I'm guessing because Safari 3 is still a beta release, but I would like to see the comparison. In my testing on a very JS-heavy app I'm working on, the Safari 3 beta on both Windows and Mac is much faster than IE or Firefox, at least in terms of JavaScript performance.
I know one person who did get a full $200 store credit simply by asking for it. Apple seems to very conscious of the fact that dropping the price so much so soon is going to make the early adopters cranky, and seem willing to make reasonable accommodations for those folks if they ask for it.
This seems to be more than most companies would do in the same situation, and it's preferable to keeping the price artificially inflated for everyone else just so the people who were happy to spend to $599 can feel better about themselves.
I have heard enough of the horror stories to believe there must be some real issues out there, but my experience getting the two cable cards (via Comcast) installed in my my TiVo S3 was totally painless.
The installer simply followed the TiVo instruction sheet, called in the numbers and they worked properly the first time, and have been entirely glitch free for 9 months.
Folks serving ads should consider for a minute WHY people want to block them. It's because of sites ABUSING users with ads. Popups, stupid floating ads moving across the screen, etc.
Your basic static banners, or AdWords-style text ads are really not a big deal, and if that was all there was, I wouldn't bother with Adblock.
Unfortunately, some sites think the ad has to be shoved down the user's throat, so therefore I block ads altogether.
Out here we have a cab service that brings 2 drivers... the second driver drives your vehicle home for you. It doesn't cost that much more than the regular cab ride so it's a great deal.
That's brilliant. I wish all cab companies had that service. Although, seeing the condition of most cabs, I'm not entirely sure I would entrust a cabbie to drive my car...
If you're impaired in such a way, you shouldn't be driving at all, whether it was caused by low blood sugar or high blood alcohol.
While literally true, the difference is that a low blood sugar reaction is not something that is usually expected at a given time. If someone's been drinking, they KNOW they may possibly be impaired, and should act accordingly.
If someone is driving along and their blood sugar levels drop past a critical point, it isn't likely planned, and since they are now impaired, they may not have the presence of mind to pull the car over, or fearing coma or death, may decide to risk it and get to 7-11 for a shot of OJ...
Perhaps, but is there something wrong with those who need the charity getting more than one option? Personally, I think it's great that people are looking at a market like this and saying "hey, let's try to compete in that market", instead of "hey, I think I may have some dirty old socks around here I can unload on them".
The OS is completely irrelevant to most people. They all have window controls, file systems, and the basic stuff you need to make your computer turn on and do something.
The average person doesn't care how the OS works, they care about what they DO with their computers - can they write e-mail, browse the web, open the spreadsheet they sent home to work on over the weekend, etc.
The average person is not interested in the technology. They will use what most of their peers use, because it means they can more easily get help, share programs, exchange documents, etc. with the least amount of issues. They will use what is the easiest to obtain, and the most widely supported.
Grandma may be more than happy with Linux if she's just writing e-mails and such, but the minute her friend shows her a cool little program that lets her design her own cross-stitch patterns, Grandma will wonder why she can't run it too...and no amount of Linux evangelism will make her happy when she realizes she can't just do what she wants to do.
I like technology, I like to tinker, and I usually have some Linux distro or another on one of my boxes to play with, but I use Windows day to day because I invariably run into a need for an application that Linux has no equivalent for. (Here's one example of something I got a lot of use out of recently: http://www.punchsoftware.com/index.htm. )
I have yet to have the opposite experience.
Windows is that path of least resistance for the vast majority who see the computer as merely a tool to facilitate their work or leisure, rather than the thing itself.
Years ago I worked in a small computer shop that sold both Windows boxes and Macs. I was rarely asked to compare them on the merits of the operating system, but was constantly asked "will it run X Y or Z". If the answer was "no", or anything less than an unequivocal "yes", they would not buy that system. Period.
Really though, the problem is that rather than properly protecting the information, the government instead goes for "security by obscurity", and then balks when freely public information is made more easily obtainable.
