Actually, fair use can include making a copy of an entire work.
I'm pretty sure that was implied when I wrote, "First, fair use does not apply to recreating entire works, except in a few, specifically described circumstances that don't apply here.
Making a copy for the sake of having a backup copy is also considered fair use, and involves making a duplicate of the entire work. Copying data in the process of using it (ie. a temporary copy of software into memory) is also fair use.
Actually, the backup copy was legal only through the nonprofit copying clause removed in 1976. It is most likely still legal according to the four consideration enumerated in copyright law, but I don't think this has been successfully proven in court and the courts (district I believe) in the US did specifically state that a backup copy was not "sufficient fair use" to bypass encryption ala the DMCA.
As for temporary copies in memory, it protects you if you are making a temporary copy while using the work, to which you have a valid right. It does not protect you if you are making a temporary copy for transmitting a work. ISPs and the like are protected by the fact that data is fragmented when transmitted and by the common carrier statutes that also exempt them from responsibility for having kiddie porn, death threats, slander, etc. on their routers.
Knowing that person A is talking to person B, and that the number of messages between the two is increasing, and where and when each message has been sent (not to mention what type of traffic is taking place) is also very informative. If you know A, a known terrorist, is exchanging a lot of messages with B, a PhD student in nuclear physics in a top-notch university, is enough to raise red flags all over the place, regardless of what kind of encryption is used to protect the messages themselves.
I think you might be confused. I'm pretty sure this is not traffic matching, per se but packet inspection. Otherwise this could handle a lot more traffic. Just matching IP address A and B and the traffic levels is easy. When the IP addresses are changing though, this does let them match encryption Key A and B and traffic levels. It also lets them match e-mail for address A and B and traffic levels, unless someone is using a proxy.
That is all well and good, but this particular system is a lot more about reading 100,000 random individuals' e-mail searching for the word "jihad" in conjunction with the word "Washington," in conjunction with traffic to the unfriendly nations IP space, or the like. Or it would be good for searching for jpegs in conjunction with a list of the IP addresses of the Democratic party congresscritters and making copies/records of those files just in case any are porn and can be used to blackmail them.
It's legal for you to send packets over network connections owned and operated by third parties. If you have an expectation of privacy for data being handled by parties you have no relationship with, you're being unreasonable.
This is not necessarily so. First, many technologies apply a strong metaphor to an existing service, even going so far as to assure customers they won't be able to tell the difference. VoIP is the primary consideration here, but e-mail is also a candidate. It is illegal for someone to look in the mail messages you send, so most people (knowing nothing of the technology involved) assume the same is true for e-mail. Thus they have an expectation. If you explain to them it is more like a postcard, most will understand, but they won't understand why their online bills don't have a envelope around them for privacy when their offline bills do. Also, more and more networks are converging. How much POTS traffic made via regular phones runs over the IP network? Try arguing in front a a jury that the difference between whether AT&T does it at the switching station or an individual does it with their server decides whether or not eavesdropping without a warrant is legal.
Truthfully, for the average user there probably is an expectation of privacy, partially because of laws passed to protect phone and regular mail communication that have not been extended to the internet equivalents.
AT&T isn't the only telecom left. Large retailers, banks, credit card companies also have a need to store trillions of records.
Actually, the constraint here is throughput, not storage. How many Gigabytes per second can you match against a regular expression while still not introducing significant latency in the packets you forward? Copying the matching flows into a huge database for examination is the easy part.
By sending IP packets, you are distributing your work. Narus could make a fair use argument that would be a chilling parody of the arguments posted by folks who troll around slashdot arguing that fair use covers anonymous torrents.
First, fair use does not apply to recreating entire works, except in a few, specifically described circumstances that don't apply here. Second, Narus is just selling gear, what someone else does with it is not their problem. Third, their customers are ISPs, given exemption from many copyright laws under common carrier statutes, which could, very well apply here (certainly more so than fair use).
If you don't like it, encrypt it.
This won't happen until the tools to do so are are made much easier, it is provided as a service, or both. VPNs are already taking off for corporations. What is needed is for consumer OS's to provide that functionality in a an interoperable way, by default. So yes, this is all Microsoft's fault for retarding the progress of the industry (as usual).
Does it make anybody else nervous that there is a market for these products? "off the shelf" products that can scale to this degree?
If enough large companies are purchasing these to the degree that a company manufactures this equipment...exclusively.. doesn't that strike an interesting chord?
Supply and demand is somewhat elastic. Where I work right now we build fairly specialized traffic monitoring servers for the core and edge routers of ISPs. While we don't manufacture our own hardware, we do make use of hardware designed for traffic analysis like this and sold to numerous companies that create devices needing the same basic characteristics. Whether you are making a packet analyzer, a high-level forensic tool, a firewall, an IDS, a traffic shaper, or something else, you may very well need basically the same hardware. So maybe 50 customers want something as expensive as what Narus makes for the high end, that can handle that much throughput. If they are willing to pay enough, someone (like Narus) will build it. Regulation compliance budgets are pretty large this year.
Of course Narus probably did not start out selling a "snooping" device. Look at their customers. They are all major ISPs and telecoms. The smart money says they started as a way to track traffic for billing and expanded as their customers needed to comply with more government regulations.
I somehow doubt that they are just using a "commercially available network-analysis product". I mean what "commercially available network-analysis product" breaks encryption?
Is this really news to anyone? I thought the original report showed they were using a Narus box. If I recall correctly it does not break encryption, but it will automatically make copies of matching encrypted flows for later analysis and cracking. My guess would be they just make copies of encrypted traffic they are interested in then move on to the big guns if it is really, really important (which they may or may not have ever actually done).
I have tried Ubuntu, but it does not really meet my needs for a workstation or a server. It is just not as nice as OS X as a workstation because it lacks many mainstream, commercial software offerings I need. The UI is not as polished, for navigating the filesystem, searching, and integrating the OS and different applications. It does have some nice features, even some I prefer to the OS X way of doing things, but it in the end, it doesn't fully meet my needs.
As a server it is a bit too bloated and not quite as locked down as I'd like. It is passable, but just not quite as useful as other Linux distros and not as well suited to most of my server needs as OpenBSD.
As for support, I have no doubt the MacBook will support Ubuntu by the time I am ready for my next purchase. It will, however, probably be running in a VM or hypervised mode with OS X as the primary OS. Now don't get me wrong. I am all for the open source methodology and I obviously prefer the licensing of Ubuntu; but at the end of the day, I need to get work done and I need to enjoy my 8-12 hours a day in front of a workstation. Ubuntu just doesn't measure up.
Note: in regard to the comparison, you can always add more OS's and functionality to both products. What we're comparing, however, is what ships with it.
For example. BMW 3-series cars for 2006 all have run-flat tires on them. Does that mean if we are to compare it to an Audi we must equip it with run-flat tires even if it doesn't come as a factory option?
If they are more expensive and we're doing a price comparison, then yes.
Exactly, which is why we shouldn't even try to equip both computers identically. I don't have any need for a modem as I use bluetooth from my cell, so it's nice that Apple has gone this direction.
This is called, "moving goal posts." You can compare the price of two computers used to perform a given set of tasks, but you have to define those tasks beforehand. Otherwise you can always say, "Oh I'll never use the modem" or "hard drive, I only use flash drives!" Since neither of us wants to sit down and define a whole list of tasks and uses and since those tasks would be useless to anyone not planning on performing exactly those tasks, we have to define the comparison differently. We assume all features are useful to someone and assign value to those features we cannot normalize by custom configuration of the machines.
