The black MacBook also comes with an extra 20GB of storage space (80GB standard in the block vs. 60GB standard in the white). This either explains the price difference or allows Apple to obscure the actual price premium for black, depending on how cynical you're feeling.
It's a fair point to comment that the evaluation of server stability compared a stable release of Linux against a development branch of FreeBSD that was not intended for production systems. One might make the case that it was fraudulent to compare the versions that they did, since it's unreasonable to expect stability or scalability out of a development branch that was undergoing significant overhaul and change at the time.
it was not until FreeBSD 5.21 that FreeBSD 5 was recommended for production systems.
Sounds like maybe "have" is a bit optimistic. From the site it looks like they may have a competing network at some undefined point in the future if they ever get around to building it in their spare time.
iTMS DRM is acceptable because it doesn't impact my usage of the media. I'm quite able to do all the things I expect and want to do with songs and videos I buy from the iTMS. So the DRM is just fine by me.
How is that a hard concept to grasp? It's a product I want at a fair price that arrives in a form which does everything I expect it to do.
I'll happily concede your point (well, except Apple likes saying "UNIX-based", not "UNIX-like") if you can explain to me why it matters at all.
The Open Group's attempts to keep the term UNIX as their Trademark is certainly not a technical issue, it's just a licensing issue -- they don't want to lose the revenue they get from controlling the term. From a technical, practical, and pragmatic perspective it has virtually no impact on an end user.
While I can't disagree with the facts behind your point, I sure don't understand from where you are drawing the frustration and vehemence you demonstrate over the issue. At least we do both agree that the subject is "stupidity."
With Linux, on the other hand, the vast majority of software is not only completely free, it's open source!
I'm sure you realize this, but 99% of that free, open source software you love so much is not Linux-specific. In fact, it compiles and runs just fine on a Mac exactly like it does on any Unix or Unix-like platform. Mac users hardly feel "stuck" with anything, since they can choose to use native OS X software (which sometimes costs money) or any of the open source software which you mistakenly think of as "Linux software." Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
It makes it difficult to work yourself into a froth of frustration, but the world isn't nearly as bipolar as you seem to believe it is. For open source to succeed it is not necessary for closed-source software to fail. Neither is the opposite true -- if open source software fails to increase in popularity it isn't necessarily the fault of the closed-source world.
Support open source all you want, but you'd be well-served by losing that ridiculous notion that "shunning closed, proprietary software" is doing anything at all to help open source software gain acceptance or improve.
Speaking as a developer who has code in FreeBSD which Apple is using, I couldn't disagree more. It would be horrible if the BSD license tried to enforce that sort of thing and I sure wouldn't have contributed my work to the project if it were under such a terrible license. You seem to think that I and the other BSD developers have been cheated, or that Apple has somehow done something we didn't expect and don't like. You couldn't be farther from the truth. When I produce open source code I want for it to be useful to as many people as possible. I want to contribute it for the world to use. I have no interest at all in wrapping it up in a restrictive license (like the GPL) that tries to make sure that it's only useful for other people who agree to use the same license I did.
I can't stand how the GPL is designed to "enforce freedom" which sounds like quite an oxymoron to me.
I could charge you money instead, but I'm altruistic and am telling you to pass on the favor...
But see, there's the problem. Many developers would prefer to be much more altruistic than that. When I write open source code I don't just want to restrict its usefulness to people who use just a single license. I want to maximize its utility to a much larger population. Thus the GPL is too restrictive for my tastes.
Releasing code to the public domain or using a BSD license helps all programmers. Releasing code under the GPL helps other programmers who are using the GPL. I'd rather see my code available to everyone else, too, like the apache developers and the x.org developers, and the mozilla developers, and yes even the Apple developers and the Microsoft folks.
In my mind, that's a whole lot more generous, altruistic, and (dare I say it?) *free* than the GPL which is a bit coercive in practice.
I believe you've missed his point. Namely, that "ALL the power" need not be the same amount of power that we currently permit the government to hold. The government has a monopoly on the use of force to extract taxes and redistribute wealth and in the absence of that, Corporations cannot assume the same degree of influence and control over our lives and wallets.
