It is my understanding that the reason the FireWire 800 port is absent on the new MacBook Pro is that the Intel chipset they're using doesn't support it. To have FireWire 800 support, Apple would have to provide a custom chipset capable of supporting it. Since Apple doesn't exactly have fab capabilities, it's not on the MacBook. Also, it's been suggested by others -- and quite rightly, I think -- that most customers weren't using the FireWire 800 port on the PowerBook. For the benefit it would provide, building FireWire 800 into the MacBook seems prohibitively expensive. Now the Power Mac may be an entirely different story.
Martha Stewart was never charged with securities fraud or insider trading -- well, actually she was, but the charges were dropped quickly when the investigation didn't turn anything up. What sent Martha to prison for five months followed by five months of home confinement was lying to federal investigators. So I guess the lesson here is that the way to cover your ass is to not attempt to cover your ass; even if they don't find anything they can still get you if you lie to them. Remember that IBM: don't tell the SEC there was a stop-loss order in effect unless there really was a stop-loss order in effect.
I think the thing that would help you understand mathematics better is altering your approach to it. When I was in 8th grade, I took Algebra and while I did well in the course and came out with a good grade, I didn't really understand it. Imagine my surprise, then, as a freshman in high school taking Geometry -- a far more rigorous and abstract course. About halfway through the year I started to learn that the trick to understanding geometry was not to memorize postulates and theorems -- although that certainly doesn't hurt -- but instead to think on a more abstract level. Instead of "three lines that intersect" I started to see a triangle with three sides and three vertices. Once I got to that level the properties began to fall into place. I started to really "get" geometry.
As an undergrad, I took two geometry courses -- I was lucky enough to go to a university that offered two geometry courses to undergrads -- and I did really well in both of them. As time went on I really started to regard mathematics as far more powerful and beautiful.
All romantic notions about mathematics aside, I can offer you a few good pieces of advice about learning about mathematics as an adult. There are a number of "for Dummies" books out there dealing with algebra, trigonometry, analysis (my personal favorite) and calculus. Spend a day at Barnes and Noble or someplace, or maybe even your library if your town has a good one and browse through these books. Look for books that give a lot of examples but are also rigorous. Even though the word "proof" makes most of the people I know recoil in horror, mathematical logic is the foundation for all of mathematics. Look for books that give you a good set of exercises (complete with solutions and perhaps even explanations of the solutions). You don't need tons of exercises, but you do need some that are really hard to really get you to think about mathematics in the right way.
The problem with "visual" guides is that the author's visual representation of an object isn't necessarily meaningful to all readers. Since you say that you like to learn things visually, you should try to build up your own representations of concepts. Mathematics beyond arithmetic becomes increasingly less involved with numbers and increasingly more a system about manipulating symbols. Many types of symbols don't lend themselves well to visual depiction, although you might be able to find a way that works for you. I actually think that calculus textbooks would do well to include more visual representations of certain fundamental concepts. I didn't really understand how limits worked until I drew some pictures for myself. Now if I were to look back on those pictures I'd probably laugh at them as a gross oversimplification of the way things work, but they can be a helpful learning tool in the beginning.
Another ingredient you will definitely need is patience. Learning about mathematics doesn't happen overnight. If you have the resources, you might check with your local college or university to see if you can hire a math tutor to help guide you through your studies. Then again, if you have the resources it might be best to take a course or two in the foundational stuff. I don't think I would want to try to learn calculus without an instructor of some kind to help me out. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a friend who, like me, could talk about mathematics (or computer science especially in my case) for hours and hours and would be excited to know that you want to improve your understanding of mathematics.
As your skills improve, you'll find that there are fewer and fewer "how-to" books for mathematics available and more textbooks. That's OK; by that point you should have an intuitive understanding of what you'll need to know to really understand a particular topic. You'll be better able to choose exercises from textbooks that will help you understand the concepts. You should work with the ideas in those books until you have an intuitive "feel" for them. It's hard to expl
Do your sources also say booting from FireWire is supported? While I love target disk mode, being able to boot from my old 3G iPod is also pretty handy; you never know when you'll screw up your OS X installation:-)
Mac desktops come with a Mighty Mouse -- two buttons plus a "squeeze" button on the side and a clickable scroller ball on top. I bought one to go with my Power Mac G5 and I really like it. However, the notebooks still have the standard one button trackpad. Honestly, I really like the one button trackpad since you can use either hand with it. Even though I'm righthanded, I often use my left hand for the trackpad. But if you want to run Windows and got a MacBook, you'd probably want to get yourself a Bluetooth mouse to go with it, although I'm not sure which Bluetooth mice are supported on the Mac. Also, the Apple Bluetooth mouse is a plain-jane ol' single button optical mouse. There is no Bluetooth Mighty Mouse yet.
Also, see the other posts about technical reasons why Windows XP won't run on the Intel-based Macs; Reader's Digest version: Windows XP needs BIOS and Macs have EFI instead. We know Vista will support EFI, but there's been speculation whether the EFI support will be 64-bit only.
Now for the other part. If Windows can be made to run on a MAC using the X86 architecture, then the MAC OS-X can be made to run on PC hardware using the X86 architecture.
Not necessarily. First of all, that would be against Apple's license agreement; it says that Apple OSes are only to be run on Apple computers. But more importantly, it has been speculated in recent months not *if* Apple will use some kind of trusted platform computing to prevent OS X from running on generic PCs, but *what kind* they will use. Granted, I don't think we know what they wound up doing yet. But I'm sure we'll find out in a few days when people start getting their new iMacs.
I think the only reason people were able to get the developer kit versions of Tiger to run on other PC hardware is because Apple didn't want to play their Trusted Platform card too soon. Either they wanted to keep it secret for as long as possible or they hadn't solidified the hardware/software combo required to do that yet. However, I do see Apple making an effort at some point to make Windows interoperability a reality. They will likely strike some kind of licensing deal with Microsoft where one can purchase a copy of Windows along with the necessary Apple virtualization software so that one can run Windows apps right alongside their OS X apps.
It probably won't even be a full copy of Windows; it will likely be the "guts" of the OS so that people can run Windows apps on their Macs. I expect it will look quite a bit like the Classic environment for running OS9 inside OS X. In any event, I'd pay for that. It's not that I'm in love with Windows, but I'll finally be able to own just one computer instead of both a Mac and a PC for the few apps that require Windows. Plus, Microsoft already owns Virtual PC for the Mac -- they bought out Connectix a couple of years ago -- so they already have a great start for building drivers that operate within a virtual Windows environment and a real Mac OS X environment. Plus, Microsoft won't be losing any money by doing this; they'll still get to sell the licenses to Apple. I think that Microsoft, now in its "middle age", has suffered enough defeats in the past few years that they're learning they have to become a bit more flexible with respect to other companies if they want to survive in a truly meaningful way.
