....They are all, every one of them, physically unable to pay all their customers back their deposits should they request them.....
This principle applies not only to money, which of course is nothing more than another commodity. Many systems are set up this way. If everybody in town flushes their toilet at the same time, there isn't enough water. If everyone tries to use the phone at once most people get no dial tone. Even an airliner might crash if every passenger got up and went to the tail end of the plane.
So the banking system is just one of many that relies on law of averages which is not necessarily bad.
So the Americans are the debtor. Who is the creditor? What if the Americans just someday decide they cannot or don't want to pay their debt? When an individual cannot pay his/her debt, the creditor is ultimately left holding the bag, since we don't put people into debtors prison or sell them as slaves, like it was common a long time ago. When an individual cannot pay their mortgage or car loan the lose these. What will the creditors take from the Americans as a whole if the nation as a whole cannot or will not pay whoever these creditors are?
It is interesting, but in ancient Israel of biblical times they had a system whereby all debts had to be cancelled every 49 years. I guess it would have been hard to get a loan in the 48th year!
Since you mention coffee in a thread concerning money, is interesting to me. In Germany, after WW2, real coffee beans functioned for a time as money. My grandmother told me they were able to get their entire winter's supply of fuel to heat their house for one pound of coffee beans. A relative had sent a care package from the USA which among other things contained a few pounds of coffee. My grandparents were able to "buy" other things the needed for the remainder. Working light bulbs and radio tubes, can you imagine, were also quite useable as "money"!
Which is managed by whom? Politicians, presidents, prime ministers, kings, emperors and whatever else they may be called are only like puppets on a string. The puppets are controlled by whoever controls the value of a commodity which a large number of people have agreed upon to use as a barter intermediary. We commonly call this intermediary commodity "money". In the USA we have given it the name "dollar" which stems back to thaler, disk of metal or other substance. Like every other commodity, its value is determined by how much of it exists or can be obtained for a given amount of effort.
When the agreed upon barter commodity takes little or no effort to make or obtain, such as our present "money", the those few people who do control how much of it exists have more control than all political creatures we vote on or who proclaim themselves as dictators, put together.
When the barter commodity is controlled by a natural scarcity, ie. it takes a relatively large human effort to obtain it, anybody can go out and labor for a given amount of time to obtain some of this barter commodity. That means the ultimate control power is taken away from just a select few and given back to anyone willing to put in whatever effort it takes to obtain a given amount of it or someone who manages to collect a large hoard of it.
A barter commodity of intrinsic scarcity has to be durable, compact, widely distributed, difficult to alter or dilute, easily recognizable and measurable. For centuries that yellow metal GOLD has met and still meets this requirement. There is still plenty of gold in the crust of the Earth, but is takes a large effort to obtain some. If an ounce of gold could be bartered for a nice big house, you'd see a resurgence of people heading to the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada and other places where they used to dig or pan gold out the earth.
No, I would rather have the device that I can use without fear. I would rather have a device that I do not have to waste money purchasing all sorts of "security software", most of which has not prevented the incredible epidemic of infected Windows computers. I want a computing device and especially one as crucial as a phone, to be as secure by design as it is humanly possible to make. Security has to be built and not added on. I do not want a device upon which any Tom Dick and Harry can install any program on that they wish. I want a device, where new software can only come from a secure trusted source and not from any dark corner of the Internet. Anyone who jail breaks their iPhone apparently does not care that much about such things.
And what is the mantra that is usually trotted out here on/. as to why this is so? This is not always something along the lines of "these systems have such a small market share" BS? Is it possible that in five years from today, the number of iPhones may far exceed the number of Windows computers? The iPhone is a relatively small, personal device which many people will want and can afford. The cell phone market as a whole is far larger than the computer market in terms of units sold. I can see where the miscreants of this world who write software vermin, we'll make very strenuous efforts to reach such a huge installed base. Therefore, Apple has put certain security measures into place to prevent this from happening.