Exactly, which is why we shouldn't even try to equip both computers identically.
See my above paragraph. That makes the comparison useless and completely undefined.
No, that was clearly an insult.
...but you still have Jack and shit to back up your assertion.
Technically that's not ad hominem.
It was an unspecified attack on the credibility of a group, rather than a logical attack on their study. That is clearly ad hominem.
Consumer Reports just isn't a reliable source. It's better than being ignorant, I suppose.
So you have qualms about their methodology, which they apply impartially, but you don't have any sources yourself. So instead of looking objectively at their study and basing your opinions on their conclusions, with some reservations or finding another study with more strict methodology, you instead decided to just make up an opinion of your own based upon your personal feelings and anecdotal evidence? And you expect this to be a compelling argument, even though your conclusions based upon this wholly unscientific method fly in the face of most studies and of the common opinion of those in the industry?
You don't have a reasonable or rational argument and you don't have any evidence to support your opinions. You have an opinion and an asshole and that's about it. You're a poster child for the pseudo-science crowd. You don't know how to apply the scientific method and you form opinions arbitrarily, which you then struggle to defend, simply because you feel threatened when anyone challenges your beliefs about anything. Here's a hint "I bought one" is not a logical reason to believe something is well made. It is just a threat you your ego that you may have made a poor decision. People who use reason to form their opinions will look at facts. People who react emotionally defend their feelings. I feel sorry for you, almost.
A differentiator is a significant difference. Thanks for conceding the point.
Obviously it depends on the individual needs, but they aren't critical.
It depends upon the individual needs. Thanks for conceding another point.
Well that was a choice Apple made.
Yes, just as Dell decided to include a modem. Each is something that cost money and was included by one vendor and not the other. Whether we care which we have or whether we ever expect to use either the optical drive or the modem is irrelevant for purposes of comparing the relative costs of the machines and their hardware.
You're shitting me. You think Apple invented this?
I'll take that to mean you don't know if you can use it this way under Windows with the available drivers and this hardware, otherwise point me to a link bright boy.
I know who consumer reports is. If you did, you wouldn't put so much faith in them.
This is the logical fallacy of, "ad hominem attack," thanks for playing. Gee who has more credibility Consumer Reports or "sheldon"... gee tough one here. I take it you still haven't found a credible report to the contrary, nor a logical argument to refute their study.
Ok fan boi. Whatever.
Either go back to believing whatever you heard somewhere in marketing materials, or sit down and read a book on logic and critical thinking. Then do a little research and base your opinion on that research, not on what facts you can find to support the opinion you already made. All you've presented is unsupported opinion, with a healthy dose of spotty reasoning. I like Apple hardware and much of their software. I also like Lenovo hardware and even some Sony models. The reason for this is the features and quality of the hardware. In addition to my own personal experience, I have some pretty good statistical evidence to back up my purchasing decisions. What exactly do you have again?
All that was needed was to make a fair comparison between a genuine alternative and the advocate zombies come out of their caves and mod it down to a Troll.
There are a dozen better comparisons already posted in this article's thread. You neglect many major features, even going so far as to list an omnidirectional microphone as a "feature" missing from the Macbook, despite the fact that it has one. You made off-the-cuff remarks about the quality of the machines, but failed to reference the objective reports comparing the relative reliability and quality of each company's offerings. (Do look them up, I think you'll be a bit surprised.) Maybe you weren't trolling, maybe you are just less informed than anyone who read most of this thread. Even so, I can see why someone would think you are trolling.
And finally, it is no wonder that mac people get hyper when you mention ports. They want to deny the reality that it is better to have the option of a certain port or interface, however obscure, than not.
This is called a "straw-man argument." It is where you claim those "mac people" believe some random thing despite no one having said any such thing.
However for me the PCMCIA card slot is perhaps the most important shortcoming in mac portables since expansion is impossible without it.
This is the low-end consumer model. Most people who buy the professional model never upgrade it. Most people who buy towers never upgrade them. If having the ability to add upgraded hardware that can't interface via USB or Firewire is important to you (which is a pretty rare case) then buy the pro model already, or at very least quit whining about the fact that it is not on the consumer one.
In the past I've had PB1400 and G3 portables from Apple and they've been nice. However now that I'm doing serious work I have had to opt for a HP business notebook with a dual boot w2k/linux.
OK, well I guess it depends upon what you consider "serious work." In my mind, macbooks can boot Windows, Linux, and OS X, giving them greater flexibility and the ability to easily run more software than any other notebook on the market. Macs are about 50% of the machines where I work. Most of the users are engineers and security experts coding high-end network security related servers. I think of this as serious work, but then, I have a Nerf gun in my desk drawer. Have fun dealing with Windows, I'm glad I don't have to use it as much these days.
Certainly, but just because the Dell comes with Solitaire doesn't mean the apple has to. Which is why we look at the major specs... CPU, harddrive, memory, screen, size and weight, etc.
...ummm, you don't consider an entire suite of very well regarded programs including a video editing package, DVD creation/burning software (including licensing), music mixing software, etc. to be a major feature? Well, it is to a lot of people.
Uhh, hardly critical issues.
That all depends upon your intended uses. It is very critical if you are using them in a corporate network. That is why we don't judge the importance of features, only the cost.
Perhaps. But isn't it curious how they give you iLife for free and charge you for iWork... but the Dell gives you a free word processor? Are you going to add $79 to the price of the MacBook to make up for this definciency[sic]?
Yes, I think that is fair. Although we should probably subtract some to account for the built in Word processor in OS X that works in all native text, not to mention all the other features that will be "coming soon" to Windows Vista but are already in OS X:)
The drawers are more desirable.
They are more desirable to you, but that is not an objective measure. I happen to disagree. More importantly, however, the slot loading drives are more expensive to purchase, which is what concerns us.
It's a function of the video card, and they both come with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950.
...only if it is supported in the OS. Is it? Can you find this functionality detailed anywhere for the Dell or any other Windows PC, because I haven't. If so, what resolutions of external monitors will it support?
LOL! Consumer Reports. LOL!
Consumer reports is one of the very few product review companies that does not take special donations and other favors from the companies it reviews. It buys them all retail, without anyone knowing who they are so vendors can't cherry pick machines just for them. They refuse to take advertising dollars from companies they review, being supported instead by subscription fees. They also employ knowledgeable staff and have a very good reputation. I'd trust them more than pretty much any other review I can think of. They jealously guard their reputation for impartiality, which it took them decades to build and which is their primary asset as a company. Who exactly do you think is better suited as an impartial judge?
Yeah, my personal anecdotal evidence overwhelms yours. I'm not an Apple fan boy, and certainly have no loyalty to Dell. I'll trash any product which doesn't meet my needs, no matter who it is from.
I'll take it that means you have no sources and are just pulling opinions out of your butt. Yeah, you certainly seem like a better source upon which to judge the relative quality of customer support.
But to claim Dell is the worst in the industry eludes logic.