Microsoft will not be dropping support for the Mac any time soon. At the keynote on Tuesday, Steve brought out Roz Ho from Microsoft's Mac BU -- who they apparently finally convinced to start dressing more casually for these Apple keynotes -- and she said that Apple and Microsoft have come to a formal agreement that Microsoft will continue to deliver new versions of Office for the Mac for at least the next five years. It's been a very successful product for Microsoft, so they have no apparent reason to drop it.
That's true; a keyboard like this won't be of much use to someone who only uses a keyboard to type. However, certain applications exploit the keyboard so that the user won't have to move the mouse to choose tools and commands. Two good examples of this are Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. While I don't use FCP, I do use Photoshop and I know that not knowing the keyboard shortcuts really slows me down. It would be nice to be able to see what key to hit to switch tools or even to see what the modifier keys will do to the current tool.
A friend of mine who does use FCP has a neat modified Apple Pro keyboard called the Logic Keyboard that replaces a number of the standard keycaps with color-coded keys labelled with icons from the program. Also, I could see gamers really latching onto this. The more complex games get, the more likely it is that you'll need a richer set of commands which are most easily accessed from the keyboard. Even the picture from the website shows the keyboard relabelled for Doom. If you play a lot of games this would be a godsend.
It's a technical reason. The current CableCARDs that cable systems use are unidirectional. To do VOD, PPV, and other things the cable company would *really* like you to do -- especially PPV -- you would need a bidirectional card. But those don't exist yet.
When I called my cable company about getting digital cable -- something I resisted until I got a new TV with CableCARD, they told me that they didn't support CableCARD. Then I said that the FCC mandates that they do. Utterly nonplussed, the cable lady told me that I couldn't get VOD or PPV without a box. I said, "I know; that's part of the attraction." Then she told me it would be three weeks before they could install it. I'm not sure what kind of "installation" is needed beyond installing the card and activating it, but she insisted that a real human being had to come to my house between the hours of 9 and 2. But anyway, I've never had to wait longer than a week for an appointment. I said, "do you want my money or not?" And suddenly, magically, an appointment just happened to open up within the next week. So I guess the moral of the story is don't expect the cable company to be polite when you ask for a CableCARD instead of their crappy set-top boxes. And I guess don't expect them to be honest, either.
By the way, don't connect a cable box to a TiVo. You have to set up an IR blaster to change the channel, and someone can easily come along and screw it all up by changing the channel on the TV, totally unaware that the TiVo is recording from the cable box.
Funny you should say that, because just last week (Tuesday, in fact) I was on my way back from my parents' house (Virginia to Iowa; leave a shitty state, arrive in a shittier state) and my connection in Detroit was cancelled due to weather. I found myself an "online-only" deal -- definitely worth the $6.95 for wireless access in the terminal. I wound up paying $89 at the Westin for a very nice room for the night. Plus, since I was travelling on Northwest (who doesn't in Detroit?) and my baggage was already en route to Cedar Rapids, I was able to check in at the automated stand at the hotel and take advantage of the no-line TSA checkpoint as well.
I've stayed in some shitty hotels in my time and for $89, this was almost to good to be true. Everything at the Westin is "Heavenly" according to them, and for someone who's been stuck in an airport terminal all day, a "heavenly" shower, followed by a decent meal at the restaurant downstairs (featuring *real* silverware, even), a drink, some smokey treats and about six hours in the "heavenly" bed is worth any price they care to name. A couple of friends who just moved to Detroit even met me at the bar for a drink. After spending ten days with my parents, it was a welcome relief.
The moral is, you can get a good deal at an airport hotel; you just need to wait until after check-in time and look around online. They're willing to take almost any price if they're afraid no one will be using the room for the night. And if you can make the reservation cheap for them by booking it online, they'll give you an even better deal. Or maybe I just got extremely lucky.
I remember when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, there was a huge outcry from documentary filmmakers. Their grievance? Moore is not making documentaries, he's making editorial movies. And they were certainly right. Even though many of these filmmakers agreed with what Moore was saying, they still felt like he was usurping and bastardizing their artform. By the way, every now and then a documentary will become popular. Like this summer's March of the Penguins, which I haven't seen but have heard is really well done.
But you're right; my first thought when I read the headline was "conspiracy". Like any system that's so secretive, it can be as corrupt as it likes and no one knows about it. That's by definition. And that also just makes me want to see this film that much more. Now if only I knew someone who gets IFC; I'm not about to pay an extra $15 a month for digital cable no matter how good the documentary is.
It's the fascist organization that decided to develop a voluntary system of television ratings before the government established its own censor office to do that for them. While it's certainly not a good thing, it would have been a lot worse if the government took it over.
Women certainly have the right to choose to go into pornography. However, they shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that this is in some way "empowering." Women who do this become sex objects; they subjugate themselves to the fantasies of other people -- men, in particular. My friend Rachel, who is gay, says that she can't look at "lesbian" porn because she finds it so humiliating and degrading -- to lesbians. The women in these films aren't gay, but they're pretending to be because girls having sex with each other is all the rage with men. These are women who have sex, not because they enjoy it, but because that's what they're supposed to do.
I'm sure you've seen the Paris Hilton sex tape, right? Notice how when she's actually engaged in intercourse she couldn't be less interested. Hell, she answered the phone right in the middle of it! But she sure did love showing off. It's not about being sexual, it's about being sexy. That's the difference.
Yes, there are women in the real world who are proportioned similarly to the women in those games, but rarely naturally. Often, these are women who have cosmetic surgery thinking that this will give them some kind of power -- to attract power, wealth, success, whatever. But it never does. When I was in high school, I had a friend who had very large breasts. Oh, she was popular with the boys, but not because she was on the honor roll or because she was one hell of a singer. She had horrible back pain and, because she was also pretty short, had to have bras custom-made for her. She had a breast reduction before our senior year which, I think, made her look much better. But if it hadn't been for the fact that her mother died of breast cancer three years earlier, I don't think she would have done it. But it made her feel better, alleviated her chronic back pain, and for the first time in years she was able to really play sports again, which she had missed. And she also had a boyfriend -- a real boyfriend and not someone who just wanted to sleep with her -- for the first time. He was my best friend, actually.
