"$199 gets you a PC, with everything you need except a keyboard, mouse, and monitor."
Ultra-cheap PC's can be really, really crappy BTW, especially when you look at the PSU (and case). I don't have Mac's and have built many many PC's over the last twenty years and I can assure you I would never contemplate purchasing a super-cheap PC, so it is a bit unfair to compare the price of a PC based piece of crap to a Mac based PC which is probably built to a much higher quality standard.
It's like claiming a Trabant is a better option for car buyers than say a Toyota Corolla because they both have 4 wheels, four seats and a 1.6 litre engine.
And good luck with soldering them back on so that you can't tell that they have been touched by a sodering iron. You can be sure that an email from Apple HQ has already been drafted directing their hardware techs to check for solder tampering on these "jumpers" on all 1.25Ghz Mini warranty claims before commencing any repairs.
" I'm not really clear on how overclocking would necessarily be detectable, and thus void the warranty. If I go in and change the jumpers, melt it down, change the jumpers back - how is Apple going to know?"
Because the "jumpers" are actually "surface mount zero ohm resistors" and are soldered to the board, and any typically hamfisted attempt to remove and replace the "jumpers" by a hacker with a handheld soldering iron will be easily detectable to any hardware tech worth his salt.
" The jumpers are not soldered, just normal (tiny) jumpers. "
They are most definetly soldered.
There are in fact, as the article states, "zero ohm resistors". To be fully accurate, you would call them "surface mount zero Ohm resistors". The page author goes on to say that you do not need to put them back to set your desired clock speed because you can just use a "blob of solder".
" Microsoft needs pretend competition. Rather than let the "alternative types" go off the the uncontrollable Linux, Bill Gates can contain them in the Apple world."
It's true. It's like when I used to play Civilisation a lot, I used to play it with the goal of making the highest population (number of citizens) I could possibly make, which basically meant wiping out all the other nations and planting cities on every possible square of land.
But here's the thing, if you wiped out all your competitors completely then it was game over, much like it would be for Microsoft and their tenuous anti-trust situation. So what I would do would be to leave one enemy city alive (usually on a tiny single square sized island and stick a few battleships next to it to keep it totally isolated. That way you can keep playing the game and build up your massive mono-culture and the competition doesn't bother you much but is just enough to stop the game from continuing.
Golly, and here I am thinking it would be sensible to just put a machine in for each, charge them both rental fees or a percentage on sales, and let the students decide which brand they want to drink.
So much for free choice and competition I suppose.
In the past I have actually walked out of stores without a purchase when it becomes apparent that they have an exclusive deal to sell nothing but Coke products (usually because I am looking for 'Red Bull' or 'V' and all they have is the Coke clone 'Lift'.
"I'm sure Apple has some of the typical corporate ambivalence towards Free Software, but they're much better than most . . "
. . . yet I still can't download Quicktime from them to use on my linux box (but I can download Realplayer, yet which company is the darling of/. and which company is much maligned).
Apple is no friend of FOSS, they don't even pretend to be so. They have as much vested interest in stifling the growth of Linux as Microsoft does. Not to mention that anybody who is as reliant on Microsoft as Apple are (without MS Office for Mac apple would sell even fewer macs than they do now) is usually asked to return the favour, and I'm sure Microsoft is not shy about reminding apple about how much they fear and dislike the growth of FOSS.
"Think about that next time you are considering porting Quicktime to that other OS, Mr Jobs."
"[...] consumers have the power to shut down that system. There is no need to consume things like music, movies, television programmes, etc. Stop that consumption and the system will die, because the corporations that run the system will die."
I don't believe enough people will care enough to boycott the "entertainment" industry to effectively kill the corporations in question, but I agree, there is no need for people to consume this crap. The very fact that there are plenty of people out there who are stupid enough to think that 50 cent and Usher are talented enough for them to lay out their hard-earned cash on their CD's alone is demonstrative of that fact.
My suggestion is to make hay while the sun is still shining, build up your collections of unencumbered stuff now while you still can and then just stop consuming their crap when they make it too hard/expensive/restrictive to do so. From then on you will have to rely on legacy hardware and your existing collections for as long as you can keep it all working.
Note: Keep plenty of spares.
I expect that enough people will continue to purchase the latest and greatest DRM'd dreck that will continue being pumped out of Hollywood to keep the industry going, but I sure don't intend to contribute to it at all.
"Most of my users still want to run at 800x600 on 17" or 19" screens and maximize their browser window, even when the text in that window is only an inch across."
I have had to argue with users about that. On sight of a new big 19" screen, the first thing most of them say is "cool, a big screen, now the letters will be even bigger!" and then they proceed to continue working in 640 by fricking 480! On a nineteen inch screen!
Then they want to argue with you when you suggest that they can increase the resolution so that they can see more things on the screen at once. "Why on earth would I want to do that?" they'll respond with an incredulous look.
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet. That's what they're looking for. How in the nine hells are they supposed to know what "Firefox" is [...] People *MIGHT* start using something other than IE when this stops being the case.
