Lemme guess... Supafly Johnson marches into the bowels of hell and does battle with the devil himself. And that devil is... JOHN ROMERO, AND HE'S GOING TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH!
Tax the players who win They already do this. It's still income, even if it isn't from your employment.
Tax the casino They already do this. It's called "sales tax". The casino's product is gambling entertainment. They use some sort of tokens to account for their revenues (chips, money, whatever). Sales tax is supposed to be collected from the seller, not the buyer. Therefore, a casino is subject to sales taxes just as any other vendor is. Most people don't realize this and accept it when some lazy and/or greedy seller passes the "savings" on to the buyer. It's a slightly shady practice that has become all too common in the USA. It's shady because of this: I pay $1 for an item. The government demands $0.10 from the seller for that sale. The seller wants me to give him $1.10 to cover it all. Now, suddenly, the transaction price has actually become $1.10 and the seller should actually owe $0.11 tax. That's why the seller is supposed to pay sales tax. When the seller pays sales tax, the above transaction goes like this: I pay $1 for an item. The government demands $0.10 from the seller for that sale. The seller pays the government and pockets the other $0.90. Or, if the seller wants the whole dollar, he sells it for $1.10, pays the government $0.10, and the $1 is his. Either way, he has to tell me the sales price with tax up front and cannot put me in a position of aiding and abetting tax evasion due to his poor calculations.
Ensure that it is not so easy for people to spend their lifes earnings (and money they dont have, such as credit card money) on gambling and blowing their lives away. This is not the government's concern. If they'd drop some welfare programs like a hot rock, put a few million people on the street and brace for deinflation, we'd all be better off anyway. Sure, there would be a massive drop in the average standard of living. But it's unlikely that anyone with a skilled job would have to take a pay cut. And companies that need unskilled workers could hire some and lower their prices due to expending less effort in acquiring the help they need. (This includes the massive labor pool they could draw from not being able to demand a wage beyond what's expected for unskilled labor.) Those that don't work will starve and once they've all starved (give it a few months), then we're done. I'm NOT advocating that all welfare be dropped. Just the types that are abused by those who don't want to work. Disability would be made tougher (it's a valid program, but needs stricter entry rules). Food stamps would be done away with entirely. WIC could stay as-is. With that single stroke, you've given people incentive not to gamble. Beyond that incentive, it's not the government's job to make sure nobody stubs their toe.
There's always WINE. Personally, I'm waiting for that.
My Windows app needs are limited to one or two small, old, known-quantity programs that won't present a challenge to WINE (they're "gold" compatibility or better, both of them). Once WINE finishes their port to OSX (they have to abstract out a bunch of stuff like CoreAudio and the windowing system), I'll be all over it. For free, most likely, since the WINE WinAPI-alike is already compatible with what I want to use. (The only changes for OSX are presentation problems, not compatibility problems.) If CrossOver gets there first (or TransGaming/Cedega), I might plunk down some money, but it's not very likely I'll do so more than once.
I leave my Macs running 24/7. They require a reboot whenever they get an update to a system library (and QuickTime is a system library - d'oh). That's about once a month, tops. They don't overheat (they're Mac Minis, and the fans come on periodically, but not often). They don't crash (I'm not taxing them heavily, but they don't just sit idle all the time). So why would they need a biweekly reboot? I've had Macs that ran nonstop for months (after they stop issuing updates to the OS there's no reason to reboot). They were shut down when I bought and installed replacements with faster processors, more RAM, etc.
And by the way, if you're a BSD zealot, you're already within the 10-foot-pole range of Mac OS X. You'd find installation of things to rarely be a "bitch". It's all about./configure; make; make install;.
It's ubiquitous. That makes it at least one step better than WMV, which won't always work on my MacBook Pro. As well as it works (and it ain't perfect), Flip4Mac doesn't work on every movie. I would assume Linux systems have similar issues with WMV.
If millions of people were more inclined to go download codecs and shit, this wouldn't have been such a headache inducing problem.
No need. Last time I used WMP (it was v7 on Windows, IIRC) it would go download any codecs you needed (including DivX, this was before XviD) any time you loaded up a file it couldn't decode. Audio or video. If you had an internet connection, it could get you a codec. Period. And it worked well enough. I only had it fail once, and that was when my connection was on the blink.
It's actually one of the things Microsoft did right with WMP (kinda. it has some security issues, I would imagine). I was surprised that Apple didn't follow suit with Quicktime, make it work even better, and claim they invented it or something. (Hey, everybody does it, it's not just Microsoft.)
Note: it wouldn't work if you were opening video within IE (or any other browser). It only worked within WMP.
Also, MRAM cells are very large, even compared with flash memory.
I'm inclined to believe Wikipedia on this one. From Wikipedia:
MRAM is physically similar to DRAM in makeup, consisting of metal plates and insulators. MRAM and DRAM both have a physically smallest size at which they can be built. As the cell size of a DRAM decreases, the charge able to be stored on the capacitor shrinks, requiring more refreshes. At some point this leads to diminishing returns in terms of performance, and using the best available insulators the current smallest cell size is around 55 nm. In comparison, MRAM is limited by the smallest size of cell that can contain a recognizable magnetic field. Bulk magnetic materials can be self-organized into domains known as quantum dots about 5 nm in size. Thus, in theory at least, MRAM can scale to sizes far smaller than DRAM, which suggests much lower prices.
I wouldn't call 5nm "large" when DRAM ("regular" memory) is 55nm and flash memory is even larger.
While they're currently making a 1MB chip, I'd expect that to increase rapidly very soon. This stuff is going to be a godsend to the embedded device industry.
Magic strings are the "right way", or at least close to it.
Have you ever looked at the first 4 bytes of a Java.class file? It's CA FE BA BE. Guess what... even if it somehow gets named foobar.OMGWTFIsThisFileType, the JVM can still pick it out as a Java bytecode file. Why? How? All Java bytecode files always start with CAFEBABE. If it starts with CAFEBABE, the JVM can semi-safely assume that this is a valid bytecode file. But... what if some other file "collides" with that signature?
All Mac files (until 2001, with in introduction of OSX) had "type and creator codes" in a "resource fork". Now, if you just flatten the resource fork into a data header format, you suddenly have a standardized file header with type and creator metadata in them. But what if your FS doesn't support "resource forks"?
