I think Microsoft has lost the media wars, and they pretty well know it. (admittedly, just a guess)
Ugh... bulky.WMV files are all I get in those "Subject: FW: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: WOW NEATO LOOK AT THIS!!!" emails from retired relatives. Seems MS has one niche in the market nailed; the niche that doesn't understand how to post and/or send links of videos that are posted on websites.
More advanced OS' make it easier to have the software display videos and animations.
As if we (end users) actually need any of this annoying shit, just keep your advertisements elsewhere and let me have my damn money in a convenient and secure fashion! Serves 'em right, greedy advertising whores.
How do you suggest fixing that? You can't really control what icons malicious applications use without integrating something akin to facial recognition technology, scanning 3rd party icons for similarity to system ones... good luck with that. Lots of people don't read, they click on shiny icons and expect them to do what they always do.
No, it's not reasonable. Here's the problem. There's malware out there already, that creates decoy buttons in the AutoPlay menu. They look like "Open folder to view files" or "Take no action", complete with the complementary windows icons, but if you look closely, you'll notice they're actually tied to executables! We all know lusers look closely before clicking, right?
I've always despised this feature. Here's one example: when you eject a piece of read-only media,
and Windows starts screaming at you relentlessly because a program was auto-running in the background from the media you just removed... hate that shit.
No shit that Mac OS X (or any other OS) is not completely immune to viruses or malware, I never said it was. So far though it's track record in the wild is many times better than Windows, which is good enough for me.
When Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X become a big enough target and start getting hit in the real world (not competitions and proof of concepts), hopefully Chrome for Mac will be available and decent. Or perhaps Windows 7 will suck less than Vista by then, or maybe parents and grandparents will actually be able to use a desktop Linux distro.
Audi vs VW is actually more in line with the GP's car analogy unlike Accura or Lexus. VW actually builds the Jetta and the A3 on the same A4 platform; and the Passat and A4 on the same B5 platform.
I'll take an Audi A3 TDI with Quattro and a manual transmission over here in the US please.
Yeah but it's an appliance. A product that quickly degrades to no value. It's not worth the investment.
If you're buying for investment, the macbook is gonna hold it's value better than any sub $1000 notebook from Dell or HP, by the way. But who the hell buy's computers (or cars) as an investment!?
I don't think the mini or macbook prices are that bad really. For a couple hundred more, it's worth the peace of mind of never having to waste hours cleaning malware off of a family member's PC again, not to mention the performance you get from not having to run a realtime AV scanner.
Toyota Altezza. Toyota Corona. Honda Accord. Perhaps not exact matches but close enough, and ~40% cheaper in cost.
Like I said, you can't buy an Altezza or Corona in the US. If you actually enjoy driving, and drive one of these cars, you'll realize why they cost more than an Accord or Camry. If you're the kind of person that views cars as purely utility, then don't waste your time.
Dells or HPs don't use cheap components or cheap fans.
$700 and up Dells & HP's don't use cheap components, but the lower-cost consumer ones sure do. I have a noisy Compaq sitting on a desk over there (that cost >$700 3 years ago obviously) that likes to make obnoxious chattering and whooshing fan noises every time McAfee decides to scan something.
As for installed software, it helps reduce costs just the same as ads in a magazine does and can easily be removed.
And Apple won't do this because it sucks and people generally hate it, so don't hold your breath for that cost cutting measure from Apple. People don't want their computer to look or work like Myspace.
As for longevity - who cares? A presumption that I want my laptop to still be working in 2020 is a false presumption. I will have upgraded to a faster CPU by that point.
11 years LOL... I'm talking about POS's that have trouble lasting 3-5 years as a productive business or educational tool. You can't compare them to the Macbook Pro or even the plain old Macbook. What are the dimensions and weight of those $400 laptops? How's their battery life?
A $400 laptop is fine for Mom or Grandma to use around the house, but have fun keeping it up to date and cleaning all the malware off of it. At least we haven't had to worry about that garbage so far with OS X or Linux. Granted of course, we have UAC with Vista now which will protect Mom and Grandma from malaware.