But guess what? The boys no longer flocked to her like they once did. And she told me that, although it's disappointing to find out just how lousy some people are, it was a good thing to learn who her real friends were. So I don't think that I did underestimate kids. Most of the boys in the school only wanted to be around her because of her cup size.
I've also known women with eating disorders. While there are men who suffer from them too, the ratio is something like three men to every one hundred women. Are you really telling me that there is no relationship between the constant media images of skinny women with big boobs and problems like these? And yes, video games are a form of media. So Lara Croft is as guilty of this as Pamela Anderson.
And Amish? Oh give me a break. So because I think that women shouldn't be expected to conform to outrageous body types I'm a technologically backward religious fundamentalist who makes really good apple butter? Oh please.
Also, as a final aside, anyone else find it interesting that the recent Playboy game was designed by Brenda Brathwaite, who is in fact a real actual female woman?
I read a fascinating book recently called "Female Chauvenist Pigs." It's really a great read. The book's thesis is that there are women in this country who exploit their sexuality to gain power. While this is hardly surprising, the women who do it brand their behavior as a form of nouveau feminism.
The writer, who is a woman, writes about many of these female chauvenist pigs including some of the girls from "Girls Gone Wild" as well as the (female) producer. At various points in the book, female chauvenist pigs assert that they've accepted patriarchy as the de facto sociopolitical organization in America and feel that instead of rebelling agasint this (wrong) paradigm, they should instead exploit it. So they go to strip clubs, because that's what men do. They read Playboy, because that's what men do. They watch degrading porn. They do things that make many of the women I know recoil in horror.
This is really off-topic, but it was so interesting I had to mention it. There's a chapter on a lesbian subculture which transcends the usual labels of "butch" and "femme". Certain women call themselves "bois", some have mastectomies to look male, but they are not transgendered. Instead, their relationships to other lesbians is designed to closely resemble the insensitive and often abusive nature of some male-female relationships. The writer even noted that one of these bois failed to show up for a scheduled interview saying that she "didn't have time for a skirt like [her]."
Anyway, just because women participate in and support a patriarchal system, it does not make them feminists. And this is what I think of women who don't object, and even celebrate, media images of characters like Lara Croft.
As a man, I consider myself a feminist insofar as I believe that our society is better when we recognize women as complete equals. So I find these images offensive as well. Can someone tell me what material benefit putting unrealistically proportioned half-naked women in a game provides?
I think that our society presents women as whores and sex objects because sex is both intensely attractive and also taboo. But what concerns me is that both young boys and young girls will internalize these images -- they're everywhere, you know. Over time, these young people will often begin to believe that this is the way that women should look and behave. And in large part, the prevalence of media images like these lead many young women to mutilate themselves so that they may look like the images they've accepted as ideal.
So when you say "what's the harm", I say, "a great deal." And while video games are but a drop in the bucket, but they still matter.
Or if you own a Mac and your HD fails, they're even polite about it. The person I talked to (emailed, actually) did give the usual finger-wagging lecture about backing up your stuff, but said, something to the effect of "given the circumstances, it seems appropriate that we let you download all your music again." I think they really didn't care that much since at that time I'd bought exactly one album.
I got 35 Mbps from your calculation. 320x240x16*30 = 36864000bps, so to translate, take that number and divide by 2^20 to get Mbps and you end up with 35.15625Mbps. Still, that's probably more bandwidth than you could expect from a 802.11g device -- remember that 54 MBps is the theoretical limit. In reality, the speed is usually much lower than that.
Also, QVGA is just not going to be good enough. People are going to want real 720p or 1080i HD images on their fancy-pants TVs. And, if you're going to have a device that displays to your TV, you're also going to want a decent interface to choose content and what-not. I doubt people are going to use their laptops to control a video Airport Express like you would control AirTunes.
By the time you add up all the features you'd need to make this work, it tunrs out you'd need a device that's about as powerful as a Mac Mini -- plus some key features like real HD output and 5.1 surround sound. So there you have it; it Apple builds anything like this, it's most likely going to be something more like a Mac Mini than an Airport Express.
This doesn't preclude Apple from building something that looks like a Media Center Extender. But again, for what they'd charge for it, it would probably cost about as much as a Mac Mini. So there you have it.
Wikipedia has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. If you're looking for information about subjects other than history and politics, the 'pedia is usually not too bad. For example, it often has great articles on even some more obscure computing topics. But as soon as you read an article about a person or historical event, it's likely to be full of incorrect and inflamatory information.
Wikipedia is an interesting experiment, but are any of us surprised that people use the Wikipedia to promulgate their personal political views? As my grandmother always said (usually when someone said something unkind), "consider the source". These are just other people on the web who are rarely experts on the topics they're writing about.
I like looking nice at work. I don't know what it is, but I think dressing nicely helps keep one's mind on work.
For example, today I'm wearing tan pants -- don't buy Dockers; they're made from cheap fabric, they're uncomfortable, and they don't look as good as you think they do -- a white button-down shirt and a sweater over that. I'm in Iowa, so the sweater is both functional and stylish.
So how about some advice? I like to think that I dress well, and people around me reinforce that idea. First, buy things like pants, shirts and sweaters in solid colors. They're easy to find and are always in style. Also, invest in quality clothes. Things made from comfortable cotton fabrics hold up well and are also much more comfortable. Fit matters. Too small is uncomfortable, but so is too big. You have to try on every article of clothing you buy (except for undies and socks, of course). Even different shirts and pants from the same store will fit differently. You're never "a medium" or "a large". You are whatever size fits you for a partciular garment. And unless they just didn't have the right size at the store, never order anything online. Always try it on first in a real store.
This next bit of advice cannot be overemphasized: belts and shoes must match. Don't worry, though. You only need one pair of black shoes and a matching belt and a pair of brown shoes and matching belt. It's little details like this that make you look much more "put together." Never (ever) wear white socks to work. Just don't do it. Black or navy socks go well with black shoes, and brown and tan socks go well with brown shoes. Again, quality counts, so buy good socks that will give you some cushion. They'll also last many more washes than cheap socks.
Also, black tennis shoes do not count as black shoes. The same goes for brown hiking-style shoes. Yes, they're comfortable, but they look like hell. If your "formal" shoes aren't comfortable, then they either don't fit right or are made of crappy materials. Good work shoes are oxford-style. They may have laces or they may not. They do not have Velcro. Ever. They're not "boat shoes" or loafers or any such thing. Invest in a few good pairs of shoes; they'll last you much longer and be much more comfortable. Also, have a salesperson actually fit you at the store for every pair of shoes you buy. Every shoe is a little bit differently sized, so it's worth the extra ten minutes of so to really make sure it fits. Don't count on really uncomfortable shoes to "break in"; if they're not "pretty comfortable" at the store, then they won't ever be really comfortable.
