....Don't tell me they're putting water in ice cream now?....
I was not referring to water, but to components of anti-freeze. I'm told that anti-freeze for cars tastes sweet. Feed some to your dog or cat some time and see what happens. A small amount of a related chemical in the ice cream allows manufacturers to make a smoother, creamier product without putting in anywhere near the amount of real, relatively expensive cream. Therefore such chemically adulterated ice-cream can sell for quite a bit less.
....but the FDA has been very slow to accept it as a sweetener....
Are you really so naive to think that the FDA still cares even a little about your health? They were given that function by Congress a long time ago. Now they, like so much of government, are in the pockets of the big corporations.
Do you really think that someone like Monsanto or whoever owns the patents on current non-sugar sweeteners would NOT be able to influence the FDA to prevent a cheaper, un-patentable natural substitute, such as stevia, to come on the market?
(...Preservatives are not intrinsically bad...)
True. Salt is a preservative and so is sugar. Yet too much of these can also be harmful. The general rule of a shorter ingredients list for any given food is good for your health. If you can buy ice cream or whatever, that doesn't have all the chemical additives, you'll be better off, even if it turns out that some of these chemicals are not yet established as being harmful. Sometimes it takes years to do this. How many years did the tobacco industry fight the notion that cigarettes are harmful to health? How about asbestos?
Meanwhile I am playing it safe, by avoiding chemically laced foods as much as possible.
....Or, you could spend a little bit of time to learn what the ingredient is......
Here is a test. Go to you friendly supermarket and look a BREYER brand vanilla ice cream. Now look at some of the other brands, particularly the inexpensive ones in the larger plastic containers. Check the Ingredient lists in both.
Now answer this: Which casts more? Which has a long ingredient list of a number of unpronounceable chemical names? Maybe less is more? Do you know what they put in car radiators? You'll find some of the same ingredients in many brands of ice cream.
Does calcium propionate or polysorbate 80 sound like something that comes out of a cow or grows naturally on a tree? Do you know why these are found in many foods? Oh, they are preservatives, are they? So what are these chemicals supposed to preserve the food from? Oh yeah, spoilage! Well now, what causes spoilage? Oh right, microorganisms. So then you will eat stuff that even primitive microorganisms won't. I hope you stay healthy to a ripe old age.
....do you know how many people died from food poisoning....
Do you know how many thousands of years people have lived on milk and other natural unadulterated foods? Even today, how many rural people in other lands keep milking and meat animals and DON'T get sick from eating natural unprocessed foods?
In mass production, it IS necessary to sterilize milk and other foods simply because the cleanliness and care required costs a lot. As soon as any mass food processor cuts corners to get a leg up on their competition, the incidence of such poisonings goes up. Since the government can't be on everybody's tail 100% of the time, they make blanket rules that work reasonably well, but at the cost of a product that is not what nature intended.
Much of the manufactured oils, starches and sugar have many, if not most essential trace nutrients refined out of them. Whole wheat flour doesn't keep on the shelf the way white refined flour does. White sugar doesn't contain any of the nutrients that nature put in the sugar cane. Notice the difference in cost of cheap, colored waffle syrup and real maple syrup.
If you really want to learn a little about natural nutrition, you can start here:
.....Still, I can't help but notice so many surprisingly large people out there on the streets.....
Most large Food companies are not interested in providing healthful foods, but only in their bottom line. Shelf life of their products is an important component of their ultimate profits. That's why our food supply is laced with preservative, hormones, pesticides residues and who knows what other artificial manmade chemical garbage.
One example: By laws passed by paid for politicians under the guise of health, milk as it comes naturally from cows, must be pasteurized and homogenized. Natural milk comes with enzymes that help digest it. These are ALL destroyed by heat.That's why there are so many lactose intolerant people. Milk without the needed enzymes IS hard to digest. Homogenization, used to keep the fat particles of the cream in suspension, breaks these fats into such small components, that many of them pass through the intestinal wall, right into the bloodstream. There they then clog arteries and make for heart attacks.
A simple rule to follow: The longer the ingredient list, the worse the item is for your health. If you can't pronounce or understand any ingredient name, don't buy the item.
an external USB HD in the luggage or a tiny keychain drive in a pocket. Most places with Intent access allow for any data to be accessed and downloaded after clearing the border. I don't think they'll be searching every laptop coming across the borders anyway. If they did try that, the congress-critters would likely have a thing to two to say about it, after getting squawks from too many voters.
