...but it starts making less and less sense to use old Macs...
Actually, we still use an old color classic Mac running OS 7.5 as a full time fax and answering machine, running 24/7 every day of the year. We also still use it to program an old CP90 X-10 controller for some simple home automation. The thing just runs and runs, sort of like the energizer bunny!
... OS X is a bit better - now they only have to explain crashes and freezes once a month or so...
Actually, we have been using OSX since it first came out. The only system crash I have EVER had was when I unplugged an external firewire HD without putting it away properly first. The system crashed after the reminder that I was a bad boy for doing that. Plenty of programs have crashed or frozen, but force quit has always taken care of that annoyance.
Since installing win2k, our windows boxes have been working reasonably well, although one of them died and nothing I tried could get it to boot again. I thought it was a hardware failure, but after re-installing win2k the system has been working fine for the last 6 months.
...It's kind of like growing up in a country without rights...
I think a better analogy would be insect pests like flies, mosquitoes etc. It is impossible to eradictate these, but they can be kept down to the point where the annoyance they cause can be lieved with. The fewer desireable results that spammmers get for their efforts, the less spam there will be, sort of like eliminating known breeding grounds for the pests. As more and more spam gets filtered and ignored by all internet users, the less economic incentive there will be to send it. The cost for sending spam is extremely low, but it is not zero. When the economic effectiveness of spam drops below some point, which hopefully is getting closer, spam will die out or at least be self limiting.
...Western expressions, where we feel the need to control our surroundings and know everything...
Even living in an industrialized society does not force anyone to be anxious to control and know. Anyone can march to the beat of a different drummer and there is no need to allow the culture to squeeze anyone into a particular mold. Everyone has choices and then has to live with the results of those. Your TV and computer has an OFF switch, which only YOU control. Use it, and then go outside, especially in this spring time of the year and marvel at the new life bursting forth all around. Admittedly, for us here, living in the mountains of Southern Oregon, this is easier than for someone living in a 29th floor apartment of a large city. Even so, there are green places in most cities where the wonder of spring time can let you forget the frenetic pace of life for a while and think about what is REALLY important, such as the human relationships apart from technology.
...You buy a refrigerator and the first thing it will do is go online...
I will never buy such a refrigerator or whatever appliance connected to the Internet. A virus comes along and turns it off and all the food rots! Thanks, but NO thanks. Just because something CAN be done, does not mean it should be. I think predictions like this are like the flying car articles in Popular Science etc. in the 50s telling us by the turn of the millenium everybody will be flying everywhere in their own personal flying machines, rather than driving. Tell that now to someone stuck in a miles long traffic jam on a modern, "freeway"!!
The signature on a credit card only binds you to pay the debt you have incurred. It has no other contracting or agreement function. An "agreement is always between at least two parties which must be unambigously identified and be of legal age.
People have played and written music for millenia, long before anyone thought of copyright and making money from it. There are STILL (can you believe it) people who love music who also have day jobs to pay their bills. As Justice Oconnor wrote, copyright is to benefit society as a whole, not just a few artists to get rich. It was especially not intended for mega corporations to get rich from the creativity of talented artists. If there were no such thing as copyright, or if it were at least as it was originally, there still would artists who would share their work, because art and beauty is part of the human spirit and human creativity which mirrors our Creator who placed this urge to create within. Blind chance evolutionary processes cannot explain this human urge for the expression of art and beauty. Making music or art is not a requirement for the survival of the fittest.
...Thus, you cannot rip a DVD without circumventing that access control mechanism, thereby breaking the law...
Actually, the DMCA does not proscribe the USE of tools to copy something, but for anybody to PROVIDE such tools to others in any manner, selling or giving it away. You can make your own hammer to pound nails (or break DVD's), but it is against the law to provide hammers to others. If you can find a hammer in a country that doesn't outlaw the manufacture of hammers, you are allowed to use it, athough it is illegal to smuggle a hammer into the USA. So where did you get your hammer? I made it myself! Oh, that's ok. Having and using a copy breaking hammer is not in the same league as illegal substances; ie. you can't get arrested for the posession of a hammer, only if you let someone else use it.