Finally, it's well worth it to choose clothes that you can "mix and match". That's why I say start with solids. Always have a clean white shirt in your closet; even if every other article of clothing you own is dirty, you can wear white with whatever you have.
This sounds like a lot of preachy advice, but honestly, following these little tips will make you look better, feel better, and generally make your life easier and more pleasant between the time you wake up and the time you come home from work.
If there's anything we genuinely know about Steve Jobs, it's that he loves simplicity. You can see it in the design of everything that Apple produces from its hardware to the iTunes Music Store. That's why Apple sells only two configurations of each of its iPods. And the prices even mesh well: the low end full-size iPod is more expensive than the high end iPod nano. Offering every song for the same price eliminates all the guesswork. If you're standing in a store looking at a CD, you know exactly what it would cost at the iTunes Music Store. That makes your decision largely a matter of "are the liner notes and actual CD worth an extra $5-6 to me or not?"
But what's most important to notice is this: a variable pricing scheme as described in TFA could seriously hurt Apple's sales. While I have no data to support this claim, I'm sure that Apple makes most of its money from popular songs. However, remember that when an album is new and popular, the retail price is usually lower to boost first-week sales. I doubt that this same policy would apply to the iTunes Music Store. Thus, if the price is higher at the iTunes Music Store, a full album could very well end up being more expensive than the retail CD.
We live in an impatient world, and this has at least two implications: people won't wait for the price to come down and will buy the CD at retail, or people will pay more for the instant gratification of the iTunes Music Store. I think the former is more likely, because in reality you would be getting more (a real CD) for less. People love a bargain.
So if you're the kind of person who buys popular music when it first comes out, which many if not most of the iTunes Music Store's customers are, chances are good that you will never have cause to buy an album from the iTunes Music Store again. Plus, suppose that when an album is no longer "new and hot" that Apple is permitted to lower the price. By that time, people have lost interest that Apple could lower the price substantially and they still wouldn't sell many copies -- everyone who wants it already has it.
There's also a psychology at work here. $.99 seems a lot smaller than $1.00, even though for all intents and purposes there's no real difference. That's why you rarely buy anything in a store that is an even dollar amount because $39.99 looks a lot smaller than $40.00. Suppose Apple starts selling at $1.19 for a popular track. That's only $.20 more and 20% higher than $.99, but gosh, $1.19 looks huge compared to $.99. That $1 mark makes a big difference in terms of the perceived cost of a song.
In the long run, I don't see how this can be anything but bad for Apple. And, the more the record labels try to screw people over with high prices, the more people are perfectly content to screw over the record label by downloading illegally. So it may even end up being worse for them. What it boils down to is this: one way or another, people will download music. Whether it happens legally or not is entirely in the hands of the record companies.
Something that troubles me about the Xbox 360 CPU is that it doesn't provide out of order execution. While the value of OOE varies depending on a number of factors including the type of program running and the quality of the compiler used, it seems that it would be better to scale back the number of cores and include OOE. Presently, most games don't execute more than one or two threads. As the article says, any additional threads generally do "housekeeping" type tasks, like caching additional game data. The system certainly doesn't need the ability to run four more high performance threads to do that; a couple of extra threads and a good scheduling algorithm would be more than enough, I'd think. Plus, I don't know much about the internals of the particular PowerPC processor they're using, but if the pipeline is very long at all, I think you're going to see reduced performance due to pipeline bubbles.
Another thing that I thought was really strange is that the north bridge is integrated into the GPU. That just seems like such a weird place to put it. My best guess for this is that since the GPU/north bridge will have direct access to the system's main memory it will be able to use that memory in lieu of a larger memory dedicated to the GPU. I think they would have been much better off, at least in terms of performance but probably not price, if they'd integrated an on-die memory controller in the CPU (like the IBM/Apple PowerPC G5 does) and given the GPU a nice healthy dedicated memory.
Now, of course, you have to take all of this with a grain of salt; I've never designed a game console before, and I have no idea what kind of costs these things would incur -- probably not inconsequential. But I do think that Microsoft made some very bizarre design choices for the Xbox 360 that may negatively impact performance down the road. From what I've read, both the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution seem to have somewhat more sensible designs. But Microsoft does deserve props for ridding themselves of the x86 architecture.
When I was an undergrad -- only a couple of years ago -- we had a faculty member who was very interested in patterns, and taught a course on them under the guise of an agile class (a good way to do it, I think).
Anyway, we split up into teams and did a project (a wiki server, in our case) and we did everything in an XP-ish way: user stories, refactoring, pair programming, the whole bit. I think you could do an OSS class in much the same way; have the class decide on a couple of projects based on interest, then teach the class in a more "studio" style. That is, use about half the lecture time to teach them how various OSS projects have operated in the past, then have them do the same thing with their own projects. And, as issues arise, as they always do, spend a few minutes here and there addressing them.
Students could also choose a project they like, but is perhaps still in its infancy stage, and have them make a plan to modify and extend it. If you really want to go for realism, you should see if you can find a faculty member teaching a similar class at another university and have them get a sense of the "distributed" flavor of OSS, with some part of each team being at the others' campus. (Granted, much OSS development happens at corporations these days, but most of the really cool projects start out with a small group of folks developing something in their spare time, usually for fun and/or their own use).
I think a big part of evaluating their work would not be to determine how much code they wrote (although everyone should have to write code, if for no other reason than the experience), but rather to determine their contribution to the team. For example, if a student refactors a few Java classes or something so that other development goes a lot faster, then she should get plenty of credit for that.
The moral of this story, then, is that since people learn well by doing, they should spend most of their time doing.
You can, however, install a copy of OS X on your iPod. I did, and it's great when you have problems with your hard drive. Case in point, my PowerBook kept crashing, so I booted it from the iPod, ran a number of drive diagnostics, and discovered that, yes, it was in fact the hard drive that was having problems. The guy I talked to at Apple support had never heard of such a thing, but was impressed nevertheless.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason Apple sells a 60GB iPod.
Oh, and same with movies (MPAA), lower the stupid movie ticket prices by 2-3 dollars and i BET your sorry fat executive asses that your ticket sales will increase at least 40%
That might make sense to you and me, but this is how the MPAA folks would see it: lowering the price $2-3 represents about a 40% cut -- OK, less than a 40% cut, but close enough -- so even if sales increased by 40%, we'd still be where we are now. We want to make more money. So we want ticket prices to stay exactly where they are, and we want to stop all distribution of our movies online.
