2: Absence of a full email client. I suggest they grab Mozilla's Thunderbird. I have no trouble with it at all.
I'm not sure why an e-mail client has to be integrated into the office suite. In fact, I'm not sure why we have to have our slideshow program integrated with our word processor.
However, among the free e-mail clients, it seems to me that Evolution is the most complete replacement for Outlook. And Evolution is already a Novell program. If only they'd get Windows/OSX ports built.
I don't see why that indicates that Newell is lying. Apparently Blizzard had a good experience working with Apple and Valve didn't have a good experience. I still don't see a reason to disbelieve him.
Well, no, there's not really "Linux hardware", but I guess it depends on what "Linux" is meant to be doing in the headline. I assumed that it was acting as an adjective, not modifying "Hardware" as much as it was meant to modify "Donor".
As in, "What kind of 'Hardware Donor' is he? Oh, he's a 'Linux' Hardware Donor." I mean, it's not exactly a correct use of language anyway, but it's a headline. Headlines always abuse words in order to save space.
In any event, the point is pretty clear. He's a guy who's donating hardware that runs Linux. The natural assumption is that it's hardware that is also capable of running Windows, since most computers are. Don't be so picky.
That's right, what he's doing is awful. By providing all these free computers, he's depriving major manufacturers of a lot of sales, which hurts the economy and causes hardworking Americans to lose their jobs. This communist is taking food out of the mouths of starving children whose parents can't find jobs. He should be locked up!
(I hope it's really obvious that I'm kidding, but sadly some people do believe that sort of crap)
I say let them put in fiber and cut copper. Let them go through all that to block potential competitors. Once they're finished, immediately pass a law saying that they need to open fiber to competitors.
It's not really just religion, though. Anything which limits the ability of people to make reasonable claims or ask reasonable answers will lessen the potential for scientific progress. Even progressive secular people sometimes seek to limit questions and claims.
In reality, there are things which should not be said because they are offensive, and things which should not be asked because they're dangerous. However, if you want to make real progress, you have to place severe limits on those sorts of limits. You have to allow for people to make claims that are a little offensive, and to ask questions which are fairly dangerous. Sometimes the truth is dangerous and offensive, after all.
I personally am a little afraid of what some would like to fix about the current tubes we're running on.
I wouldn't mind if the tubes themselves got fixed. Judging by the slow speeds available to American consumers, it seems to me that the tubes must be leaking somewhere. I think they be careful about installing new valves and filters that would cause the tubes to block up in new ways.
I assume you mean that he's not saying "Macs can't run games."
But yes, he's not saying that. He's saying that Apple isn't helping game developers. Worse even, he's saying that Apple is openly soliciting game developers to spend time to give Apple information on how to help game developers, and then not acting on any of that information.
I don't see any reason to disbelieve him. As an Apple customer, I hope that Apple changes this behavior and starts pursuing game developers more actively. I was running Windows on my Mac for a little while just to play Half Life 2.
this heat [temperature gradient] is harnessed by a thermoelectric materal- basically it consists of several layers of different metals that produce a voltage potential in response to a temperature gradient
Why can't this be used to power laptops? I bet my Macbook Pro generates enough heat to power a small city.
I would say more generally, that any time someone references that equation, there's something wrong with the claim/argument they're making.
Of course, it's not really true. Every once in a blue moon, it makes sense to actually cite that "E=mc^2". But it's so rare that the equation is actually applicable, and even when it is the equation itself is so rarely helpful. I mean, ok, you're talking about a nuclear reaction, but do we actually need to know the ratio of energy to mass? Are we going to be doing calculations here?
Most of the time I've seen or heard someone reference the equation, it seems to be in the hopes of confusing and impressing people. It's one of the most famous physics equations in pop culture, but most people don't even know what it means, let alone how it was derived or when to use it.
Re:I think someone has a sig relevant to this news
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
I don't think there are any of the sort of "free-marketers" in existence who aren't either children, madmen, or disingenuous about their views. So who would I ask?
I'm saying that I don't even understand what kind of concept you're getting at. By what method does commerce control the government except through bribery and corruption? I don't see even a possible theoretical mechanism for it.
There are actual colors being displayed. And the two colors in question are actually the same color, even though they appear not to be. Hence, it's an "illusion".
Seriously, this is how illusions work. There's the notion of the perceived vs. the actual. Or else what's your alternative theory? How do you talk about "illusions" without dragging in the notion of disparity between a perception and reality?