Requiring financial responsibility (usually insurance) is not the issue, since that is a neccessary car expense, same as gasoline. It is whether this RFID system will enfocrce this reqirement without undue expense and hassle for both the state and the citizens.
...rather lower ammount of vehicles on the road in Germany...
Wow, where do you get your information!? If you have ever been in a STAU (traffic jam) ten or 20km or more where traffic inches along if it moves at all, you would not be saying this. I did drive a Mercedes once on the Autobahhn at 240Km/hr and the speedometer was still climbing when I chickened out and slowed back down to 140Km/hr. Our interstates were specified for 70mph and that is a reasonable speed for continuous travelling on long stretches of these highways.
...An RFID tag in your car gets read at mile-marker 100...
What happens if the car has no RFID tag because it from a state where such tags are not used? Or what happens if the tag is defective or subtly disabled/destroyed by a well placed high voltage discharge or a second or two in a microwave oven? Gee I didn't know that chip is defective, but I DO have insurance! Most chips are very sensititive to high electric fields. Will the cops be chasing thousands of cars in vain? How bad is the insurance compliance in Texas? I wonder if this is really worth doing?
Re:QUICK.. before the day is over
on
EU to Ban Macs
·
· Score: 1
... before the day is over...
I sure am glad this sillyness comes only once a year. At other times, there is other sillyness on/. of course.
...Firstly, poorly written third party applications do not consititute a security flaw in Windows...
I agree with you very much on that. The problem is that Windows tries, or has at least tried up to now, to not break existing software. If they really want to make a secure OS, then backward compatibility will have to sacrificed at the altar of security. Many Mac pre-OSX programs died, such as all my MIDI and sound recording pgms for example, even under compatibility mode because OSX allows no application access to hardware. Similarly, any Windows app that wants to write to system space or hardware will need to be re-written. Games are especially notorius for doing this, because the game developers try to squeeze the last drop of performance out of a given hardware, often bypassing the OS. Windows needs to disallow the use of poorly written software. If Longhorn will be truly secure, be prepared to upgrade most, if not all your applications. This can be very hard and expensive to do for a business that has come to rely on certain software, for which the maker is no longer around to fix such programs. There are still a huge number of computers running Win98 or even Win95 because of this. Unlike the new Macs, which will no longer boot into OS9 or earlier, the latest x86 hardware still allows the installation of Win9x OS and its programs or even DOS, giving these legacy apps a chance to run on speedy modern hardware.
...can be used for a legal purpose, although nobody uses it for that...
I'm sure that it can be shown that even these services are used for legitimate purposes. By your reasoning, Apple's "rip-mix-burn" ad campaign would make all iPods illegal since most of them contain music from CD's legally purchased, but may also contain p2p illegal downloads. Nothing on this earth is either all good or bad, but usually a mixture of both. Just because something can be used for wrong or even mostly wrong, doesn't mean it should be categorically outlawed. This what the copyright holders are trying to do to p2p, just as they tried it with the VCR. Sony also advertised that their VCR could be used to record TV shows, which of course are copyrighted.
Yes, lets! Why waste money on a general purpose computer when you can get a game console for WAY less and have even many more games for it? Macs are not marketed for games and in order to get decent game performance on PC, you need to spend a considerable pile of cash. You can get TWO game consoles, a Play Station and an Xbox for less than the Mac mini. There is no way your lowball PC will play games with only $65 video system.
Who is saying to throw the computer away? If you bought a $3500 plasma TV and it went on the blink, you'd also have a hard time servicing it unless you have significant electronics skills. Unlike the laptop, getting your mitts into the TV could get you electrocuted. Take your dead laptop to a professional service guy, just as most people take their new modern cars to someone who knows how to deal with it. I see no reason why a manufacturer has to make it easy for an amateur to screw around with the equipment and then if something bad happens and the duffer gets hurt, get sued yet on top of it all. Most technology has become too complex for ordinary consumers to be able to fix it. The days of the ordinary, simple to fix cars and other consumer devices have gone, for better or worse. Most cheap consumer gadgets are simply thrown away and replaced with newer, fancier ones and the more costlier ones must be serviced by professionals who know what they are doing and have the proper tools.