Oh, and, don't you know that the reason ticket prices are so high right now is because people are distributing movies using p2p apps? If you naughty naughty children would just stop stealing our movies, we could lower ticket prices. (Like that would ever happen)
But then again, I haven't been to a movie in probably six months. nor have I bothered to download a movie in the same length of time. The reason is simple: there's hardly a movie out there that is worth either the effort to download or money to pay to see. I might occasionally pay $4 to rent a movie from Blockbuster, but only then because I can keep it for awhile and watch it when I want. (Or you can rent a $1 movie from Family Video, which I think is the funniest business name for no other reason than the fact that they rent hard core pr0n) Plus, my floors aren't sticky, and the grocery store doesn't charge me $6 for a bag of microwave popcorn. And better yet, I don't have to listen to some idiot blab on his cell phone or hear some dumb guy explain the plot (assuming there is a plot) to his equally dumb girlfriend (or vice-versa). Hey MPAA, if you want to know why you haven't been making any money off of me lately, you should take a look at your products.
Now if I could download a movie through TiVo a la Pay Per View (are you listening TiVo?) for a reasonable price ($3 seems fair) then I'd be a much happier camper. I'd even be willing to wait until after the theatrical release -- but before the DVD comes out -- to download movies. Here's how I think it should work: you go to the TiVo Video Store on your computer (which would look suspiciously like the iTunes Music Store) and pick out a movie, pay for it, and then your TiVo starts downloading it automatically. Give it a couple of minutes to start downloading (make some popcorn, turn off the lights, and cuddle up with your honey on the couch) and you should be able to start watching. We can pause for bathroom breaks, rewind if we missed a line, and maybe even watch it again later -- you know, because we fell asleep or something.
According to the memo, it's unfair to lock the state's employees into a proprietary format. That's why they think it's bad to use Office... I mean OpenOffice.
Are you confused? So am I. The tacit assumption in TFA is that it's bad to switch away from Microsoft because they'd be locking themselves into a proprietary format... which is nothing at all like Microsoft.doc,.xls,.ppt, or any other Microsoft format. They're wiiiiiiide open, aren't they?
Are they joking? OpenOffice uses a (surprise surprise) open format. Microsoft is free to develop their own converters if they like. The format is freely available for their use. That also means that any other vendor that wants to support OpenOffice file formats can do so with equal ease. An open file format is really the antithesis of a proprietary format.
And let's not forget the very attractive price of OpenOffice.org itself: $0. Now, before you remind me that it costs money to install and maintain, I'll tell you that I already know that. But it's no harder to install or maintain than Office, works on a variety of platforms, and for 99% of the people who will use it, it does exactly what they need it to do. Why spend that much taxpayer money on Office if a free product can do the same thing?
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It is my understanding that the reason the FireWire 800 port is absent on the new MacBook Pro is that the Intel chipset they're using doesn't support it. To have FireWire 800 support, Apple would have to provide a custom chipset capable of supporting it. Since Apple doesn't exactly have fab capabilities, it's not on the MacBook. Also, it's been suggested by others -- and quite rightly, I think -- that most customers weren't using the FireWire 800 port on the PowerBook. For the benefit it would provide, building FireWire 800 into the MacBook seems prohibitively expensive. Now the Power Mac may be an entirely different story.
Martha Stewart was never charged with securities fraud or insider trading -- well, actually she was, but the charges were dropped quickly when the investigation didn't turn anything up. What sent Martha to prison for five months followed by five months of home confinement was lying to federal investigators. So I guess the lesson here is that the way to cover your ass is to not attempt to cover your ass; even if they don't find anything they can still get you if you lie to them. Remember that IBM: don't tell the SEC there was a stop-loss order in effect unless there really was a stop-loss order in effect.
As an undergrad, I took two geometry courses -- I was lucky enough to go to a university that offered two geometry courses to undergrads -- and I did really well in both of them. As time went on I really started to regard mathematics as far more powerful and beautiful.
All romantic notions about mathematics aside, I can offer you a few good pieces of advice about learning about mathematics as an adult. There are a number of "for Dummies" books out there dealing with algebra, trigonometry, analysis (my personal favorite) and calculus. Spend a day at Barnes and Noble or someplace, or maybe even your library if your town has a good one and browse through these books. Look for books that give a lot of examples but are also rigorous. Even though the word "proof" makes most of the people I know recoil in horror, mathematical logic is the foundation for all of mathematics. Look for books that give you a good set of exercises (complete with solutions and perhaps even explanations of the solutions). You don't need tons of exercises, but you do need some that are really hard to really get you to think about mathematics in the right way.
The problem with "visual" guides is that the author's visual representation of an object isn't necessarily meaningful to all readers. Since you say that you like to learn things visually, you should try to build up your own representations of concepts. Mathematics beyond arithmetic becomes increasingly less involved with numbers and increasingly more a system about manipulating symbols. Many types of symbols don't lend themselves well to visual depiction, although you might be able to find a way that works for you. I actually think that calculus textbooks would do well to include more visual representations of certain fundamental concepts. I didn't really understand how limits worked until I drew some pictures for myself. Now if I were to look back on those pictures I'd probably laugh at them as a gross oversimplification of the way things work, but they can be a helpful learning tool in the beginning.
Another ingredient you will definitely need is patience. Learning about mathematics doesn't happen overnight. If you have the resources, you might check with your local college or university to see if you can hire a math tutor to help guide you through your studies. Then again, if you have the resources it might be best to take a course or two in the foundational stuff. I don't think I would want to try to learn calculus without an instructor of some kind to help me out. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a friend who, like me, could talk about mathematics (or computer science especially in my case) for hours and hours and would be excited to know that you want to improve your understanding of mathematics.
As your skills improve, you'll find that there are fewer and fewer "how-to" books for mathematics available and more textbooks. That's OK; by that point you should have an intuitive understanding of what you'll need to know to really understand a particular topic. You'll be better able to choose exercises from textbooks that will help you understand the concepts. You should work with the ideas in those books until you have an intuitive "feel" for them. It's hard to expl
Do your sources also say booting from FireWire is supported? While I love target disk mode, being able to boot from my old 3G iPod is also pretty handy; you never know when you'll screw up your OS X installation :-)
Also, see the other posts about technical reasons why Windows XP won't run on the Intel-based Macs; Reader's Digest version: Windows XP needs BIOS and Macs have EFI instead. We know Vista will support EFI, but there's been speculation whether the EFI support will be 64-bit only.