Re:I think someone has a sig relevant to this news
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
Ok, that's a big long explanation of why you're conservative, which is fine. But my question is how are you going to have "commerce" run the government as a good thing? Even if you have conservatives running the government, using careful planning and looking towards secondary and tertiary consequences, they still shouldn't be choosing laws based on personal economic gain, should they? Shouldn't they be making laws for the good of the country, and not based on what makes them money?
That's because software is not the same sort of "good" as a pair of Levis. When you download software/music/movies, you deprive the content owner of a possible sale. When you steal a pair of Levis, you deprive them of the possible sale plus you deprive them of the actual jeans (materials, production, transport, stocking). It's different. In short, downloading a song is not "theft", it's "copyright infringement".
However, it's been shown over and over that a large number of people are willing to pay for content. At least in abstract. So it becomes meaningful to ask, what's the difference between instances when a person downloads content illegally and when a person buys the content download? Sometimes it's different people or different content, but I know from listening to people that it's often an issue of who is perceived to be deprived of the "possible sale". People are more likely to want to pay when they think their money is going to "the artist" than when they think it's going to "the RIAA".
Re:I think someone has a sig relevant to this news
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
I've re-read it, still not getting it. The "invisible hand" of economic pressure can control commerce and have it be a free market and a good thing, but what does it look like when the "invisible hand" of economic pressure controls the federal government?
Individuals in the government should not be making decisions based on their own personal economic gain. When they do, I'd tend to call that some kind of "bribery" or "corruption", even if it's not explicitly structured with one guy handing money to another.
In my opinion, the federal government should limit itself to a narrow scope and content itself with limited powers, but should always use those powers judiciously for the sake of the public good. What room is there in that for "commerce"?
The only way for the "free market" to be more "free" than that would be to disband the government entirely and have a general anarchy loosely controlled by whatever commerce can survive the anarchy. I guess there are probably people out there who think that system would be good, but they're madmen. It would greatly harm "the market" anyhow.
Quite the opposite. I'm stating, outright, that the reason interoperability exists is because without it there is no future for thier product.
So to sum up your post, your complaint of Apple as a company is that they only make good products in order to sell them, because there wouldn't be a future for the product if it weren't good enough.
In my mind, that's just ideal. When people make good things because they need to make things good in order to succeed, good things come out as a result. The alternative is Microsoft: someone making bad products because they feel that they can get away with it and they don't care.
Of course, I think what you're really asking is, is Apple making good products because they need to or because they want to. Well, the public persona of Steve Jobs is a stubborn, asshole-ish perfectionist who refuses to release a product that isn't cool enough to give him an ego-boost when he takes the stage to announce it. That would imply that he wants to release good products. Of course, they need to release good products, too, but everyone does, and that doesn't diminish the possibility of wanting to release good products.
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure I really care, so long as they're releasing good products.
Re:I think someone has a sig relevant to this news
on
The 700MHz Question
·
· Score: 1
If you're talking "The Invisible Hand" of economic pressure originating with the desires and choices of masses of individuals
I don't think that's what we're talking about. What was written was, "In Soviet Russia, government controls the commerce." According to the format of the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes, you'd reverse that and say that, in America, commerce controls the government. It implies that the government is being controlled by wealthy entities exerting economic pressure over officials (i.e. bribery).
Why so touchy? You don't seem to know what you're talking about. That's not a personal insult, but you're just talking about things beyond your scope. I know I'll often talk about things I don't really know too much about, but I try not to paint myself as an authority in those cases.
You're implying there's some problem with trying to get a Mac to interoperate with other operating systems. It bespeaks a massive amount of ignorance on the subject. Being ignorant on a subject isn't even a character flaw. Each of us is horribly ignorant on at least a few topics.
The point in a nutshell is that Apple could have blocked it
And why would blocking MS Office on the Mac have been less vendor lock-in for Apple? MS Office for Mac is expressly for the purpose of providing improved interoperability with another platform. Blocking MS Office for the Mac would have been a more restrictive move. In any event, there are a number of alternatives on OSX to Microsoft Office, including iWork and NeoOffice. Prohibiting competing products from existing would be more in line with the idea of "vendor lock-in".
The third option, (they are somehow equi-distant from the truth) was basically the only one not expressed.
Yeah, well that's a big one to miss, since both of them could be interpreted to be the same thing, both of them could have been exactly the truth, and that it's not an either/or proposition.
Appletalk networks, non standard floppy drives, one button mice
You're basically talking about a time when Apple was trying to create standards, back before a lot of these standards were really set. 20 years ago, they had their own format for floppies, their own networking protocols, and their own mice. But hell, you're talking about ancient history-- a time back when we were using floppies, before ethernet, and before mice. Apple was the first company to really offer mice to consumers, and you're complaining about their one-button mice being non-standard?
