I'm sure your spoiled children will LOVE to lie to you when they're 16. Have fun earning their respect when they do learn reason.
i can't believe so many people are under the assumption that children are born with all the thinking characteristics of a 25 year old. It boggles my mind! Think back...when you were 6 and in the toy store and you wanted that toy and mom said it was too expensive and you threw a fit and...what? You never heard that things were too expensive? You usually got what you wanted? Oh! Your mom must have been like those parents who cause me to loath the mall, letting their child scream piss and moan about a toy until they end up giving in and getting it for fear that letting their child know there are repercussions foracting up they may hold a disrespect for them later in life.
i went up the shake the hand of a stranger in the mall one day: his 3-4yo threw a fit and without batting an eye he spun the kid around and gave him three swift whacks, the kid whimpered a bit, bit his lip, and straightened up. Some woman who was in the vicinity came up and said that she didn't appreciate him abusing his child in public like that and made some comments about how child abuse shoudl be reported etc. just FYI this was the woman who left her kid in teh stroller alone to walk over and tell this guy that...15-20 ft away... anyway, so she does her 20 second spiel about this and that, and the guy just let her finish, then in a calm but firm voice that steadily got louder but not quite to a yell, he said "ma'am, these are my children, it's my job to raise them to the best of my ability, i'd suggest you go mind your own child and your own god damned business!" The woman stormed off, and like i said, i just had to come up and shake the guy's hand. it was one of those moments that camera woudl have been awesome:)
hmm...you were either a pain in the ass who never had a hand laid on you, or you were beaten severely. My dad was 6'5", 220lbs when i was growing up. I rarely ever needed more than a look, and the only times i ever remember having a hand laid on me i deserved it and it wasn't like he knocked me out. He would do one quick whack with whatever he had handy, belt, switch, hand, one time he poppped me real hard with a wet shop rag, THAT hurt. My mom was the same way. it's not abuse when A) you get caught in the act B) you've been adequately warned and you KNEW what was coming C) you neglected those warnings D) it's not overly harsh. Once i hit 8 or 9 and it wasn't plausible for mom to spank i got slapped. One or two busted lips and i learned my limits. This didn't make me hate my parents. Usually it pissed me off, but looking back on it, i was wrong and deserved it.
If you'd given me a time out in any of those situations, i wouldn't have cared. i would have used the time to plot new and evil things to do. Think about what i'd done? yeah right. Think about what i'm going to do next. I have two nephews, 4 and 6. the 6 year old is getting old enough now that he minds. but the 4 year old is a free spirt. when he looks at you, you can tell he's scheming to do something, and he usually is. The little fart loves me and respects me, i do things for them, i helped them both put together some of their toys that even my bro adn sis in law couldn't figure out, and at thanksgiving i gave them each a big bag of some of my old Legos. But both of them also know that i give one warning, not the several that mom and dad give. the 6yo is getting to the age where i can pick him up one handed in teh summer when i'm in shape, but right now he's kinda heavy. the little one i still can. That was almost my most hated way to get whipped when i was little and really let me know i had screwed up. Dad would grab me by one arm, pick me up, hold me at arms reach and come right down across my ass with the free hand. you can't get away, you can't jump and lessen the impact, you get all of it. The first time i did it to the little one i set him back down, told him NO one more time (i'd been saying it the whole time i was walking to him and he just kept doing whatever it was) and he looked at me with this utter look of disbelief and pain, but he never cried. later his mom came and got him and i told her what a little jerk he'd been, the next day he came back and he said he was sorry. it was one of the cutest things i've seen.
if you want to talk about the people who can't discern from what punishing their kids is from punishing the kids for their mistakes, you're more than welcome. But a lot more contributes to a childs feeligns of malice than a swift hand or belt when the little bastard is overstepping his boundaries.
Being a "seasoned" college junior, enough experience to know all the back ways around campus, but smart enough to know i still don't know jack sh!t, I'm going to venture my opinion here:
If you're hired because of your talent/experience with a language, but you ain't got a degree to show that you did more than high school English, you're most likely going to be hired for a programming job and not much more. Maybe a project leader eventually.
I will agree that there are people who never did more than algebra who are some of the best leaders/thinkers out there, and there are others who have the degrees but aren't worth the oxygen they use hourly.
But there is no denying that most of the people who make it farther than the duties of a programmer/techie/etc are the ones with the social, management, and problem solving skills developed in those 8-10 semesters of schooling (in my case probably closer to 11 or 12 semesters...)
the monopolistic practices counter-claims everybody was filing against them? I remember Sharman had one pending, amoung others. Were all these dropped? Pending? What?