...Then Congress will step in and take care of that...
Indeed, just like they did with DMCA. Republicrats and Democans can all be purchased for the proper amount of bribes. Of course it is not called a bribe, but campaign contributions. The entertainment companies have a lot of money, but then do the technology companies. The outcome may be determined by which is able or willing to buy more legislators. What the public wants or needs will not be considered, just as it was not when the DMCA was enacted.
...Business models have a lot to do with everything...
It has nothing to do whatsoever with any business model. It is simply this: If I make a product or service, and someone uses it to do something illegal, can I be held responsible for their bad behavior? I hope the court says a resounding NO, just as it did 20 years ago when the same issue came up with the VCR. The phone company is not liable if someone plans a murder using the phone, so why should those that provide the software to send files over those same wires be held responsible for the illegal activity of the users?
These short sighted content providers have whined EVERY time, from the player piano onward, when a new technology came along until they figured out how to make billions from the new technologies. 20 years from now, these same plaintiffs will likely have figured out how to make even more money using the new technology than they ever dreamed of. If they had prevailed 20 years ago, they would not make a fraction of the amount of money they make today. Why is it that these guys cannot learn from history?
I can't understand why there is such an obsession with upgrading a computer? Nobody upgrades their other consumer electronics, so what's the big deal. If you want a better TV set, you don't upgrade the old one, nor the VCR, DVD player, stereo etc! The Mini and iMac is for the vast majority of ordinary consumers who could not care about upgradeability of their computer any more than the upgradeability of their refrigerator. Apple, unlike most/.ers has grasped the idea that a computer is just another consumer appliance, which consumers expect to work as advertised. So if you want to "upgrade", just go out and buy a better model that does what you want. Sell the old one or give it away to someone less fortunate than you.
..slide the tray back in, screw the screw back in and voila...
How much thicker and heavier and uglier is that Dell? How long does its battery last? The iBook is, like most consumer elctronics today, not intended to be serviced by the user. When was the last time you upgraded your TV, VCR, CD or DVD player? The higher priced Powerbook is upgradeable by anyone reasonably skilled. I have a 250G external drive connected to my Ti PB when I use it at home with an added monitor. I keep only the files I think I might need while on the road on the internal HD. My iPod doesn't take up that much extra space in the PBooks case either.
Re:I would buy a Mac...
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...My process has always been one of upgrade...
So throw out your old big, noisy Windoes box and UPGRADE to a small, quiet Mini. By the time you do all the upgrading you are taking about you will have spent as much or more, especially if your time is worth even minimum wages, than what the Mini costs. In the end you will still have a big, noisy, ugly PC box with a lot of outdated software. Guys like you would complain if Apple gave their computer away for free!
...Nor will Grandma see any benefit from using it to view pictures of her grandkids...
She might benefit if she wanted to see a VIDEO of her grandkids. She also might benefit if she doesn't have to worry about getting her computer infested by a wide variety of worms, trojans, viruses, spyware and other malware that continually plague Windows users unless they spend a lot extra money and time to have proper anti-virus software installed.
Nothing really. I make aliases of all my often used folders and some apps that I don't want to keep in the dock because the dock already is pretty full. I keep the pointer to that special folder containing nothing but aliases right next to the trash in the dock. The icon of that special alias folder is also in the sidebar of all finder windows. Most of the time that window is already open on the desktop. This way I get a customized, easily updated, quick way to access all the things I use often, or in some cases not quite as often. I have arranged the icons in that folder in logical groups, as close together as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
...but it starts making less and less sense to use old Macs...
Actually, we still use an old color classic Mac running OS 7.5 as a full time fax and answering machine, running 24/7 every day of the year. We also still use it to program an old CP90 X-10 controller for some simple home automation. The thing just runs and runs, sort of like the energizer bunny!