These days, Apple uses normal networking (TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, NFS, SMB, etc.). They offer "bonjour" as a means to zeroconf networking, but AFAIK it's pretty well documented and they offer a Windows client. OSX reads normal CD/DVD standards, UFS, and even NTFS by default. And as far as their mice, they're normal USB mice.
So you're clearly prejudiced and talking about things you know very little about.
I think this argument only works when you shut your eyes (tight) and imagine a world where Mac users don't want/need to use files and formats that have touched other operating systems...[snip]...If I'm wrong, why does Office for Mac even exist?
Office for the Mac exists so that you can use files and formats that have touched other another operating system (and office suite). As do loads of other programs. In fact, I don't know what you're talking about, and I genuinely suspect that you don't either. Or what do you imagine the problem is, transferring "files and formats" to and from other operating systems?
I'd pick 'B', personally, as being a whole lot closer to the truth.
Are those two supposed to be mutually exclusive? Maybe losing massive amounts of customers due to overly-restrictive policies isn't part of their overall vision? Anyway, I don't mind when companies base their choices on keeping their customers happy. The problem comes when they have their customers so bent over a rail that they can take their customers for granted, and that hasn't happened with Apple yet.
Magnatune also allows the buyer to set the price for an album purchase online: from $8 to $18. As far as I know, they've never released stats about how much people decide to pay.
I'd love to see an analysis of those stats, particularly if they could be set side-by-side with an analysis of Radiohead's stats. I would bet that if you compared the percentage of people buying from Magnatune and Radiohead who paid the minimum ($8 and $0 respectively), you'd find that fewer Radiohead purchasers paid the minimum. Just a guess. But I would think that psychologically, setting the minimum at $8 allows people to pay the minimum with a clearer conscience. There will be more people who look at $0 and think, "Well I should give them *something*."
Of course, that doesn't mean that the average sale price of Radiohead's album will be over $8. I'd just be interested to see how it worked out.
Beyond that, I think there are a lot of people who will pay. A lot of the problem with "piracy" is that people have such a negative association with the record industry that they don't feel any guilt about downloading music. If you could somehow offer that music for free with a suggested donation, it might very well turn into more money for bands in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
2: Absence of a full email client. I suggest they grab Mozilla's Thunderbird. I have no trouble with it at all.
I'm not sure why an e-mail client has to be integrated into the office suite. In fact, I'm not sure why we have to have our slideshow program integrated with our word processor.
However, among the free e-mail clients, it seems to me that Evolution is the most complete replacement for Outlook. And Evolution is already a Novell program. If only they'd get Windows/OSX ports built.
I don't see why that indicates that Newell is lying. Apparently Blizzard had a good experience working with Apple and Valve didn't have a good experience. I still don't see a reason to disbelieve him.
Now, if only the frontrunners in the Presidential primaries could follow his lead.
Well, no, there's not really "Linux hardware", but I guess it depends on what "Linux" is meant to be doing in the headline. I assumed that it was acting as an adjective, not modifying "Hardware" as much as it was meant to modify "Donor".
As in, "What kind of 'Hardware Donor' is he? Oh, he's a 'Linux' Hardware Donor." I mean, it's not exactly a correct use of language anyway, but it's a headline. Headlines always abuse words in order to save space.
In any event, the point is pretty clear. He's a guy who's donating hardware that runs Linux. The natural assumption is that it's hardware that is also capable of running Windows, since most computers are. Don't be so picky.
That's right, what he's doing is awful. By providing all these free computers, he's depriving major manufacturers of a lot of sales, which hurts the economy and causes hardworking Americans to lose their jobs. This communist is taking food out of the mouths of starving children whose parents can't find jobs. He should be locked up!
(I hope it's really obvious that I'm kidding, but sadly some people do believe that sort of crap)
I say let them put in fiber and cut copper. Let them go through all that to block potential competitors. Once they're finished, immediately pass a law saying that they need to open fiber to competitors.
It's not really just religion, though. Anything which limits the ability of people to make reasonable claims or ask reasonable answers will lessen the potential for scientific progress. Even progressive secular people sometimes seek to limit questions and claims.
In reality, there are things which should not be said because they are offensive, and things which should not be asked because they're dangerous. However, if you want to make real progress, you have to place severe limits on those sorts of limits. You have to allow for people to make claims that are a little offensive, and to ask questions which are fairly dangerous. Sometimes the truth is dangerous and offensive, after all.
I personally am a little afraid of what some would like to fix about the current tubes we're running on.
I wouldn't mind if the tubes themselves got fixed. Judging by the slow speeds available to American consumers, it seems to me that the tubes must be leaking somewhere. I think they be careful about installing new valves and filters that would cause the tubes to block up in new ways.