...You don't get it! OS X is what makes Apple so awesome....
OSX by itself doesn't make Macs awesome. It's the total integration as a complete SYSTEM, hardware and software. Apple doesn't care to compete directly with MS. They build complete, integrated, products, such as computers, music players, cell phones and other finished plug and play electronic devices. The software, such as OSX is just happens to be an integral part of these clever gadgets, just as much as the processors or other components. Why should they sell one of their custom components to their competitors?
Apple is an electronic hardware manufacturer and MS is a software maker. MS is to computer makers, what Bosch is to car makers. Bosch supplies certain parts which car makers then build into their products. A precision Bosch made fuel injection pump, by itself, doesn't make a particular car that has one an awesome product. Apple doesn't sell computer parts to other computer makers.
Comparing their products is rather pointless. If Dell or any of the other hardware makers wanted to write their own super-duper, cool OS and have an integrated whole computer, like Apple has, there is nobody who would prevent them from doing that.
No, it be more like I can't or would not want to use the BMW to haul manure or rocks or whatever else is usually carried on a dump truck.
If you want to play games and merely be entertained get a PC. If you want to do productive, especially, creative work, get a Mac. If you simply want to PLAY content, a PC is great. An X-BOX or PS3 is even better for that and a lot cheaper. Most productively creative people making content use Macs, because Macs are better tools for doing that.
....It was your equipment, it was your account.....
Well, if someone is truly innocent, then the Feds, or even the **AA, after proper legal procedure, are welcome to image any computer drives and search for evidence to confirm or refute their suspicions. Since, in our case, they would not find anything, they would have to go look elsewhere.
It has been established in a number of court cases now, that an IP address identifies only the gateway or computer, not the person who uses that computer. For that the **AA has to actually show that an illegal copy was made. The copy that matters is not the one on the sending computer, but the one that receives and stores the infringing copy. If a person copies legally purchased content onto the HD of their computer, for their own convenience, there is nothing that **AA can do about that. If that HD happens to be publicly accessible, that doesn't violate the copyright law. It's only when someone other than the owner of the legally purchased copies actually makes a copy onto their computer, that there is a violation of the law by the person making such a copy. "Making available" is not a violation of any law, no matter how fervently the **AAs of this world wish to make it so and no matter how big an army of lawyers they employ. They may however, in the future, purchase enough of our finest politicians, to custom fabricate such a law.
(...The College I was working at refused...)
Outright refusal is different than simply not keeping, at least for any more than necessary time, if at all, any sort of identifying data. If the requested data doesn't exist, because it was never collected, or purged after it was no longer useful for the purpose it was gathered in the first place, then there can be no obstruction of justice.
I do not know whether there are any LAWS in the US that obligate a college or anyone else for that matter, to collect and keep identifying log-in data which originates with a particular computer. If not, then a college, ISP or anyone, can avoid a lot of hassle and expense, by simply not collecting, or at least not keeping for long, such personal data. I have read that in some countries, everyone must collect, keep and make available to the legal system such data for specified lengths of time. AFAIK, there are (yet) no such laws in the US.
We have a number of Macs here, both PPC and Intel based. They ALL sleep and wake without trouble. I must admit that for security, we encourage users to log off, or at least use fast user switching, before putting the Mac to sleep. Maybe that has something to do with our experience.
That's the whole problem; there is no comparable Dell, since Dell and all the others make only half of a computer, whereas Apple makes an integrated whole system. The fact that some hackers are going to a huge amount of trouble just to run Apple's vastly superior OSX, speaks volumes about the quality of an integrated approach that is the hallmark of every modern manufactured product, EXCEPT most computers.
Where do you by a car without a transmission or an engine, having to install these yourself? Cars come with permanent seat belts and airbags. Users don't have to pay extra to have these safety devices in their cars. Why do users have to pay extra to install anti-malware software and then pay forever to in effect RENT the computer equivalent of seat belts, air bags and strong locks that prevent the doors from flying open in a crash?
Good manufacturers generally make the critical parts of a product themselves or at least ensure that their suppliers are held to their own high standards of quality. Which PC maker has ever DARED to hold MS to any sort of standard of high quality or reliability. They all cow-tow to the likes Bill Gates and Ballmer and meekly accept the insecure, bug infested crap software MS shovels their way. Then, to make matters worse these computer makers add hard to get rid of trial garbage software that makes their products suck even more.