... OS X is a bit better - now they only have to explain crashes and freezes once a month or so...
Actually, we have been using OSX since it first came out. The only system crash I have EVER had was when I unplugged an external firewire HD without putting it away properly first. The system crashed after the reminder that I was a bad boy for doing that. Plenty of programs have crashed or frozen, but force quit has always taken care of that annoyance.
Since installing win2k, our windows boxes have been working reasonably well, although one of them died and nothing I tried could get it to boot again. I thought it was a hardware failure, but after re-installing win2k the system has been working fine for the last 6 months.
...It's kind of like growing up in a country without rights...
I think a better analogy would be insect pests like flies, mosquitoes etc. It is impossible to eradictate these, but they can be kept down to the point where the annoyance they cause can be lieved with. The fewer desireable results that spammmers get for their efforts, the less spam there will be, sort of like eliminating known breeding grounds for the pests. As more and more spam gets filtered and ignored by all internet users, the less economic incentive there will be to send it. The cost for sending spam is extremely low, but it is not zero. When the economic effectiveness of spam drops below some point, which hopefully is getting closer, spam will die out or at least be self limiting.
...Western expressions, where we feel the need to control our surroundings and know everything...
Even living in an industrialized society does not force anyone to be anxious to control and know. Anyone can march to the beat of a different drummer and there is no need to allow the culture to squeeze anyone into a particular mold. Everyone has choices and then has to live with the results of those. Your TV and computer has an OFF switch, which only YOU control. Use it, and then go outside, especially in this spring time of the year and marvel at the new life bursting forth all around. Admittedly, for us here, living in the mountains of Southern Oregon, this is easier than for someone living in a 29th floor apartment of a large city. Even so, there are green places in most cities where the wonder of spring time can let you forget the frenetic pace of life for a while and think about what is REALLY important, such as the human relationships apart from technology.
...You buy a refrigerator and the first thing it will do is go online...
I will never buy such a refrigerator or whatever appliance connected to the Internet. A virus comes along and turns it off and all the food rots! Thanks, but NO thanks. Just because something CAN be done, does not mean it should be. I think predictions like this are like the flying car articles in Popular Science etc. in the 50s telling us by the turn of the millenium everybody will be flying everywhere in their own personal flying machines, rather than driving. Tell that now to someone stuck in a miles long traffic jam on a modern, "freeway"!!
...credit card purchases need a signature...
The signature on a credit card only binds you to pay the debt you have incurred. It has no other contracting or agreement function. An "agreement is always between at least two parties which must be unambigously identified and be of legal age.
...no incentive at all to write music...
People have played and written music for millenia, long before anyone thought of copyright and making money from it. There are STILL (can you believe it) people who love music who also have day jobs to pay their bills. As Justice Oconnor wrote, copyright is to benefit society as a whole, not just a few artists to get rich. It was especially not intended for mega corporations to get rich from the creativity of talented artists. If there were no such thing as copyright, or if it were at least as it was originally, there still would artists who would share their work, because art and beauty is part of the human spirit and human creativity which mirrors our Creator who placed this urge to create within. Blind chance evolutionary processes cannot explain this human urge for the expression of art and beauty. Making music or art is not a requirement for the survival of the fittest.
...Thus, you cannot rip a DVD without circumventing that access control mechanism, thereby breaking the law...
Actually, the DMCA does not proscribe the USE of tools to copy something, but for anybody to PROVIDE such tools to others in any manner, selling or giving it away. You can make your own hammer to pound nails (or break DVD's), but it is against the law to provide hammers to others. If you can find a hammer in a country that doesn't outlaw the manufacture of hammers, you are allowed to use it, athough it is illegal to smuggle a hammer into the USA. So where did you get your hammer? I made it myself! Oh, that's ok. Having and using a copy breaking hammer is not in the same league as illegal substances; ie. you can't get arrested for the posession of a hammer, only if you let someone else use it.