He's not saying "Macs can run games,
I assume you mean that he's not saying "Macs can't run games."
But yes, he's not saying that. He's saying that Apple isn't helping game developers. Worse even, he's saying that Apple is openly soliciting game developers to spend time to give Apple information on how to help game developers, and then not acting on any of that information.
I don't see any reason to disbelieve him. As an Apple customer, I hope that Apple changes this behavior and starts pursuing game developers more actively. I was running Windows on my Mac for a little while just to play Half Life 2.
If that were the case, then why wouldn't they offer an SDK for the iPhone and set up an "iPhone App" section on iTMS?
this heat [temperature gradient] is harnessed by a thermoelectric materal- basically it consists of several layers of different metals that produce a voltage potential in response to a temperature gradient
Why can't this be used to power laptops? I bet my Macbook Pro generates enough heat to power a small city.
I would say more generally, that any time someone references that equation, there's something wrong with the claim/argument they're making.
Of course, it's not really true. Every once in a blue moon, it makes sense to actually cite that "E=mc^2". But it's so rare that the equation is actually applicable, and even when it is the equation itself is so rarely helpful. I mean, ok, you're talking about a nuclear reaction, but do we actually need to know the ratio of energy to mass? Are we going to be doing calculations here?
Most of the time I've seen or heard someone reference the equation, it seems to be in the hopes of confusing and impressing people. It's one of the most famous physics equations in pop culture, but most people don't even know what it means, let alone how it was derived or when to use it.
I don't think there are any of the sort of "free-marketers" in existence who aren't either children, madmen, or disingenuous about their views. So who would I ask?
I'm saying that I don't even understand what kind of concept you're getting at. By what method does commerce control the government except through bribery and corruption? I don't see even a possible theoretical mechanism for it.
There are actual colors being displayed. And the two colors in question are actually the same color, even though they appear not to be. Hence, it's an "illusion".
Seriously, this is how illusions work. There's the notion of the perceived vs. the actual. Or else what's your alternative theory? How do you talk about "illusions" without dragging in the notion of disparity between a perception and reality?
Ok, that's a big long explanation of why you're conservative, which is fine. But my question is how are you going to have "commerce" run the government as a good thing? Even if you have conservatives running the government, using careful planning and looking towards secondary and tertiary consequences, they still shouldn't be choosing laws based on personal economic gain, should they? Shouldn't they be making laws for the good of the country, and not based on what makes them money?
Or else, what do you mean?
That's because software is not the same sort of "good" as a pair of Levis. When you download software/music/movies, you deprive the content owner of a possible sale. When you steal a pair of Levis, you deprive them of the possible sale plus you deprive them of the actual jeans (materials, production, transport, stocking). It's different. In short, downloading a song is not "theft", it's "copyright infringement".
However, it's been shown over and over that a large number of people are willing to pay for content. At least in abstract. So it becomes meaningful to ask, what's the difference between instances when a person downloads content illegally and when a person buys the content download? Sometimes it's different people or different content, but I know from listening to people that it's often an issue of who is perceived to be deprived of the "possible sale". People are more likely to want to pay when they think their money is going to "the artist" than when they think it's going to "the RIAA".
I've re-read it, still not getting it. The "invisible hand" of economic pressure can control commerce and have it be a free market and a good thing, but what does it look like when the "invisible hand" of economic pressure controls the federal government?
Individuals in the government should not be making decisions based on their own personal economic gain. When they do, I'd tend to call that some kind of "bribery" or "corruption", even if it's not explicitly structured with one guy handing money to another.
In my opinion, the federal government should limit itself to a narrow scope and content itself with limited powers, but should always use those powers judiciously for the sake of the public good. What room is there in that for "commerce"?
The only way for the "free market" to be more "free" than that would be to disband the government entirely and have a general anarchy loosely controlled by whatever commerce can survive the anarchy. I guess there are probably people out there who think that system would be good, but they're madmen. It would greatly harm "the market" anyhow.
Smells EXACTLY like vendor lock-in to me......
Apparently, you don't know what vendor lock-in smells like. Try going to Best Buy and sniffing some Office 2007 boxes for reference.
Quite the opposite. I'm stating, outright, that the reason interoperability exists is because without it there is no future for thier product.
So to sum up your post, your complaint of Apple as a company is that they only make good products in order to sell them, because there wouldn't be a future for the product if it weren't good enough.
In my mind, that's just ideal. When people make good things because they need to make things good in order to succeed, good things come out as a result. The alternative is Microsoft: someone making bad products because they feel that they can get away with it and they don't care.