I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made.
Gee, that says alot about their confidence in the security of their computer systems! If he's scared to type a letter of resignation for fear of it being broke to the media before they're ready! What the HELL!
but as far as the rest, thank the maker that crazy asshole is gone! lets just hope bush uses his common sense this time to replace him, rather than his f'ing religion. If only Cheney would resign/step down/die we'd all be in good shape. Bush ain't the worst about it, it's his asshole cabinet that 'causes much of the problem.
Stop right there. We're talking about taxes, not income. If you're talking about redistributing income then, again, you're pushing your way into socialism. That's an economic system that has basically been rejected by the world.
if you're grossing $80k a year, and you're giving up 25k of that to taxes (roughly 1/3), you're still netting $55k, a comfortable income. If you're making $20k, giving up that same 1/3, you're netting about $13.5k, and paying ~6500. Figure federal taxes is roughly 1/2 of that, based on my pay stubs. so yearly federal taxes of 13k and 3250 respectfully. Who needs the money more? Who is going to put that income to better use? The person who is going to use their extra money to put food on the table? To save some for their child's education so they're not in the same income bracket their parents were? Or that guy who's already got a house in teh suburbs, 1.3 kids, a nice college fund started? What about benefits? You think somebody making 20k a year is gonna have full benefits? I highly doubt it.
The progressive INCOME Tax system is based on your INCOME, so therefore i feel that looking at a persons INCOME is very relevant to the method of taxation. Unless you want to look at it from a Republican's perspective.
Those in poverty already don't pay federal taxes. So your rhetorical question makes no sense to start with.
Federal Poverty is less than $17k a year. Could YOU live on 17 a year? Would you like to? Its this belief "well there is a law for it, the government must be right!" mentality that is going to put this country into the ground.
No-one says that because it isn't true. Those in poverty pay no federal taxes. You can't reduce the taxes on someone that already doesn't pay any
See above. Just because they're not below the federal poverty level doesn't mean they're not in poverty based on the economy and social standards. It woudl be nice if everybody got the bare necessities needed to survive daily, but alas, that would be socialism, and having the rich give back to the poor is something that happens only in fairy tales. Our government and society takes away any incentive people may have to escape their demographic and succeed in life, then bitch when those people later need help just to feed their own mouths let alone their families (if there is a family and the dad didn't split to allow his family eligbility for welfare)
When less than 20% of the nation holds 80% of the income, and the 'elected' representatives, and i use that term loosely, roll back the progressive taxes on them before dropping the taxes on those in poverty to nothing, what does that say about their love and compassion for the lower class?
Everybody hides behind "well if they cut the taxes for the lower class on the federal level there wouldn't be anythign left!" then what is the big god-damned deal about cutting those taxes out if it's such a miniscule amount? The government is there to SERVE those people too, not to burden them so the rich and famous can feel good about their tax break. Yes, the states have to cut their taxes in order for a taxcut to really be felt on that level, but for the love of christ, STOP hiding behind that lame ass arguement. We can't have a tax system that works for everyone, at least as long as the current ruling class is in power, and that goes for both parties. But cutting out the one thing that at least makes things APPEAR to make sense based strictly on the economic issues, that's just insane. We piss so much money away, but we can't help out the people who have to live day to day.
Well put. Whoever made the comment about most of the value being in teh free software hit the nail on the head. iTunes is worlds better than any other management software i've found, even the WinAmp plugins that claim to update your iPod. Plus with ephpod, and OutPod i'm now getting most of the mac-functionality (probably to the bane of Apple) from my iPod. I have a Palm Zire i use to keep all my contacts, dates, etc, and it's nice to scribble a note on it, but my iPod goes with me in places that my Palm never will, so i like the thought that i have my entire collection of phone numbers and email addresses just about everywhere i go, plus a summary of mine and my girlfriends class schedules, along with the more significant dates tucked away in my pocket. Before i bought mine i looked at every viable option, both promised and existing (including all the iPod killers and mini-pod killers), but found none that compared. I have my complaints about iPod, such as lack of native calendar and datebook support for windows machines, which i've already taking a raping on here complaining about before, so save yourself. my 4G also locks up randomly, still an unexplained phenomea, and i expected more frequent software updates than what apple has been providing, but oh well.
Point: there are few MP3 players that can beat the 'pods in convienence and functionality. Personally it was no contest.