If hackers circumvent the security, so that any software at all can be installed, then it is very likely that these hacked phones could be plagued by the same sort of malware that infests countless Windows machines today. When that happens, there will be a huge hue and cry against Apple. We will read about millions of iPhones being infested with viruses, spyware, adware and who knows what other digital flotsam. The fact that this happened only to jail broken iPhones will of course not be mentioned by Apple's detractors.
...I think the only reason we didn't have mass compromise of iPhones is because no-one was willing to go to that much effort for such an unimportant target....
Of course the only important targets in the whole wide world are computers running Windows. All other computers by definition are unimportant and inconsequential. That includes Macs, iPhones and Linux systems. The fact that Apple sold one million of these little gadgets in the first weekend means absolutely nothing.
The fact that there are millions of Macs and iPhones out there, none of which are infected and spewing out billions of spam messages or harassing their users with countless ads, means of course also absolutely nothing.
...There's risk in jailbreaking one of these things sure and most with the savvy...
What about your grandmother or the millions like her who are not as savvy as you and most/.ers? They will have to clog up their iPhones with performance and battery sucking anti-malware crap just as they must do now in the Windows world. Maybe the word punishment is a little bit severe. Maybe had would be better to say that someone who jailed breaks the iPhone is highly likely to reap a malware infested device.
....How exactly is my identity going to be stolen off of my phone....
The iPhone is a computer is it not? How do identities get stolen from who knows how many Windows PCs very year? If the iPhone allows unsigned insecure software to be loaded, written by anyone between here and China, how will it be any different?
.....And maybe you don't want to go through the Apple content approval system.....
That content approval system is not a minor afterthought from Apple. It prevents the miscreants of this world from doing to the millions of iPhones what they have done and still are doing to millions of Windows computers all over the world. Malware writers on the iPhone could not only steal your identity, but also keep track of your every move. I think every jail-broken iPhone should get at least one good piece malware as a just punishment for screwing around with a perfectly good, very secure product. I suppose the anti-virus companies are already rubbing their hands with glee as they smell the money of another huge market for their garbage.
would still not bee as bad as virus infested device. If any software can be installed, that would include worms and viruses also. Who in his right mind would want a phone like that? I am glad that the normal phones that Apple sells are locked down so that malware will not be a problem. I wish those who have a jail broken phone lots of luck to NOT get all sorts of worms, spyware and other digital vermin such as all Windows PCs get.
maybe for people only. The land around Chernobyl is apparently teeming with wildlife. Dump the nuclear waste in a wildlife sanctuary and put up signs for people to keep out.
....You'd think a species advanced enough to master interstellar travel....
would be immune to radiation. There is a lot more radiation in space than in a measly little nuclear wast dump.
Besides that, even today, the majority of radioactive material that would have ended up in a waste dump 50 years ago, is recycled into more fuel and other useful things. In 1000 years, places like Yucca Mountain and other garbage dumps may mined for scarce resources.
....How many Vista botnets zombies have you heard about?....
Since I am primarily a Mac user, although I also use Windows XP, I do not keep track of how many or the latest viruses, Trojans, spyware and other such crap available for all versions of Windows. I assume you know how to use Google. As outlined in one article, VISTA had malware out in the wilds of the Internet on the very day it was launched.
I have loaded VISTA onto one of my PCs, just to see what it was all about. He even after SP1 it is still slow and the UAC is most annoying. It does look cool though. I will definitely stay with XP until the day comes when I need to use a program that is not available for the Mac which will also not run on XP. From what I've been reading on the web and in various blogs, that day will be a long time in coming.
That also means that there will be plenty of Windows computers to become botnet slaves for the foreseeable future. The biggest security feature of the Mac is that it is hard to write viable malware compared to Windows. The malware contests of the future will be won not by the most numerous computers, but are the ones for which it is easiest to get such garbage to execute and if possible propagate easily.
From what I have read, all flavors of Windows are easier to get into, including VISTA than a Mac. One reason for this is that Microsoft has not been able to convince ALL developers to only write programs that do not require administrator privileges. If there is even one program that a user wishes to run, which will not do so unless that user runs as an administrator, makes such a computer significantly less secure. I do not know of a single program for the Mac, which requires a user to be administrator in order for that program to run. Until that changes, VISTA will bear the brunt of malware attacks in the future.