Dell is one of the worst in the industry both for reliability of randomly sampled hardware and surveys of customer support satisfaction. They gained the largest market share through a cut-rate supply chain and by selling the cheapest things they could throw together. That is why anyone in logistics and purchasing studies Michael Dell and why people in CS or Electrical Engineering don't. This is pretty widely known industry knowledge. Anyone who buys large numbers of machines will likely tell you the same thing. Heck, we buy piles of their high-end servers, which are pretty average for both price and reliability, but we certainly don't purchase many of their laptops or desktops because they cost more in sending them back than we save with their price difference.
Maybe you're not clear on what "logic" is. It is not agreeing with whatever marketing hype is loudest. It is objectively looking at collected facts and making a decision based upon them.
P.S. check out my other comment in this thread on the price difference as estimated by a real survey, with real numbers, by a real objective observer.
Just an added note, PiperJaffray just released a report comparing the pricing of macs versus PCs with comparable hardware and with an OS installed across the full spectrum of PC manufacturers and concluded Macs are, on average, 10% more expensive. Considering Apple is one of the higher end machines and ships with both extra software and better than average support, I suspect you'll have a hard time finding the same hardware from another vendor at a better price, with equal or better support. Also, including a retail copy of Windows to dual boot the mac, only raises the price to 16% more expensive (a premium I think a lot of professionals are happy to pay for the added ability to run OS X).
If I don't need it, I don't need it. There's no point in trying to match specs, because the Dell is going to have stuff that Apple does not have and vice versa.
Yes, there certainly is a point. We're not trying to find the cheapest machine that will do some specific (but undefined) set of tasks, we're trying to compare as closely as possible the pricing of the same hardware from different vendors. Otherwise I could just as easily say, I always use my laptop at home with an external monitor, so I can just pay $150 for a used laptop with a broken LCD and it beats them both for price. The point is to make them as close as possible.
XP Home only lacks ability to add to a domain, and install the IIS tools.
This is not true. It also restricts the multiprocessing algorithm, access controls, remote desktop server, offline copies of network files, and the built-in encryption features.
This is the crap that makes Apple unique. For the other 95% of us who don't need it, what's the point? It's like complaining that OS-X doesn't include Solitaire.
Sorry, but like it or not, Apple includes software that provides a wide range of common functionality that is not provided by software included with Dells. That software has a lot of value to a lot of people. Remember we're trying to get as close of a match as possible here.
I didn't notice the slot load drive. Nice in that you can't break it off. Kind of a negative in that slot drives tend to accumulate gunk, especially in a laptop which you're moving around a lot. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
My first laptop with one is about four years old, and has not had any problems with it, despite regular use and lots of banging around in bags. (it was actually a refurb too, so the drive may be older than that.) I know this is anecdotal, but no more so than your comment.
Why would you think that? Are you just trying to demonstrate your lack of knowledge?
They don't mention it in their literature and none of the Dell or IBM laptops here support it. Do you have any evidence that it does support monitor spanning (not just mirroring)?
You laugh at my comments about reliability and support. Fine. My source is consumer reports, which issues a review every year and which is both independent and well regarded. Do you have a credible source that contradicts it? For that matter, most all of the studies I've seen as well as my own personal anecdotal evidence agree. Dell sells the cheapest junk they can get at any given time in their consumer machines. I've personally had to send back large numbers of desktops because they had 3 different video cards, two different NICs, two different manufactures of hard drives in two different sizes, and two kinds of RAM in a single shipment of supposedly the same machine. All of them were whatever was cheapest when Dell was buying. Some of them worked under OpenBSD and some did not, and certainly not with the same disk image.
You're just wrong. They prices are comparable for comparable hardware and software and the quality of service is much better for the Apple machines.
What's the point of praising a machine that has the specs you want? Just buy it and shut up. Oh, you want to convince others of how good it is? I see. Maybe the point of complaining is to convince others how bad it is?
The previous poster was not complaining about anything wrong with the design (except his uninformed comment about two RAM chips). He was merely complaining that it was not the specs he (or she) wanted. I.e. the low end notebook doesn't have a more powerful graphics card. So buy the high-end one with the graphics card. The comments made were about as valid as saying, "The macbook sucks. I don't want a battery and an integrated screen. I want expandability. Why can't they ship this as a desktop instead, except with a PPC processor?" Complaining about poor design decisions on Slashdot is one thing. Complaining that the product they just released is not the one you want, is something else (especially when they already sell that product). If he wants a different product, suggest it to Apple. They have lots of user feedback links on their site. Complaining here is pointless, and just makes him (or her) seem whiny.
That's not too bad. The screen is a trade off between larger diagonal and widescreen. Configuring the same system though, I get $866 (with the remote control and backup CD needed to match the macbook specs). I'm also not sure Media-Center or Home versions of XP are a fair trade for OS X. They are crippleware versions of the desktop OS, unlike OS X which has no such restrictions. XP pro adds another $150 to the price. As for included software, I don't see an option to add the equivalent of iLife. It also looks like there is no option to add a built in Webcam. That is probably worth something. Also the cool power connector is a plus for some of us as is the slot drive, rather than a tray. The ability to do monitor spanning is also a huge plus, which I think is not an option for the Dell.
The Dell has more USB ports and a card reader.
The pricing looks fairly close to me, which is surprising since they are going up against Dell. Dell sells some of the cheapest, least reliable hardware in the business, with mediocre to poor rated customer support. Comparatively, Apple rates as some of the most reliable hardware in the industry, with the highest rated customer support of the big 8, for many years running.
All of this is, of course, academic. There will always be differences, which will be of a different value to different people. The pricing is close, but no one in the market for a mac is going to buy the Dell and few people in the market for the Dell are going to buy the mac. People who want to run OS X are going to buy the mac. People who want to run Windows, will by and large, buy the Dell (since most people don't even know what dual booting is). Personally, I wouldn't buy a Dell unless I was desperate. Having worked with large numbers of them in the past, I know they are fine for large deployments where you have 10-20% extra hardware to swap in as things break and where you have the staff to manage it and where you are big enough Dell actually cares if they piss you off. As an individual, the hassle of shoddily built hardware, possible data loss, turn around time, etc. is just not worth it. And, given that I can probably eliminate having a separate Windows box with my next Mac workstation purchase, I don't foresee ever buying a laptop or desktop from them again.
It's the low-end consumer machine. Having integrated graphics is common, just look at other machines in the same price range.
Shipping with 2xSODIMMS? (meaning your tossing out both)
The intel chipset used needs paired RAM chips for reasonable performance.
Black is essentially a premium color? It cost more that the system below it with a $50 upgrade to the HDD.
You were expecting it to cost less than the model below it? Yup it's a $50 hard drive upgrade and tax on the fashion conscious. If you don't like it, don't pay it.
Not good enough.
...then don't buy it. What is the point of complaining here that a machine doesn't have the specs you want?
On the other hand, how is 6 steps, none of which involve removing one's hand from the mouse (and one of which could be skipped) all that difficult? The problem with it is that it's a fairly unknown feature...
Learnability is part of usability.
For most windows apps, you can normally right-click on something to change its properties. If you ever have a chance to watch a user with an application, which breaks this assumption, you'll get to see some confused looks. This is one of the reasons that the Mac -> Windows jump, and the opposite as well, cause such problems...
On the mac, right clicking on an application or a file will always give you the option of "Get Info" in the finder, or were were you referring to something else?