Information is either public or it's not, and it's up to those who are responsible for the information to protect it accordingly, not to legislate some sort of middle ground where it's OK that it's public, except when it's aggregated in a manner they deem too easy to access.
Several years ago I was retail manager of a small computer retail shop. While manufacturers couldn't dictate a minimum sale price, many do dictate a minimum advertised price (MAP). I could sell an item for whatever I wanted, I just couldn't advertise it below a certain amount.
In our case, we sold both Macs and PC's - Apple had a MAP policy, none of the PC manufacturers we dealt with did.
The end result was that Macs were the only systems we could be competitive with. Our wholesale cost was always reasonably below the MAP, so we could sell the systems at the same price as the big retailers, and make a profit.
Contrast this with the PC's, where most manufacturers wouldn't even let us buy certain systems (generally the consumer targeted systems) without buying millions of dollars in inventory at a time, which wasn't feasible for a small shop. The systems we could get, usually bare bones "business" models, were very expensive on the wholesale level in small quantities.
In the end, we couldn't compete at all on the PC side since our cost for the systems was usually higher than what a big store could sell them at retail. And, since they weren't the "consumer" models, they had less bundled software, etc.
It really comes down to philosophy. Do you have a pure open market, where large retailers can give themselves a competitive advantage by buying quantity, or do you have some level of controls in place to allow smaller retailers to be price competitive.
He isn't saying there is no current warming trend. He is simply claiming that there isn't as much warming happening as some claim, and that the current warming trend isn't historically anomalous, which would suggest excessive human influence on climate.
I agree it's very important to study these things, but the main point in his piece is that there isn't always intellectual honesty when science is reported to the masses.
Considering how much attention this issue gets, and the influence the science has on the world in general, I like seeing an article like this if only for the fact that it may make some people look at the issue more critically.
It's easy to take this position with virtually any charitable initiative - why this and not that? The fact is there are lots of problems that need solving, and they all deserve attention to some degree or another.
This initiative isn't replacing other causes, it's in addition to them. You are free to support whichever issue is most important to you - and no matter what it is, someone out there will disagree with your priorities.
This is great advice - and not just because you get more for your money, but you can decide exactly which parts to splurge on, and which parts you can live with a lower end version of. And unlike a prebuilt system, you don't just get to choose which part, but which vendor for the part.
With things like graphics card, an otherwise identical card from two different manufacturers can differ in price by as much as 15-20%, plus the savings you get from not having the system builder's markup on top of that makes it even better.
Also, as you do the research on the components, you will end up knowing a great deal about the parts you bought, and know much better what your upgrade options or limitations are down the road, not to mention having control over deciding what upgrade options are important to you when you build it.
I recently built a fairly monster machine for around $3500 - yeah, not cheap at all, but a comparable pre-built box would have been well over $5000. The higher end you get, the more you save building your own, but even at the low end you will save some money AND get better quality for the price.
Oh, and building systems is actually a pretty entertaining way to spend a few hours (or days if something doesn't go right LOL)
Essentially, TiVo made a deal with Comcast to put their software on Comcast DVR boxes. The deal was announced a year ago, and still no TiVo Comcast boxes (at least not in my area), so we'll see. Although perhaps the pricing model changes are at least partially to make way for this.
Here's my thought for a 'solution,' or at least a stopgap: the problem isn't that Linux-compatible WL cards don't exist, it's that they're very hard to find and poorly marked. (Witness my "v3" problem.) What somebody with a lot of money needs to do, either an enterprising individual or an organization, is find a manufacturer that makes a well-supported WL card (one that uses a Prism chipset, probably) and contract to buy a production run of them in OEM packaging. Call them whatever you want, toss them in a white box with a driver CD, and sell them for $20 more than they cost.
Interestingly, this is basically what TiVo does. Since TiVo is Linux-based, they have the same issues with wireless adapter support. They maintain a list of supported adapters, and kept a stock of thier "recommended" one available to order from thier site.
While I didn't get mine for the video capability, it turns out the screen is actually much more watchable than one would expect from the specs.
The image quality is quite high, and at arms length it's really not that much different than sitting across the room from a 20" or so screen.