Depends on how you use it. Personally i like the taskbar's...idea, and it's potential, i just don't think M$ has realized it yet. Dock has it's place too, but tends to annoy me as much or more than Taskbar's faults.
Also, saved searches = smart playlists? I know they weren't the first, but why is this the first 'mainstream' app, or at least the first one with so much pull, to implement so many features? It's like the China article earlier, there are so many things that are like: "DUH! Why didn't we do this the first time!" Some were limited by the technology avilable (whcih is where China has us beat, they didn't START to modernize until the tech was available, whereas we have to adapt new ways to old ideas/tech...not always good. See: Republicans...) some were just forgotten. Personally i think M$ has a lot right, but a lot more wrong. Same with Apple. I swear, a hybrid machine would work wonders.
Or at least the ability to buy mac 'approved' hardware and then buy the OS. In order to be mac approved the manufacturer has to share a profit margin with Apple, and personally speaking, i'd be willing to pay a lot more for OSX than i would WinXP. Paying $200 for OSX, when it includes damned near every app i use on a daily basis in a stable, sleek work enviroment would be a no-comparision to paying a ton for WinXP only to be shot in the foot by all the monopoly lawsuits because features that *should* be integrated and *should* be streamlined into the OS as many Apple apps are, are cut out because third parties were losing their share since they couldn't provide a competive product. But this is America! If you can't beat'em, SUE'EM!
Oh i totally agree with the tablet PC. apple would be two kidney's richer if they'd make one. I agree too that the software is the jewel of the apple, and the (somewhat) seamless integration of apps and hardware are what makes many macs so damned sexy. iTunes is marginal for windows. It's the best at what it does, dont' get me wrong, but it still has problems. It's a memory hog, as i mentioned earlier, and it's playback capabilities and ease of use still pale in comparison to a properly plugged-in winamp:)
Hell, instead of porting the software suite, how about a plugin for Outlook that'll sync contacts and calendar files with my ipod:) piss on doing it through a third app or a modified iTunes or whatever:) just bring'em right from the source. I'm very surprised one hasn't been written yet, but the last similiar things i looked at weren't very functional. i wrote a question in my journal about acquiring a decent used Mac. I may be in the market, depends on what kind of prices vs hardware i can find.
My old roommate who's a macaddict bought his 4g about the same time i did this summer and he said his recently started doing the same thing. But my other roommate had a 3G and he swears he's never had a single problem. so IDK. maybe just two coincidental, isolated occurances. LIke it'll crash when skipping tracks if you do it too fast, or just stop in the middle of the playback, when it's sitting on a flat surface, not moving at all. Restart it (if you can) then you play the same song again error free. i don't know what the problem is. i just know it makes me beg for a simple reset button when it does crash, because even a short 10 seconds it takes to reset it, plus the 10 or so it takes to boot it feels like an eternity when you should be listening to music problem free.
No...i'm quite content with my PC aside from the minor glitches that are usually my doing...I'd just like to use the features included on my $400 piece of hardware. The iPod is sold as a music player, but it's potential would be so much greater if the software that accompanies it would be more robust.
I use mine to determine what goes to my iPod and what doesn't. with well over 40GB of music total, only 23GB of it is worthy for me to tote around. A lot of band's albums don't make it, just their singles, etc etc. Guess the match only checked songs does work to an extent. just not very flexible. idk, maybe i'm just too picky.
there are a lot of things about iTunes i don't like...many may be constricted to the windows version, idk. the biggest one is how slow it is and how big of a memory hog it is as the song count creeps up. Why does it take so much memory and processing juice to open a 6.5MB XML file with 8800 song entries? I've extracted whole audio CDs in teh time it takes for iTunes to load, and that's on a fresh install of XP with SP1.
I bit the bullet and purchased a 40GB 4G in July/August to upgrade/replace a 128MB RCA Lyra that started my addiction of having music with me at all times. In the 3 months of heavy use of my iPod, here's the list of what i would like to see:
integrated SD-memory reading (my dig camera uses SD cards, they're smaller than CF, and while not as flexible as far as legacy use and capacity, almost every portable device i've looked into purchasing uses SD or xD memory over CF.
REMOVEABLE BATTERY - for the love of christ would they get this one right. it would really ease my mind significantly if they'd make it interchangable at home, maybe on the fly, where i can keep a spare battery handy as i do for my cell phone and dig camera, (2 spares in teh case of the camera) and when one goes dead, i do a swap. the thought of having to send my 4G off in a year or two at the cost of an ADDITIONAL $100 because they found it more convienent to design an integrated battery on an otherwise superior product gives me shivers.
iCal and Address Book for Windows, or at the very least an iTunes extention that lets you manage these two precious entities. Oh, and a smart playlist parameter for whether or not a song is checked!