Do things the "Lisa" way. Apparently, the Apple Lisa had some sort of database-like file system (in 1983 - WinFS, eat your heart out) that would assign a file ID, but display a filename, and track a dozen or so metadata fields per file. So in the UI, in any given container, you could have 10 files named identically, but they wouldn't conflict with each other. They would also have a full complement of needed metadata maintained within their file-system wrapper (essentially, their file headers). This was arguably the "next level of file system" after the Unix-style hierarchy (and its timing was appropriate in 1983). It's similar to how MP3 files have ID3 tags embedded in them. Those ID3 tags are just metadata values. If every file in the file system had a minimum "simple set" of metadata tags in the header information, this would work beautifully. Someone should make a general standard for this sort of thing and write support for it into Linux. Apple could probably be persuaded to support it (especially if you allowed them to put their name on the standardization effort). Then MS would probably jump on the bandwagon and say they invented it. Let them (who cares? All we want is decent file metadata).
Your argument about file extensions, though, is not only naive, it's also incorrect. Extensions are part of the filename. I, as a user, can meddle with them in the same manner as the rest of a filename. They are completely arbitrary and can be removed entirely if I so choose. They are not metadata. And if I wanted to pack up a binary file with its own headers or signature and send it over a network, it would work perfectly fine. And if I were to design a file system that would work over a network, I would make the file header format a standard. And it would be every bit as reliable as any other system, except when data got to the recipient it would be guaranteed to have its metadata, rather than an arbitrarily-modified filename that may have lost its file type in the transfer.
I will agree with you about mime-types. Mime-types, as you note, are not reliable because they aren't stored with the file. They're more of a way for a server to tell a client what they're downloading before they download it. They work well for that, but are certainly not a good way of defining file metadata.
I don't know much about base-3, and from what those pages showed, it looked overly complex and not at all "efficient" in the sense of being easy to calculate either mentally or by machine.
But I think you missed a major point in number base theory, as evidenced here:
To continue the devil's advocacy, hex isn't much better than decimal for practicality. 16 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. That's three practical divisors, compared to duodecimals four. The only thing you gain in base 16 is division by 8, but you still lose division by 3, which is a more practical divisor.
First of all, base-16 would only be used as a shorthand for the real base-2 system. Just a convenience to keep small numbers from taking up enormous amounts of visual space in UI's (on-screen or on paper). Secondly, you missed the whole point of non-integer calculations. 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, etc. are all valid digit-places. They correspond to 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, and so on. This is how floating point values work, and it's why computers don't work well with numbers like 0.3(decimal). 0.3 is 0.25 + a bunch of tinier powers of 2. 23 bits (old-school 32-bit IEEE floating point) isn't enough precision to deal with that number accurately. But I can tell you that a 96-bit float type doesn't have any trouble with it. And I can also guarantee that 0.3 would not be a common value in a system where everything is base-2. If nothing is grouped by threes or tens, it wouldn't be common, and that alleviates the necessity. For those few times it actually needs to happen, throw more precision at it until you get a close-enough estimate and call it a day.
I'm sure you've had basic high-school geometry (or will, depending on your age). In that class, I learned that being able to cut something into equal halves (by length, area, or volume) is the solution to everything. Why? Because it can be done without fancy tools. Extend that to an entire monetary and measurement system, and you have a recipe for success.
If you use base-12, however, well, let me just ask you - what is 12^-1? 12^-2? 12^-3? And how are they useful?
Actually, "google" was a word too. It's an informal word meaning to look, similar to ogle. Eyes are sometimes described as "googly", particularly those goofy toy eyes that have pupils free-floating in a plastic bubble. I suspect that's why Google got its name. It looks for things for you, ogling the internet and reporting its results back to you when you ask. You use Google to google the internet. "Googling" has now obtained the additional meaning of "to use Google". But it still has the same basic meaning - to look or search for something.
The major differences between Google and Furl are 1) Even my mother "googles" for things. She does not "furl" things (except maybe towels). 2) Google used a word that kinda means what they do. Furl did not. Nothing about bookmarks makes me think of folding things. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that "furl" based their name on the term URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. Therefore, Furl has no relation to the dictionary word. But Google does.
Screw that. Everything should be done in base 2 (binary). For a "shorthand notation" we can use base 16 (hex). I would love it if my bank account contained 0x94EF.F2 dollars and my bank statement said so.
In a similar vein, the metric system should be converted to use 2^n instead of 10^n. That makes it infinitely more useful to those of us who don't have to use our fingers to count. It would also make an acceptable replacement for "imperial" units. Anyone who makes this change might also consider making non-arbitrary base units that can't fluctuate. Grams aren't always grams. Material decay causes the "standard" gram to change over time. And what exactly is a "meter"? Completely arbitrary, AFAIK. I once heard that it was an even fraction of the distance from the north pole to the south pole, but I've never seen anything to back that up.
Meanwhile, speakers of language HTML had 255 words for green and another 16 million words for other colors that contained various levels of green. Along with that, there's a set of 216 synonyms that aid in English translation of some of the more common colors' words.
The words "deify" and "deity" fall within the "unless it sounds like a" part of that rule. It's "DAY-ity" and "DAY-ify", not American-idiot or "hick" pronunciation "DEE-ity" and "DEE-ify". It comes from the Latin root "deus", which is pronounced "DAY-oos".
Of the other two, "codeine" is a proper name of a chemical and drug. With proper names, all bets are off. So that leaves "conscience", or really, any word with "science" in it. And if you'll break the word "science" down by syllables, you'll note that it's not really an "ie" combination since there's a syllable break in there. That doesn't hold true for how most people pronounce words like "conscience", but I bet it used to.
"Furl it"? I've never heard of a website named "furl". And if someone told me to furl it, I'd ask them what they would like me to wrap, roll, or fold. It appears that "furl" is already a verb.
Nintendo's release dates are all listed as "Q4 2006", and since October 1 is a Sunday (and therefore not a business day), the first business day of Q4 2006 is Monday, October 2, 2006.
The web is growing up, and page processors like PHP will fall out of use. WebObjects showed the way forward arbeit at a cost of $50,000 when it was 1st released, and now we have free alternatives like Jakarta/Struts and Ruby on Rails.