While it won't be replacing my home theater any time soon, being able to watch a show or movie on a plane trip or whatever is a nice bonus.
Sure, there are better dedicated video players, but it's an Apples and oranges comparison. The iPod is still a music player primarily, with photo ability and video as nice bonuses. If video is what you see as a primary use for a device, look elsewhere, but for occasional viewing, it's more than adequate.
I think that experiment was a little different - the clones were still "non standard" hardware, built by a couple of essentially unknown companies.
It created a situation that didn't have much hope of substantially increasing the user base, but did bleed off hardware sales from Apple.
Having OS-X run on commodity PC hardware opens a much larger potential market, one that MIGHT turn into a big enough increase in software sales to justify a hit to the hardware sales.
I tend to think this is an eventual necessity, because it will be harder to justify the price premiums on thier hardware when it becomes just a standard, albeit pretty PC to the casual observer.
Hardware is already a very low margin business, and if they lose even a little bit of thier ability to charge a premium, I think it's very possible they will need to open OS X up to the big PC vendors to stay competitive.
A Windows build of TOra has recently resurfaced:
http://tora.sourceforge.net/
It is so far a bit buggier than I recall from pre-Quest Windows versions (I am getting some weird text display glitches in the editor), but it's a hopeful sign.
Oh, I am sure they will keep ColdFusion around - consider that now Adobe will now have a product to cover every possible component of building and deploying multimedia web content - image and video editing (Photoshop, Premier, Illustrator), interface (Flash), dev tools (Dreamweaver and/or GoLive), and server technology (ColdFusion).
If anything, along with Flash, ColdFusion is one of the most important things Adobe gains from the aquisition - they had the authoring tools, now they have the distribution tools as well.
Well, the problem isn't letter-writing per se, it's that not enough people do it. People seem content to expend the energy complaining to friends, or on message boards, when if they directed that exact same effort toward the people who make the decisions, they might have at least some chance to effect some change.
It's not a magic bullet, for sure, but it's better than nothing, and probably better than most realize.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing because Safari 3 is still a beta release, but I would like to see the comparison. In my testing on a very JS-heavy app I'm working on, the Safari 3 beta on both Windows and Mac is much faster than IE or Firefox, at least in terms of JavaScript performance.
I know one person who did get a full $200 store credit simply by asking for it. Apple seems to very conscious of the fact that dropping the price so much so soon is going to make the early adopters cranky, and seem willing to make reasonable accommodations for those folks if they ask for it.
This seems to be more than most companies would do in the same situation, and it's preferable to keeping the price artificially inflated for everyone else just so the people who were happy to spend to $599 can feel better about themselves.
I have heard enough of the horror stories to believe there must be some real issues out there, but my experience getting the two cable cards (via Comcast) installed in my my TiVo S3 was totally painless.
The installer simply followed the TiVo instruction sheet, called in the numbers and they worked properly the first time, and have been entirely glitch free for 9 months.
Perhaps I am just very lucky.
Exactly.
Folks serving ads should consider for a minute WHY people want to block them. It's because of sites ABUSING users with ads. Popups, stupid floating ads moving across the screen, etc.
Your basic static banners, or AdWords-style text ads are really not a big deal, and if that was all there was, I wouldn't bother with Adblock.
Unfortunately, some sites think the ad has to be shoved down the user's throat, so therefore I block ads altogether.
Out here we have a cab service that brings 2 drivers... the second driver drives your vehicle home for you. It doesn't cost that much more than the regular cab ride so it's a great deal.
That's brilliant. I wish all cab companies had that service. Although, seeing the condition of most cabs, I'm not entirely sure I would entrust a cabbie to drive my car...
If you're impaired in such a way, you shouldn't be driving at all, whether it was caused by low blood sugar or high blood alcohol.
While literally true, the difference is that a low blood sugar reaction is not something that is usually expected at a given time. If someone's been drinking, they KNOW they may possibly be impaired, and should act accordingly.