It is beyond my understanding why it is that computer and software makers get away with practices and so called EULAs that would get a manufacturer of any other modern good sued into oblivion or have every good government come down on such purveyors of crap like a ton of bricks. Apple isn't perfect, but their integrated, functional products are surely a lot closer to what manufacturers of other modern goods produce.
.....Otherwise, as far as I can see, the specs are identical....
There are many design features of Apple computers that don't show up on spec sheets. Mag-safe connectors, back-lit keyboards, guaranteed reliable sleep and wake, no malware and crap-ware, easy to remove programs since there is no stupid, arcane registry or uninstall program needed, lighter, thinner, stronger over all design. Dells just have that overall impression of cheapness whereas Apple products give the immediate impression of quality. Even the packaging of a new Apple products reflect this attention to detail. Also, Apple service and support is tops in the whole computer industry.
Apple is not for those whose first and often only consideration is price, but for those who do appreciate quality not evident in a raw spec sheet and are willing to pay a little extra for such quality.
....If it's ugly and it works, stick it under your desk....
The problem is that I have such an ugly PC under my desk. Unfortunately, it it is also ugly to the ears by making a lot of noise. Now that I have Windows on my Macbook, running virtually under OSX, that noisy abortion sees virtually no more use.
But that's the whole point. A computer is determined by its software AND it hardware. When the two are integrated, such as in Apples products, the sum is greater than its parts. That's why Apple makes better computers. They make the WHOLE system, not only half of it. If they were foolish enough to one again license out their software, they'd be in the same boat as MS. They'd have to support who knows how many different hardware designs.
....they've gone over and above what was promised...
When my what I thought was otherwise working, 4 year old ipod needed a new battery, I sent it in to Apple for that. What I got back was a newly re-furbished iPod of that model. With it was an explanation note, that after extensive testing, they determined that my old iPod was not meeting the original factory specs, even with a new battery. Like any other human endeavor, Apple may not be perfect, but they are orders of magnitude above others in the same game. Not all of Apple's profits go into Steve's pocket.
....In my experience Apple Care and tech support isn't all that great....
In this case YOU are the minority. I just got my Consumer Reports magazine for this month. They tabulated their data from about 10,000 computer owners. The support ratings for Apple are FAR superior than any other computer maker.
Apple has the highest, by far, support score for both laptops and desktop systems of 83 and 81% respectively. For comparison, HP is at the bottom of the list with only 48 and 47%. Dell is at 60 and 56%.
For workhorse laptops, Apples were also number one in over all satisfaction results turned in by these real world, non-geek computer users.
Maybe Apple does pad their prices a bit, as evidenced by their considerably better profits than the rest of the computer makers. In the end though, you get what you pay for. A backlit keyboard, mag-safe connector, motion sensor, flawless sleep and wake-up and freedom from malware, ie. over all attention to details of design, don't show up on spec sheets, but do add measurably to the computing experience for many people. Even the way Apple packages their products speaks of care and quality. You'd know this, if you have ever bought a new Apple product.
Did anyone hold a gun to your head or a knife to your throat and force you to buy a Mac? No? Well then why do you care if others ARE willing to spend whatever amount of money Apple asks for their goodies? You and others like you just want to have an Apple computer at Dell prices. I'd like a BMW at Honda Civic or Chevy prices. Too bad BMWs sell for so much. So I have to settle for a Honda or Chevy car and you settle for a Dell computer.
Apple makes a WHOLE computer, OS and all, unlike everybody else, which only makes half computers. If I were willing to work VERY hard, it might be possible to turn a Civic into a BMW, no? So, if you work very hard, your time being worth nothing anyway, you will probably, finally, at last, get Apple's OSX to run on your cheap-ass homemade box.
... or said College becomes responsible for the violations as the network operator...
So then there is a law that a college or any other ISP is responsible for their customer? If someone unknown uses our open WAP, does that make me an Internet provider, responsible to the **AA or anyone else?
It is very relevant, because if the **AA can't get their "making available" theory to hold up, their entire modus operandi of hauling people into court falls apart. They would have to sue the downloaders themselves, rather than anybody who has copyrighted works on their HD that just happens to be accessible on the Internet. Whoever downloads something, is the one who makes the copy, which then appears on the downloaders HD.