Or you could turn the $400 laptop into a hackintosh... there, you have your $400 Macbook.
It's like those persons who buy a Lexus or Acura, and insist the +$15,000 premium gives them a better car than a Toyota or Honda. Of course these cars are all engineered by the same people, so no, there's no measurable difference between Lexus/Toyota or Acura/Honda.
Your analogy is broken. Show me the Toyota equivalent of a Lexus IS for sale in the US. Or the Honda equivalent of the Acura TSX for sale in the US; and don't even say Camry or Accord because those are completely different platforms, in fact those two cars don't even share a platform with any Toyotas or Hondas sold in the US.
You can't buy a Macbook for $400 because it'd be made entirely of cheap flimsy plastic, loaded with crapware and poorly engineered cooling components with loud fans that go out within 3 years of use. Give a college student a $400 Acer laptop to take to school and use, let me know how it's working out for ya in 2 years.
P.S. I don't own a Lexus or an Acura, nor do I own a Macbook. I just happen to know stuff about cars and I'm the official fix my college student's laptop guy for the owners of the company I work for. I've been through 5 college students, 2 more to go; the Macs get much better mileage in my experience. Rich kids are harder on laptops than salespeople.
An IC engine isn't operating anywhere near peak torque until it gets close to red line. It gets worse if you've got a turbocharger.
This is not always true for all Internal Combustion engines, and totally wrong in the case of turbodiesel engines, who's torque usually peaks right around 2k... just FYI.
I always love when I'm logged on as a user in the Enterprise Admin group, after freshly joining a machine to a domain, one after another: *POP!* *Take a tour of windows XP NOW!* *Wireless networks are available!* *You have unused icons on your desktop* *Windows updates are available*. HELLO... domain administrator in a business environment, STFU and let me get some work done here, I don't need your hand holding bullshit Windows.
I'm with ya man, I HATE Verizon for that shit. Also hate how they truncate SMS messages to 160 characters outbound to other carriers, but inbound they split it into two separate texts; makes it easier for them to eat through my limited number of text messages. Hmm what else... I also hate how they call my cell, my work phone, text me, email me, AND FUCKING SNAIL MAIL ME shit about how I can get a new phone with another 2yr contract. Oh, and suddenly my cheap 35/mo plan isn't available anymore either? Nope, I'll stick with my current plan and keep getting free hand me down phones from friends and family. NO MEANS NO VERIZON, FUCK OFF! I also hate their cock block version of the internet where you can barely get out to the real internet, then when you get there you can't load HTTPS pages because that particular root CA isn't in the phone's store and there's no way to say IGNORE. Oh I could go on and on...
I'd like to see fewer people using self-signed certificates that train users to ignore SSL warnings.
Yeah, we'll we'd all like to see Verisign and the like not charge a fucking arm and a leg for a cert used to secure a webmail server, a mythweb server, etc.
I use StartSSL, they're a pretty decent provider of free class 1 certs, and their root certs are already in every major browser except IE, and they provide a nice lil' page that you can link to, to install the root certs into IE (after clicking through like 8 IE warning dialogs, no joke). They also use RSA for the signing algorithm, not that MD5 crap
and do you really want the average moron to be playing around with whole disk encryption?
thats just a recipe for disaster.
If you're a domain admin, you can set up certificate-based EFS recovery policy, where you (or other delegated admins) can recover users encrypted files in scenarios where they forget their password, get fired, get turned into a vegetable in a horrible accident, etc.
Uh, yeah they do. The HP Mininote 2133 is one example. I run my MythTV box on a Mini ITX EPIA MII motherboard. The video chipsets do MPEG2 and H.264 offloading, so they handle the job quite nicely with a dedicated tuner card, just don't expect to be doing any transcoding on the lowly C3's and C7's. The Via Nano supposedly can compete very well against the Atom, since Intel saddled all their designs with a massive northbridge.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, thanks to the same niche who doesn't understand how to use the BCC field.