If someone is driving along and their blood sugar levels drop past a critical point, it isn't likely planned, and since they are now impaired, they may not have the presence of mind to pull the car over, or fearing coma or death, may decide to risk it and get to 7-11 for a shot of OJ...
The practice came to light months ago, but this is the first example, to my knowledge, of a state filing suit against them for it.
Perhaps, but is there something wrong with those who need the charity getting more than one option? Personally, I think it's great that people are looking at a market like this and saying "hey, let's try to compete in that market", instead of "hey, I think I may have some dirty old socks around here I can unload on them".
...then yes.
The OS is completely irrelevant to most people. They all have window controls, file systems, and the basic stuff you need to make your computer turn on and do something.
The average person doesn't care how the OS works, they care about what they DO with their computers - can they write e-mail, browse the web, open the spreadsheet they sent home to work on over the weekend, etc.
The average person is not interested in the technology. They will use what most of their peers use, because it means they can more easily get help, share programs, exchange documents, etc. with the least amount of issues. They will use what is the easiest to obtain, and the most widely supported.
Grandma may be more than happy with Linux if she's just writing e-mails and such, but the minute her friend shows her a cool little program that lets her design her own cross-stitch patterns, Grandma will wonder why she can't run it too...and no amount of Linux evangelism will make her happy when she realizes she can't just do what she wants to do.
I like technology, I like to tinker, and I usually have some Linux distro or another on one of my boxes to play with, but I use Windows day to day because I invariably run into a need for an application that Linux has no equivalent for. (Here's one example of something I got a lot of use out of recently: http://www.punchsoftware.com/index.htm. )
I have yet to have the opposite experience.
Windows is that path of least resistance for the vast majority who see the computer as merely a tool to facilitate their work or leisure, rather than the thing itself.
Years ago I worked in a small computer shop that sold both Windows boxes and Macs. I was rarely asked to compare them on the merits of the operating system, but was constantly asked "will it run X Y or Z". If the answer was "no", or anything less than an unequivocal "yes", they would not buy that system. Period.
Really though, the problem is that rather than properly protecting the information, the government instead goes for "security by obscurity", and then balks when freely public information is made more easily obtainable.
Information is either public or it's not, and it's up to those who are responsible for the information to protect it accordingly, not to legislate some sort of middle ground where it's OK that it's public, except when it's aggregated in a manner they deem too easy to access.
If they are using public records to compile the list, then how "secret" is the information expected to be?
Several years ago I was retail manager of a small computer retail shop. While manufacturers couldn't dictate a minimum sale price, many do dictate a minimum advertised price (MAP). I could sell an item for whatever I wanted, I just couldn't advertise it below a certain amount.
In our case, we sold both Macs and PC's - Apple had a MAP policy, none of the PC manufacturers we dealt with did.
The end result was that Macs were the only systems we could be competitive with. Our wholesale cost was always reasonably below the MAP, so we could sell the systems at the same price as the big retailers, and make a profit.
Contrast this with the PC's, where most manufacturers wouldn't even let us buy certain systems (generally the consumer targeted systems) without buying millions of dollars in inventory at a time, which wasn't feasible for a small shop. The systems we could get, usually bare bones "business" models, were very expensive on the wholesale level in small quantities.
In the end, we couldn't compete at all on the PC side since our cost for the systems was usually higher than what a big store could sell them at retail. And, since they weren't the "consumer" models, they had less bundled software, etc.
It really comes down to philosophy. Do you have a pure open market, where large retailers can give themselves a competitive advantage by buying quantity, or do you have some level of controls in place to allow smaller retailers to be price competitive.
And, amusingly, they aren't even the first result in that search.
He isn't saying there is no current warming trend. He is simply claiming that there isn't as much warming happening as some claim, and that the current warming trend isn't historically anomalous, which would suggest excessive human influence on climate.
I agree it's very important to study these things, but the main point in his piece is that there isn't always intellectual honesty when science is reported to the masses.
Considering how much attention this issue gets, and the influence the science has on the world in general, I like seeing an article like this if only for the fact that it may make some people look at the issue more critically.