Even if The **AA gets the co-operation of the ISP, only the downloaders NAT/gateway can be identified. There can be a number of both known and unknown computers on any particular gateway and these computers in turn could have any number of persons actually responsible for the downloading. Anyone living in a populated place knows that there are numerous WAPs that can be accessed by anybody without any password or other security.
Those "agreements" are worth about as much or less than EULAs are. Clicking a mouse does NOT identify who clicked it nor whether such a clicker was of age to enter into any sort of agreement.
Someone can connect to one of the millions open WAPs and click away. There is no way to determine who it really was that did what at any time. All that the IP and MAC addresses do is to identify the COMPUTER, not the person responsible for its operation. Even that computer only identifying information is not available beyond the NAT/router gateway. If that gateway doesn't keep some sort of long term record, even the identity of the computers used is unavailable.
Most subscribers to an ISP get only one dynamically assigned IP address which then is usually shared wireless with a number of individual computers, both known and unknown. In cities, finding such open wireless networks is easy. Some people have inadvertently and unknowingly used their neighbors WAP for extended periods of time, even though they have their own subscription to an ISP. As long as there is no sure way to identify the actual users of the computers, the use of some IP or MAC address will always be ambiguous evidence.
....What they are saying, is they want these Colleges to force....
Is this forcing some kind of some kind of law or only the fervent wishes of the **AA? If it is not a federal law, can the colleges not just tell the **AA to go and pound sand? So then when the **AA sends their notice, the college can just honestly tell them they don't have nor keep that information on who uses the networks. As for MAC addresses, everybody knows that those can be fabricated at will.
...the end user is essentially breaking their terms with the company they are requesting data from....
If I request data from some random website, how can I have an agreement with them? If I listen to the radio, how do I have an agreement with a particular radio station? The internet is just as public as the air waves. Anyone who puts a web server up is no different tan a broadcaster. When I make a request of their server, I am in effect tuning in on their channel and receiving whatever they send.
The ISP interfering with this is like my neighbor setting up a transmitter and sending additional material to my receiver.
....During this time, the ISP exercises that contracted ability, and injects code into the packets...
If a carrier, phone or ISP, inspects the content of conversations or digital data, can they not be held liable for that content? If that content is illegal, such as someone planning a crime or digital data of forbidden porn, can they not be held liable for failing to prevent illegal activity? Traditionally carriers have not looked at or cared what data travelled over their wires and were therefore shielded from such liability.
If ISP now have the ability and use that ability to inspect the information and modify that information, could they then not become responsible for that information and be no longer immune to lawsuits? If that were to happen, ISPs would certainly forgo the inspections of data, rather than face huge lawsuits for taking or not taking action, based on the data flowing through their networks. They could even face criminal prosecution as accessories to crimes which they knew or should have known was happening, because they were inspecting the contents of all data.
If UPS or Fedex started opening all packages, could they then also be held responsible for not reporting illegal merchandise to the proper authorities?
If the messengers are inspecting all messages entrusted to them, and even worse, changing the message, do they then not become responsible for the message also? Messengers ought to never know or care about the contents of the messages they are paid to deliver.
....Can someone tell me whether Charter is inserting any ads?....
If an ISP or a phone company monitors the content of a transmission, don't they become responsible for the content? Does that mean they are no longer enjoy protection from lawsuits as carriers of information have had all these years? If someone plans a crime using the phone, the phone company is not held responsible, since they don't monitor the conversation. They only provide the channel.
If an ISP DOES monitor the information, they are doing more than providing merely a channel and could theoretically be held responsible for all content that traverses their lines. If that actually happened, ISPs would quickly back off from such hare-brained content inspection and modification schemes. Maybe some rich person can hire an army of lawyers to sue an ISP for allowing forbidden porn traverse their network. Maybe, even a state attorney can try to make a name for himself.
... The sad likelihood is that IP's will become tied to our identities...
How would this be enforced for a number of fixed computers as well as a number of unknown guests accessing the internet via our NAT/DHCP server and several WAPs without a password? It is my understanding that from the Internet, only one external IP address is shared by all of the internal computers. The DHCP server records are erased at least once each week and new addresses are assigned to all computers.
Slashdot Mirror
....Don't tell me they're putting water in ice cream now?....