...Unless it's a very strategically beaten point....
I guess having a computer system that is free from viruses and other nasty stuff is not strategic to you. I suppose having a system that has to be continually updated with expensive and performance robbing antivirus and anti-spyware software is not strategic either. All the other features you mentioned in your original post are useless if they have to be traded for a system that is slowed down to half speed or less by malware or performance sucking programs to guard against such. Besides, I was not trying to win an argument. In fact I agree with you many points of your original post. Apple is not perfect or without flaws. To me at least, being forced to spend money and/or time to guard against various kinds of malware, outweighs most of the things that you mentioned that could be problems with Macs.
.....Apple also has a history of marking up components much higher than the identical component could be purchased online.....
I certainly agree with that. The Germans have a saying which roughly translated is: "They take it from living, because it is impossible to get anything from the dead".
There are plenty of people in this world, though probably not on/., who are scared to death of cracking open and looking inside of a computer case. These are the folks to which Apple can sell expensive, otherwise easily installed upgrades. These are the type of people who will call the AAA towing service to change a flat tire.
Finding and downloading extra software is definitely more work, taking time, which for many people is money. Comparing any Windows content creation program that Microsoft might have included, with the equivalent Apple offerings is laughable.
There is no way you are going to buy a laptop for example, from Dell, for the price of the top-of-the-line Macbook. Do they even offer a FireWire connection?
None of the all in one PC computers having similar features to the iMac or any less expensive. Anyone purchasing a computer that will be used at least some of the time to create content, video or audio, would be a fool to buy a VISTA system. Anyone serious about playing games would be a fool to buy a Macintosh. Anyone just wanting to surf the net and get their e-mail could probably get by quite well with a rock-bottom priced box running VISTA or possibly Linux.
...the PC is still the winner when it comes to how much you can do with it for the price....
Baloney! Try this:
Get a video camera (say a Sony) with say a 20-40 minute video you or a friend made. Plug this camera into your computer. Most likely you won't find a place to connect it, because most video cameras use firewire.
Now edit this video down to exactly 10 minutes, adding a few transitions, titles and a few effects. Then produce a DVD with Titles and Chapters. After that convert your magnum opus and upload it to youtube for all the world to enjoy.
The conditions though for all that is that you may not buy or download any extra software, but must only use the PC as you get it from the manufacturer.
Any Mac, even the inexpensive mini will do all that OUT OF THE BOX.
Of course, if you are only a consumer, rather than at times a creator of content, you would not care about all this.
...Apple products are more expensive for a reason,...
Yes they are, because they are generally better. We have been using both Apple stuff and all sorts of other brand PCs. Apple consistently is better, mostly because of their superior software. Since they buy most components from the same sources that other reputable makers obtain them, hardware of about equal specs will not be too much different in reliability. They do give consistently better service than the others when something does need to get fixed. Just as Consumer Reports.
....Hear about how 10.5 Leopard has been out less time and has 20x the security flaws than Vista?......
Hear about the 23500 botnet zombies running OSX?
You haven't? Well neither have I, because there's not even ONE such zombied Mac of *any* version of MAC OSX. Who cares how many theoretical OSX vulnerabilities the sellers of Windows security software come up with! Until the FIRST 1000 or 2000 zombied Macs used to spew forth spam and steal identities etc. come online, ALL such dire security scare mongering will fall on deaf ears and tightly shut wallets of Mac users. The scare-mongering purveyors of Mac versions of Windows anti-virus crapware have not been successful at leaching money out of Mac owners pockets.
Meanwhile, there are still millions of spams clogging the internet, all going forth from actual, real, not theoretical, Windows systems ONLY; Not a single, lonely Mac among them!
..If there's ever that lightning strike that causes the lights to flicker, the internet always "goes down"..