Ugh... bulky .WMV files are all I get in those "Subject: FW: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: WOW NEATO LOOK AT THIS!!!" emails from retired relatives. Seems MS has one niche in the market nailed; the niche that doesn't understand how to post and/or send links of videos that are posted on websites.
The BlackBerry Desktop software has allowed you to sync iTunes libraries with crackberries for a while now.
More advanced OS' make it easier to have the software display videos and animations.
As if we (end users) actually need any of this annoying shit, just keep your advertisements elsewhere and let me have my damn money in a convenient and secure fashion! Serves 'em right, greedy advertising whores.
How do you suggest fixing that? You can't really control what icons malicious applications use without integrating something akin to facial recognition technology, scanning 3rd party icons for similarity to system ones... good luck with that. Lots of people don't read, they click on shiny icons and expect them to do what they always do.
No, it's not reasonable. Here's the problem. There's malware out there already, that creates decoy buttons in the AutoPlay menu. They look like "Open folder to view files" or "Take no action", complete with the complementary windows icons, but if you look closely, you'll notice they're actually tied to executables! We all know lusers look closely before clicking, right?
"Hide extensions for known file types"... yes, another dumb down the fucking user feature that I HATE!
I've always despised this feature. Here's one example: when you eject a piece of read-only media, and Windows starts screaming at you relentlessly because a program was auto-running in the background from the media you just removed... hate that shit.
No shit that Mac OS X (or any other OS) is not completely immune to viruses or malware, I never said it was. So far though it's track record in the wild is many times better than Windows, which is good enough for me.
When Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X become a big enough target and start getting hit in the real world (not competitions and proof of concepts), hopefully Chrome for Mac will be available and decent. Or perhaps Windows 7 will suck less than Vista by then, or maybe parents and grandparents will actually be able to use a desktop Linux distro.
Audi vs VW is actually more in line with the GP's car analogy unlike Accura or Lexus. VW actually builds the Jetta and the A3 on the same A4 platform; and the Passat and A4 on the same B5 platform.
I'll take an Audi A3 TDI with Quattro and a manual transmission over here in the US please.
>>>you're buying better interiors
Yeah but it's an appliance. A product that quickly degrades to no value. It's not worth the investment.
If you're buying for investment, the macbook is gonna hold it's value better than any sub $1000 notebook from Dell or HP, by the way. But who the hell buy's computers (or cars) as an investment!?
Exactly... Accord != TSX, there isn't even a car built on the same platform from Honda available in the US.
I don't think the mini or macbook prices are that bad really. For a couple hundred more, it's worth the peace of mind of never having to waste hours cleaning malware off of a family member's PC again, not to mention the performance you get from not having to run a realtime AV scanner.
Like I said, you can't buy an Altezza or Corona in the US. If you actually enjoy driving, and drive one of these cars, you'll realize why they cost more than an Accord or Camry. If you're the kind of person that views cars as purely utility, then don't waste your time.
$700 and up Dells & HP's don't use cheap components, but the lower-cost consumer ones sure do. I have a noisy Compaq sitting on a desk over there (that cost >$700 3 years ago obviously) that likes to make obnoxious chattering and whooshing fan noises every time McAfee decides to scan something.
And Apple won't do this because it sucks and people generally hate it, so don't hold your breath for that cost cutting measure from Apple. People don't want their computer to look or work like Myspace.
11 years LOL... I'm talking about POS's that have trouble lasting 3-5 years as a productive business or educational tool. You can't compare them to the Macbook Pro or even the plain old Macbook. What are the dimensions and weight of those $400 laptops? How's their battery life?
A $400 laptop is fine for Mom or Grandma to use around the house, but have fun keeping it up to date and cleaning all the malware off of it. At least we haven't had to worry about that garbage so far with OS X or Linux. Granted of course, we have UAC with Vista now which will protect Mom and Grandma from malaware.
Or you could turn the $400 laptop into a hackintosh... there, you have your $400 Macbook.