The web hasn't changed. It's still a stateless, every-page-for-itself environment. PHP isn't a "page processor", it's a pre-response request processor. A client sends an HTTP request (yes, the very same as the XmlHttpRequest JavaScript "object") to Apache (Apache HTTPD, to be specific). Apache uses PHP (as mod_php) to preprocess the request. Then Apache sends the response generated by PHP. That's why PHP (now) means "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor".
"Jakarta/Struts" is a framework (actually probably several frameworks) built in Java and uses the Tomcat engine to serve up servlets. Guess what... A client sends an HTTP request (all the URL's start with "http:" regardless of the port, so it's still HTTP) to Tomcat. Tomcat uses Java (and it's libraries and frameworks - like Struts) to preprocess the request. Then Tomcat sends the response generated by Java. I feel like I'm repeating myself here.
[JavaScript is] a great OO language, highly dynamic.
You have got to be kidding me. JavaScript is a prototyped language. You don't define objects so much as you lay out a template for one and implement a library that pretends to operate on this so-called "object". It's about as OO as old-school C. In C, you could define a struct and segregate off a header and implementation for it and call it an "object", but there was no enforcement other than internal constraints you imposed upon your own code. JavaScript is just about as strict.
It's possible to do some serious development in Javascript.
I've been wondering what was wrong with web design lately. I've also been wondering why everyone on/. bitches incessantly about the evils of "web apps". Now I know. I can tell you one thing for sure, though. It's possible to do some serious development in JavaScript... just turn it off. That's the best development JavaScript has seen in years.
I'm happy that the patterns for web development are finally moving closer to the 1980s.
Keep using JavaScript and you'll keep moving toward the 1980's. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue going forward.
Re:You got that right
on
PHP Hacks
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your entire post is trollish and whiny, but I thought I'd point this out, as it gave me a chuckle:
But then, Perl never pretends it will keep programmers secure, while PHP tries to and fails.
followed immediately by:
Perl also has the immensely important "taint" mode, where unprocessed user input isn't allowed anywhere near important functions, like executing an external program, writing data into the database or selecting a file to open. It's this that forces programmers to think properly, and does a far better job than PHP's attempt to keep you safe without making you think about security. PHP has nothing like taint mode, and it desperately needs it.
So Perl never pretends to keep programmers secure with some sort of "taint mode" but PHP is retarded because it aims to protect its users by not having such a feature? Huh? You either have it backwards (Perl is actually your overprotective mother while PHP lets you just get things done) or this "taint mode" is a security hole placed there by design (which forces me to call into question the sanity of the Perl guys).
Just to give you an idea where I'm coming from, I'm a professional PHP developer. I also do C, C++, and Java, and I can pick up just about any other language quickly. Perl is one of only two languages that usually makes my eyes bleed. The other one is Objective-C, and that's mostly because I hear "C" and think it's going to actually be readable. IMNSHO, Perl blows and I wish it would die. Why? Well, for example, the "eq" "operator". Operators are made of non-alphabetic symbols for a reason: so I, the programmer, can pick them out and tell them apart from the non-operators (variables, literals, constants, keywords, and function calls). Now, Java has the stupid String.equals() function. That's bad enough, but at least it's a function. Having alphabetic operators makes unreadable code as bad as any COBOL program ever dared to be (yes, I've endured COBOL). Oh, wait, that's right, this is Perl we're talking about here. Nobody can read that anyway. Poor language design is not soley the domain of PHP.
Umm... the power supply was recalled, yes. And Apple replaced them free of charge (including shipping!). The other things were not defects.
- The battery died after 7 years of use. - The "searing" heat was never hot enough to be painful. Worrisome, but never painful. - The iPod hard drive did not break. It was corrupted, but such is life. A reformat is not the same as a replacement.
And yes, I am a fanboy. I'm just not an incompetent, blind, incoherent, illiterate fucking moron like you seem to be. Don't like the name-calling? Don't reply like an asshat after two days without being able to read and understand what you're replying to. Two days is enough for anyone that isn't a complete tool to grasp the meaning of some words.
Have you seen Cars? If so, did you stay for the credits?
John Ratzenberger's character (Mack) is watching a bunch of older Pixar movies (modified to fit the Cars theme) and bragging about the voice talent (himself, over and over). Then he starts complaining about how they're just using the same actor over and over again.
I think it's this sort of voice-acting usage that he's complaining about, though this particular case kinda pokes fun at it.
On the other hand, that whole movie (along with most other Pixar movies) is an example of what he's talking about. Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Darryl Waltrip, etc. all did exactly what Mr. West was complaining about.
I myself are one of the ppl affected by a faulty G3 iBook. The extensive warranty didn't cover it because I replaced the cd-drive with a cd-burner before I was aware of the problem.
And it's Apple's fault that you voided your warranty? And then something broke and they wouldn't fix it because you voided your warranty? Notice who voided your warranty. You.
You just need to take a look at the forums. In all those cases the usual tactic of Apple is 1.) not to react at all 2.) call it a user problem 3.) deny that a problem exists etc etc
Looking at the forums is just a way to gather more useless anecdotal whining. And to be honest, if there are only a few hundred forum posts about problems with a product where thousands or millions of units are shipped, I'm inclined to agree with Apple's stance of "you must be doing something wrong" without seeing and investigating further evidence.
Those are tactics I expcect from $cheapo_brand but not from Apple. Remember that the iBook extensive warranty program was only created because a lawsuit was near?
Apple is no different from any other company. Why wouldn't you expect those "tactics" from Apple? Apple is a publicly traded corporation and if you're not a shareholder, they don't owe you a damned thing more than what you agreed to pay them for. They are not your friend, your pal, or your buddy. They said "we have product-A for sale for X-amount of money and it does this function and we guarantee that if you don't break it, it's made well enough to do that function for at least a year. If you pay us extra, we'll make that guarantee extend to 3 years." You bought it. Then you tampered with the machine enough to void that guarantee. Other people found that there was an actual flaw and Apple was forced to abide by their prior agreement to fix things. The "lawsuit" that was "near" that you mention was probably just an angry customer venting their frustration before getting a response from Apple.
The B&W G3 had issues with the IDE controller
Yes, but I didn't have one of those. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "first-generation" products. The B&W G3's IDE issues only affected Revision A motherboards.
eMac: Numerous reports of various errors, especially dying monitors.
And numerous reports of recalls too. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "low-end" products. The eMac is decidedly low-end.
