits it receives muddy the waters of a "free market" and "private ownership" enough in of it themselves. Private businesses have rights, in a sense, because they are property owned by an individual and individuals have rights and can basically do whatever they want (or in theory that's how it works) within the context of their own property.
Once you incorporate, it's an entirely different matter. Corporations (in theory) have no rights. They are a creation of the government.
This is a good point. I have been a long time AMD user and, with the exception of my various Macs (Intel and PPC), have used AMD exclusively. While the Intel onboard 3D isn't exactly eye popping, it runs WoW reasonably on my MacBook and it has open drivers. The latter alone was enough to make me consider switching to Intel for my next Linux box. On the gaming side, I'm also a long time nVidia user (since the original TNT cards were released), but if this pans out, I'll stick with AMD and ditch nVidia.
Also, this isn't just about gaming as many people seem to be implying. We're seeing 3D accelerated desktops and the like. 3D acceleration is becoming (or some could say HAS become) part of everyday computing. I'm really glad to hear this. If the product is quality, even if nVidia opens up later, it's unlikely I'll go back to using their hardware.
This is one of the few days that I actually want to mod someone and have no points. Seriously though, of everything I have read on this topic, this is the best suggestion and the kind of sound advice that a lot of techies forget. Me included too--kiosks and virtual machines were the first things that came to my mind when this is what should have.
Let me be the first to say, fuck the police.
The 7" runs at 800×480 and the 10" is supposed to be around 1280×768.
I was originally hot on the idea of the 7", but the 10" is looking really good now. I wonder if there is going to be a decent after market for better batteries. 3 hours is not very good battery life for a computer with no moving parts. It's using older NiCa batteries though. It'd be nice to get a Lithium Ion replacement. Another cool thing is that the RAM in these babies is easily upgradeable. (Although, precisely what I'd be doing with them that would call for more than 512 is beyond me.)
When I first saw these I knew I wanted one. I HATE PDAs. I don't like input methods that do not involve a keyboard and while the keyboard on this thing is small, it's usable compared to something like a call phone sized on. It's also cheaper than a lot of cell phones. I can tote this around to remodeling jobs and other places that there's no way in hell I'm taking my MacBook to and replace my trusty notepad with something digital.
And Vista isn't always a plus for people. When I first saw the preview for the Eee, my first thought was, "I wonder if the hardware is all Linux compatible." Had I read two more paragraphs, I would have found out.
The biggest problem here is that cops are quite often worse than the criminals they hunt. That and the crime ring the have going with the lower court judges and prosecutors. I am FAR less concerned with my car being stolen than I am about being targeted by the police AGAIN. They will make your life hell and if you stand up to them they will stomp on you.
They say a conservative is a liberal that hasn't been mugged yet and that a liberal is a conservative that hasn't been beaten up by the police yet. However, the sad reality is that most of us harmless people are constantly juggling which criminal is more dangerous. Well, check your pain and suffering count sometime and I think you'll find that government criminals have your average thief and mugger beat by a long shot.
If the police were generally a bunch of guys who really lived to protect and serve and defend the rights of the community, it'd be great. They're not though. A few are, but they're the exception to the bullies or even the average types that have felt the taint of authority and let it go to their heads.
I don't think the ACLU is some bastion of greatness--their stand on gun rights is asinine--but just because something makes it easier to "catch criminals" doesn't mean it's a "good thing" and it doesn't even mean it's going to protect anyone.
Oh yeah, one more thing:
"Let's roll back though. These are license plates. Plates that are government issue, on highways that are government funded (yes by the taxes of the people, but government funded) and a device that is government controlled. So where's the problem?"
I'd say the government issued plates are the first problem. And yeah, the roads are government funded, but who owns the government? They're PUBLIC roads, NOT government roads. They're MY roads as a tenant in common. Why in the hell do I have to ask my SERVANT pretty please to use MY roads and get a plate from them? And roads get paid for if you use them. For the time being gas taxes do a good job of being a fair user fee. The more you use, the more you pay.
I might not have the same expectation of privacy on road as I do in my house, just as there's a big difference between a PUBLIC room like a living room and my bedroom. However, I don't want a camera on every street corner and all my movements tracked just because it might catch a few car thieves. It's just not worth it. Especially given the direction it WILL go and HAS historically gone. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It will ALWAYS be used by whoever is in power to suppress opposition.