We solved out power problems with a continuously converting, regulating, 1.5KVA UPS. It will regulate the output to 120V even when to input power varies from 90-147V. All equipment runs from this, except for the laser printer. Lightning and other disturbances are totally ignored by all systems running from that power source.
But is any government nothing more than a group of people? It is not necessary to go back in history to see that goodness and freedom are in the minority. Tally up how many governments there are today, that allow the ordinary population under each government to live in freedom. Even the people of the USA are much less free than even only 50-60 years ago. Are the people of China free? How many countries are less free than even the US still is today, the erstwhile land of the free and home of the brave?
In the many countries where the Moslems are in control, there is no freedom to be of another religion.
(...Slavery has been abolished...)
A certain form of slavery has been abolished in most countries, especially in the western nations. Is heavy debt not also a form of slavery? A person who is afraid of changing or losing his/her job because of massive debt is not a slave in a way? The government even changed bankruptcy rules to ensure the debt slaves are not as easily emancipated.
(..logic and philosophy formalized into mathematics and science..)
In earlier centuries, people believed in some sort of power outside of humanity, some kind of god whom they could either please are displease by their behavior. Modern scientific philosophy has abolished this idea and placed man at the center, responsible only to himself. The teaching is that man is basically a cosmic accident without a higher purpose or meaning.
The postmodern scientific philosophy challenges the very idea of the existence of truth. If there is no truth, then there is no falsehood and if there's no falsehood there is no evil. The logical outgrowth of all of this is exactly what Mao, of the former communist leader of China said: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun"
(..Humans do well when they turn on those who would exploit them..)
Turning aside tyranny is called revolution. It has always been a difficult and bloody process to get rid of tyranny, regardless of whether it was embodied in a single individual or in a group. The rich and the powerful have always managed to exploit their fellow human beings. In former times these people were generally individuals embodied in the term "royalty". today they are embodied in faceless groups of people called "corporations". In this sense these have achieved immortality, something the old royalty did not accomplish.
Voting is meaningless sham in a system where only those who are blessed with money or supported by those with money can be elected to office.
...But I'd also think that you'd have to have at least a smidgin of evidence that someone was using your unsecured network......
I'd think that the accusers who have nothing more than an IP address would need to have at least a smidgin of evidence that the computer(s) of the owner of the unsecured WAP had evidence of the illegal content. A search through the computers regularly on that network should come up with evidence that it was not some random outsider. The possession of the IP address only, by the **AAs apparently is no longer enough to prove copyright law violations. They have to have more evidence than that to prove their accusations. It has been and still is up to the accusers to prove their case, rather than the accused having to prove their innocence.
That theory makes the assumption that the people that lived in those days were so stupid or ignorant, that they could not tell the difference between a year and a month. Do you really believe THAT?
We have plenty of evidence that even the earliest civilizations of humans had a surprising knowledge of the workings of celestial objects. All of the really ancient calendars we know about divided a year into exactly 360 days.
There is really no translation error, since the Hebrew words for year and month are quite distinct and cannot be confused even by a beginning Hebrew student. I wonder how it is that ignorant people come up with such outlandish theories! In order for any language to work, words have to have meaning. This is also true of the languages wherein the Bible was originally written.
How do people who study these ancient texts determine historical accounts and differentiate them from fiction? Are people who spend their lives studying these things not able to tell the difference?
I happen to believe that a God who is able to create the entire universe and all life forms within it from absolutely nothing, would be able to communicate truth to any intelligent beings, including humanity. I also happen to believe in the law of cause and effect. The universe and everything in it must have a cause which itself must be uncaused, eternal, outside of time and space, matter and energy, which appeared at the so-called Big Bang. The Bible is the only book that describes such a transcendent being as the eternally self-existent "I am" God. All other religions or philosophies place God into or as part of this time space universe we find ourselves in.
Slashdot Mirror
....They are all, every one of them, physically unable to pay all their customers back their deposits should they request them.....