In the end, I recommend that people use whatever system does the job they need done, all things being equal, pick the one you like. For writing documents, email and surfing the web, just use the OS you are most comfortable with.
I partially agree with this. Users need to pick the best tools for what they are doing. I use four OS's daily and they all have strengths and weaknesses. I do take exception to the idea that people should stick with what they are comfortable with though. If you never try something else, how will you know if there is a better tool? Now I'm typing on a mac right now and I'd be very sad to move to something else for my primary workstation. It has functionality above and beyond what Windows offers right now and saves me loads of time. If I had never tried another system, would I still be using Linux or Windows as my desktop and using slow and difficult methodologies to work around the shortcomings? Would I be wasting my time training a separate spell checker for each and every application?
I encourage everyone to explore new options constantly. It is the only way to find the best tools.
Speaking of being blinded to alternatives... It damn well does matter what is running and what isn't. Every program you have spinning its wheels in the background is eating up memory.
Hahahahahaha! spoken like a real Windows user. When running Windows I care what programs are open. When running OS X, usually I don't give a rat's ass. My powerbook from work has 512 Meg of RAM in it (way too little for much of what I do, like manipulating very large files in resource hungry Adobe applications). So this morning someone requested I edit a few images. I opened photoshop up and several images and some reference materials and realized I needed more info. So I sent some e-mail and have been waiting for a response all day. Did I shut down photoshop? Nope. "But what about the memory" you might say. It is not a problem. Even while using the resource hungry Adobe InDesign file to manipulate a huge file, photoshop can sit quietly in the background without a problem. Ditto my e-mail, 4 terminals, calendar, two Web browsers, a proxy server, a PDF viewer, two text editors, a chat client, and some assorted widgets. This is called decent resource management, something Windows has not managed.
Windows shapes your workflows around having only a few applications open, especially major ones. Whether it is gaming of image processing, it is one at a time. OS X does not force you to work around the same deficiency. I'm always amused at LAN parties when Windows aficionados gasp when I don't shut down all my work programs before firing up a game.
when I close it, I want it to close. If it doesn't close, or I leave it open, I want an indication of that.
There is a little triangle next to running applications in the dock. There isn't one next to ones that aren't running. Most people figure it out in about 5 minutes.
As for the start menu, it is basically just another implementation of the same functionality as the dock. Until indexed searching/launching became a reality (with Quicksilver then Spotlight) most OS X users just dropped their applications folder on the dock- presto all your applications in an ever-present hierarchical menu. Now of course it is faster to keyboard it with cmd-space-letterletterletter-arrow-enter. seven quick key-presses to launch anything you know the name of. We adapt our workflows to the tools provided to us, but you have to be careful not to be so hung up on tools that you forget about the goal of your task.
The truth is, the dock makes a lot of sense for most users. Most people only use a handful of programs, and it is faster and easier to have an ever-present menu with just those applications you use, that doubles as a task monitor, than it it is to have a large, hierarchical menu of everything. Open windows obscure the desktop, so launching from icons there is a pain in the butt. It requires less fine motor skills and is just plain easier. More advanced users can always adapt the system with ease and build the interface that best suits them.
I'm going to have to disagree with you almost completely on this one. I use Windows, OS X, Linux, and NetBSD pretty much daily. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but Compared to the OS X dock, the Windows start menu is certainly not one of Window's strong points.
Okay... backwards compared to an OS that insists that you put your disks in the trash (the place you put things when you want them deleted) in order to eject them... I think it's safer to say that both OS's have shortcomings, not that one is "backwards."
You're more than a little out of date here. First, there's an eject button on the keyboard. Second there's and eject button in the Finder right next to each volume. Third, if you're dragging a disk, the trash disappears to be replaced by an eject icon.
Still, you're conceptually right to some degree. The OS X UI is not perfect and Windows does some things better. Still, it is my opinion that, in general, OS X gets a lot more right than Windows with their current releases.
And when you change the setting to something you don't want by mistake?
You change it back. This has the advantage that you see the changes as you make them, with no restarts or delays. In this way you don't end up changing five things, restarting and then hunting in safe mode for the different changes to find which one messed things up. Sorry, I just fundamentally disagree with you on this one. From a UI design and usability standpoint, instant feedback on your actions and elimination of unnecessary steps is a clear win.
Everything I've ever installed on Mac OSX has involved an installer except for a tiny few homebrew applications.
You mean tiny home brew applications like MS Office or Mathematica? Still, your point is taken. Too many software developers are stuck in a Windows mindeset. They want to break the install conventions and add their own drivers, kernel modules, and other DRM laden crap. Hopefully the move to MAC/jails/VMs will further discourage them. And some software has legitimate need for these features or needs to use the BSD-like environment. Apple needs to improve this aspect of their OS by adding a proper application manager that can manage version, keep things up to date, ease uninstalling "messy" programs, and provide an official and approved way to manage licensing.
Still, compared to Windows, it is bloody nice to be able to easily IM, e-mail, or otherwise transfer fully functional applications. I remember seeing someone in CompUSA once with an iPod, plug into a demo machine and copy a fully functional MS office onto it with a quick mouse drag. I can't even count the number of times I was chatting with someone, they asked me about a tool for some tasks, and I just sent them a copy of the program I use. Also, for those of us who like to tinker, it is really nice to be able to just navigate into a program and access the resources it uses, without a hex editor. That's a cool song in this game, I think I'll copy it into iTunes... poof, done. I still mark this one as win for OS X, but I do agree there is room for improvement.
I can't remember the last time I restarted Windows after installing something.
I can. Try almost anything from Adobe.
The learning curve on OSX has made me want to shoot people every step of the way. Most notably, its antiquated and nigh-unpredictable way of handling files. Is there a way in OSX to make it so that every, say, GIF image opens in a particular program? I always have to deal with the problem of them wanting to open up in the program that spawned them, and sometimes I don't want to fire up Photoshop in order to look at an image.
You sir, are in the minority. The common use case is for people to open a given file only with one application. Very few people want to use multiple programs (preview and photoshop) to open the same image. Those that do are assumed smart enough to figure it out. Select a file and go to "File: Get Info." Under the "Open with" section, select the application you want it to open in. Click the "Change All" button to make all files with this extension open in the application you just selected (there is text explaining this on the tab).
Strangely, "tying" does not appear anywhere in the document, let alone in section one.
You're right of course. The NY Times improperly cited their reference and I did not bother to check it. I have not yet tracked down the real reference they were quoting.
The very first offense listed in the Clayton Act is "..." Again, this is not tying.
Actually, that one is tying.
Tying refers to forcing a customer to purchase one product in order to be able to purchase another product, often a product that the company has a monopoly on.
Actually, tying refers to any method used to provide incentive for a purchaser to purchase a second product based upon the characteristics the first product. What you have described is one form of tying, usually referred to as bundling.
As long as the tying product is available independent of the purchase of the tied product, there is no illegality.
This is not true, based upon numerous court precedents in both the US and the EU. For example, MS was ruled guilty of tying their Server OS with their desktop OS via undocumented, intentionally obscured protocols (exchange and AD mostly). You have to buy both OS's separately, but built-in compatibility with those protocols in the desktop (monopoly) gave purchasers significant incentive to buy their server OS, despite it otherwise being an obviously inferior product. The result is MS makes money and their competitors lose money, based not on innovation by through the leveraging of a monopoly. This harms consumers, competitors, and innovation and the courts were right to convict them of it.