...have protection against induced voltages - even after putting them in a microwave...
I suspect no chip wil stand up to a 200KV tesal coil discharge either.
....driver did not have insurance...
Requiring financial responsibility (usually insurance) is not the issue, since that is a neccessary car expense, same as gasoline. It is whether this RFID system will enfocrce this reqirement without undue expense and hassle for both the state and the citizens.
...rather lower ammount of vehicles on the road in Germany...
Wow, where do you get your information!? If you have ever been in a STAU (traffic jam) ten or 20km or more where traffic inches along if it moves at all, you would not be saying this. I did drive a Mercedes once on the Autobahhn at 240Km/hr and the speedometer was still climbing when I chickened out and slowed back down to 140Km/hr. Our interstates were specified for 70mph and that is a reasonable speed for continuous travelling on long stretches of these highways.
...An RFID tag in your car gets read at mile-marker 100...
What happens if the car has no RFID tag because it from a state where such tags are not used? Or what happens if the tag is defective or subtly disabled/destroyed by a well placed high voltage discharge or a second or two in a microwave oven? Gee I didn't know that chip is defective, but I DO have insurance! Most chips are very sensititive to high electric fields. Will the cops be chasing thousands of cars in vain? How bad is the insurance compliance in Texas? I wonder if this is really worth doing?
... before the day is over...
/. of course.
I sure am glad this sillyness comes only once a year. At other times, there is other sillyness on
...Firstly, poorly written third party applications do not consititute a security flaw in Windows...
I agree with you very much on that. The problem is that Windows tries, or has at least tried up to now, to not break existing software. If they really want to make a secure OS, then backward compatibility will have to sacrificed at the altar of security. Many Mac pre-OSX programs died, such as all my MIDI and sound recording pgms for example, even under compatibility mode because OSX allows no application access to hardware. Similarly, any Windows app that wants to write to system space or hardware will need to be re-written. Games are especially notorius for doing this, because the game developers try to squeeze the last drop of performance out of a given hardware, often bypassing the OS. Windows needs to disallow the use of poorly written software. If Longhorn will be truly secure, be prepared to upgrade most, if not all your applications. This can be very hard and expensive to do for a business that has come to rely on certain software, for which the maker is no longer around to fix such programs. There are still a huge number of computers running Win98 or even Win95 because of this. Unlike the new Macs, which will no longer boot into OS9 or earlier, the latest x86 hardware still allows the installation of Win9x OS and its programs or even DOS, giving these legacy apps a chance to run on speedy modern hardware.
...can be used for a legal purpose, although nobody uses it for that...
I'm sure that it can be shown that even these services are used for legitimate purposes. By your reasoning, Apple's "rip-mix-burn" ad campaign would make all iPods illegal since most of them contain music from CD's legally purchased, but may also contain p2p illegal downloads. Nothing on this earth is either all good or bad, but usually a mixture of both. Just because something can be used for wrong or even mostly wrong, doesn't mean it should be categorically outlawed. This what the copyright holders are trying to do to p2p, just as they tried it with the VCR. Sony also advertised that their VCR could be used to record TV shows, which of course are copyrighted.
...Lets take the games market...
Yes, lets! Why waste money on a general purpose computer when you can get a game console for WAY less and have even many more games for it? Macs are not marketed for games and in order to get decent game performance on PC, you need to spend a considerable pile of cash. You can get TWO game consoles, a Play Station and an Xbox for less than the Mac mini. There is no way your lowball PC will play games with only $65 video system.
...more user-accessible...
Who is saying to throw the computer away? If you bought a $3500 plasma TV and it went on the blink, you'd also have a hard time servicing it unless you have significant electronics skills. Unlike the laptop, getting your mitts into the TV could get you electrocuted. Take your dead laptop to a professional service guy, just as most people take their new modern cars to someone who knows how to deal with it. I see no reason why a manufacturer has to make it easy for an amateur to screw around with the equipment and then if something bad happens and the duffer gets hurt, get sued yet on top of it all. Most technology has become too complex for ordinary consumers to be able to fix it. The days of the ordinary, simple to fix cars and other consumer devices have gone, for better or worse. Most cheap consumer gadgets are simply thrown away and replaced with newer, fancier ones and the more costlier ones must be serviced by professionals who know what they are doing and have the proper tools.