I was not referring to water, but to components of anti-freeze. I'm told that anti-freeze for cars tastes sweet. Feed some to your dog or cat some time and see what happens. A small amount of a related chemical in the ice cream allows manufacturers to make a smoother, creamier product without putting in anywhere near the amount of real, relatively expensive cream. Therefore such chemically adulterated ice-cream can sell for quite a bit less.
....but the FDA has been very slow to accept it as a sweetener....
Are you really so naive to think that the FDA still cares even a little about your health? They were given that function by Congress a long time ago. Now they, like so much of government, are in the pockets of the big corporations.
Do you really think that someone like Monsanto or whoever owns the patents on current non-sugar sweeteners would NOT be able to influence the FDA to prevent a cheaper, un-patentable natural substitute, such as stevia, to come on the market?
(...Preservatives are not intrinsically bad...)
True. Salt is a preservative and so is sugar. Yet too much of these can also be harmful. The general rule of a shorter ingredients list for any given food is good for your health. If you can buy ice cream or whatever, that doesn't have all the chemical additives, you'll be better off, even if it turns out that some of these chemicals are not yet established as being harmful. Sometimes it takes years to do this. How many years did the tobacco industry fight the notion that cigarettes are harmful to health? How about asbestos?
Meanwhile I am playing it safe, by avoiding chemically laced foods as much as possible.
....Or, you could spend a little bit of time to learn what the ingredient is......
Here is a test. Go to you friendly supermarket and look a BREYER brand vanilla ice cream. Now look at some of the other brands, particularly the inexpensive ones in the larger plastic containers. Check the Ingredient lists in both.
Now answer this: Which casts more? Which has a long ingredient list of a number of unpronounceable chemical names? Maybe less is more? Do you know what they put in car radiators? You'll find some of the same ingredients in many brands of ice cream.
Does calcium propionate or polysorbate 80 sound like something that comes out of a cow or grows naturally on a tree? Do you know why these are found in many foods? Oh, they are preservatives, are they? So what are these chemicals supposed to preserve the food from? Oh yeah, spoilage! Well now, what causes spoilage? Oh right, microorganisms. So then you will eat stuff that even primitive microorganisms won't. I hope you stay healthy to a ripe old age.
....do you know how many people died from food poisoning....
Do you know how many thousands of years people have lived on milk and other natural unadulterated foods? Even today, how many rural people in other lands keep milking and meat animals and DON'T get sick from eating natural unprocessed foods?
In mass production, it IS necessary to sterilize milk and other foods simply because the cleanliness and care required costs a lot. As soon as any mass food processor cuts corners to get a leg up on their competition, the incidence of such poisonings goes up. Since the government can't be on everybody's tail 100% of the time, they make blanket rules that work reasonably well, but at the cost of a product that is not what nature intended.
Much of the manufactured oils, starches and sugar have many, if not most essential trace nutrients refined out of them. Whole wheat flour doesn't keep on the shelf the way white refined flour does. White sugar doesn't contain any of the nutrients that nature put in the sugar cane. Notice the difference in cost of cheap, colored waffle syrup and real maple syrup.
If you really want to learn a little about natural nutrition, you can start here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/
.....Still, I can't help but notice so many surprisingly large people out there on the streets.....
Most large Food companies are not interested in providing healthful foods, but only in their bottom line. Shelf life of their products is an important component of their ultimate profits. That's why our food supply is laced with preservative, hormones, pesticides residues and who knows what other artificial manmade chemical garbage.
One example: By laws passed by paid for politicians under the guise of health, milk as it comes naturally from cows, must be pasteurized and homogenized. Natural milk comes with enzymes that help digest it. These are ALL destroyed by heat.That's why there are so many lactose intolerant people. Milk without the needed enzymes IS hard to digest. Homogenization, used to keep the fat particles of the cream in suspension, breaks these fats into such small components, that many of them pass through the intestinal wall, right into the bloodstream. There they then clog arteries and make for heart attacks.
A simple rule to follow: The longer the ingredient list, the worse the item is for your health. If you can't pronounce or understand any ingredient name, don't buy the item.
....The easiest method would be to use....
an external USB HD in the luggage or a tiny keychain drive in a pocket. Most places with Intent access allow for any data to be accessed and downloaded after clearing the border. I don't think they'll be searching every laptop coming across the borders anyway. If they did try that, the congress-critters would likely have a thing to two to say about it, after getting squawks from too many voters.
...You don't get it! OS X is what makes Apple so awesome....