I think the only reason people were able to get the developer kit versions of Tiger to run on other PC hardware is because Apple didn't want to play their Trusted Platform card too soon. Either they wanted to keep it secret for as long as possible or they hadn't solidified the hardware/software combo required to do that yet. However, I do see Apple making an effort at some point to make Windows interoperability a reality. They will likely strike some kind of licensing deal with Microsoft where one can purchase a copy of Windows along with the necessary Apple virtualization software so that one can run Windows apps right alongside their OS X apps.
It probably won't even be a full copy of Windows; it will likely be the "guts" of the OS so that people can run Windows apps on their Macs. I expect it will look quite a bit like the Classic environment for running OS9 inside OS X. In any event, I'd pay for that. It's not that I'm in love with Windows, but I'll finally be able to own just one computer instead of both a Mac and a PC for the few apps that require Windows. Plus, Microsoft already owns Virtual PC for the Mac -- they bought out Connectix a couple of years ago -- so they already have a great start for building drivers that operate within a virtual Windows environment and a real Mac OS X environment. Plus, Microsoft won't be losing any money by doing this; they'll still get to sell the licenses to Apple. I think that Microsoft, now in its "middle age", has suffered enough defeats in the past few years that they're learning they have to become a bit more flexible with respect to other companies if they want to survive in a truly meaningful way.
Microsoft will not be dropping support for the Mac any time soon. At the keynote on Tuesday, Steve brought out Roz Ho from Microsoft's Mac BU -- who they apparently finally convinced to start dressing more casually for these Apple keynotes -- and she said that Apple and Microsoft have come to a formal agreement that Microsoft will continue to deliver new versions of Office for the Mac for at least the next five years. It's been a very successful product for Microsoft, so they have no apparent reason to drop it.
A friend of mine who does use FCP has a neat modified Apple Pro keyboard called the Logic Keyboard that replaces a number of the standard keycaps with color-coded keys labelled with icons from the program. Also, I could see gamers really latching onto this. The more complex games get, the more likely it is that you'll need a richer set of commands which are most easily accessed from the keyboard. Even the picture from the website shows the keyboard relabelled for Doom. If you play a lot of games this would be a godsend.
When I called my cable company about getting digital cable -- something I resisted until I got a new TV with CableCARD, they told me that they didn't support CableCARD. Then I said that the FCC mandates that they do. Utterly nonplussed, the cable lady told me that I couldn't get VOD or PPV without a box. I said, "I know; that's part of the attraction." Then she told me it would be three weeks before they could install it. I'm not sure what kind of "installation" is needed beyond installing the card and activating it, but she insisted that a real human being had to come to my house between the hours of 9 and 2. But anyway, I've never had to wait longer than a week for an appointment. I said, "do you want my money or not?" And suddenly, magically, an appointment just happened to open up within the next week. So I guess the moral of the story is don't expect the cable company to be polite when you ask for a CableCARD instead of their crappy set-top boxes. And I guess don't expect them to be honest, either.
By the way, don't connect a cable box to a TiVo. You have to set up an IR blaster to change the channel, and someone can easily come along and screw it all up by changing the channel on the TV, totally unaware that the TiVo is recording from the cable box.
I've stayed in some shitty hotels in my time and for $89, this was almost to good to be true. Everything at the Westin is "Heavenly" according to them, and for someone who's been stuck in an airport terminal all day, a "heavenly" shower, followed by a decent meal at the restaurant downstairs (featuring *real* silverware, even), a drink, some smokey treats and about six hours in the "heavenly" bed is worth any price they care to name. A couple of friends who just moved to Detroit even met me at the bar for a drink. After spending ten days with my parents, it was a welcome relief.
The moral is, you can get a good deal at an airport hotel; you just need to wait until after check-in time and look around online. They're willing to take almost any price if they're afraid no one will be using the room for the night. And if you can make the reservation cheap for them by booking it online, they'll give you an even better deal. Or maybe I just got extremely lucky.
But you're right; my first thought when I read the headline was "conspiracy". Like any system that's so secretive, it can be as corrupt as it likes and no one knows about it. That's by definition. And that also just makes me want to see this film that much more. Now if only I knew someone who gets IFC; I'm not about to pay an extra $15 a month for digital cable no matter how good the documentary is.
It's the fascist organization that decided to develop a voluntary system of television ratings before the government established its own censor office to do that for them. While it's certainly not a good thing, it would have been a lot worse if the government took it over.
Women certainly have the right to choose to go into pornography. However, they shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that this is in some way "empowering." Women who do this become sex objects; they subjugate themselves to the fantasies of other people -- men, in particular. My friend Rachel, who is gay, says that she can't look at "lesbian" porn because she finds it so humiliating and degrading -- to lesbians. The women in these films aren't gay, but they're pretending to be because girls having sex with each other is all the rage with men. These are women who have sex, not because they enjoy it, but because that's what they're supposed to do.
I'm sure you've seen the Paris Hilton sex tape, right? Notice how when she's actually engaged in intercourse she couldn't be less interested. Hell, she answered the phone right in the middle of it! But she sure did love showing off. It's not about being sexual, it's about being sexy. That's the difference.
Yes, there are women in the real world who are proportioned similarly to the women in those games, but rarely naturally. Often, these are women who have cosmetic surgery thinking that this will give them some kind of power -- to attract power, wealth, success, whatever. But it never does. When I was in high school, I had a friend who had very large breasts. Oh, she was popular with the boys, but not because she was on the honor roll or because she was one hell of a singer. She had horrible back pain and, because she was also pretty short, had to have bras custom-made for her. She had a breast reduction before our senior year which, I think, made her look much better. But if it hadn't been for the fact that her mother died of breast cancer three years earlier, I don't think she would have done it. But it made her feel better, alleviated her chronic back pain, and for the first time in years she was able to really play sports again, which she had missed. And she also had a boyfriend -- a real boyfriend and not someone who just wanted to sleep with her -- for the first time. He was my best friend, actually.
But guess what? The boys no longer flocked to her like they once did. And she told me that, although it's disappointing to find out just how lousy some people are, it was a good thing to learn who her real friends were. So I don't think that I did underestimate kids. Most of the boys in the school only wanted to be around her because of her cup size.
I've also known women with eating disorders. While there are men who suffer from them too, the ratio is something like three men to every one hundred women. Are you really telling me that there is no relationship between the constant media images of skinny women with big boobs and problems like these? And yes, video games are a form of media. So Lara Croft is as guilty of this as Pamela Anderson.