This principle applies not only to money, which of course is nothing more than another commodity. Many systems are set up this way. If everybody in town flushes their toilet at the same time, there isn't enough water. If everyone tries to use the phone at once most people get no dial tone. Even an airliner might crash if every passenger got up and went to the tail end of the plane.
So the banking system is just one of many that relies on law of averages which is not necessarily bad.
....a lifetime of unpayable debt....
So the Americans are the debtor. Who is the creditor? What if the Americans just someday decide they cannot or don't want to pay their debt? When an individual cannot pay his/her debt, the creditor is ultimately left holding the bag, since we don't put people into debtors prison or sell them as slaves, like it was common a long time ago. When an individual cannot pay their mortgage or car loan the lose these. What will the creditors take from the Americans as a whole if the nation as a whole cannot or will not pay whoever these creditors are?
It is interesting, but in ancient Israel of biblical times they had a system whereby all debts had to be cancelled every 49 years. I guess it would have been hard to get a loan in the 48th year!
...I think you need some coffee....
Since you mention coffee in a thread concerning money, is interesting to me. In Germany, after WW2, real coffee beans functioned for a time as money. My grandmother told me they were able to get their entire winter's supply of fuel to heat their house for one pound of coffee beans. A relative had sent a care package from the USA which among other things contained a few pounds of coffee. My grandparents were able to "buy" other things the needed for the remainder. Working light bulbs and radio tubes, can you imagine, were also quite useable as "money"!
....money is managed by the Fed....
Which is managed by whom? Politicians, presidents, prime ministers, kings, emperors and whatever else they may be called are only like puppets on a string. The puppets are controlled by whoever controls the value of a commodity which a large number of people have agreed upon to use as a barter intermediary. We commonly call this intermediary commodity "money". In the USA we have given it the name "dollar" which stems back to thaler, disk of metal or other substance. Like every other commodity, its value is determined by how much of it exists or can be obtained for a given amount of effort.
When the agreed upon barter commodity takes little or no effort to make or obtain, such as our present "money", the those few people who do control how much of it exists have more control than all political creatures we vote on or who proclaim themselves as dictators, put together.
When the barter commodity is controlled by a natural scarcity, ie. it takes a relatively large human effort to obtain it, anybody can go out and labor for a given amount of time to obtain some of this barter commodity. That means the ultimate control power is taken away from just a select few and given back to anyone willing to put in whatever effort it takes to obtain a given amount of it or someone who manages to collect a large hoard of it.
A barter commodity of intrinsic scarcity has to be durable, compact, widely distributed, difficult to alter or dilute, easily recognizable and measurable. For centuries that yellow metal GOLD has met and still meets this requirement. There is still plenty of gold in the crust of the Earth, but is takes a large effort to obtain some. If an ounce of gold could be bartered for a nice big house, you'd see a resurgence of people heading to the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada and other places where they used to dig or pan gold out the earth.
....rather be in a jail....
No, I would rather have the device that I can use without fear. I would rather have a device that I do not have to waste money purchasing all sorts of "security software", most of which has not prevented the incredible epidemic of infected Windows computers. I want a computing device and especially one as crucial as a phone, to be as secure by design as it is humanly possible to make. Security has to be built and not added on. I do not want a device upon which any Tom Dick and Harry can install any program on that they wish. I want a device, where new software can only come from a secure trusted source and not from any dark corner of the Internet. Anyone who jail breaks their iPhone apparently does not care that much about such things.
....and look at how virus infested those are.....
And what is the mantra that is usually trotted out here on /. as to why this is so? This is not always something along the lines of "these systems have such a small market share" BS? Is it possible that in five years from today, the number of iPhones may far exceed the number of Windows computers? The iPhone is a relatively small, personal device which many people will want and can afford. The cell phone market as a whole is far larger than the computer market in terms of units sold. I can see where the miscreants of this world who write software vermin, we'll make very strenuous efforts to reach such a huge installed base. Therefore, Apple has put certain security measures into place to prevent this from happening.