Tying the search to the desktop OS is no less illegal, and whatever happens in the US, Microsoft is unlikely to escape being convicted of it in other jurisdictions where they have not lobbied (bribed) government officials as effectively.
As IE is freely available, as is Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and others, we get into a bit of a grey area, considering one does not really purchase something that is free (although Microsoft's initial entry into a marketplace where every other product DID have a price was a pretty good case of tying).
Direct purchase is not a consideration for the law. It deals only with markets. The market for advertising dollars generated in conjunction with a free download is just as real as a direct purchase in a store. All it does is give more "wiggle room" and make the case harder to prove.
However, if you read the court ruling against Microsoft, you will see that the court believed that simply giving OEMs the option to remove bundled software and provide their own alternatives was sufficient to bring Microsoft into compliance with the law.
Yeah that was the third judge right? After the other two actually made reasonable decisions? The point is providing the option neither solves the abuse of the market nor punishes MS for breaking the law in the first place. Lawyers and yourself as well can argue that it barely meets with the letter of the law, but it certainly violates the intention of the law.
Hence, my point that as long as Microsoft is not using its monopoly to bully OEMs into not using Firefox that there is no basis for a blaming Firefox's meger market share on Microsoft.
So you're arguing that if Firefox owned the monopoly on desktop OS's instead of MS and had bundled Firefox with it, then MS would still have the dominant browser? Bullshit!
MS leveraged their monopoly to gain a second monopoly. That is illegal.
Despite assertions to the contrary, in a world where everyone plays fairly, the emergence of a better product will not magically spread to dominate inferior products.
Nope, but eventually the market does work. That is the whole point of capitalism. Removing the competitive element from it will not work, and all the arguing that other things (like marketing) can make it not work are moot. Capitalism works via competition. Monopoly bundling bypasse
Bundling is NOT an anti-trust violation. There is nothing illegal about having an advantage.
Bundling is a an anti-trust violation when it is the bundling of a product in a monopolized market and product in another market. If you bother to read through the Sherman act you'll see "tying" listed in section one. In 1962 the supreme court ruled that bundling was one form of tying. If you read the Clayton antitrust act you'll see a number of specific examples of illegal behavior. Bundling is the very first one listed.
The illegality comes when you use your monopoly to threaten others if they do not play by your rules.
Threatening is not the main point of antitrust law. The point of anti-trust law is to prevent companies from bypassing the free market. I think you are more than a little confused about the law. Bundling is one of the main methods used to extend a monopoly and it has been entrenched in legal precedent for decades.
...the only one to blame for Firefox's low share would be Firefox, regardless of whether or not its product was better.
MS took an action that gave it an advantage (bundling). It was able to do this because it has a monopoly, which it used. As a result an inferior product won out in the market.
How is this not a clear case of anti-trust law violation? The law bans companies from using a monopoly to gain any advantage in another market. You're just plain wrong.
If there ever was an organization dedicated to mediocrity, impeding productivity and forcing people to be on strike and not earning money when they want to, a union would be it.
I agree that unions promote mediocrity, but they also help balance the very unbalanced power struggle between individual workers and corporate employers.
So here's the deal. Everyone is a unique an wonderful individual. Life is anarchy. Every person defends their own and bargains with one another and negotiations are balanced, or at least based upon the abilities of each individual. The system more or less works.
Some bright people have an idea. They form a club. As a group they can go to anyone they want and demand whatever they want. One person can't effectively bargain against a large, united group since they have more collective power. One person in the group can spend all their time countering the individual while being supported by the group. The individual must either give in, perish, or be exceptionally better than the collective group (very rare). You can call the group a government or a corporation or a union or whatever you want. The point is collective bargaining works to advantage members.
Business in the US is a poster child of this process. Corporations are some of the biggest "groups" and have disproportionate power. Some individuals might be able to play one corporation off of another, but most do not have that option. Enter unions. All they are is another group dedicated to counter-balancing the first group in negotiations.
Take a look at the history of the average person in the US before unions. The working conditions were horrendous and the government was so corrupt and controlled by business as to be nothing more than another oppressive regime. Unions have partially balanced that out at this point.
So here's the problem. Bureaucracies are inefficient and prone to the failing of human nature. They attract the greedy and power hungry and likely become sources of even more abuses. It is sort of like fighting evil with evil. The balance of the two evils is usually better than having just one, but not always.
You say you don't like unions. That is fine. The stated purpose of a union, however is to benefit the members and improve their working conditions and daily lives. They are trying to counter-balance corporations whose stated purpose is to concentrate as much money as possible into the hands of the shareholders. I find the first stated goal much more admirable than the second. I also think that unions are a necessary evil. As long as corporations are hiring people on a massive scale, unions are needed to negotiate for employees on a massive scale. Otherwise, the abuses become horrendous.
It seems to me the article's poster expects the world owes him/her something. Get over yourself, I say. The world owes you nothing, isn't fair, and a Union won't do anything but take your money, impose restrictions that hamper the hard workers and the competent, and drive the work away faster.
This isn't about entitlement, it is about fair bargaining. Like it or not, unions do a lot of good. They are the reason we america has some of the safest workplaces in the world, rather than abusive sweatshops and near slave-labor conditions.
Unions... no thanks. I'm doing just fine without them.
The tech industry is still very young and specialized. Give it a few decades when the average programmer or technician is a real commodity and the industry has weeded out all the small players (as it almost certainly will).
The only people who need unions are lazy folks, people without foresight, or people without initiative.
Statements like this are so misguided they make me ill. Before making blanket statements like this, go read a history book and learn about the brave men and women who died establishing the first unions in this country and take a look at the working conditions of the average person before them. Your ignorance
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, fair use can include making a copy of an entire work.
I'm pretty sure that was implied when I wrote, "First, fair use does not apply to recreating entire works, except in a few, specifically described circumstances that don't apply here.
Making a copy for the sake of having a backup copy is also considered fair use, and involves making a duplicate of the entire work. Copying data in the process of using it (ie. a temporary copy of software into memory) is also fair use.
Actually, the backup copy was legal only through the nonprofit copying clause removed in 1976. It is most likely still legal according to the four consideration enumerated in copyright law, but I don't think this has been successfully proven in court and the courts (district I believe) in the US did specifically state that a backup copy was not "sufficient fair use" to bypass encryption ala the DMCA.
As for temporary copies in memory, it protects you if you are making a temporary copy while using the work, to which you have a valid right. It does not protect you if you are making a temporary copy for transmitting a work. ISPs and the like are protected by the fact that data is fragmented when transmitted and by the common carrier statutes that also exempt them from responsibility for having kiddie porn, death threats, slander, etc. on their routers.
Knowing that person A is talking to person B, and that the number of messages between the two is increasing, and where and when each message has been sent (not to mention what type of traffic is taking place) is also very informative. If you know A, a known terrorist, is exchanging a lot of messages with B, a PhD student in nuclear physics in a top-notch university, is enough to raise red flags all over the place, regardless of what kind of encryption is used to protect the messages themselves.
I think you might be confused. I'm pretty sure this is not traffic matching, per se but packet inspection. Otherwise this could handle a lot more traffic. Just matching IP address A and B and the traffic levels is easy. When the IP addresses are changing though, this does let them match encryption Key A and B and traffic levels. It also lets them match e-mail for address A and B and traffic levels, unless someone is using a proxy.