PowerMac G4 sounds like a jet engine
Install the fricking firmware update already. It's only been out for 4 years.
sensor in PowerMac G5 causing the harddrives to get quite hot
Yet another "first-generation" issue. This was fixed within 2 months of release.
issues with freezes with the PowerMac G5 2,0 Ghz Single under OS X 10.4
"Low-end" again. Sure, this is the PowerMac G5, but it's the cheap one with a single chip. IIRC, they scale everything down on those. Slower memory, crappier graphics card, etc. It's a cheapened facsimile of the high-end desktop.
bad capacitators with the iMac G5
Now we have the best (worst?) of both worlds. A "low-end" iMac crossed with a "first-generation" (and only-generation) iMac G5. (Revision B was the Core Duo model.)
I never, really never experienced those problems with PC Hardware.
Yes, you did. You just didn't pin them on anyone else, since you were the only one to blame when something went wrong. If you had bought a Dell and all this stuff went wrong, then Dell would be just as "evil" and would've "locked you in" just as much, even though they sell the same PC hardware as every other vendor and the same as what you can buy from your favorite parts supplier. With Apple (or Dell) you're under warranty. Period. Unless you're so stupid as to go and void the warranty before it
Heh. Well, for starters, you're a troll and an idiot. But I'll humor you nonetheless.
The beige G3 is quite slow, but not unusable with Mac OS X 10.2.8. The Voodoo3 had to be removed in order for it to boot without a kernel panic. And it no longer is able to run UT at all (since UT wasn't ported fully to OSX and OSX lacks Rage Pro drivers). It makes a good space heater, and an even better closet filler. OSX 10.2.8 is the last version that will run on systems without built-in USB, so tell Apple how they know "diddly-fuckall" about computers and spare me your ignorant rants.
I have a Costco card and a Sam's Club card already. I don't like Sam's club as much, since they have higher prices, lower quality, and more rednecks starting fist-fights in the parking lot.
This article is really about informal buying co-ops. Co-ops were and are a good idea, and are widely hated by "real" and "legitimate" businesses because they cut into profits. That means it's about time they make a big comeback, aided by the Internet as a way to "spread the word".
While we're on the topic of anecdotes (and how those prove beyond a doubt that what you're saying is true in all cases), I'd love to throw mine into the mix.
- Beige G3 tower, 300MHz, came with 64 MB of RAM (now has 448 MB), 4GB SCSI HDD (now has that and a 20GB IDE) and extra video card (removed and replaced with a Voodoo3). I received the system via UPS on August 14, 1998. It never gave me a problem outside of the occasional Unreal Tournament crash during reads to the SCSI card and the HD that was on that bus. It runs 10.2.8 and is still in perfect working condition, though a bit underpowered for any real use.
- Colorsync 17 CRT, a Sony product (has a Trinitron tube complete with bracing wires). Received via UPS on August 14, 1998. Died (not completely, but to blinky to the point of uselessness) sometime in 2001. Still powers on, but goes wonky within minutes. Usable as a head for a normally headless server, as long as it can connect to a fricking old-school Apple Display Connection (not the same as the all-in-one ADC power/USB/video plug. It's older and is really just VGA with a non-HD plug.). I keep it around because it's cheaper to store it than to pay for CRT disposal.
- Powerbook G3 (Bronze Keyboard), a.k.a. "1999" or "Lombard". Has been upgraded to 320MB RAM and 10GB HDD by myself. It was refurbished when I bought it, so it had passed QA twice. I received it in the early spring of 2000. Upgrades were done in 2001. There was a power adapter recall, but no further problems. The battery died in late 2005. It still works, though it relies on the replacement power adapters (the same yo-yo ones as the first iBooks). Got kinda hot if you sat it on a non-heat-conductive surface (worse than a MacBook Pro). Seemed to have a huge metal plate in the bottom of it as a heat-spreader.
- iPod, 4th generation (click wheel), 40GB. Purchased in July 2004. Has had a few HD corruption issues (mostly in FAT32 mode, and nothing a reformat couldn't fix), has a few scratches from being dropped (carpet, concrete, and tile). Still works beautifully and still holds a 10-hour charge.
- Mac Mini, 1.42GHz G4 "loaded" configuration. First generation. Purchased in April 2005. Serves as a HD-PVR (in concert with an EyeTV 500). Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- Mac Mini, 1.33GHz G4 (speed-bumped "1.25GHz") "cheap" configuration. First generation. Purchased October 7, 2005. Serves as a light-duty desktop and will soon be a PostgreSQL and Apache server for my home-use web-apps. Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- MacBook Pro, 15", 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD. Purchased June 2006 (about 4 weeks ago). Gets kinda hot, but not too hot to put on your lap, even running iTunes and Eclipse and 10 other smaller apps simultaneously. No physical defects apparent yet (other than the standard penchant every keyboard has for attracting a ring of solidified skin oils on the "e", "i", "o", "return", and "delete" keys - ugh). No overheating problems, especially after the firmware flash that was ready shortly after first boot. I've seen some WiFi connection weirdness, but only when at the far reaches of a hotspot. Apparently, the swelling battery problem requires a few months of fermentation. I'm hoping mine is a "rev B" or something and avoids this problem.
Now, I don't doubt you've had some issues with your Apple hardware, but I don't believe for a second that it's overly widespread (at least any more than any other manufacturer), or that there is a higher-than-normal percentage of bad Apples (har har). To point out the obvious, you've purchased several "first-generation" and "low-end" Apple products, which do have higher failure rates than the "revision" and "high-end" products. The iBook is low-end, the iPod is perpetually "first-generation" because they keep overhauling it (retarded product strategy, btw), and the Mighty Mouse is seriously first-gen (and won't be 2nd-gen for a long time). When they start including the Mighty Mouse with the pro-line "high-end" desktops, then it will have graduated to 2nd-generation.
He only saved a couple hundred bucks? What a tool.
I saw a deal at Costco on an AMD Turion X2 laptop with everything my new MacBook Pro has, except it was $1500 cheaper. It even had a larger screen. (15" MBP = $2500, 17" off-brand AMD laptop = $1000 w/coupon or $1150 w/o coupon.)
I'd love to be the one to point out to any of these guys that if Apple was going to lose marketshare because of his publicity, they would've given him the computer for his continued support. Apple knows that these nerds mean jack shit to their bottom line.