If hackers circumvent the security, so that any software at all can be installed, then it is very likely that these hacked phones could be plagued by the same sort of malware that infests countless Windows machines today. When that happens, there will be a huge hue and cry against Apple. We will read about millions of iPhones being infested with viruses, spyware, adware and who knows what other digital flotsam. The fact that this happened only to jail broken iPhones will of course not be mentioned by Apple's detractors.
...I think the only reason we didn't have mass compromise of iPhones is because no-one was willing to go to that much effort for such an unimportant target....
Of course the only important targets in the whole wide world are computers running Windows. All other computers by definition are unimportant and inconsequential. That includes Macs, iPhones and Linux systems. The fact that Apple sold one million of these little gadgets in the first weekend means absolutely nothing.
The fact that there are millions of Macs and iPhones out there, none of which are infected and spewing out billions of spam messages or harassing their users with countless ads, means of course also absolutely nothing.
...There's risk in jailbreaking one of these things sure and most with the savvy...
What about your grandmother or the millions like her who are not as savvy as you and most /.ers? They will have to clog up their iPhones with performance and battery sucking anti-malware crap just as they must do now in the Windows world. Maybe the word punishment is a little bit severe. Maybe had would be better to say that someone who jailed breaks the iPhone is highly likely to reap a malware infested device.
....How exactly is my identity going to be stolen off of my phone....
The iPhone is a computer is it not? How do identities get stolen from who knows how many Windows PCs very year? If the iPhone allows unsigned insecure software to be loaded, written by anyone between here and China, how will it be any different?
.....And maybe you don't want to go through the Apple content approval system.....
That content approval system is not a minor afterthought from Apple. It prevents the miscreants of this world from doing to the millions of iPhones what they have done and still are doing to millions of Windows computers all over the world. Malware writers on the iPhone could not only steal your identity, but also keep track of your every move. I think every jail-broken iPhone should get at least one good piece malware as a just punishment for screwing around with a perfectly good, very secure product. I suppose the anti-virus companies are already rubbing their hands with glee as they smell the money of another huge market for their garbage.
....an update that bricks your jailbroke phone...
would still not bee as bad as virus infested device. If any software can be installed, that would include worms and viruses also. Who in his right mind would want a phone like that? I am glad that the normal phones that Apple sells are locked down so that malware will not be a problem. I wish those who have a jail broken phone lots of luck to NOT get all sorts of worms, spyware and other digital vermin such as all Windows PCs get.
...which would render land uninhabitable....
maybe for people only. The land around Chernobyl is apparently teeming with wildlife. Dump the nuclear waste in a wildlife sanctuary and put up signs for people to keep out.
the sign should say; NEVER MIND THE DOG beware of owner
....You'd think a species advanced enough to master interstellar travel ....
would be immune to radiation. There is a lot more radiation in space than in a measly little nuclear wast dump.
Besides that, even today, the majority of radioactive material that would have ended up in a waste dump 50 years ago, is recycled into more fuel and other useful things. In 1000 years, places like Yucca Mountain and other garbage dumps may mined for scarce resources.
....How many Vista botnets zombies have you heard about?....
Since I am primarily a Mac user, although I also use Windows XP, I do not keep track of how many or the latest viruses, Trojans, spyware and other such crap available for all versions of Windows. I assume you know how to use Google. As outlined in one article, VISTA had malware out in the wilds of the Internet on the very day it was launched.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005542
I have loaded VISTA onto one of my PCs, just to see what it was all about. He even after SP1 it is still slow and the UAC is most annoying. It does look cool though. I will definitely stay with XP until the day comes when I need to use a program that is not available for the Mac which will also not run on XP. From what I've been reading on the web and in various blogs, that day will be a long time in coming.
That also means that there will be plenty of Windows computers to become botnet slaves for the foreseeable future. The biggest security feature of the Mac is that it is hard to write viable malware compared to Windows. The malware contests of the future will be won not by the most numerous computers, but are the ones for which it is easiest to get such garbage to execute and if possible propagate easily.