Adjustable click wheel sensitivity and a dedicated reset button. My wheel has the most annoying tendancy to NOT want to move ONE click. no matter how softly i caress it or how little i bump it i usually move 2 or 3. maybe it's because i have larger than normal fingers or something. idk. also, if the thing has the remote possibility of choking on a bad mp3 and crashing, i'd love to have a manual reset button that doesn't go through software. That process sounds like something M$ came up with. many times mine will crash and run itself dead because the reset method doesn't work. even docked.
If they're going to integrate a color screen onto the ipod they shouldn't have went the LCD route, but used emerging tech like full color organic Electro-Luminescent displays (think Pioneer's high end car stereos) Sony just released a PDA in japan based on this screen design, which is far superior to LCD for the parameters of a portable device. It requires no battery-hungry and heat generating back light. It has better viewability (word?) in direct sunlight than LCDs. It may not have the color detail, but the resolutions are comparable. It would be suitable for a small display like the iPod Photo's. This would ahve allowed them to retain at least somehwat more of the battery life.
Are you listening Mr Jobs? Some of these things are not that damned difficult to implement, and others would just take a bit of time and effort.
TCO. That's what the REAL bottom line is. The Macs will cost less because of the lower IT staffing requirements. Unfortunately, that's the same reason many school IT administrators will go with Windows. Less staff = a smaller fiefdom for the managers. I disagree...most school IT departments are undermanned anyway, the school system in my county has a technical coordinator (who does nothing pertaining to actual work on teh networks or machines) and 2 acutal techs who do all the work, they maintain 5 buildings, somewhere around 400-500 machines. 2 elementary schools, a middle school, high school and an administration building. I know the IT director personally, he'd probably sell his soul to get Macs into our school but They continue to purchase Dells. While I agree that interested kids should learn to use a difficult OS from the root level, making something liek WIndows or OSX a cakewalk to sit down and do whatever, BUT, 6th graders I don't see a 6th grader who has no interest in teh internal workings of a computer wanting to learn how to run each OS from a CLI. ANd on that fact, OSX would be the best OS for them, pending they use acutal mouses, rather htan those junk 1 button jobbies. standard keyboards too, mac boards never impress me, they dont' have a good tactical feel. but as far as the OS, it's the easiest thing to use i've ever encountered. Plus it's stable, fast, and you can run applicatins up the ass without noticeable effects on performance.
A good windows 9x trick we pulled on my comp applications teacher in high school a few years ago...might still work on XP or 2k, haven't tried it. Open a command prompt and head over to the desktop folder, add a folder named whatever you want, vulgaries (what we used), etc etc. at the end of the name, type alt-0255, in the old version, it was a character space, invisible but it existed, Windows just didn't recognize it's existance. I dont' know the details, but if you double clicked on it, you got an error, tried to delete, got an error, tried to drag and drop it,got an error, but it stayed there. After stumping the systems admin for our school, he leaves the classroom to go get a reinstall disk, he was just going to wipe 98 and reinstall it, that's how frustrated he was. at this point it's liek 5 mins til school was out for the day, so naturally the teacher went out ot police the hallway while we alll sat around and bullsh*ted for a few minutes, one of us went over and did the command line thing again, deleting the file. this "mysteriously" happened several times over the course of the year...
As for your knock on democracy, actually 51% of the country could vote for a candidate and still lose. My god man, where were you last election? That's the whole point of the electoral college, to allow more people to matter. That and to keep California from electing the President.
I gotta disagree...80% already know who they're voting for, 40% will vote republican, because mom and dad voted that way, or whatever reason, 40% will vote democrat for variations of the same reasons. it's the 20% who actually give a rats ass about who the guy is and what his ideals are that makes the difference in the election. Hell, i'm willing to go out on a limb and say that if a candidate made a few speeches at select colleges, saying that he was in favor of stopping the privacy invasion that the RIAA and MPAA are doing, and/or that he was in favor of filesharing (WAY out on a limb there...) you'd have quite a few college kids decide NOT to forfeit their right to vote as many of them do. Just my opinion and that of some of my friends and peers.
I'm curious...when will the government get involved? And when they do, will it be a federal mandate, or will the federal government leave it up to the individual states? in the 2004 debates there had damn well better be some issues over this brought up...i wanna know our fair leaders take on things (or future leader...depends on who's running)
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I'm sure your spoiled children will LOVE to lie to you when they're 16. Have fun earning their respect when they do learn reason.