And as far as "essential software" goes, what doesn't run on an MBP? Ooh! Ooh! I know! Macsbug! Break out the burning 5300c!
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And unfortunately, we have no chance to survive make our time.
Lemme guess... Supafly Johnson marches into the bowels of hell and does battle with the devil himself. And that devil is... JOHN ROMERO, AND HE'S GOING TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH!
Tax the players who win
They already do this. It's still income, even if it isn't from your employment.
Tax the casino
They already do this. It's called "sales tax". The casino's product is gambling entertainment. They use some sort of tokens to account for their revenues (chips, money, whatever). Sales tax is supposed to be collected from the seller, not the buyer. Therefore, a casino is subject to sales taxes just as any other vendor is. Most people don't realize this and accept it when some lazy and/or greedy seller passes the "savings" on to the buyer. It's a slightly shady practice that has become all too common in the USA. It's shady because of this: I pay $1 for an item. The government demands $0.10 from the seller for that sale. The seller wants me to give him $1.10 to cover it all. Now, suddenly, the transaction price has actually become $1.10 and the seller should actually owe $0.11 tax. That's why the seller is supposed to pay sales tax. When the seller pays sales tax, the above transaction goes like this: I pay $1 for an item. The government demands $0.10 from the seller for that sale. The seller pays the government and pockets the other $0.90. Or, if the seller wants the whole dollar, he sells it for $1.10, pays the government $0.10, and the $1 is his. Either way, he has to tell me the sales price with tax up front and cannot put me in a position of aiding and abetting tax evasion due to his poor calculations.
Ensure that it is not so easy for people to spend their lifes earnings (and money they dont have, such as credit card money) on gambling and blowing their lives away.
This is not the government's concern. If they'd drop some welfare programs like a hot rock, put a few million people on the street and brace for deinflation, we'd all be better off anyway. Sure, there would be a massive drop in the average standard of living. But it's unlikely that anyone with a skilled job would have to take a pay cut. And companies that need unskilled workers could hire some and lower their prices due to expending less effort in acquiring the help they need. (This includes the massive labor pool they could draw from not being able to demand a wage beyond what's expected for unskilled labor.) Those that don't work will starve and once they've all starved (give it a few months), then we're done. I'm NOT advocating that all welfare be dropped. Just the types that are abused by those who don't want to work. Disability would be made tougher (it's a valid program, but needs stricter entry rules). Food stamps would be done away with entirely. WIC could stay as-is. With that single stroke, you've given people incentive not to gamble. Beyond that incentive, it's not the government's job to make sure nobody stubs their toe.
There's always WINE. Personally, I'm waiting for that.
My Windows app needs are limited to one or two small, old, known-quantity programs that won't present a challenge to WINE (they're "gold" compatibility or better, both of them). Once WINE finishes their port to OSX (they have to abstract out a bunch of stuff like CoreAudio and the windowing system), I'll be all over it. For free, most likely, since the WINE WinAPI-alike is already compatible with what I want to use. (The only changes for OSX are presentation problems, not compatibility problems.) If CrossOver gets there first (or TransGaming/Cedega), I might plunk down some money, but it's not very likely I'll do so more than once.
Reboot every 2 weeks? Why?
./configure; make; make install;.
I leave my Macs running 24/7. They require a reboot whenever they get an update to a system library (and QuickTime is a system library - d'oh). That's about once a month, tops. They don't overheat (they're Mac Minis, and the fans come on periodically, but not often). They don't crash (I'm not taxing them heavily, but they don't just sit idle all the time). So why would they need a biweekly reboot? I've had Macs that ran nonstop for months (after they stop issuing updates to the OS there's no reason to reboot). They were shut down when I bought and installed replacements with faster processors, more RAM, etc.
And by the way, if you're a BSD zealot, you're already within the 10-foot-pole range of Mac OS X. You'd find installation of things to rarely be a "bitch". It's all about
It's ubiquitous. That makes it at least one step better than WMV, which won't always work on my MacBook Pro. As well as it works (and it ain't perfect), Flip4Mac doesn't work on every movie. I would assume Linux systems have similar issues with WMV.
If millions of people were more inclined to go download codecs and shit, this wouldn't have been such a headache inducing problem.
No need. Last time I used WMP (it was v7 on Windows, IIRC) it would go download any codecs you needed (including DivX, this was before XviD) any time you loaded up a file it couldn't decode. Audio or video. If you had an internet connection, it could get you a codec. Period. And it worked well enough. I only had it fail once, and that was when my connection was on the blink.
It's actually one of the things Microsoft did right with WMP (kinda. it has some security issues, I would imagine). I was surprised that Apple didn't follow suit with Quicktime, make it work even better, and claim they invented it or something. (Hey, everybody does it, it's not just Microsoft.)
Note: it wouldn't work if you were opening video within IE (or any other browser). It only worked within WMP.
I'm inclined to believe Wikipedia on this one. From Wikipedia:
I wouldn't call 5nm "large" when DRAM ("regular" memory) is 55nm and flash memory is even larger.
While they're currently making a 1MB chip, I'd expect that to increase rapidly very soon. This stuff is going to be a godsend to the embedded device industry.
Magic strings are the "right way", or at least close to it.
.class file? It's CA FE BA BE. Guess what... even if it somehow gets named foobar.OMGWTFIsThisFileType, the JVM can still pick it out as a Java bytecode file. Why? How? All Java bytecode files always start with CAFEBABE. If it starts with CAFEBABE, the JVM can semi-safely assume that this is a valid bytecode file. But... what if some other file "collides" with that signature?
Have you ever looked at the first 4 bytes of a Java
All Mac files (until 2001, with in introduction of OSX) had "type and creator codes" in a "resource fork". Now, if you just flatten the resource fork into a data header format, you suddenly have a standardized file header with type and creator metadata in them. But what if your FS doesn't support "resource forks"?