From what I have read, all flavors of Windows are easier to get into, including VISTA than a Mac. One reason for this is that Microsoft has not been able to convince ALL developers to only write programs that do not require administrator privileges. If there is even one program that a user wishes to run, which will not do so unless that user runs as an administrator, makes such a computer significantly less secure. I do not know of a single program for the Mac, which requires a user to be administrator in order for that program to run. Until that changes, VISTA will bear the brunt of malware attacks in the future.
...Unless it's a very strategically beaten point....
I guess having a computer system that is free from viruses and other nasty stuff is not strategic to you. I suppose having a system that has to be continually updated with expensive and performance robbing antivirus and anti-spyware software is not strategic either. All the other features you mentioned in your original post are useless if they have to be traded for a system that is slowed down to half speed or less by malware or performance sucking programs to guard against such. Besides, I was not trying to win an argument. In fact I agree with you many points of your original post. Apple is not perfect or without flaws. To me at least, being forced to spend money and/or time to guard against various kinds of malware, outweighs most of the things that you mentioned that could be problems with Macs.
.....Apple also has a history of marking up components much higher than the identical component could be purchased online.....
I certainly agree with that. The Germans have a saying which roughly translated is: "They take it from living, because it is impossible to get anything from the dead".
There are plenty of people in this world, though probably not on /., who are scared to death of cracking open and looking inside of a computer case. These are the folks to which Apple can sell expensive, otherwise easily installed upgrades. These are the type of people who will call the AAA towing service to change a flat tire.
...Well, that's a rather silly condition....
Finding and downloading extra software is definitely more work, taking time, which for many people is money. Comparing any Windows content creation program that Microsoft might have included, with the equivalent Apple offerings is laughable.
There is no way you are going to buy a laptop for example, from Dell, for the price of the top-of-the-line Macbook. Do they even offer a FireWire connection?
None of the all in one PC computers having similar features to the iMac or any less expensive. Anyone purchasing a computer that will be used at least some of the time to create content, video or audio, would be a fool to buy a VISTA system. Anyone serious about playing games would be a fool to buy a Macintosh. Anyone just wanting to surf the net and get their e-mail could probably get by quite well with a rock-bottom priced box running VISTA or possibly Linux.
...the PC is still the winner when it comes to how much you can do with it for the price....
Baloney! Try this:
Get a video camera (say a Sony) with say a 20-40 minute video you or a friend made. Plug this camera into your computer. Most likely you won't find a place to connect it, because most video cameras use firewire.
Now edit this video down to exactly 10 minutes, adding a few transitions, titles and a few effects. Then produce a DVD with Titles and Chapters. After that convert your magnum opus and upload it to youtube for all the world to enjoy.
The conditions though for all that is that you may not buy or download any extra software, but must only use the PC as you get it from the manufacturer.
Any Mac, even the inexpensive mini will do all that OUT OF THE BOX.
Of course, if you are only a consumer, rather than at times a creator of content, you would not care about all this.
...Apple products are more expensive for a reason,...
Yes they are, because they are generally better. We have been using both Apple stuff and all sorts of other brand PCs. Apple consistently is better, mostly because of their superior software. Since they buy most components from the same sources that other reputable makers obtain them, hardware of about equal specs will not be too much different in reliability. They do give consistently better service than the others when something does need to get fixed. Just as Consumer Reports.
....Hear about how 10.5 Leopard has been out less time and has 20x the security flaws than Vista?......
Hear about the 23500 botnet zombies running OSX?
You haven't? Well neither have I, because there's not even ONE such zombied Mac of *any* version of MAC OSX. Who cares how many theoretical OSX vulnerabilities the sellers of Windows security software come up with! Until the FIRST 1000 or 2000 zombied Macs used to spew forth spam and steal identities etc. come online, ALL such dire security scare mongering will fall on deaf ears and tightly shut wallets of Mac users. The scare-mongering purveyors of Mac versions of Windows anti-virus crapware have not been successful at leaching money out of Mac owners pockets.
Meanwhile, there are still millions of spams clogging the internet, all going forth from actual, real, not theoretical, Windows systems ONLY; Not a single, lonely Mac among them!