And Amish? Oh give me a break. So because I think that women shouldn't be expected to conform to outrageous body types I'm a technologically backward religious fundamentalist who makes really good apple butter? Oh please.
I read a fascinating book recently called "Female Chauvenist Pigs." It's really a great read. The book's thesis is that there are women in this country who exploit their sexuality to gain power. While this is hardly surprising, the women who do it brand their behavior as a form of nouveau feminism.
The writer, who is a woman, writes about many of these female chauvenist pigs including some of the girls from "Girls Gone Wild" as well as the (female) producer. At various points in the book, female chauvenist pigs assert that they've accepted patriarchy as the de facto sociopolitical organization in America and feel that instead of rebelling agasint this (wrong) paradigm, they should instead exploit it. So they go to strip clubs, because that's what men do. They read Playboy, because that's what men do. They watch degrading porn. They do things that make many of the women I know recoil in horror.
This is really off-topic, but it was so interesting I had to mention it. There's a chapter on a lesbian subculture which transcends the usual labels of "butch" and "femme". Certain women call themselves "bois", some have mastectomies to look male, but they are not transgendered. Instead, their relationships to other lesbians is designed to closely resemble the insensitive and often abusive nature of some male-female relationships. The writer even noted that one of these bois failed to show up for a scheduled interview saying that she "didn't have time for a skirt like [her]."
Anyway, just because women participate in and support a patriarchal system, it does not make them feminists. And this is what I think of women who don't object, and even celebrate, media images of characters like Lara Croft.
As a man, I consider myself a feminist insofar as I believe that our society is better when we recognize women as complete equals. So I find these images offensive as well. Can someone tell me what material benefit putting unrealistically proportioned half-naked women in a game provides?
I think that our society presents women as whores and sex objects because sex is both intensely attractive and also taboo. But what concerns me is that both young boys and young girls will internalize these images -- they're everywhere, you know. Over time, these young people will often begin to believe that this is the way that women should look and behave. And in large part, the prevalence of media images like these lead many young women to mutilate themselves so that they may look like the images they've accepted as ideal.
So when you say "what's the harm", I say, "a great deal." And while video games are but a drop in the bucket, but they still matter.
Or if you own a Mac and your HD fails, they're even polite about it. The person I talked to (emailed, actually) did give the usual finger-wagging lecture about backing up your stuff, but said, something to the effect of "given the circumstances, it seems appropriate that we let you download all your music again." I think they really didn't care that much since at that time I'd bought exactly one album.
Also, QVGA is just not going to be good enough. People are going to want real 720p or 1080i HD images on their fancy-pants TVs. And, if you're going to have a device that displays to your TV, you're also going to want a decent interface to choose content and what-not. I doubt people are going to use their laptops to control a video Airport Express like you would control AirTunes.
By the time you add up all the features you'd need to make this work, it tunrs out you'd need a device that's about as powerful as a Mac Mini -- plus some key features like real HD output and 5.1 surround sound. So there you have it; it Apple builds anything like this, it's most likely going to be something more like a Mac Mini than an Airport Express.
This doesn't preclude Apple from building something that looks like a Media Center Extender. But again, for what they'd charge for it, it would probably cost about as much as a Mac Mini. So there you have it.
Wikipedia is an interesting experiment, but are any of us surprised that people use the Wikipedia to promulgate their personal political views? As my grandmother always said (usually when someone said something unkind), "consider the source". These are just other people on the web who are rarely experts on the topics they're writing about.
For example, today I'm wearing tan pants -- don't buy Dockers; they're made from cheap fabric, they're uncomfortable, and they don't look as good as you think they do -- a white button-down shirt and a sweater over that. I'm in Iowa, so the sweater is both functional and stylish.
So how about some advice? I like to think that I dress well, and people around me reinforce that idea. First, buy things like pants, shirts and sweaters in solid colors. They're easy to find and are always in style. Also, invest in quality clothes. Things made from comfortable cotton fabrics hold up well and are also much more comfortable. Fit matters. Too small is uncomfortable, but so is too big. You have to try on every article of clothing you buy (except for undies and socks, of course). Even different shirts and pants from the same store will fit differently. You're never "a medium" or "a large". You are whatever size fits you for a partciular garment. And unless they just didn't have the right size at the store, never order anything online. Always try it on first in a real store.
This next bit of advice cannot be overemphasized: belts and shoes must match. Don't worry, though. You only need one pair of black shoes and a matching belt and a pair of brown shoes and matching belt. It's little details like this that make you look much more "put together." Never (ever) wear white socks to work. Just don't do it. Black or navy socks go well with black shoes, and brown and tan socks go well with brown shoes. Again, quality counts, so buy good socks that will give you some cushion. They'll also last many more washes than cheap socks.
Also, black tennis shoes do not count as black shoes. The same goes for brown hiking-style shoes. Yes, they're comfortable, but they look like hell. If your "formal" shoes aren't comfortable, then they either don't fit right or are made of crappy materials. Good work shoes are oxford-style. They may have laces or they may not. They do not have Velcro. Ever. They're not "boat shoes" or loafers or any such thing. Invest in a few good pairs of shoes; they'll last you much longer and be much more comfortable. Also, have a salesperson actually fit you at the store for every pair of shoes you buy. Every shoe is a little bit differently sized, so it's worth the extra ten minutes of so to really make sure it fits. Don't count on really uncomfortable shoes to "break in"; if they're not "pretty comfortable" at the store, then they won't ever be really comfortable.
Finally, it's well worth it to choose clothes that you can "mix and match". That's why I say start with solids. Always have a clean white shirt in your closet; even if every other article of clothing you own is dirty, you can wear white with whatever you have.
This sounds like a lot of preachy advice, but honestly, following these little tips will make you look better, feel better, and generally make your life easier and more pleasant between the time you wake up and the time you come home from work.
But what's most important to notice is this: a variable pricing scheme as described in TFA could seriously hurt Apple's sales. While I have no data to support this claim, I'm sure that Apple makes most of its money from popular songs. However, remember that when an album is new and popular, the retail price is usually lower to boost first-week sales. I doubt that this same policy would apply to the iTunes Music Store. Thus, if the price is higher at the iTunes Music Store, a full album could very well end up being more expensive than the retail CD.
We live in an impatient world, and this has at least two implications: people won't wait for the price to come down and will buy the CD at retail, or people will pay more for the instant gratification of the iTunes Music Store. I think the former is more likely, because in reality you would be getting more (a real CD) for less. People love a bargain.