Do things the "Lisa" way. Apparently, the Apple Lisa had some sort of database-like file system (in 1983 - WinFS, eat your heart out) that would assign a file ID, but display a filename, and track a dozen or so metadata fields per file. So in the UI, in any given container, you could have 10 files named identically, but they wouldn't conflict with each other. They would also have a full complement of needed metadata maintained within their file-system wrapper (essentially, their file headers). This was arguably the "next level of file system" after the Unix-style hierarchy (and its timing was appropriate in 1983). It's similar to how MP3 files have ID3 tags embedded in them. Those ID3 tags are just metadata values. If every file in the file system had a minimum "simple set" of metadata tags in the header information, this would work beautifully. Someone should make a general standard for this sort of thing and write support for it into Linux. Apple could probably be persuaded to support it (especially if you allowed them to put their name on the standardization effort). Then MS would probably jump on the bandwagon and say they invented it. Let them (who cares? All we want is decent file metadata).
Your argument about file extensions, though, is not only naive, it's also incorrect. Extensions are part of the filename. I, as a user, can meddle with them in the same manner as the rest of a filename. They are completely arbitrary and can be removed entirely if I so choose. They are not metadata. And if I wanted to pack up a binary file with its own headers or signature and send it over a network, it would work perfectly fine. And if I were to design a file system that would work over a network, I would make the file header format a standard. And it would be every bit as reliable as any other system, except when data got to the recipient it would be guaranteed to have its metadata, rather than an arbitrarily-modified filename that may have lost its file type in the transfer.
I will agree with you about mime-types. Mime-types, as you note, are not reliable because they aren't stored with the file. They're more of a way for a server to tell a client what they're downloading before they download it. They work well for that, but are certainly not a good way of defining file metadata.
I don't know much about base-3, and from what those pages showed, it looked overly complex and not at all "efficient" in the sense of being easy to calculate either mentally or by machine.
But I think you missed a major point in number base theory, as evidenced here:
To continue the devil's advocacy, hex isn't much better than decimal for practicality. 16 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. That's three practical divisors, compared to duodecimals four. The only thing you gain in base 16 is division by 8, but you still lose division by 3, which is a more practical divisor.
First of all, base-16 would only be used as a shorthand for the real base-2 system. Just a convenience to keep small numbers from taking up enormous amounts of visual space in UI's (on-screen or on paper). Secondly, you missed the whole point of non-integer calculations. 2^-1, 2^-2, 2^-3, etc. are all valid digit-places. They correspond to 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, and so on. This is how floating point values work, and it's why computers don't work well with numbers like 0.3(decimal). 0.3 is 0.25 + a bunch of tinier powers of 2. 23 bits (old-school 32-bit IEEE floating point) isn't enough precision to deal with that number accurately. But I can tell you that a 96-bit float type doesn't have any trouble with it. And I can also guarantee that 0.3 would not be a common value in a system where everything is base-2. If nothing is grouped by threes or tens, it wouldn't be common, and that alleviates the necessity. For those few times it actually needs to happen, throw more precision at it until you get a close-enough estimate and call it a day.
I'm sure you've had basic high-school geometry (or will, depending on your age). In that class, I learned that being able to cut something into equal halves (by length, area, or volume) is the solution to everything. Why? Because it can be done without fancy tools. Extend that to an entire monetary and measurement system, and you have a recipe for success.
If you use base-12, however, well, let me just ask you - what is 12^-1? 12^-2? 12^-3? And how are they useful?
Actually, "google" was a word too. It's an informal word meaning to look, similar to ogle. Eyes are sometimes described as "googly", particularly those goofy toy eyes that have pupils free-floating in a plastic bubble. I suspect that's why Google got its name. It looks for things for you, ogling the internet and reporting its results back to you when you ask. You use Google to google the internet. "Googling" has now obtained the additional meaning of "to use Google". But it still has the same basic meaning - to look or search for something.
The major differences between Google and Furl are
1) Even my mother "googles" for things. She does not "furl" things (except maybe towels).
2) Google used a word that kinda means what they do. Furl did not. Nothing about bookmarks makes me think of folding things. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that "furl" based their name on the term URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. Therefore, Furl has no relation to the dictionary word. But Google does.
Screw that. Everything should be done in base 2 (binary). For a "shorthand notation" we can use base 16 (hex). I would love it if my bank account contained 0x94EF.F2 dollars and my bank statement said so.
In a similar vein, the metric system should be converted to use 2^n instead of 10^n. That makes it infinitely more useful to those of us who don't have to use our fingers to count. It would also make an acceptable replacement for "imperial" units. Anyone who makes this change might also consider making non-arbitrary base units that can't fluctuate. Grams aren't always grams. Material decay causes the "standard" gram to change over time. And what exactly is a "meter"? Completely arbitrary, AFAIK. I once heard that it was an even fraction of the distance from the north pole to the south pole, but I've never seen anything to back that up.
Meanwhile, speakers of language HTML had 255 words for green and another 16 million words for other colors that contained various levels of green. Along with that, there's a set of 216 synonyms that aid in English translation of some of the more common colors' words.
The words "deify" and "deity" fall within the "unless it sounds like a" part of that rule. It's "DAY-ity" and "DAY-ify", not American-idiot or "hick" pronunciation "DEE-ity" and "DEE-ify". It comes from the Latin root "deus", which is pronounced "DAY-oos".
Of the other two, "codeine" is a proper name of a chemical and drug. With proper names, all bets are off. So that leaves "conscience", or really, any word with "science" in it. And if you'll break the word "science" down by syllables, you'll note that it's not really an "ie" combination since there's a syllable break in there. That doesn't hold true for how most people pronounce words like "conscience", but I bet it used to.
"Furl it"? I've never heard of a website named "furl". And if someone told me to furl it, I'd ask them what they would like me to wrap, roll, or fold. It appears that "furl" is already a verb.
Nintendo's release dates are all listed as "Q4 2006", and since October 1 is a Sunday (and therefore not a business day), the first business day of Q4 2006 is Monday, October 2, 2006.
Object orientated programming
/. bitches incessantly about the evils of "web apps". Now I know. I can tell you one thing for sure, though. It's possible to do some serious development in JavaScript... just turn it off. That's the best development JavaScript has seen in years.
Maybe I'm just elitist, but why would you make all of your objects face eastward? Oh, you meant object oriented programming.
The web is growing up, and page processors like PHP will fall out of use. WebObjects showed the way forward arbeit at a cost of $50,000 when it was 1st released, and now we have free alternatives like Jakarta/Struts and Ruby on Rails.