:)
i can't believe so many people are under the assumption that children are born with all the thinking characteristics of a 25 year old. It boggles my mind! Think back...when you were 6 and in the toy store and you wanted that toy and mom said it was too expensive and you threw a fit and...what? You never heard that things were too expensive? You usually got what you wanted? Oh! Your mom must have been like those parents who cause me to loath the mall, letting their child scream piss and moan about a toy until they end up giving in and getting it for fear that letting their child know there are repercussions foracting up they may hold a disrespect for them later in life.
i went up the shake the hand of a stranger in the mall one day: his 3-4yo threw a fit and without batting an eye he spun the kid around and gave him three swift whacks, the kid whimpered a bit, bit his lip, and straightened up. Some woman who was in the vicinity came up and said that she didn't appreciate him abusing his child in public like that and made some comments about how child abuse shoudl be reported etc. just FYI this was the woman who left her kid in teh stroller alone to walk over and tell this guy that...15-20 ft away... anyway, so she does her 20 second spiel about this and that, and the guy just let her finish, then in a calm but firm voice that steadily got louder but not quite to a yell, he said "ma'am, these are my children, it's my job to raise them to the best of my ability, i'd suggest you go mind your own child and your own god damned business!" The woman stormed off, and like i said, i just had to come up and shake the guy's hand. it was one of those moments that camera woudl have been awesome
that board with the holes in it (I can never remember what it's called)
Pegboard? lol...
hmm...you were either a pain in the ass who never had a hand laid on you, or you were beaten severely. My dad was 6'5", 220lbs when i was growing up. I rarely ever needed more than a look, and the only times i ever remember having a hand laid on me i deserved it and it wasn't like he knocked me out. He would do one quick whack with whatever he had handy, belt, switch, hand, one time he poppped me real hard with a wet shop rag, THAT hurt. My mom was the same way. it's not abuse when A) you get caught in the act B) you've been adequately warned and you KNEW what was coming C) you neglected those warnings D) it's not overly harsh. Once i hit 8 or 9 and it wasn't plausible for mom to spank i got slapped. One or two busted lips and i learned my limits. This didn't make me hate my parents. Usually it pissed me off, but looking back on it, i was wrong and deserved it.
If you'd given me a time out in any of those situations, i wouldn't have cared. i would have used the time to plot new and evil things to do. Think about what i'd done? yeah right. Think about what i'm going to do next. I have two nephews, 4 and 6. the 6 year old is getting old enough now that he minds. but the 4 year old is a free spirt. when he looks at you, you can tell he's scheming to do something, and he usually is. The little fart loves me and respects me, i do things for them, i helped them both put together some of their toys that even my bro adn sis in law couldn't figure out, and at thanksgiving i gave them each a big bag of some of my old Legos. But both of them also know that i give one warning, not the several that mom and dad give. the 6yo is getting to the age where i can pick him up one handed in teh summer when i'm in shape, but right now he's kinda heavy. the little one i still can. That was almost my most hated way to get whipped when i was little and really let me know i had screwed up. Dad would grab me by one arm, pick me up, hold me at arms reach and come right down across my ass with the free hand. you can't get away, you can't jump and lessen the impact, you get all of it. The first time i did it to the little one i set him back down, told him NO one more time (i'd been saying it the whole time i was walking to him and he just kept doing whatever it was) and he looked at me with this utter look of disbelief and pain, but he never cried. later his mom came and got him and i told her what a little jerk he'd been, the next day he came back and he said he was sorry. it was one of the cutest things i've seen.
if you want to talk about the people who can't discern from what punishing their kids is from punishing the kids for their mistakes, you're more than welcome. But a lot more contributes to a childs feeligns of malice than a swift hand or belt when the little bastard is overstepping his boundaries.
Being a "seasoned" college junior, enough experience to know all the back ways around campus, but smart enough to know i still don't know jack sh!t, I'm going to venture my opinion here: If you're hired because of your talent/experience with a language, but you ain't got a degree to show that you did more than high school English, you're most likely going to be hired for a programming job and not much more. Maybe a project leader eventually.
I will agree that there are people who never did more than algebra who are some of the best leaders/thinkers out there, and there are others who have the degrees but aren't worth the oxygen they use hourly.
But there is no denying that most of the people who make it farther than the duties of a programmer/techie/etc are the ones with the social, management, and problem solving skills developed in those 8-10 semesters of schooling (in my case probably closer to 11 or 12 semesters...)
the monopolistic practices counter-claims everybody was filing against them? I remember Sharman had one pending, amoung others. Were all these dropped? Pending? What?