Your analogy is broken. Show me the Toyota equivalent of a Lexus IS for sale in the US. Or the Honda equivalent of the Acura TSX for sale in the US; and don't even say Camry or Accord because those are completely different platforms, in fact those two cars don't even share a platform with any Toyotas or Hondas sold in the US.
You can't buy a Macbook for $400 because it'd be made entirely of cheap flimsy plastic, loaded with crapware and poorly engineered cooling components with loud fans that go out within 3 years of use. Give a college student a $400 Acer laptop to take to school and use, let me know how it's working out for ya in 2 years.
P.S. I don't own a Lexus or an Acura, nor do I own a Macbook. I just happen to know stuff about cars and I'm the official fix my college student's laptop guy for the owners of the company I work for. I've been through 5 college students, 2 more to go; the Macs get much better mileage in my experience. Rich kids are harder on laptops than salespeople.
Rule of thumb is you lose a cylinders worth of power, and I don't think people will give up their air conditionair
LOL, I don't know where you heard that, but it's totally false.
This is not always true for all Internal Combustion engines, and totally wrong in the case of turbodiesel engines, who's torque usually peaks right around 2k... just FYI.
I figured it was some bullshit Verizon limitation, but I've never used text messaging from any other carrier.
It would be nice if it was actually consistent though, inbound messages >160 get split into two.
Outbound messages >160 get truncated and verizon sends me an obnoxious automated response saying they truncated my >160 char message.
I always love when I'm logged on as a user in the Enterprise Admin group, after freshly joining a machine to a domain, one after another: *POP!* *Take a tour of windows XP NOW!* *Wireless networks are available!* *You have unused icons on your desktop* *Windows updates are available*. HELLO... domain administrator in a business environment, STFU and let me get some work done here, I don't need your hand holding bullshit Windows.
I'm with ya man, I HATE Verizon for that shit. Also hate how they truncate SMS messages to 160 characters outbound to other carriers, but inbound they split it into two separate texts; makes it easier for them to eat through my limited number of text messages. Hmm what else... I also hate how they call my cell, my work phone, text me, email me, AND FUCKING SNAIL MAIL ME shit about how I can get a new phone with another 2yr contract. Oh, and suddenly my cheap 35/mo plan isn't available anymore either? Nope, I'll stick with my current plan and keep getting free hand me down phones from friends and family. NO MEANS NO VERIZON, FUCK OFF! I also hate their cock block version of the internet where you can barely get out to the real internet, then when you get there you can't load HTTPS pages because that particular root CA isn't in the phone's store and there's no way to say IGNORE. Oh I could go on and on...
I'd like to see fewer people using self-signed certificates that train users to ignore SSL warnings.
Yeah, we'll we'd all like to see Verisign and the like not charge a fucking arm and a leg for a cert used to secure a webmail server, a mythweb server, etc.
I use StartSSL, they're a pretty decent provider of free class 1 certs, and their root certs are already in every major browser except IE, and they provide a nice lil' page that you can link to, to install the root certs into IE (after clicking through like 8 IE warning dialogs, no joke). They also use RSA for the signing algorithm, not that MD5 crap
and do you really want the average moron to be playing around with whole disk encryption?
thats just a recipe for disaster.
If you're a domain admin, you can set up certificate-based EFS recovery policy, where you (or other delegated admins) can recover users encrypted files in scenarios where they forget their password, get fired, get turned into a vegetable in a horrible accident, etc.
Uh, yeah they do. The HP Mininote 2133 is one example. I run my MythTV box on a Mini ITX EPIA MII motherboard. The video chipsets do MPEG2 and H.264 offloading, so they handle the job quite nicely with a dedicated tuner card, just don't expect to be doing any transcoding on the lowly C3's and C7's. The Via Nano supposedly can compete very well against the Atom, since Intel saddled all their designs with a massive northbridge.
Yes, IE 5 is also affected according to this article. In addition, IE6 and IE7 as well as IE8 Beta 2 are also affected.