So if you're the kind of person who buys popular music when it first comes out, which many if not most of the iTunes Music Store's customers are, chances are good that you will never have cause to buy an album from the iTunes Music Store again. Plus, suppose that when an album is no longer "new and hot" that Apple is permitted to lower the price. By that time, people have lost interest that Apple could lower the price substantially and they still wouldn't sell many copies -- everyone who wants it already has it.
There's also a psychology at work here. $.99 seems a lot smaller than $1.00, even though for all intents and purposes there's no real difference. That's why you rarely buy anything in a store that is an even dollar amount because $39.99 looks a lot smaller than $40.00. Suppose Apple starts selling at $1.19 for a popular track. That's only $.20 more and 20% higher than $.99, but gosh, $1.19 looks huge compared to $.99. That $1 mark makes a big difference in terms of the perceived cost of a song.
In the long run, I don't see how this can be anything but bad for Apple. And, the more the record labels try to screw people over with high prices, the more people are perfectly content to screw over the record label by downloading illegally. So it may even end up being worse for them. What it boils down to is this: one way or another, people will download music. Whether it happens legally or not is entirely in the hands of the record companies.
Another thing that I thought was really strange is that the north bridge is integrated into the GPU. That just seems like such a weird place to put it. My best guess for this is that since the GPU/north bridge will have direct access to the system's main memory it will be able to use that memory in lieu of a larger memory dedicated to the GPU. I think they would have been much better off, at least in terms of performance but probably not price, if they'd integrated an on-die memory controller in the CPU (like the IBM/Apple PowerPC G5 does) and given the GPU a nice healthy dedicated memory.
Now, of course, you have to take all of this with a grain of salt; I've never designed a game console before, and I have no idea what kind of costs these things would incur -- probably not inconsequential. But I do think that Microsoft made some very bizarre design choices for the Xbox 360 that may negatively impact performance down the road. From what I've read, both the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution seem to have somewhat more sensible designs. But Microsoft does deserve props for ridding themselves of the x86 architecture.
No, I'm a 19-35 year old male and I'd much rather see more of Jack than Lexx or Seven of Nine, thankyouverymuch.
When I was an undergrad -- only a couple of years ago -- we had a faculty member who was very interested in patterns, and taught a course on them under the guise of an agile class (a good way to do it, I think).
Anyway, we split up into teams and did a project (a wiki server, in our case) and we did everything in an XP-ish way: user stories, refactoring, pair programming, the whole bit. I think you could do an OSS class in much the same way; have the class decide on a couple of projects based on interest, then teach the class in a more "studio" style. That is, use about half the lecture time to teach them how various OSS projects have operated in the past, then have them do the same thing with their own projects. And, as issues arise, as they always do, spend a few minutes here and there addressing them.
Students could also choose a project they like, but is perhaps still in its infancy stage, and have them make a plan to modify and extend it. If you really want to go for realism, you should see if you can find a faculty member teaching a similar class at another university and have them get a sense of the "distributed" flavor of OSS, with some part of each team being at the others' campus. (Granted, much OSS development happens at corporations these days, but most of the really cool projects start out with a small group of folks developing something in their spare time, usually for fun and/or their own use).
I think a big part of evaluating their work would not be to determine how much code they wrote (although everyone should have to write code, if for no other reason than the experience), but rather to determine their contribution to the team. For example, if a student refactors a few Java classes or something so that other development goes a lot faster, then she should get plenty of credit for that.
The moral of this story, then, is that since people learn well by doing, they should spend most of their time doing.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason Apple sells a 60GB iPod.
That might make sense to you and me, but this is how the MPAA folks would see it: lowering the price $2-3 represents about a 40% cut -- OK, less than a 40% cut, but close enough -- so even if sales increased by 40%, we'd still be where we are now. We want to make more money. So we want ticket prices to stay exactly where they are, and we want to stop all distribution of our movies online.
Oh, and, don't you know that the reason ticket prices are so high right now is because people are distributing movies using p2p apps? If you naughty naughty children would just stop stealing our movies, we could lower ticket prices. (Like that would ever happen)
But then again, I haven't been to a movie in probably six months. nor have I bothered to download a movie in the same length of time. The reason is simple: there's hardly a movie out there that is worth either the effort to download or money to pay to see. I might occasionally pay $4 to rent a movie from Blockbuster, but only then because I can keep it for awhile and watch it when I want. (Or you can rent a $1 movie from Family Video, which I think is the funniest business name for no other reason than the fact that they rent hard core pr0n) Plus, my floors aren't sticky, and the grocery store doesn't charge me $6 for a bag of microwave popcorn. And better yet, I don't have to listen to some idiot blab on his cell phone or hear some dumb guy explain the plot (assuming there is a plot) to his equally dumb girlfriend (or vice-versa). Hey MPAA, if you want to know why you haven't been making any money off of me lately, you should take a look at your products.
Now if I could download a movie through TiVo a la Pay Per View (are you listening TiVo?) for a reasonable price ($3 seems fair) then I'd be a much happier camper. I'd even be willing to wait until after the theatrical release -- but before the DVD comes out -- to download movies. Here's how I think it should work: you go to the TiVo Video Store on your computer (which would look suspiciously like the iTunes Music Store) and pick out a movie, pay for it, and then your TiVo starts downloading it automatically. Give it a couple of minutes to start downloading (make some popcorn, turn off the lights, and cuddle up with your honey on the couch) and you should be able to start watching. We can pause for bathroom breaks, rewind if we missed a line, and maybe even watch it again later -- you know, because we fell asleep or something.
Are you confused? So am I. The tacit assumption in TFA is that it's bad to switch away from Microsoft because they'd be locking themselves into a proprietary format... which is nothing at all like Microsoft .doc, .xls, .ppt, or any other Microsoft format. They're wiiiiiiide open, aren't they?
Are they joking? OpenOffice uses a (surprise surprise) open format. Microsoft is free to develop their own converters if they like. The format is freely available for their use. That also means that any other vendor that wants to support OpenOffice file formats can do so with equal ease. An open file format is really the antithesis of a proprietary format.
And let's not forget the very attractive price of OpenOffice.org itself: $0. Now, before you remind me that it costs money to install and maintain, I'll tell you that I already know that. But it's no harder to install or maintain than Office, works on a variety of platforms, and for 99% of the people who will use it, it does exactly what they need it to do. Why spend that much taxpayer money on Office if a free product can do the same thing?