Considering that Microsoft successfully managed to sue Lindows because its name "sounded phonetically like Windows", then it is not much of a stretch to imagine that Microsoft would also consider suing anybody that made a browser that had anything that "sounded" like "internet" in its name.
"3DFX died not because of SLI, but because they put all the R&D funding toward anti-aliasing low resolution (640x480, 800x600) graphics."
That was only one of their mistakes. The other two were;
* Insistance that 16bit graphics were "all games require", (640K RAM anyone?) and their subsequent dogged refusual to offer 32bit cards. This allowed nVidia to leapfrog them and take a huge market lead, from which they never recovered.
* Attempted to force the market into adopting their own proprietary standard by refusing to offer proper support for anything other than their own Glide API.
the let-down occurs *after* Sony get your hard-earned cash. So unless someone makes a stink, why should Sony care?
Well, for a start, people might be less enthused about buying games for the system. I'm pretty sure that most console/hand-held makers don't make a hell of a lot on selling the hardware. The hardware is just a hook to get you to buy their (licenced) games.
Yes, but according to the article, the PSP is, despite what Sony has been saying in the press, region coded. This might be a bit of a problem for the looters by the time the thing is released in the U.S. although I suppose they could just steal another one when it launches there.
I used to do a lot of pot, back in the eighties, and I do mean a LOT.
These days, I can't touch the stuff. The last time I smoked a jay (at a concert) I spent the next 3 months experiencing a major derpression episode.
So, I can attest to the fact that at least in my case it can indeed "screw with your head". I'm not saying that it should be banned, but we should at least start being honest with ourselves and our kids about the stuff.
Part of mm job is to maintain a mailserver for our domain (sendmail)
What I do when required to enter an email address in a webform is to creat an email alias that is based on the site I am registering with. For example,when I registered at gamespot.com I made an alias "gamespot" and pointed it to my real address.
The beauty of this approach is;
1) You can still receive emails from
the site if you want to
2) If you don't want to you simply delete
the alias
3) If you get torrents of spam to that
address you know who has been acting
loose and carefree with your email
address.
Slashdot Mirror
"$199 gets you a PC, with everything you need except a keyboard, mouse, and monitor."
Ultra-cheap PC's can be really, really crappy BTW, especially when you look at the PSU (and case). I don't have Mac's and have built many many PC's over the last twenty years and I can assure you I would never contemplate purchasing a super-cheap PC, so it is a bit unfair to compare the price of a PC based piece of crap to a Mac based PC which is probably built to a much higher quality standard.
It's like claiming a Trabant is a better option for car buyers than say a Toyota Corolla because they both have 4 wheels, four seats and a 1.6 litre engine.
And good luck with soldering them back on so that you can't tell that they have been touched by a sodering iron. You can be sure that an email from Apple HQ has already been drafted directing their hardware techs to check for solder tampering on these "jumpers" on all 1.25Ghz Mini warranty claims before commencing any repairs.
You can count on it.
" I'm not really clear on how overclocking would necessarily be detectable, and thus void the warranty. If I go in and change the jumpers, melt it down, change the jumpers back - how is Apple going to know?"
Because the "jumpers" are actually "surface mount zero ohm resistors" and are soldered to the board, and any typically hamfisted attempt to remove and replace the "jumpers" by a hacker with a handheld soldering iron will be easily detectable to any hardware tech worth his salt.
" The jumpers are not soldered, just normal (tiny) jumpers. "
They are most definetly soldered.
There are in fact, as the article states, "zero ohm resistors". To be fully accurate, you would call them "surface mount zero Ohm resistors". The page author goes on to say that you do not need to put them back to set your desired clock speed because you can just use a "blob of solder".
"So it will keep me from cooking my cohones along with my microwave popcorn [...]
Disclosure: I do wear a pocket protector.'
You wear a pocket protector AND worry about your fertility?
Love your optimism dude!
'twas a joke my friend. hence the ;-)
That should end "just enough to stop the game from finishing"
" Microsoft needs pretend competition. Rather than let the "alternative types" go off the the uncontrollable Linux, Bill Gates can contain them in the Apple world."
It's true. It's like when I used to play Civilisation a lot, I used to play it with the goal of making the highest population (number of citizens) I could possibly make, which basically meant wiping out all the other nations and planting cities on every possible square of land.
But here's the thing, if you wiped out all your competitors completely then it was game over, much like it would be for Microsoft and their tenuous anti-trust situation. So what I would do would be to leave one enemy city alive (usually on a tiny single square sized island and stick a few battleships next to it to keep it totally isolated. That way you can keep playing the game and build up your massive mono-culture and the competition doesn't bother you much but is just enough to stop the game from continuing.
Golly, and here I am thinking it would be sensible to just put a machine in for each, charge them both rental fees or a percentage on sales, and let the students decide which brand they want to drink.
So much for free choice and competition I suppose.
In the past I have actually walked out of stores without a purchase when it becomes apparent that they have an exclusive deal to sell nothing but Coke products (usually because I am looking for 'Red Bull' or 'V' and all they have is the Coke clone 'Lift'.