I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made.
Gee, that says alot about their confidence in the security of their computer systems! If he's scared to type a letter of resignation for fear of it being broke to the media before they're ready! What the HELL!
but as far as the rest, thank the maker that crazy asshole is gone! lets just hope bush uses his common sense this time to replace him, rather than his f'ing religion. If only Cheney would resign/step down/die we'd all be in good shape. Bush ain't the worst about it, it's his asshole cabinet that 'causes much of the problem.
Stop right there. We're talking about taxes, not income. If you're talking about redistributing income then, again, you're pushing your way into socialism. That's an economic system that has basically been rejected by the world.
if you're grossing $80k a year, and you're giving up 25k of that to taxes (roughly 1/3), you're still netting $55k, a comfortable income. If you're making $20k, giving up that same 1/3, you're netting about $13.5k, and paying ~6500. Figure federal taxes is roughly 1/2 of that, based on my pay stubs. so yearly federal taxes of 13k and 3250 respectfully. Who needs the money more? Who is going to put that income to better use? The person who is going to use their extra money to put food on the table? To save some for their child's education so they're not in the same income bracket their parents were? Or that guy who's already got a house in teh suburbs, 1.3 kids, a nice college fund started? What about benefits? You think somebody making 20k a year is gonna have full benefits? I highly doubt it.
The progressive INCOME Tax system is based on your INCOME, so therefore i feel that looking at a persons INCOME is very relevant to the method of taxation. Unless you want to look at it from a Republican's perspective.
Those in poverty already don't pay federal taxes. So your rhetorical question makes no sense to start with.
Federal Poverty is less than $17k a year. Could YOU live on 17 a year? Would you like to? Its this belief "well there is a law for it, the government must be right!" mentality that is going to put this country into the ground.
No-one says that because it isn't true. Those in poverty pay no federal taxes. You can't reduce the taxes on someone that already doesn't pay any
See above. Just because they're not below the federal poverty level doesn't mean they're not in poverty based on the economy and social standards. It woudl be nice if everybody got the bare necessities needed to survive daily, but alas, that would be socialism, and having the rich give back to the poor is something that happens only in fairy tales. Our government and society takes away any incentive people may have to escape their demographic and succeed in life, then bitch when those people later need help just to feed their own mouths let alone their families (if there is a family and the dad didn't split to allow his family eligbility for welfare)
When less than 20% of the nation holds 80% of the income, and the 'elected' representatives, and i use that term loosely, roll back the progressive taxes on them before dropping the taxes on those in poverty to nothing, what does that say about their love and compassion for the lower class?
Everybody hides behind "well if they cut the taxes for the lower class on the federal level there wouldn't be anythign left!" then what is the big god-damned deal about cutting those taxes out if it's such a miniscule amount? The government is there to SERVE those people too, not to burden them so the rich and famous can feel good about their tax break. Yes, the states have to cut their taxes in order for a taxcut to really be felt on that level, but for the love of christ, STOP hiding behind that lame ass arguement. We can't have a tax system that works for everyone, at least as long as the current ruling class is in power, and that goes for both parties. But cutting out the one thing that at least makes things APPEAR to make sense based strictly on the economic issues, that's just insane. We piss so much money away, but we can't help out the people who have to live day to day.
Well put. Whoever made the comment about most of the value being in teh free software hit the nail on the head. iTunes is worlds better than any other management software i've found, even the WinAmp plugins that claim to update your iPod. Plus with ephpod, and OutPod i'm now getting most of the mac-functionality (probably to the bane of Apple) from my iPod. I have a Palm Zire i use to keep all my contacts, dates, etc, and it's nice to scribble a note on it, but my iPod goes with me in places that my Palm never will, so i like the thought that i have my entire collection of phone numbers and email addresses just about everywhere i go, plus a summary of mine and my girlfriends class schedules, along with the more significant dates tucked away in my pocket. Before i bought mine i looked at every viable option, both promised and existing (including all the iPod killers and mini-pod killers), but found none that compared. I have my complaints about iPod, such as lack of native calendar and datebook support for windows machines, which i've already taking a raping on here complaining about before, so save yourself. my 4G also locks up randomly, still an unexplained phenomea, and i expected more frequent software updates than what apple has been providing, but oh well. Point: there are few MP3 players that can beat the 'pods in convienence and functionality. Personally it was no contest.