...Then Congress will step in and take care of that...
Indeed, just like they did with DMCA. Republicrats and Democans can all be purchased for the proper amount of bribes. Of course it is not called a bribe, but campaign contributions. The entertainment companies have a lot of money, but then do the technology companies. The outcome may be determined by which is able or willing to buy more legislators. What the public wants or needs will not be considered, just as it was not when the DMCA was enacted.
...Business models have a lot to do with everything...
It has nothing to do whatsoever with any business model. It is simply this: If I make a product or service, and someone uses it to do something illegal, can I be held responsible for their bad behavior? I hope the court says a resounding NO, just as it did 20 years ago when the same issue came up with the VCR. The phone company is not liable if someone plans a murder using the phone, so why should those that provide the software to send files over those same wires be held responsible for the illegal activity of the users?
These short sighted content providers have whined EVERY time, from the player piano onward, when a new technology came along until they figured out how to make billions from the new technologies. 20 years from now, these same plaintiffs will likely have figured out how to make even more money using the new technology than they ever dreamed of. If they had prevailed 20 years ago, they would not make a fraction of the amount of money they make today. Why is it that these guys cannot learn from history?
...Whats the upgrade path of a Mac mini?...
/.ers has grasped the idea that a computer is just another consumer appliance, which consumers expect to work as advertised. So if you want to "upgrade", just go out and buy a better model that does what you want. Sell the old one or give it away to someone less fortunate than you.
I can't understand why there is such an obsession with upgrading a computer? Nobody upgrades their other consumer electronics, so what's the big deal. If you want a better TV set, you don't upgrade the old one, nor the VCR, DVD player, stereo etc! The Mini and iMac is for the vast majority of ordinary consumers who could not care about upgradeability of their computer any more than the upgradeability of their refrigerator. Apple, unlike most
..slide the tray back in, screw the screw back in and voila...
How much thicker and heavier and uglier is that Dell? How long does its battery last? The iBook is, like most consumer elctronics today, not intended to be serviced by the user. When was the last time you upgraded your TV, VCR, CD or DVD player? The higher priced Powerbook is upgradeable by anyone reasonably skilled. I have a 250G external drive connected to my Ti PB when I use it at home with an added monitor. I keep only the files I think I might need while on the road on the internal HD. My iPod doesn't take up that much extra space in the PBooks case either.
...My process has always been one of upgrade...
So throw out your old big, noisy Windoes box and UPGRADE to a small, quiet Mini. By the time you do all the upgrading you are taking about you will have spent as much or more, especially if your time is worth even minimum wages, than what the Mini costs. In the end you will still have a big, noisy, ugly PC box with a lot of outdated software. Guys like you would complain if Apple gave their computer away for free!
...Nor will Grandma see any benefit from using it to view pictures of her grandkids...
She might benefit if she wanted to see a VIDEO of her grandkids. She also might benefit if she doesn't have to worry about getting her computer infested by a wide variety of worms, trojans, viruses, spyware and other malware that continually plague Windows users unless they spend a lot extra money and time to have proper anti-virus software installed.
...10k in a 3% savings account...
Except inflation and taxes will mean your 13.5K will buy less than what the 10K buy today, especially your house.
...What's better than the OS X Finder....
Nothing really. I make aliases of all my often used folders and some apps that I don't want to keep in the dock because the dock already is pretty full. I keep the pointer to that special folder containing nothing but aliases right next to the trash in the dock. The icon of that special alias folder is also in the sidebar of all finder windows. Most of the time that window is already open on the desktop. This way I get a customized, easily updated, quick way to access all the things I use often, or in some cases not quite as often. I have arranged the icons in that folder in logical groups, as close together as possible.