Of course, I think what you're really asking is, is Apple making good products because they need to or because they want to. Well, the public persona of Steve Jobs is a stubborn, asshole-ish perfectionist who refuses to release a product that isn't cool enough to give him an ego-boost when he takes the stage to announce it. That would imply that he wants to release good products. Of course, they need to release good products, too, but everyone does, and that doesn't diminish the possibility of wanting to release good products.
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure I really care, so long as they're releasing good products.
If you're talking "The Invisible Hand" of economic pressure originating with the desires and choices of masses of individuals
I don't think that's what we're talking about. What was written was, "In Soviet Russia, government controls the commerce." According to the format of the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes, you'd reverse that and say that, in America, commerce controls the government. It implies that the government is being controlled by wealthy entities exerting economic pressure over officials (i.e. bribery).
Why so touchy? You don't seem to know what you're talking about. That's not a personal insult, but you're just talking about things beyond your scope. I know I'll often talk about things I don't really know too much about, but I try not to paint myself as an authority in those cases.
You're implying there's some problem with trying to get a Mac to interoperate with other operating systems. It bespeaks a massive amount of ignorance on the subject. Being ignorant on a subject isn't even a character flaw. Each of us is horribly ignorant on at least a few topics.
The point in a nutshell is that Apple could have blocked it
And why would blocking MS Office on the Mac have been less vendor lock-in for Apple? MS Office for Mac is expressly for the purpose of providing improved interoperability with another platform. Blocking MS Office for the Mac would have been a more restrictive move. In any event, there are a number of alternatives on OSX to Microsoft Office, including iWork and NeoOffice. Prohibiting competing products from existing would be more in line with the idea of "vendor lock-in".
The third option, (they are somehow equi-distant from the truth) was basically the only one not expressed.
Yeah, well that's a big one to miss, since both of them could be interpreted to be the same thing, both of them could have been exactly the truth, and that it's not an either/or proposition.
Appletalk networks, non standard floppy drives, one button mice
You're basically talking about a time when Apple was trying to create standards, back before a lot of these standards were really set. 20 years ago, they had their own format for floppies, their own networking protocols, and their own mice. But hell, you're talking about ancient history-- a time back when we were using floppies, before ethernet, and before mice. Apple was the first company to really offer mice to consumers, and you're complaining about their one-button mice being non-standard?
These days, Apple uses normal networking (TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS, NFS, SMB, etc.). They offer "bonjour" as a means to zeroconf networking, but AFAIK it's pretty well documented and they offer a Windows client. OSX reads normal CD/DVD standards, UFS, and even NTFS by default. And as far as their mice, they're normal USB mice.
So you're clearly prejudiced and talking about things you know very little about.
There are no actual lighting conditions
Exactly. The picture is just blotches of color, and there is actually no blue light or red light being shone on them.
I think this argument only works when you shut your eyes (tight) and imagine a world where Mac users don't want/need to use files and formats that have touched other operating systems...[snip]...If I'm wrong, why does Office for Mac even exist?
Office for the Mac exists so that you can use files and formats that have touched other another operating system (and office suite). As do loads of other programs. In fact, I don't know what you're talking about, and I genuinely suspect that you don't either. Or what do you imagine the problem is, transferring "files and formats" to and from other operating systems?
I'd pick 'B', personally, as being a whole lot closer to the truth.
Are those two supposed to be mutually exclusive? Maybe losing massive amounts of customers due to overly-restrictive policies isn't part of their overall vision? Anyway, I don't mind when companies base their choices on keeping their customers happy. The problem comes when they have their customers so bent over a rail that they can take their customers for granted, and that hasn't happened with Apple yet.
Magnatune also allows the buyer to set the price for an album purchase online: from $8 to $18. As far as I know, they've never released stats about how much people decide to pay.
I'd love to see an analysis of those stats, particularly if they could be set side-by-side with an analysis of Radiohead's stats. I would bet that if you compared the percentage of people buying from Magnatune and Radiohead who paid the minimum ($8 and $0 respectively), you'd find that fewer Radiohead purchasers paid the minimum. Just a guess. But I would think that psychologically, setting the minimum at $8 allows people to pay the minimum with a clearer conscience. There will be more people who look at $0 and think, "Well I should give them *something*."
Of course, that doesn't mean that the average sale price of Radiohead's album will be over $8. I'd just be interested to see how it worked out.
Beyond that, I think there are a lot of people who will pay. A lot of the problem with "piracy" is that people have such a negative association with the record industry that they don't feel any guilt about downloading music. If you could somehow offer that music for free with a suggested donation, it might very well turn into more money for bands in the long run.