The only solution I've heard that makes any sense is very well-stated by Ron Paul:
"Last week I mailed each of my congressional colleagues a copy of a speech outlining my views on the lobbying and ethics scandals engulfing Washington. Iím afraid many of them wonít like my conclusion: to reduce corruption in government, we must make government less powerful-- and hence less interesting to lobbyists.
I find it hard to believe that changing the congressional ethics rules or placing new restrictions on lobbyists will do much good. After all, we already have laws against bribery, theft, and fraud. We already have ethics rules in Congress. We already have campaign finance reform. We already require campaigns and lobbyists to register with the federal government and disclose expenditures. We already require federal employees, including the president and members of congress, to take an oath of office. None of it is working, so why should we think more rules, regulations, or laws will change anything?
Lobbying, whether we like it or not, is constitutionally protected. The First amendment unequivocally recognizes the right of Americans to ìpetition the government for a redress of grievances.î We canít deal with corruption in government by ignoring the Constitution.
I donít believe the problem is corrupt lobbyists or even corrupt politicians per se. The fundamental problem, in my view, is the very culture of Washington. Our political system has become nothing more than a means of distributing government largesse, through tax dollars confiscated from the American people-- always in the name democracy. The federal budget is so enormous that it loses all meaning. Whatís another million or so for some pet project, in an annual budget of $2.4 trillion? No one questions the principle that a majority electorate should be allowed to rule the country, dictate rights, and redistribute wealth.
Itís no wonder a system of runaway lobbying and special interests has developed. When we consider the enormous entitlement and welfare system in place, and couple that with a military-industrial complex that feeds off perpetual war and encourages an interventionist foreign policy, the possibilities for corruption are endless. We shouldnít wonder why there is such a powerful motivation to learn the tricks of the lobbying trade-- and why former members of Congress and their aides become such high priced commodities.
The dependency on government generated by welfarism and warfarism, made possible by our shift from a republican to a democratic system of government, is the real scandal of the ages. If we merely tinker with current attitudes about the role of the federal government in our lives, it wonít do much to solve the ethics crisis. True reform is impossible without addressing the immorality of wealth redistribution.
After all, criminals by definition ignore laws; unethical people ignore the rules of ethics. Changing the rules or the players is merely a band-aid if we donít change the nature of the game itself."
We need 534 more of him in Congress. The Texans who have repeatedly voted to send Ron Paul to the House of Representatives should be commended and the rest of us need to get on the ball and do likewise in our own districts.
This is certainly worth keeping in mind the next time we have to endure another "Linux versus Microsoft" argument here on Slashdot, too. Why should our own dogma be any different? Personally, I knew this years ago. The only way a person could seriously advocate MySQL would be if their brain was turned off. It's perfectly obvious!
Slashdot Mirror
I see the Linux Fault Threshold is just as powerful today as it was in 2001.
I like to listen to music using my stereo.
An audiophile likes to listen to their stereo using music.
The black MacBook also comes with an extra 20GB of storage space (80GB standard in the block vs. 60GB standard in the white). This either explains the price difference or allows Apple to obscure the actual price premium for black, depending on how cynical you're feeling.
And once you've bought this set, the rumors about the HD-DVD and/or BluRay release will begin.
Yeah, because the last thing I want to do is use the stable filesystem for my home partition.
Nope, sadly, not yet.
Only if they find some reason to need Linux which is an even less plausible scenario than an OS X user needing Windows.
It's a fair point to comment that the evaluation of server stability compared a stable release of Linux against a development branch of FreeBSD that was not intended for production systems. One might make the case that it was fraudulent to compare the versions that they did, since it's unreasonable to expect stability or scalability out of a development branch that was undergoing significant overhaul and change at the time.
it was not until FreeBSD 5.21 that FreeBSD 5 was recommended for production systems.
Sounds like maybe "have" is a bit optimistic. From the site it looks like they may have a competing network at some undefined point in the future if they ever get around to building it in their spare time.
Hooray for Nuclear Tacos!
iTMS DRM is acceptable because it doesn't impact my usage of the media. I'm quite able to do all the things I expect and want to do with songs and videos I buy from the iTMS. So the DRM is just fine by me.