OSX by itself doesn't make Macs awesome. It's the total integration as a complete SYSTEM, hardware and software. Apple doesn't care to compete directly with MS. They build complete, integrated, products, such as computers, music players, cell phones and other finished plug and play electronic devices. The software, such as OSX is just happens to be an integral part of these clever gadgets, just as much as the processors or other components. Why should they sell one of their custom components to their competitors?
Apple is an electronic hardware manufacturer and MS is a software maker. MS is to computer makers, what Bosch is to car makers. Bosch supplies certain parts which car makers then build into their products. A precision Bosch made fuel injection pump, by itself, doesn't make a particular car that has one an awesome product. Apple doesn't sell computer parts to other computer makers.
Comparing their products is rather pointless. If Dell or any of the other hardware makers wanted to write their own super-duper, cool OS and have an integrated whole computer, like Apple has, there is nobody who would prevent them from doing that.
....it'd be like you can only drive the BMV....
No, it be more like I can't or would not want to use the BMW to haul manure or rocks or whatever else is usually carried on a dump truck.
If you want to play games and merely be entertained get a PC. If you want to do productive, especially, creative work, get a Mac. If you simply want to PLAY content, a PC is great. An X-BOX or PS3 is even better for that and a lot cheaper. Most productively creative people making content use Macs, because Macs are better tools for doing that.
....It was your equipment, it was your account.....
Well, if someone is truly innocent, then the Feds, or even the **AA, after proper legal procedure, are welcome to image any computer drives and search for evidence to confirm or refute their suspicions. Since, in our case, they would not find anything, they would have to go look elsewhere.
It has been established in a number of court cases now, that an IP address identifies only the gateway or computer, not the person who uses that computer. For that the **AA has to actually show that an illegal copy was made. The copy that matters is not the one on the sending computer, but the one that receives and stores the infringing copy. If a person copies legally purchased content onto the HD of their computer, for their own convenience, there is nothing that **AA can do about that. If that HD happens to be publicly accessible, that doesn't violate the copyright law. It's only when someone other than the owner of the legally purchased copies actually makes a copy onto their computer, that there is a violation of the law by the person making such a copy. "Making available" is not a violation of any law, no matter how fervently the **AAs of this world wish to make it so and no matter how big an army of lawyers they employ. They may however, in the future, purchase enough of our finest politicians, to custom fabricate such a law.
(...The College I was working at refused...)
Outright refusal is different than simply not keeping, at least for any more than necessary time, if at all, any sort of identifying data. If the requested data doesn't exist, because it was never collected, or purged after it was no longer useful for the purpose it was gathered in the first place, then there can be no obstruction of justice.
I do not know whether there are any LAWS in the US that obligate a college or anyone else for that matter, to collect and keep identifying log-in data which originates with a particular computer. If not, then a college, ISP or anyone, can avoid a lot of hassle and expense, by simply not collecting, or at least not keeping for long, such personal data. I have read that in some countries, everyone must collect, keep and make available to the legal system such data for specified lengths of time. AFAIK, there are (yet) no such laws in the US.
We have a number of Macs here, both PPC and Intel based. They ALL sleep and wake without trouble. I must admit that for security, we encourage users to log off, or at least use fast user switching, before putting the Mac to sleep. Maybe that has something to do with our experience.
....we should configure a comparable Dell....
That's the whole problem; there is no comparable Dell, since Dell and all the others make only half of a computer, whereas Apple makes an integrated whole system. The fact that some hackers are going to a huge amount of trouble just to run Apple's vastly superior OSX, speaks volumes about the quality of an integrated approach that is the hallmark of every modern manufactured product, EXCEPT most computers.
Where do you by a car without a transmission or an engine, having to install these yourself? Cars come with permanent seat belts and airbags. Users don't have to pay extra to have these safety devices in their cars. Why do users have to pay extra to install anti-malware software and then pay forever to in effect RENT the computer equivalent of seat belts, air bags and strong locks that prevent the doors from flying open in a crash?
Good manufacturers generally make the critical parts of a product themselves or at least ensure that their suppliers are held to their own high standards of quality. Which PC maker has ever DARED to hold MS to any sort of standard of high quality or reliability. They all cow-tow to the likes Bill Gates and Ballmer and meekly accept the insecure, bug infested crap software MS shovels their way. Then, to make matters worse these computer makers add hard to get rid of trial garbage software that makes their products suck even more.