The web hasn't changed. It's still a stateless, every-page-for-itself environment. PHP isn't a "page processor", it's a pre-response request processor. A client sends an HTTP request (yes, the very same as the XmlHttpRequest JavaScript "object") to Apache (Apache HTTPD, to be specific). Apache uses PHP (as mod_php) to preprocess the request. Then Apache sends the response generated by PHP. That's why PHP (now) means "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor".
"Jakarta/Struts" is a framework (actually probably several frameworks) built in Java and uses the Tomcat engine to serve up servlets. Guess what... A client sends an HTTP request (all the URL's start with "http:" regardless of the port, so it's still HTTP) to Tomcat. Tomcat uses Java (and it's libraries and frameworks - like Struts) to preprocess the request. Then Tomcat sends the response generated by Java. I feel like I'm repeating myself here.
[JavaScript is] a great OO language, highly dynamic.
You have got to be kidding me. JavaScript is a prototyped language. You don't define objects so much as you lay out a template for one and implement a library that pretends to operate on this so-called "object". It's about as OO as old-school C. In C, you could define a struct and segregate off a header and implementation for it and call it an "object", but there was no enforcement other than internal constraints you imposed upon your own code. JavaScript is just about as strict.
It's possible to do some serious development in Javascript.
I've been wondering what was wrong with web design lately. I've also been wondering why everyone on
I'm happy that the patterns for web development are finally moving closer to the 1980s.
Keep using JavaScript and you'll keep moving toward the 1980's. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue going forward.
Your entire post is trollish and whiny, but I thought I'd point this out, as it gave me a chuckle:
But then, Perl never pretends it will keep programmers secure, while PHP tries to and fails.
followed immediately by:
Perl also has the immensely important "taint" mode, where unprocessed user input isn't allowed anywhere near important functions, like executing an external program, writing data into the database or selecting a file to open. It's this that forces programmers to think properly, and does a far better job than PHP's attempt to keep you safe without making you think about security. PHP has nothing like taint mode, and it desperately needs it.
So Perl never pretends to keep programmers secure with some sort of "taint mode" but PHP is retarded because it aims to protect its users by not having such a feature? Huh? You either have it backwards (Perl is actually your overprotective mother while PHP lets you just get things done) or this "taint mode" is a security hole placed there by design (which forces me to call into question the sanity of the Perl guys).
Just to give you an idea where I'm coming from, I'm a professional PHP developer. I also do C, C++, and Java, and I can pick up just about any other language quickly. Perl is one of only two languages that usually makes my eyes bleed. The other one is Objective-C, and that's mostly because I hear "C" and think it's going to actually be readable. IMNSHO, Perl blows and I wish it would die. Why? Well, for example, the "eq" "operator". Operators are made of non-alphabetic symbols for a reason: so I, the programmer, can pick them out and tell them apart from the non-operators (variables, literals, constants, keywords, and function calls). Now, Java has the stupid String.equals() function. That's bad enough, but at least it's a function. Having alphabetic operators makes unreadable code as bad as any COBOL program ever dared to be (yes, I've endured COBOL). Oh, wait, that's right, this is Perl we're talking about here. Nobody can read that anyway. Poor language design is not soley the domain of PHP.
Umm... the power supply was recalled, yes. And Apple replaced them free of charge (including shipping!). The other things were not defects.
- The battery died after 7 years of use.
- The "searing" heat was never hot enough to be painful. Worrisome, but never painful.
- The iPod hard drive did not break. It was corrupted, but such is life. A reformat is not the same as a replacement.
And yes, I am a fanboy. I'm just not an incompetent, blind, incoherent, illiterate fucking moron like you seem to be. Don't like the name-calling? Don't reply like an asshat after two days without being able to read and understand what you're replying to. Two days is enough for anyone that isn't a complete tool to grasp the meaning of some words.
Welcome to slashdot, Anonymous Coward.
Have you seen Cars? If so, did you stay for the credits?
John Ratzenberger's character (Mack) is watching a bunch of older Pixar movies (modified to fit the Cars theme) and bragging about the voice talent (himself, over and over). Then he starts complaining about how they're just using the same actor over and over again.
I think it's this sort of voice-acting usage that he's complaining about, though this particular case kinda pokes fun at it.
On the other hand, that whole movie (along with most other Pixar movies) is an example of what he's talking about. Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Darryl Waltrip, etc. all did exactly what Mr. West was complaining about.
you obviously got lucky
Yes. I got lucky 5 times in a row. Right.
I myself are one of the ppl affected by a faulty G3 iBook. The extensive warranty didn't cover it because I replaced the cd-drive with a cd-burner before I was aware of the problem.
And it's Apple's fault that you voided your warranty? And then something broke and they wouldn't fix it because you voided your warranty? Notice who voided your warranty. You.
You just need to take a look at the forums. In all those cases the usual tactic of Apple is 1.) not to react at all 2.) call it a user problem 3.) deny that a problem exists etc etc
Looking at the forums is just a way to gather more useless anecdotal whining. And to be honest, if there are only a few hundred forum posts about problems with a product where thousands or millions of units are shipped, I'm inclined to agree with Apple's stance of "you must be doing something wrong" without seeing and investigating further evidence.
Those are tactics I expcect from $cheapo_brand but not from Apple. Remember that the iBook extensive warranty program was only created because a lawsuit was near?
Apple is no different from any other company. Why wouldn't you expect those "tactics" from Apple? Apple is a publicly traded corporation and if you're not a shareholder, they don't owe you a damned thing more than what you agreed to pay them for. They are not your friend, your pal, or your buddy. They said "we have product-A for sale for X-amount of money and it does this function and we guarantee that if you don't break it, it's made well enough to do that function for at least a year. If you pay us extra, we'll make that guarantee extend to 3 years." You bought it. Then you tampered with the machine enough to void that guarantee. Other people found that there was an actual flaw and Apple was forced to abide by their prior agreement to fix things. The "lawsuit" that was "near" that you mention was probably just an angry customer venting their frustration before getting a response from Apple.
The B&W G3 had issues with the IDE controller
Yes, but I didn't have one of those. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "first-generation" products. The B&W G3's IDE issues only affected Revision A motherboards.
eMac: Numerous reports of various errors, especially dying monitors.
And numerous reports of recalls too. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "low-end" products. The eMac is decidedly low-end.