How the hell do you become an alcoholic drinking one carton of beer a month?
;-)
I'm an alcoholic and I can assure you it requires at least 2 cartons a week.
"I'm sure Apple has some of the typical corporate ambivalence towards Free Software, but they're much better than most . . "
/. and which company is much maligned).
. . . yet I still can't download Quicktime from them to use on my linux box (but I can download Realplayer, yet which company is the darling of
Apple is no friend of FOSS, they don't even pretend to be so. They have as much vested interest in stifling the growth of Linux as Microsoft does. Not to mention that anybody who is as reliant on Microsoft as Apple are (without MS Office for Mac apple would sell even fewer macs than they do now) is usually asked to return the favour, and I'm sure Microsoft is not shy about reminding apple about how much they fear and dislike the growth of FOSS.
"Think about that next time you are considering porting Quicktime to that other OS, Mr Jobs."
"[...] consumers have the power to shut down that system. There is no need to consume things like music, movies, television programmes, etc. Stop that consumption and the system will die, because the corporations that run the system will die."
I don't believe enough people will care enough to boycott the "entertainment" industry to effectively kill the corporations in question, but I agree, there is no need for people to consume this crap. The very fact that there are plenty of people out there who are stupid enough to think that 50 cent and Usher are talented enough for them to lay out their hard-earned cash on their CD's alone is demonstrative of that fact.
My suggestion is to make hay while the sun is still shining, build up your collections of unencumbered stuff now while you still can and then just stop consuming their crap when they make it too hard/expensive/restrictive to do so. From then on you will have to rely on legacy hardware and your existing collections for as long as you can keep it all working.
Note: Keep plenty of spares.
I expect that enough people will continue to purchase the latest and greatest DRM'd dreck that will continue being pumped out of Hollywood to keep the industry going, but I sure don't intend to contribute to it at all.
So, how do those FM radio station prank calls work then?
"Most of my users still want to run at 800x600 on 17" or 19" screens and maximize their browser window, even when the text in that window is only an inch across."
I have had to argue with users about that. On sight of a new big 19" screen, the first thing most of them say is "cool, a big screen, now the letters will be even bigger!" and then they proceed to continue working in 640 by fricking 480! On a nineteen inch screen!
Then they want to argue with you when you suggest that they can increase the resolution so that they can see more things on the screen at once. "Why on earth would I want to do that?" they'll respond with an incredulous look.
What is this "dumb" of which you speak and why would he want to fuck it?
" Just because it isn't proper english doesn't mean it isn't a word."
That is inglapop
Well, it's called "Internet Explorer". It's got the keyword - internet. That's what they're looking for. How in the nine hells are they supposed to know what "Firefox" is [...] People *MIGHT* start using something other than IE when this stops being the case.
Considering that Microsoft successfully managed to sue Lindows because its name "sounded phonetically like Windows", then it is not much of a stretch to imagine that Microsoft would also consider suing anybody that made a browser that had anything that "sounded" like "internet" in its name.
Just a thought.
"3DFX died not because of SLI, but because they put all the R&D funding toward anti-aliasing low resolution (640x480, 800x600) graphics."
That was only one of their mistakes. The other two were;
* Insistance that 16bit graphics were "all games require", (640K RAM anyone?) and their subsequent dogged refusual to offer 32bit cards. This allowed nVidia to leapfrog them and take a huge market lead, from which they never recovered.
* Attempted to force the market into adopting their own proprietary standard by refusing to offer proper support for anything other than their own Glide API.
It is a fish
the let-down occurs *after* Sony get your hard-earned cash. So unless someone makes a stink, why should Sony care?
Well, for a start, people might be less enthused about buying games for the system. I'm pretty sure that most console/hand-held makers don't make a hell of a lot on selling the hardware. The hardware is just a hook to get you to buy their (licenced) games.
Oops, that second link should have been divorce
still looking for a wife
You really should read about marriage and divorce before you go and do something really stupid.
Yes, but according to the article, the PSP is, despite what Sony has been saying in the press, region coded. This might be a bit of a problem for the looters by the time the thing is released in the U.S. although I suppose they could just steal another one when it launches there.
I used to do a lot of pot, back in the eighties, and I do mean a LOT.
These days, I can't touch the stuff. The last time I smoked a jay (at a concert) I spent the next 3 months experiencing a major derpression episode.
So, I can attest to the fact that at least in my case it can indeed "screw with your head". I'm not saying that it should be banned, but we should at least start being honest with ourselves and our kids about the stuff.
Part of mm job is to maintain a mailserver for our domain (sendmail)
What I do when required to enter an email address in a webform is to creat an email alias that is based on the site I am registering with. For example,when I registered at gamespot.com I made an alias "gamespot" and pointed it to my real address.
The beauty of this approach is;
1) You can still receive emails from
the site if you want to
2) If you don't want to you simply delete
the alias
3) If you get torrents of spam to that
address you know who has been acting
loose and carefree with your email
address.