That is all well and good, but this particular system is a lot more about reading 100,000 random individuals' e-mail searching for the word "jihad" in conjunction with the word "Washington," in conjunction with traffic to the unfriendly nations IP space, or the like. Or it would be good for searching for jpegs in conjunction with a list of the IP addresses of the Democratic party congresscritters and making copies/records of those files just in case any are porn and can be used to blackmail them.
It's legal for you to send packets over network connections owned and operated by third parties. If you have an expectation of privacy for data being handled by parties you have no relationship with, you're being unreasonable.
This is not necessarily so. First, many technologies apply a strong metaphor to an existing service, even going so far as to assure customers they won't be able to tell the difference. VoIP is the primary consideration here, but e-mail is also a candidate. It is illegal for someone to look in the mail messages you send, so most people (knowing nothing of the technology involved) assume the same is true for e-mail. Thus they have an expectation. If you explain to them it is more like a postcard, most will understand, but they won't understand why their online bills don't have a envelope around them for privacy when their offline bills do. Also, more and more networks are converging. How much POTS traffic made via regular phones runs over the IP network? Try arguing in front a a jury that the difference between whether AT&T does it at the switching station or an individual does it with their server decides whether or not eavesdropping without a warrant is legal.
Truthfully, for the average user there probably is an expectation of privacy, partially because of laws passed to protect phone and regular mail communication that have not been extended to the internet equivalents.
AT&T isn't the only telecom left. Large retailers, banks, credit card companies also have a need to store trillions of records.
Actually, the constraint here is throughput, not storage. How many Gigabytes per second can you match against a regular expression while still not introducing significant latency in the packets you forward? Copying the matching flows into a huge database for examination is the easy part.
By sending IP packets, you are distributing your work. Narus could make a fair use argument that would be a chilling parody of the arguments posted by folks who troll around slashdot arguing that fair use covers anonymous torrents.
First, fair use does not apply to recreating entire works, except in a few, specifically described circumstances that don't apply here. Second, Narus is just selling gear, what someone else does with it is not their problem. Third, their customers are ISPs, given exemption from many copyright laws under common carrier statutes, which could, very well apply here (certainly more so than fair use).
If you don't like it, encrypt it.
This won't happen until the tools to do so are are made much easier, it is provided as a service, or both. VPNs are already taking off for corporations. What is needed is for consumer OS's to provide that functionality in a an interoperable way, by default. So yes, this is all Microsoft's fault for retarding the progress of the industry (as usual).
Does it make anybody else nervous that there is a market for these products? "off the shelf" products that can scale to this degree? If enough large companies are purchasing these to the degree that a company manufactures this equipment...exclusively.. doesn't that strike an interesting chord?
Supply and demand is somewhat elastic. Where I work right now we build fairly specialized traffic monitoring servers for the core and edge routers of ISPs. While we don't manufacture our own hardware, we do make use of hardware designed for traffic analysis like this and sold to numerous companies that create devices needing the same basic characteristics. Whether you are making a packet analyzer, a high-level forensic tool, a firewall, an IDS, a traffic shaper, or something else, you may very well need basically the same hardware. So maybe 50 customers want something as expensive as what Narus makes for the high end, that can handle that much throughput. If they are willing to pay enough, someone (like Narus) will build it. Regulation compliance budgets are pretty large this year.
Of course Narus probably did not start out selling a "snooping" device. Look at their customers. They are all major ISPs and telecoms. The smart money says they started as a way to track traffic for billing and expanded as their customers needed to comply with more government regulations.
I somehow doubt that they are just using a "commercially available network-analysis product". I mean what "commercially available network-analysis product" breaks encryption?
Is this really news to anyone? I thought the original report showed they were using a Narus box. If I recall correctly it does not break encryption, but it will automatically make copies of matching encrypted flows for later analysis and cracking. My guess would be they just make copies of encrypted traffic they are interested in then move on to the big guns if it is really, really important (which they may or may not have ever actually done).
I have tried Ubuntu, but it does not really meet my needs for a workstation or a server. It is just not as nice as OS X as a workstation because it lacks many mainstream, commercial software offerings I need. The UI is not as polished, for navigating the filesystem, searching, and integrating the OS and different applications. It does have some nice features, even some I prefer to the OS X way of doing things, but it in the end, it doesn't fully meet my needs.
As a server it is a bit too bloated and not quite as locked down as I'd like. It is passable, but just not quite as useful as other Linux distros and not as well suited to most of my server needs as OpenBSD.
As for support, I have no doubt the MacBook will support Ubuntu by the time I am ready for my next purchase. It will, however, probably be running in a VM or hypervised mode with OS X as the primary OS. Now don't get me wrong. I am all for the open source methodology and I obviously prefer the licensing of Ubuntu; but at the end of the day, I need to get work done and I need to enjoy my 8-12 hours a day in front of a workstation. Ubuntu just doesn't measure up.
Note: in regard to the comparison, you can always add more OS's and functionality to both products. What we're comparing, however, is what ships with it.
For example. BMW 3-series cars for 2006 all have run-flat tires on them. Does that mean if we are to compare it to an Audi we must equip it with run-flat tires even if it doesn't come as a factory option?
If they are more expensive and we're doing a price comparison, then yes.
Exactly, which is why we shouldn't even try to equip both computers identically. I don't have any need for a modem as I use bluetooth from my cell, so it's nice that Apple has gone this direction.
This is called, "moving goal posts." You can compare the price of two computers used to perform a given set of tasks, but you have to define those tasks beforehand. Otherwise you can always say, "Oh I'll never use the modem" or "hard drive, I only use flash drives!" Since neither of us wants to sit down and define a whole list of tasks and uses and since those tasks would be useless to anyone not planning on performing exactly those tasks, we have to define the comparison differently. We assume all features are useful to someone and assign value to those features we cannot normalize by custom configuration of the machines.
Exactly, which is why we shouldn't even try to equip both computers identically.
See my above paragraph. That makes the comparison useless and completely undefined.
No, that was clearly an insult.
...but you still have Jack and shit to back up your assertion.
Technically that's not ad hominem.
It was an unspecified attack on the credibility of a group, rather than a logical attack on their study. That is clearly ad hominem.
Consumer Reports just isn't a reliable source. It's better than being ignorant, I suppose.
So you have qualms about their methodology, which they apply impartially, but you don't have any sources yourself. So instead of looking objectively at their study and basing your opinions on their conclusions, with some reservations or finding another study with more strict methodology, you instead decided to just make up an opinion of your own based upon your personal feelings and anecdotal evidence? And you expect this to be a compelling argument, even though your conclusions based upon this wholly unscientific method fly in the face of most studies and of the common opinion of those in the industry?
You don't have a reasonable or rational argument and you don't have any evidence to support your opinions. You have an opinion and an asshole and that's about it. You're a poster child for the pseudo-science crowd. You don't know how to apply the scientific method and you form opinions arbitrarily, which you then struggle to defend, simply because you feel threatened when anyone challenges your beliefs about anything. Here's a hint "I bought one" is not a logical reason to believe something is well made. It is just a threat you your ego that you may have made a poor decision. People who use reason to form their opinions will look at facts. People who react emotionally defend their feelings. I feel sorry for you, almost.