PowerMac G4 sounds like a jet engine
Install the fricking firmware update already. It's only been out for 4 years.
sensor in PowerMac G5 causing the harddrives to get quite hot
Yet another "first-generation" issue. This was fixed within 2 months of release.
issues with freezes with the PowerMac G5 2,0 Ghz Single under OS X 10.4
"Low-end" again. Sure, this is the PowerMac G5, but it's the cheap one with a single chip. IIRC, they scale everything down on those. Slower memory, crappier graphics card, etc. It's a cheapened facsimile of the high-end desktop.
bad capacitators with the iMac G5
Now we have the best (worst?) of both worlds. A "low-end" iMac crossed with a "first-generation" (and only-generation) iMac G5. (Revision B was the Core Duo model.)
I never, really never experienced those problems with PC Hardware.
Yes, you did. You just didn't pin them on anyone else, since you were the only one to blame when something went wrong. If you had bought a Dell and all this stuff went wrong, then Dell would be just as "evil" and would've "locked you in" just as much, even though they sell the same PC hardware as every other vendor and the same as what you can buy from your favorite parts supplier. With Apple (or Dell) you're under warranty. Period. Unless you're so stupid as to go and void the warranty before it
Heh. Well, for starters, you're a troll and an idiot. But I'll humor you nonetheless.
The beige G3 is quite slow, but not unusable with Mac OS X 10.2.8. The Voodoo3 had to be removed in order for it to boot without a kernel panic. And it no longer is able to run UT at all (since UT wasn't ported fully to OSX and OSX lacks Rage Pro drivers). It makes a good space heater, and an even better closet filler. OSX 10.2.8 is the last version that will run on systems without built-in USB, so tell Apple how they know "diddly-fuckall" about computers and spare me your ignorant rants.
Stop commenting now, please.
I have a Costco card and a Sam's Club card already. I don't like Sam's club as much, since they have higher prices, lower quality, and more rednecks starting fist-fights in the parking lot.
This article is really about informal buying co-ops. Co-ops were and are a good idea, and are widely hated by "real" and "legitimate" businesses because they cut into profits. That means it's about time they make a big comeback, aided by the Internet as a way to "spread the word".
While we're on the topic of anecdotes (and how those prove beyond a doubt that what you're saying is true in all cases), I'd love to throw mine into the mix.
- Beige G3 tower, 300MHz, came with 64 MB of RAM (now has 448 MB), 4GB SCSI HDD (now has that and a 20GB IDE) and extra video card (removed and replaced with a Voodoo3). I received the system via UPS on August 14, 1998. It never gave me a problem outside of the occasional Unreal Tournament crash during reads to the SCSI card and the HD that was on that bus. It runs 10.2.8 and is still in perfect working condition, though a bit underpowered for any real use.
- Colorsync 17 CRT, a Sony product (has a Trinitron tube complete with bracing wires). Received via UPS on August 14, 1998. Died (not completely, but to blinky to the point of uselessness) sometime in 2001. Still powers on, but goes wonky within minutes. Usable as a head for a normally headless server, as long as it can connect to a fricking old-school Apple Display Connection (not the same as the all-in-one ADC power/USB/video plug. It's older and is really just VGA with a non-HD plug.). I keep it around because it's cheaper to store it than to pay for CRT disposal.
- Powerbook G3 (Bronze Keyboard), a.k.a. "1999" or "Lombard". Has been upgraded to 320MB RAM and 10GB HDD by myself. It was refurbished when I bought it, so it had passed QA twice. I received it in the early spring of 2000. Upgrades were done in 2001. There was a power adapter recall, but no further problems. The battery died in late 2005. It still works, though it relies on the replacement power adapters (the same yo-yo ones as the first iBooks). Got kinda hot if you sat it on a non-heat-conductive surface (worse than a MacBook Pro). Seemed to have a huge metal plate in the bottom of it as a heat-spreader.
- iPod, 4th generation (click wheel), 40GB. Purchased in July 2004. Has had a few HD corruption issues (mostly in FAT32 mode, and nothing a reformat couldn't fix), has a few scratches from being dropped (carpet, concrete, and tile). Still works beautifully and still holds a 10-hour charge.
- Mac Mini, 1.42GHz G4 "loaded" configuration. First generation. Purchased in April 2005. Serves as a HD-PVR (in concert with an EyeTV 500). Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- Mac Mini, 1.33GHz G4 (speed-bumped "1.25GHz") "cheap" configuration. First generation. Purchased October 7, 2005. Serves as a light-duty desktop and will soon be a PostgreSQL and Apache server for my home-use web-apps. Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.
- MacBook Pro, 15", 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD. Purchased June 2006 (about 4 weeks ago). Gets kinda hot, but not too hot to put on your lap, even running iTunes and Eclipse and 10 other smaller apps simultaneously. No physical defects apparent yet (other than the standard penchant every keyboard has for attracting a ring of solidified skin oils on the "e", "i", "o", "return", and "delete" keys - ugh). No overheating problems, especially after the firmware flash that was ready shortly after first boot. I've seen some WiFi connection weirdness, but only when at the far reaches of a hotspot. Apparently, the swelling battery problem requires a few months of fermentation. I'm hoping mine is a "rev B" or something and avoids this problem.
Now, I don't doubt you've had some issues with your Apple hardware, but I don't believe for a second that it's overly widespread (at least any more than any other manufacturer), or that there is a higher-than-normal percentage of bad Apples (har har). To point out the obvious, you've purchased several "first-generation" and "low-end" Apple products, which do have higher failure rates than the "revision" and "high-end" products. The iBook is low-end, the iPod is perpetually "first-generation" because they keep overhauling it (retarded product strategy, btw), and the Mighty Mouse is seriously first-gen (and won't be 2nd-gen for a long time). When they start including the Mighty Mouse with the pro-line "high-end" desktops, then it will have graduated to 2nd-generation.
He only saved a couple hundred bucks? What a tool.
I saw a deal at Costco on an AMD Turion X2 laptop with everything my new MacBook Pro has, except it was $1500 cheaper. It even had a larger screen. (15" MBP = $2500, 17" off-brand AMD laptop = $1000 w/coupon or $1150 w/o coupon.)
I'd love to be the one to point out to any of these guys that if Apple was going to lose marketshare because of his publicity, they would've given him the computer for his continued support. Apple knows that these nerds mean jack shit to their bottom line.
And as far as "essential software" goes, what doesn't run on an MBP? Ooh! Ooh! I know! Macsbug! Break out the burning 5300c!