How is that a hard concept to grasp? It's a product I want at a fair price that arrives in a form which does everything I expect it to do.
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
I'll happily concede your point (well, except Apple likes saying "UNIX-based", not "UNIX-like") if you can explain to me why it matters at all.
The Open Group's attempts to keep the term UNIX as their Trademark is certainly not a technical issue, it's just a licensing issue -- they don't want to lose the revenue they get from controlling the term. From a technical, practical, and pragmatic perspective it has virtually no impact on an end user.
While I can't disagree with the facts behind your point, I sure don't understand from where you are drawing the frustration and vehemence you demonstrate over the issue. At least we do both agree that the subject is "stupidity."
With Linux, on the other hand, the vast majority of software is not only completely free, it's open source!
I'm sure you realize this, but 99% of that free, open source software you love so much is not Linux-specific. In fact, it compiles and runs just fine on a Mac exactly like it does on any Unix or Unix-like platform. Mac users hardly feel "stuck" with anything, since they can choose to use native OS X software (which sometimes costs money) or any of the open source software which you mistakenly think of as "Linux software." Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
It makes it difficult to work yourself into a froth of frustration, but the world isn't nearly as bipolar as you seem to believe it is. For open source to succeed it is not necessary for closed-source software to fail. Neither is the opposite true -- if open source software fails to increase in popularity it isn't necessarily the fault of the closed-source world.
Support open source all you want, but you'd be well-served by losing that ridiculous notion that "shunning closed, proprietary software" is doing anything at all to help open source software gain acceptance or improve.
Speaking as a developer who has code in FreeBSD which Apple is using, I couldn't disagree more. It would be horrible if the BSD license tried to enforce that sort of thing and I sure wouldn't have contributed my work to the project if it were under such a terrible license. You seem to think that I and the other BSD developers have been cheated, or that Apple has somehow done something we didn't expect and don't like. You couldn't be farther from the truth. When I produce open source code I want for it to be useful to as many people as possible. I want to contribute it for the world to use. I have no interest at all in wrapping it up in a restrictive license (like the GPL) that tries to make sure that it's only useful for other people who agree to use the same license I did.
I can't stand how the GPL is designed to "enforce freedom" which sounds like quite an oxymoron to me.
So why is the only DRM that we ever hear about that which 'protects' entertainment media distributed by the large corporations?
Because you get all your news from Slashdot?
I could charge you money instead, but I'm altruistic and am telling you to pass on the favor...
But see, there's the problem. Many developers would prefer to be much more altruistic than that. When I write open source code I don't just want to restrict its usefulness to people who use just a single license. I want to maximize its utility to a much larger population. Thus the GPL is too restrictive for my tastes.
Releasing code to the public domain or using a BSD license helps all programmers. Releasing code under the GPL helps other programmers who are using the GPL. I'd rather see my code available to everyone else, too, like the apache developers and the x.org developers, and the mozilla developers, and yes even the Apple developers and the Microsoft folks.
In my mind, that's a whole lot more generous, altruistic, and (dare I say it?) *free* than the GPL which is a bit coercive in practice.
Clearly the only rational solution is to buy a Mac.
I believe you've missed his point. Namely, that "ALL the power" need not be the same amount of power that we currently permit the government to hold.
The government has a monopoly on the use of force to extract taxes and redistribute wealth and in the absence of that, Corporations cannot assume the same degree of influence and control over our lives and wallets.
We need 534 more of him in Congress. The Texans who have repeatedly voted to send Ron Paul to the House of Representatives should be commended and the rest of us need to get on the ball and do likewise in our own districts.
This is certainly worth keeping in mind the next time we have to endure another "Linux versus Microsoft" argument here on Slashdot, too. Why should our own dogma be any different? Personally, I knew this years ago. The only way a person could seriously advocate MySQL would be if their brain was turned off. It's perfectly obvious!
I'm holding out for ESDI. All I need is the EISA configuration floppy for this controller card and I'm good to go!
The keynote is on Tuesday, 10 January, not Monday.
I'd put Pulp Fiction and Die Hard on my list of classics, even a pretty short list. They both fail your Bruce WIllis Litmus Test.
Since your original post does nothing but simply state a point I was comfortable simply responding in kind.