It is beyond my understanding why it is that computer and software makers get away with practices and so called EULAs that would get a manufacturer of any other modern good sued into oblivion or have every good government come down on such purveyors of crap like a ton of bricks. Apple isn't perfect, but their integrated, functional products are surely a lot closer to what manufacturers of other modern goods produce.
.....Otherwise, as far as I can see, the specs are identical....
There are many design features of Apple computers that don't show up on spec sheets. Mag-safe connectors, back-lit keyboards, guaranteed reliable sleep and wake, no malware and crap-ware, easy to remove programs since there is no stupid, arcane registry or uninstall program needed, lighter, thinner, stronger over all design. Dells just have that overall impression of cheapness whereas Apple products give the immediate impression of quality. Even the packaging of a new Apple products reflect this attention to detail. Also, Apple service and support is tops in the whole computer industry.
Apple is not for those whose first and often only consideration is price, but for those who do appreciate quality not evident in a raw spec sheet and are willing to pay a little extra for such quality.
....If it's ugly and it works, stick it under your desk ....
The problem is that I have such an ugly PC under my desk. Unfortunately, it it is also ugly to the ears by making a lot of noise. Now that I have Windows on my Macbook, running virtually under OSX, that noisy abortion sees virtually no more use.
....On equal footing, with the same software....
But that's the whole point. A computer is determined by its software AND it hardware. When the two are integrated, such as in Apples products, the sum is greater than its parts. That's why Apple makes better computers. They make the WHOLE system, not only half of it. If they were foolish enough to one again license out their software, they'd be in the same boat as MS. They'd have to support who knows how many different hardware designs.
....they've gone over and above what was promised...
When my what I thought was otherwise working, 4 year old ipod needed a new battery, I sent it in to Apple for that. What I got back was a newly re-furbished iPod of that model. With it was an explanation note, that after extensive testing, they determined that my old iPod was not meeting the original factory specs, even with a new battery. Like any other human endeavor, Apple may not be perfect, but they are orders of magnitude above others in the same game. Not all of Apple's profits go into Steve's pocket.
....In my experience Apple Care and tech support isn't all that great....
In this case YOU are the minority. I just got my Consumer Reports magazine for this month. They tabulated their data from about 10,000 computer owners. The support ratings for Apple are FAR superior than any other computer maker.
Apple has the highest, by far, support score for both laptops and desktop systems of 83 and 81% respectively. For comparison, HP is at the bottom of the list with only 48 and 47%. Dell is at 60 and 56%.
For workhorse laptops, Apples were also number one in over all satisfaction results turned in by these real world, non-geek computer users.
Maybe Apple does pad their prices a bit, as evidenced by their considerably better profits than the rest of the computer makers. In the end though, you get what you pay for. A backlit keyboard, mag-safe connector, motion sensor, flawless sleep and wake-up and freedom from malware, ie. over all attention to details of design, don't show up on spec sheets, but do add measurably to the computing experience for many people. Even the way Apple packages their products speaks of care and quality. You'd know this, if you have ever bought a new Apple product.
....Apple hardware is NOT worth what it costs...
Did anyone hold a gun to your head or a knife to your throat and force you to buy a Mac? No? Well then why do you care if others ARE willing to spend whatever amount of money Apple asks for their goodies? You and others like you just want to have an Apple computer at Dell prices. I'd like a BMW at Honda Civic or Chevy prices. Too bad BMWs sell for so much. So I have to settle for a Honda or Chevy car and you settle for a Dell computer.
Apple makes a WHOLE computer, OS and all, unlike everybody else, which only makes half computers. If I were willing to work VERY hard, it might be possible to turn a Civic into a BMW, no? So, if you work very hard, your time being worth nothing anyway, you will probably, finally, at last, get Apple's OSX to run on your cheap-ass homemade box.
... or said College becomes responsible for the violations as the network operator...
So then there is a law that a college or any other ISP is responsible for their customer? If someone unknown uses our open WAP, does that make me an Internet provider, responsible to the **AA or anyone else?
....but thus far I haven't seen one.....
/. article on this here:
There was a
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/25/1952222&from=rss
It is very relevant, because if the **AA can't get their "making available" theory to hold up, their entire modus operandi of hauling people into court falls apart. They would have to sue the downloaders themselves, rather than anybody who has copyrighted works on their HD that just happens to be accessible on the Internet. Whoever downloads something, is the one who makes the copy, which then appears on the downloaders HD.