Perhaps instead of spending tax dollars protecting people from themselves, we might consider spending it on educating them instead.
It's easy to take this position with virtually any charitable initiative - why this and not that? The fact is there are lots of problems that need solving, and they all deserve attention to some degree or another.
This initiative isn't replacing other causes, it's in addition to them. You are free to support whichever issue is most important to you - and no matter what it is, someone out there will disagree with your priorities.
This is great advice - and not just because you get more for your money, but you can decide exactly which parts to splurge on, and which parts you can live with a lower end version of. And unlike a prebuilt system, you don't just get to choose which part, but which vendor for the part.
With things like graphics card, an otherwise identical card from two different manufacturers can differ in price by as much as 15-20%, plus the savings you get from not having the system builder's markup on top of that makes it even better.
Also, as you do the research on the components, you will end up knowing a great deal about the parts you bought, and know much better what your upgrade options or limitations are down the road, not to mention having control over deciding what upgrade options are important to you when you build it.
I recently built a fairly monster machine for around $3500 - yeah, not cheap at all, but a comparable pre-built box would have been well over $5000. The higher end you get, the more you save building your own, but even at the low end you will save some money AND get better quality for the price.
Oh, and building systems is actually a pretty entertaining way to spend a few hours (or days if something doesn't go right LOL)
Link to article about the announcement.
Essentially, TiVo made a deal with Comcast to put their software on Comcast DVR boxes. The deal was announced a year ago, and still no TiVo Comcast boxes (at least not in my area), so we'll see. Although perhaps the pricing model changes are at least partially to make way for this.
Maybe I'm missing something....
http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
The average player is 30, 43% are women, 18% are over 50 and revenues exceed that of movies.
How much more mainstream does gaming need to be?
I'm also wondering who thinks "games" are just for kids? Not many kids playing Bridge, Shuffleboard, Bingo, etc....
Interestingly, this is basically what TiVo does. Since TiVo is Linux-based, they have the same issues with wireless adapter support. They maintain a list of supported adapters, and kept a stock of thier "recommended" one available to order from thier site.
They now have a TiVo branded adapter for sale.
While I didn't get mine for the video capability, it turns out the screen is actually much more watchable than one would expect from the specs.
The image quality is quite high, and at arms length it's really not that much different than sitting across the room from a 20" or so screen.
While it won't be replacing my home theater any time soon, being able to watch a show or movie on a plane trip or whatever is a nice bonus.
Sure, there are better dedicated video players, but it's an Apples and oranges comparison. The iPod is still a music player primarily, with photo ability and video as nice bonuses. If video is what you see as a primary use for a device, look elsewhere, but for occasional viewing, it's more than adequate.
I think that experiment was a little different - the clones were still "non standard" hardware, built by a couple of essentially unknown companies. It created a situation that didn't have much hope of substantially increasing the user base, but did bleed off hardware sales from Apple. Having OS-X run on commodity PC hardware opens a much larger potential market, one that MIGHT turn into a big enough increase in software sales to justify a hit to the hardware sales. I tend to think this is an eventual necessity, because it will be harder to justify the price premiums on thier hardware when it becomes just a standard, albeit pretty PC to the casual observer. Hardware is already a very low margin business, and if they lose even a little bit of thier ability to charge a premium, I think it's very possible they will need to open OS X up to the big PC vendors to stay competitive.
A Windows build of TOra has recently resurfaced: http://tora.sourceforge.net/ It is so far a bit buggier than I recall from pre-Quest Windows versions (I am getting some weird text display glitches in the editor), but it's a hopeful sign.
Oh, I am sure they will keep ColdFusion around - consider that now Adobe will now have a product to cover every possible component of building and deploying multimedia web content - image and video editing (Photoshop, Premier, Illustrator), interface (Flash), dev tools (Dreamweaver and/or GoLive), and server technology (ColdFusion).
If anything, along with Flash, ColdFusion is one of the most important things Adobe gains from the aquisition - they had the authoring tools, now they have the distribution tools as well.
It's not a magic bullet, for sure, but it's better than nothing, and probably better than most realize.