I totally agree that this "is an inevitable result of requiring vehicle licenses and driver's licenses." Go sit and watch your local court deal with "traffic" cases sometime (which have become this weird quasi criminal/civil bastard child of law) and it becomes really clear really fast that it has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with extracting additional funds from the public as well as a constant specter of government abuse. It's always been about tracking and about these kinds of things.
A lot of good this stuff would do if I could buy a car and just go driving. I totally oppose registration and drivers' licenses. The slippery slope started there. Who needs a national ID when we have a card that pretends to be voluntary and is tied to a single federal number?
And I'm sure someone will comment with, "Well, I don't want someone just driving! That means any idiot can just get on the road and drive like and idiot." Lemme just head that off at the pass. 1. Traffic safety laws are generally a good thing. If procedure was followed, a cop can't even check to see if you have a license if you're not violating traffic law. 2. Drivers' licenses don't do anything to prevent morons from driving like dangerous morons. A morning commute should demonstrate that well enough.
Damn... this whole thread's just done me in.
Please tell me this is a joke. It's a 30MB download and it's not going to get significantly smaller over time if it decreases in size at all.
It's pretty. It has the nicest fonts I've ever seen on a Windows machine. It's not lightweight.
KDE 4, in theory, should make Konq available for Windows, but I doubt that'll qualify as a lightweight browser either considering the overhead required to get it running.
Isn't gecko the real issue? I mean, does it matter how much you strip down everything else if Gecko is still Gecko?
There's a reason Apple went with KHTML and I've always preferred Konq to FF on my Linux machines.
The only problem is that they'd release X-Wing and TIE Fighter "Special Edition" as Lucas originally intended, but couldn't do at the time. I could continue the crack here about adding wooden acting, crappy effects and generally raping a childhood game, but... I'm sure everyone knows where this is going.
(Incidentally, I'd go for an updated TIE Fighter and X-Wing, especially TIE Fighter. Why is this genre so dead? Where's a new Privateer or Descent Freespace game?)
They smelled like hot cakes!
I don't think I've ever seen my fonts look so nice in Windows. I'm a Mac user primarily, but this is sure a boon for wek geeks who don't want to own/set up multiple operating systems. I also hope this spurs some development for Safari and I have a feeling it'll increase its share.
Maybe I haven't purchased a PC laptop in a long time but... are there non-Mac laptops where components other than the RAM and HD are easily upgradeable? I suppose some models make it easy to swap the optical drive, but I don't see a lot of people upgrading their video easily (and CPU swaps on laptops are a pain no matter who makes them). Upgrading the wireless is also easy on modern Mac laptops.
With that said, the one area that I've never liked Apple's current product line are the iMacs. I hate integrated monitors and I would like a machine I could tinker with more easily. However, people like me, who regularly do it ourselves (I upgraded the RAM in my Mac Mini and modded another one to use an external SATA drive) are not exactly commonplace and are definitely not Apple's target demographic. A product line for people like us means more manufacturing for a very limited group.
Most people don't upgrade. Not their Macs and not their PCs. When their computer (regardless of platform) slows down, they replace it. Hell, my friend brought her PC over to me last night because it stopped booting. It's just a Windows issue. There's NOTHING wrong with the computer other than that. Sure, it's not greased lightning or anything, but for everything THEY do (internet, music, word processing, email) there's no reason to get anything new. Her boyfriend wanted to just go out and buy a new machine since that one had "only cost $400."
The gamer crowd is not, nor will it ever be, Apple's target. And seriously, by "expandability" it seems like people mean "new video card." HD and RAM upgrades are pretty easy on most computers (laptops included), although the Mini is a little more annoying. CPU upgrades seem to require new motherboards anymore with the obnoxious socket changes. Moving my Athlon 2400+ to a 2800+ was pretty pointless. It wasn't like the days of my K6-2 300 being bumped up to a K6-III 450. I can't remember the last time a mere CPU upgrade created much in the way of a noticeable change in a machine. By the time it is noticeable anymore, your motherboard needs to go too. A la, pretty much a new machine.
Finally, if you can't upgrade your computer yourself, the costs of getting it done generally negate it being cost effective anyway. Hardware is cheap. I realize your article is on a gaming centric site and that's a concern but... gaming is well known not to be Apple's realm anyway so... what does it matter? No one should freak out when their framing hammer isn't great for finishing work.