Depends on how you use it. Personally i like the taskbar's...idea, and it's potential, i just don't think M$ has realized it yet. Dock has it's place too, but tends to annoy me as much or more than Taskbar's faults. Also, saved searches = smart playlists? I know they weren't the first, but why is this the first 'mainstream' app, or at least the first one with so much pull, to implement so many features? It's like the China article earlier, there are so many things that are like: "DUH! Why didn't we do this the first time!" Some were limited by the technology avilable (whcih is where China has us beat, they didn't START to modernize until the tech was available, whereas we have to adapt new ways to old ideas/tech...not always good. See: Republicans...) some were just forgotten. Personally i think M$ has a lot right, but a lot more wrong. Same with Apple. I swear, a hybrid machine would work wonders. Or at least the ability to buy mac 'approved' hardware and then buy the OS. In order to be mac approved the manufacturer has to share a profit margin with Apple, and personally speaking, i'd be willing to pay a lot more for OSX than i would WinXP. Paying $200 for OSX, when it includes damned near every app i use on a daily basis in a stable, sleek work enviroment would be a no-comparision to paying a ton for WinXP only to be shot in the foot by all the monopoly lawsuits because features that *should* be integrated and *should* be streamlined into the OS as many Apple apps are, are cut out because third parties were losing their share since they couldn't provide a competive product. But this is America! If you can't beat'em, SUE'EM!
Oh i totally agree with the tablet PC. apple would be two kidney's richer if they'd make one. I agree too that the software is the jewel of the apple, and the (somewhat) seamless integration of apps and hardware are what makes many macs so damned sexy. iTunes is marginal for windows. It's the best at what it does, dont' get me wrong, but it still has problems. It's a memory hog, as i mentioned earlier, and it's playback capabilities and ease of use still pale in comparison to a properly plugged-in winamp :)
Hell, instead of porting the software suite, how about a plugin for Outlook that'll sync contacts and calendar files with my ipod :) piss on doing it through a third app or a modified iTunes or whatever :) just bring'em right from the source. I'm very surprised one hasn't been written yet, but the last similiar things i looked at weren't very functional. i wrote a question in my journal about acquiring a decent used Mac. I may be in the market, depends on what kind of prices vs hardware i can find.
My old roommate who's a macaddict bought his 4g about the same time i did this summer and he said his recently started doing the same thing. But my other roommate had a 3G and he swears he's never had a single problem. so IDK. maybe just two coincidental, isolated occurances. LIke it'll crash when skipping tracks if you do it too fast, or just stop in the middle of the playback, when it's sitting on a flat surface, not moving at all. Restart it (if you can) then you play the same song again error free. i don't know what the problem is. i just know it makes me beg for a simple reset button when it does crash, because even a short 10 seconds it takes to reset it, plus the 10 or so it takes to boot it feels like an eternity when you should be listening to music problem free.
No...i'm quite content with my PC aside from the minor glitches that are usually my doing...I'd just like to use the features included on my $400 piece of hardware. The iPod is sold as a music player, but it's potential would be so much greater if the software that accompanies it would be more robust.
I use mine to determine what goes to my iPod and what doesn't. with well over 40GB of music total, only 23GB of it is worthy for me to tote around. A lot of band's albums don't make it, just their singles, etc etc. Guess the match only checked songs does work to an extent. just not very flexible. idk, maybe i'm just too picky.
there are a lot of things about iTunes i don't like...many may be constricted to the windows version, idk. the biggest one is how slow it is and how big of a memory hog it is as the song count creeps up. Why does it take so much memory and processing juice to open a 6.5MB XML file with 8800 song entries? I've extracted whole audio CDs in teh time it takes for iTunes to load, and that's on a fresh install of XP with SP1.
I bit the bullet and purchased a 40GB 4G in July/August to upgrade/replace a 128MB RCA Lyra that started my addiction of having music with me at all times. In the 3 months of heavy use of my iPod, here's the list of what i would like to see:
integrated SD-memory reading (my dig camera uses SD cards, they're smaller than CF, and while not as flexible as far as legacy use and capacity, almost every portable device i've looked into purchasing uses SD or xD memory over CF.
REMOVEABLE BATTERY - for the love of christ would they get this one right. it would really ease my mind significantly if they'd make it interchangable at home, maybe on the fly, where i can keep a spare battery handy as i do for my cell phone and dig camera, (2 spares in teh case of the camera) and when one goes dead, i do a swap. the thought of having to send my 4G off in a year or two at the cost of an ADDITIONAL $100 because they found it more convienent to design an integrated battery on an otherwise superior product gives me shivers.
iCal and Address Book for Windows, or at the very least an iTunes extention that lets you manage these two precious entities. Oh, and a smart playlist parameter for whether or not a song is checked!