Even if The **AA gets the co-operation of the ISP, only the downloaders NAT/gateway can be identified. There can be a number of both known and unknown computers on any particular gateway and these computers in turn could have any number of persons actually responsible for the downloading. Anyone living in a populated place knows that there are numerous WAPs that can be accessed by anybody without any password or other security.
...or at least agree to the provider's terms....
Those "agreements" are worth about as much or less than EULAs are. Clicking a mouse does NOT identify who clicked it nor whether such a clicker was of age to enter into any sort of agreement.
Someone can connect to one of the millions open WAPs and click away. There is no way to determine who it really was that did what at any time. All that the IP and MAC addresses do is to identify the COMPUTER, not the person responsible for its operation. Even that computer only identifying information is not available beyond the NAT/router gateway. If that gateway doesn't keep some sort of long term record, even the identity of the computers used is unavailable.
Most subscribers to an ISP get only one dynamically assigned IP address which then is usually shared wireless with a number of individual computers, both known and unknown. In cities, finding such open wireless networks is easy. Some people have inadvertently and unknowingly used their neighbors WAP for extended periods of time, even though they have their own subscription to an ISP. As long as there is no sure way to identify the actual users of the computers, the use of some IP or MAC address will always be ambiguous evidence.
....What they are saying, is they want these Colleges to force ....
Is this forcing some kind of some kind of law or only the fervent wishes of the **AA? If it is not a federal law, can the colleges not just tell the **AA to go and pound sand? So then when the **AA sends their notice, the college can just honestly tell them they don't have nor keep that information on who uses the networks. As for MAC addresses, everybody knows that those can be fabricated at will.
...the end user is essentially breaking their terms with the company they are requesting data from....
If I request data from some random website, how can I have an agreement with them? If I listen to the radio, how do I have an agreement with a particular radio station? The internet is just as public as the air waves. Anyone who puts a web server up is no different tan a broadcaster. When I make a request of their server, I am in effect tuning in on their channel and receiving whatever they send.
The ISP interfering with this is like my neighbor setting up a transmitter and sending additional material to my receiver.
....During this time, the ISP exercises that contracted ability, and injects code into the packets...
If a carrier, phone or ISP, inspects the content of conversations or digital data, can they not be held liable for that content? If that content is illegal, such as someone planning a crime or digital data of forbidden porn, can they not be held liable for failing to prevent illegal activity? Traditionally carriers have not looked at or cared what data travelled over their wires and were therefore shielded from such liability.
If ISP now have the ability and use that ability to inspect the information and modify that information, could they then not become responsible for that information and be no longer immune to lawsuits? If that were to happen, ISPs would certainly forgo the inspections of data, rather than face huge lawsuits for taking or not taking action, based on the data flowing through their networks. They could even face criminal prosecution as accessories to crimes which they knew or should have known was happening, because they were inspecting the contents of all data.
If UPS or Fedex started opening all packages, could they then also be held responsible for not reporting illegal merchandise to the proper authorities?
If the messengers are inspecting all messages entrusted to them, and even worse, changing the message, do they then not become responsible for the message also? Messengers ought to never know or care about the contents of the messages they are paid to deliver.
....Can someone tell me whether Charter is inserting any ads?....
If an ISP or a phone company monitors the content of a transmission, don't they become responsible for the content? Does that mean they are no longer enjoy protection from lawsuits as carriers of information have had all these years? If someone plans a crime using the phone, the phone company is not held responsible, since they don't monitor the conversation. They only provide the channel.
If an ISP DOES monitor the information, they are doing more than providing merely a channel and could theoretically be held responsible for all content that traverses their lines. If that actually happened, ISPs would quickly back off from such hare-brained content inspection and modification schemes. Maybe some rich person can hire an army of lawyers to sue an ISP for allowing forbidden porn traverse their network. Maybe, even a state attorney can try to make a name for himself.
... The sad likelihood is that IP's will become tied to our identities ...
How would this be enforced for a number of fixed computers as well as a number of unknown guests accessing the internet via our NAT/DHCP server and several WAPs without a password? It is my understanding that from the Internet, only one external IP address is shared by all of the internal computers. The DHCP server records are erased at least once each week and new addresses are assigned to all computers.