Yeah, that's an annoying conclusion. I almost never upgrade any of my computers anymore aside from RAM and hard drives, something that's pretty easy to do on Macs and most laptops (PC or Mac). My home PC, which I use to play games mainly, is running some older ASUS board with an Athlon 2400+ (as in the K7 core). I bumped it up to a gig of RAM and put in a GeForce 7600GS a couple months ago, but that's hardly some monster update.
To make the machine modern (PCIe, SATA, etc.) the whole machine has got to get replaced. The case is about the only thing I could keep. With all the CPU socket changes, a motherboard rarely survives more than one or two MINOR upgrades anymore.
In a Mac I can upgrade easily: CPU, video card, RAM, hard drive and optical drives. Oh yeah, and on the laptops at least, the wireless is really easy to upgrade as well.
So what if I can't upgrade the motherboard? Even in the PC world with a new socket coming out all the time, it's just about the same. This argument was much more valid a few years ago. Upgrading was also a much different realm when everything was on a PCI card. But now? My motherboard costs $60 - $120 (even more sometimes) and has everything but video and if I'm not a gamer... everything on it! New motherboard practically = new machine.
And when my machine gets slow? For everything but gaming and video (neither of which are things I do a lot of) how fast does your machine even need to be any more? The ONLY reason I'm not still using my G4 PowerBook is virtualization. That's it. Having quick access to IE6 and IE7 on my work machine is just too convenient to pass up. But, really, that's all.
All in all, the article was weak. Never trust a gaming centric site to give a decent review to anything but Windows based machines with the latest in "penis grade" hardware (like $500 video cards). For those of us who do work on your computers, many understand the relative strengths of Windows, Linux, OS X and whatever else appeals to our needs. Not everyone needs a $2,500 and a video card that requires its own power supply.
Yeah, and I'm sorry... but while I'm kinda middle of the road on abortion (I'm obnoxious about "original intent" and at the time the Constitution was ratified, you weren't "life" until quickening, which is about 3 - 4 months, or after the first trimester), but partial birth abortions are just disgusting. With the ABSOLUTE EXCEPTION of life or health of the mother, there is absolutely no excuse for not getting one in the first trimester. None.
It might be a "woman's body" but when you get to like... 8 months... it's a baby's body too.
It really is too bad I'll never get to vote for him. There's no way in hell he'll get out out of the primary. It's too bad too, I actually met him in 2006. He came to speak at my third party's state convention when I was running for congress since it turns out his brother is my uncle's accountant here in Nevada. He really is top notch. Even if you don't agree with his politics, you cannot cite him for being dishonest.
If he made it to the general, I'd vote for him.
Dammit. If you WEREN'T personally a victim... dammit. That's what I meant.
I know, I know. I should have used the preview button.
I'd mod you up if I had it.
I find the general teaching of the holocaust to be bullshit. Not because I don't think it happened, but because of the emphasis on Jews to the point it forgets all the other groups that were targeted. Communists, for example, were specifically targeted.
I also find the emphasis on the holocaust to be very racist in the sense that we talk about it as if nothing worse has EVER happened and that Hitler was the ultimate monster. Don't get me wrong, he was evil and he's responsible for the death of millions. But in the same century, you have Mao Zedong cleansing China which makes Hitler's death count look amateur. Of course, here in the west, we don't much give a shit because they're "just the Chinese." Darfur doesn't count because it's "just a bunch of Africans." Cambodia doesn't count because it's Cambodians. Etc. I mean, we hardly talk about atrocities of Japan toward the Chinese during their occupation of China during that era. Why?
The emphasis on Hitler specifically, when we have so many genocidal lunatics to choose from in this century, is in itself racist. Not only does the teaching generally ignore the other people Hitler butchered, but it also ignores the fact that genocidal maniacs are apparently not a once in a lifetime occurrence and people don't ask the most important question: How the hell do these psychos rise to power SO often? How do people who are clearly evil and insane gain so many followers?
Frankly, I find we have an overemphasis on WWII in general. I guess we love it so much in America because it's been so long since we'd done anything heroic that we have to keep looking back at it. (And then pat ourselves on the back for exercising "restraint" when developing nuclear weapons. Yep... melting thousands of civilians is something to be proud of.)
And one more thing, go back far enough in someone's ethnic history and you'll find that pretty much all of us were victims of terrible crimes by others at some point. If you were personally a victim, you're not some kind of fucking martyr. Get over it.
Hell, if so then I'm ALL for it!
Me too... I'm not quite sure what it is that I'm supposed to see or not see to prove what point.