Adjustable click wheel sensitivity and a dedicated reset button. My wheel has the most annoying tendancy to NOT want to move ONE click. no matter how softly i caress it or how little i bump it i usually move 2 or 3. maybe it's because i have larger than normal fingers or something. idk. also, if the thing has the remote possibility of choking on a bad mp3 and crashing, i'd love to have a manual reset button that doesn't go through software. That process sounds like something M$ came up with. many times mine will crash and run itself dead because the reset method doesn't work. even docked.
If they're going to integrate a color screen onto the ipod they shouldn't have went the LCD route, but used emerging tech like full color organic Electro-Luminescent displays (think Pioneer's high end car stereos) Sony just released a PDA in japan based on this screen design, which is far superior to LCD for the parameters of a portable device. It requires no battery-hungry and heat generating back light. It has better viewability (word?) in direct sunlight than LCDs. It may not have the color detail, but the resolutions are comparable. It would be suitable for a small display like the iPod Photo's. This would ahve allowed them to retain at least somehwat more of the battery life.
Are you listening Mr Jobs? Some of these things are not that damned difficult to implement, and others would just take a bit of time and effort.
TCO. That's what the REAL bottom line is. The Macs will cost less because of the lower IT staffing requirements. Unfortunately, that's the same reason many school IT administrators will go with Windows. Less staff = a smaller fiefdom for the managers.
I disagree...most school IT departments are undermanned anyway, the school system in my county has a technical coordinator (who does nothing pertaining to actual work on teh networks or machines) and 2 acutal techs who do all the work, they maintain 5 buildings, somewhere around 400-500 machines. 2 elementary schools, a middle school, high school and an administration building. I know the IT director personally, he'd probably sell his soul to get Macs into our school but They continue to purchase Dells. While I agree that interested kids should learn to use a difficult OS from the root level, making something liek WIndows or OSX a cakewalk to sit down and do whatever, BUT, 6th graders I don't see a 6th grader who has no interest in teh internal workings of a computer wanting to learn how to run each OS from a CLI. ANd on that fact, OSX would be the best OS for them, pending they use acutal mouses, rather htan those junk 1 button jobbies. standard keyboards too, mac boards never impress me, they dont' have a good tactical feel. but as far as the OS, it's the easiest thing to use i've ever encountered. Plus it's stable, fast, and you can run applicatins up the ass without noticeable effects on performance.
A good windows 9x trick we pulled on my comp applications teacher in high school a few years ago...might still work on XP or 2k, haven't tried it. Open a command prompt and head over to the desktop folder, add a folder named whatever you want, vulgaries (what we used), etc etc. at the end of the name, type alt-0255, in the old version, it was a character space, invisible but it existed, Windows just didn't recognize it's existance. I dont' know the details, but if you double clicked on it, you got an error, tried to delete, got an error, tried to drag and drop it,got an error, but it stayed there. After stumping the systems admin for our school, he leaves the classroom to go get a reinstall disk, he was just going to wipe 98 and reinstall it, that's how frustrated he was. at this point it's liek 5 mins til school was out for the day, so naturally the teacher went out ot police the hallway while we alll sat around and bullsh*ted for a few minutes, one of us went over and did the command line thing again, deleting the file. this "mysteriously" happened several times over the course of the year...
As for your knock on democracy, actually 51% of the country could vote for a candidate and still lose. My god man, where were you last election? That's the whole point of the electoral college, to allow more people to matter. That and to keep California from electing the President.
I gotta disagree...80% already know who they're voting for, 40% will vote republican, because mom and dad voted that way, or whatever reason, 40% will vote democrat for variations of the same reasons. it's the 20% who actually give a rats ass about who the guy is and what his ideals are that makes the difference in the election. Hell, i'm willing to go out on a limb and say that if a candidate made a few speeches at select colleges, saying that he was in favor of stopping the privacy invasion that the RIAA and MPAA are doing, and/or that he was in favor of filesharing (WAY out on a limb there...) you'd have quite a few college kids decide NOT to forfeit their right to vote as many of them do. Just my opinion and that of some of my friends and peers.
I'm curious...when will the government get involved? And when they do, will it be a federal mandate, or will the federal government leave it up to the individual states? in the 2004 debates there had damn well better be some issues over this brought up...i wanna know our fair leaders take on things (or future leader...depends on who's running)