No. I consider it a differentiater.
A differentiator is a significant difference. Thanks for conceding the point.
Obviously it depends on the individual needs, but they aren't critical.
It depends upon the individual needs. Thanks for conceding another point.
Well that was a choice Apple made.
Yes, just as Dell decided to include a modem. Each is something that cost money and was included by one vendor and not the other. Whether we care which we have or whether we ever expect to use either the optical drive or the modem is irrelevant for purposes of comparing the relative costs of the machines and their hardware.
You're shitting me. You think Apple invented this?
I'll take that to mean you don't know if you can use it this way under Windows with the available drivers and this hardware, otherwise point me to a link bright boy.
I know who consumer reports is. If you did, you wouldn't put so much faith in them.
This is the logical fallacy of, "ad hominem attack," thanks for playing. Gee who has more credibility Consumer Reports or "sheldon"... gee tough one here. I take it you still haven't found a credible report to the contrary, nor a logical argument to refute their study.
Ok fan boi. Whatever.
Either go back to believing whatever you heard somewhere in marketing materials, or sit down and read a book on logic and critical thinking. Then do a little research and base your opinion on that research, not on what facts you can find to support the opinion you already made. All you've presented is unsupported opinion, with a healthy dose of spotty reasoning. I like Apple hardware and much of their software. I also like Lenovo hardware and even some Sony models. The reason for this is the features and quality of the hardware. In addition to my own personal experience, I have some pretty good statistical evidence to back up my purchasing decisions. What exactly do you have again?
All that was needed was to make a fair comparison between a genuine alternative and the advocate zombies come out of their caves and mod it down to a Troll.
There are a dozen better comparisons already posted in this article's thread. You neglect many major features, even going so far as to list an omnidirectional microphone as a "feature" missing from the Macbook, despite the fact that it has one. You made off-the-cuff remarks about the quality of the machines, but failed to reference the objective reports comparing the relative reliability and quality of each company's offerings. (Do look them up, I think you'll be a bit surprised.) Maybe you weren't trolling, maybe you are just less informed than anyone who read most of this thread. Even so, I can see why someone would think you are trolling.
And finally, it is no wonder that mac people get hyper when you mention ports. They want to deny the reality that it is better to have the option of a certain port or interface, however obscure, than not.
This is called a "straw-man argument." It is where you claim those "mac people" believe some random thing despite no one having said any such thing.
However for me the PCMCIA card slot is perhaps the most important shortcoming in mac portables since expansion is impossible without it.
This is the low-end consumer model. Most people who buy the professional model never upgrade it. Most people who buy towers never upgrade them. If having the ability to add upgraded hardware that can't interface via USB or Firewire is important to you (which is a pretty rare case) then buy the pro model already, or at very least quit whining about the fact that it is not on the consumer one.
In the past I've had PB1400 and G3 portables from Apple and they've been nice. However now that I'm doing serious work I have had to opt for a HP business notebook with a dual boot w2k/linux.
OK, well I guess it depends upon what you consider "serious work." In my mind, macbooks can boot Windows, Linux, and OS X, giving them greater flexibility and the ability to easily run more software than any other notebook on the market. Macs are about 50% of the machines where I work. Most of the users are engineers and security experts coding high-end network security related servers. I think of this as serious work, but then, I have a Nerf gun in my desk drawer. Have fun dealing with Windows, I'm glad I don't have to use it as much these days.
Certainly, but just because the Dell comes with Solitaire doesn't mean the apple has to. Which is why we look at the major specs... CPU, harddrive, memory, screen, size and weight, etc.
...ummm, you don't consider an entire suite of very well regarded programs including a video editing package, DVD creation/burning software (including licensing), music mixing software, etc. to be a major feature? Well, it is to a lot of people.
Uhh, hardly critical issues.
That all depends upon your intended uses. It is very critical if you are using them in a corporate network. That is why we don't judge the importance of features, only the cost.
Perhaps. But isn't it curious how they give you iLife for free and charge you for iWork... but the Dell gives you a free word processor? Are you going to add $79 to the price of the MacBook to make up for this definciency[sic]?
Yes, I think that is fair. Although we should probably subtract some to account for the built in Word processor in OS X that works in all native text, not to mention all the other features that will be "coming soon" to Windows Vista but are already in OS X :)
The drawers are more desirable.
They are more desirable to you, but that is not an objective measure. I happen to disagree. More importantly, however, the slot loading drives are more expensive to purchase, which is what concerns us.
It's a function of the video card, and they both come with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950.
...only if it is supported in the OS. Is it? Can you find this functionality detailed anywhere for the Dell or any other Windows PC, because I haven't. If so, what resolutions of external monitors will it support?
LOL! Consumer Reports. LOL!
Consumer reports is one of the very few product review companies that does not take special donations and other favors from the companies it reviews. It buys them all retail, without anyone knowing who they are so vendors can't cherry pick machines just for them. They refuse to take advertising dollars from companies they review, being supported instead by subscription fees. They also employ knowledgeable staff and have a very good reputation. I'd trust them more than pretty much any other review I can think of. They jealously guard their reputation for impartiality, which it took them decades to build and which is their primary asset as a company. Who exactly do you think is better suited as an impartial judge?
Yeah, my personal anecdotal evidence overwhelms yours. I'm not an Apple fan boy, and certainly have no loyalty to Dell. I'll trash any product which doesn't meet my needs, no matter who it is from.
I'll take it that means you have no sources and are just pulling opinions out of your butt. Yeah, you certainly seem like a better source upon which to judge the relative quality of customer support.
But to claim Dell is the worst in the industry eludes logic.
Dell is one of the worst in the industry both for reliability of randomly sampled hardware and surveys of customer support satisfaction. They gained the largest market share through a cut-rate supply chain and by selling the cheapest things they could throw together. That is why anyone in logistics and purchasing studies Michael Dell and why people in CS or Electrical Engineering don't. This is pretty widely known industry knowledge. Anyone who buys large numbers of machines will likely tell you the same thing. Heck, we buy piles of their high-end servers, which are pretty average for both price and reliability, but we certainly don't purchase many of their laptops or desktops because they cost more in sending them back than we save with their price difference.
Maybe you're not clear on what "logic" is. It is not agreeing with whatever marketing hype is loudest. It is objectively looking at collected facts and making a decision based upon them.
P.S. check out my other comment in this thread on the price difference as estimated by a real survey, with real numbers, by a real objective observer.
Just an added note, PiperJaffray just released a report comparing the pricing of macs versus PCs with comparable hardware and with an OS installed across the full spectrum of PC manufacturers and concluded Macs are, on average, 10% more expensive. Considering Apple is one of the higher end machines and ships with both extra software and better than average support, I suspect you'll have a hard time finding the same hardware from another vendor at a better price, with equal or better support. Also, including a retail copy of Windows to dual boot the mac, only raises the price to 16% more expensive (a premium I think a lot of professionals are happy to pay for the added ability to run OS X).
If I don't need it, I don't need it. There's no point in trying to match specs, because the Dell is going to have stuff that Apple does not have and vice versa.
Yes, there certainly is a point. We're not trying to find the cheapest machine that will do some specific (but undefined) set of tasks, we're trying to compare as closely as possible the pricing of the same hardware from different vendors. Otherwise I could just as easily say, I always use my laptop at home with an external monitor, so I can just pay $150 for a used laptop with a broken LCD and it beats them both for price. The point is to make them as close as possible.