..If there's ever that lightning strike that causes the lights to flicker, the internet always "goes down"..
We solved out power problems with a continuously converting, regulating, 1.5KVA UPS. It will regulate the output to 120V even when to input power varies from 90-147V. All equipment runs from this, except for the laser printer. Lightning and other disturbances are totally ignored by all systems running from that power source.
....on the system of government in place.....
But is any government nothing more than a group of people? It is not necessary to go back in history to see that goodness and freedom are in the minority. Tally up how many governments there are today, that allow the ordinary population under each government to live in freedom. Even the people of the USA are much less free than even only 50-60 years ago. Are the people of China free? How many countries are less free than even the US still is today, the erstwhile land of the free and home of the brave?
In the many countries where the Moslems are in control, there is no freedom to be of another religion.
(...Slavery has been abolished...)
A certain form of slavery has been abolished in most countries, especially in the western nations. Is heavy debt not also a form of slavery? A person who is afraid of changing or losing his/her job because of massive debt is not a slave in a way? The government even changed bankruptcy rules to ensure the debt slaves are not as easily emancipated.
(..logic and philosophy formalized into mathematics and science ..)
In earlier centuries, people believed in some sort of power outside of humanity, some kind of god whom they could either please are displease by their behavior. Modern scientific philosophy has abolished this idea and placed man at the center, responsible only to himself. The teaching is that man is basically a cosmic accident without a higher purpose or meaning.
The postmodern scientific philosophy challenges the very idea of the existence of truth. If there is no truth, then there is no falsehood and if there's no falsehood there is no evil. The logical outgrowth of all of this is exactly what Mao, of the former communist leader of China said: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun"
(..Humans do well when they turn on those who would exploit them..)
Turning aside tyranny is called revolution. It has always been a difficult and bloody process to get rid of tyranny, regardless of whether it was embodied in a single individual or in a group. The rich and the powerful have always managed to exploit their fellow human beings. In former times these people were generally individuals embodied in the term "royalty". today they are embodied in faceless groups of people called "corporations". In this sense these have achieved immortality, something the old royalty did not accomplish.
Voting is meaningless sham in a system where only those who are blessed with money or supported by those with money can be elected to office.
...But I'd also think that you'd have to have at least a smidgin of evidence that someone was using your unsecured network......
I'd think that the accusers who have nothing more than an IP address would need to have at least a smidgin of evidence that the computer(s) of the owner of the unsecured WAP had evidence of the illegal content. A search through the computers regularly on that network should come up with evidence that it was not some random outsider. The possession of the IP address only, by the **AAs apparently is no longer enough to prove copyright law violations. They have to have more evidence than that to prove their accusations. It has been and still is up to the accusers to prove their case, rather than the accused having to prove their innocence.
....When you recalculate it with "moons" ...
That theory makes the assumption that the people that lived in those days were so stupid or ignorant, that they could not tell the difference between a year and a month. Do you really believe THAT?
We have plenty of evidence that even the earliest civilizations of humans had a surprising knowledge of the workings of celestial objects. All of the really ancient calendars we know about divided a year into exactly 360 days.
There is really no translation error, since the Hebrew words for year and month are quite distinct and cannot be confused even by a beginning Hebrew student. I wonder how it is that ignorant people come up with such outlandish theories! In order for any language to work, words have to have meaning. This is also true of the languages wherein the Bible was originally written.
How do people who study these ancient texts determine historical accounts and differentiate them from fiction? Are people who spend their lives studying these things not able to tell the difference?
I happen to believe that a God who is able to create the entire universe and all life forms within it from absolutely nothing, would be able to communicate truth to any intelligent beings, including humanity. I also happen to believe in the law of cause and effect. The universe and everything in it must have a cause which itself must be uncaused, eternal, outside of time and space, matter and energy, which appeared at the so-called Big Bang. The Bible is the only book that describes such a transcendent being as the eternally self-existent "I am" God. All other religions or philosophies place God into or as part of this time space universe we find ourselves in.