XP Home only lacks ability to add to a domain, and install the IIS tools.
This is not true. It also restricts the multiprocessing algorithm, access controls, remote desktop server, offline copies of network files, and the built-in encryption features.
This is the crap that makes Apple unique. For the other 95% of us who don't need it, what's the point? It's like complaining that OS-X doesn't include Solitaire.
Sorry, but like it or not, Apple includes software that provides a wide range of common functionality that is not provided by software included with Dells. That software has a lot of value to a lot of people. Remember we're trying to get as close of a match as possible here.
I didn't notice the slot load drive. Nice in that you can't break it off. Kind of a negative in that slot drives tend to accumulate gunk, especially in a laptop which you're moving around a lot. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
My first laptop with one is about four years old, and has not had any problems with it, despite regular use and lots of banging around in bags. (it was actually a refurb too, so the drive may be older than that.) I know this is anecdotal, but no more so than your comment.
Why would you think that? Are you just trying to demonstrate your lack of knowledge?
They don't mention it in their literature and none of the Dell or IBM laptops here support it. Do you have any evidence that it does support monitor spanning (not just mirroring)?
You laugh at my comments about reliability and support. Fine. My source is consumer reports, which issues a review every year and which is both independent and well regarded. Do you have a credible source that contradicts it? For that matter, most all of the studies I've seen as well as my own personal anecdotal evidence agree. Dell sells the cheapest junk they can get at any given time in their consumer machines. I've personally had to send back large numbers of desktops because they had 3 different video cards, two different NICs, two different manufactures of hard drives in two different sizes, and two kinds of RAM in a single shipment of supposedly the same machine. All of them were whatever was cheapest when Dell was buying. Some of them worked under OpenBSD and some did not, and certainly not with the same disk image.
You're just wrong. They prices are comparable for comparable hardware and software and the quality of service is much better for the Apple machines.
What's the point of praising a machine that has the specs you want? Just buy it and shut up. Oh, you want to convince others of how good it is? I see. Maybe the point of complaining is to convince others how bad it is?
The previous poster was not complaining about anything wrong with the design (except his uninformed comment about two RAM chips). He was merely complaining that it was not the specs he (or she) wanted. I.e. the low end notebook doesn't have a more powerful graphics card. So buy the high-end one with the graphics card. The comments made were about as valid as saying, "The macbook sucks. I don't want a battery and an integrated screen. I want expandability. Why can't they ship this as a desktop instead, except with a PPC processor?" Complaining about poor design decisions on Slashdot is one thing. Complaining that the product they just released is not the one you want, is something else (especially when they already sell that product). If he wants a different product, suggest it to Apple. They have lots of user feedback links on their site. Complaining here is pointless, and just makes him (or her) seem whiny.
That's not too bad. The screen is a trade off between larger diagonal and widescreen. Configuring the same system though, I get $866 (with the remote control and backup CD needed to match the macbook specs). I'm also not sure Media-Center or Home versions of XP are a fair trade for OS X. They are crippleware versions of the desktop OS, unlike OS X which has no such restrictions. XP pro adds another $150 to the price. As for included software, I don't see an option to add the equivalent of iLife. It also looks like there is no option to add a built in Webcam. That is probably worth something. Also the cool power connector is a plus for some of us as is the slot drive, rather than a tray. The ability to do monitor spanning is also a huge plus, which I think is not an option for the Dell.
The Dell has more USB ports and a card reader.
The pricing looks fairly close to me, which is surprising since they are going up against Dell. Dell sells some of the cheapest, least reliable hardware in the business, with mediocre to poor rated customer support. Comparatively, Apple rates as some of the most reliable hardware in the industry, with the highest rated customer support of the big 8, for many years running.
All of this is, of course, academic. There will always be differences, which will be of a different value to different people. The pricing is close, but no one in the market for a mac is going to buy the Dell and few people in the market for the Dell are going to buy the mac. People who want to run OS X are going to buy the mac. People who want to run Windows, will by and large, buy the Dell (since most people don't even know what dual booting is). Personally, I wouldn't buy a Dell unless I was desperate. Having worked with large numbers of them in the past, I know they are fine for large deployments where you have 10-20% extra hardware to swap in as things break and where you have the staff to manage it and where you are big enough Dell actually cares if they piss you off. As an individual, the hassle of shoddily built hardware, possible data loss, turn around time, etc. is just not worth it. And, given that I can probably eliminate having a separate Windows box with my next Mac workstation purchase, I don't foresee ever buying a laptop or desktop from them again.
I'm not certain, but didn't they start supporting monitor spanning in the last bump of the PPC ibooks?
Integrated graphics?
It's the low-end consumer machine. Having integrated graphics is common, just look at other machines in the same price range.
Shipping with 2xSODIMMS? (meaning your tossing out both)
The intel chipset used needs paired RAM chips for reasonable performance.
Black is essentially a premium color? It cost more that the system below it with a $50 upgrade to the HDD.
You were expecting it to cost less than the model below it? Yup it's a $50 hard drive upgrade and tax on the fashion conscious. If you don't like it, don't pay it.
Not good enough.
...then don't buy it. What is the point of complaining here that a machine doesn't have the specs you want?
On the other hand, how is 6 steps, none of which involve removing one's hand from the mouse (and one of which could be skipped) all that difficult? The problem with it is that it's a fairly unknown feature...
Learnability is part of usability.
For most windows apps, you can normally right-click on something to change its properties. If you ever have a chance to watch a user with an application, which breaks this assumption, you'll get to see some confused looks. This is one of the reasons that the Mac -> Windows jump, and the opposite as well, cause such problems...
On the mac, right clicking on an application or a file will always give you the option of "Get Info" in the finder, or were were you referring to something else?
In the end, I recommend that people use whatever system does the job they need done, all things being equal, pick the one you like. For writing documents, email and surfing the web, just use the OS you are most comfortable with.
I partially agree with this. Users need to pick the best tools for what they are doing. I use four OS's daily and they all have strengths and weaknesses. I do take exception to the idea that people should stick with what they are comfortable with though. If you never try something else, how will you know if there is a better tool? Now I'm typing on a mac right now and I'd be very sad to move to something else for my primary workstation. It has functionality above and beyond what Windows offers right now and saves me loads of time. If I had never tried another system, would I still be using Linux or Windows as my desktop and using slow and difficult methodologies to work around the shortcomings? Would I be wasting my time training a separate spell checker for each and every application?
I encourage everyone to explore new options constantly. It is the only way to find the best tools.
Speaking of being blinded to alternatives... It damn well does matter what is running and what isn't. Every program you have spinning its wheels in the background is eating up memory.
Hahahahahaha! spoken like a real Windows user. When running Windows I care what programs are open. When running OS X, usually I don't give a rat's ass. My powerbook from work has 512 Meg of RAM in it (way too little for much of what I do, like manipulating very large files in resource hungry Adobe applications). So this morning someone requested I edit a few images. I opened photoshop up and several images and some reference materials and realized I needed more info. So I sent some e-mail and have been waiting for a response all day. Did I shut down photoshop? Nope. "But what about the memory" you might say. It is not a problem. Even while using the resource hungry Adobe InDesign file to manipulate a huge file, photoshop can sit quietly in the background without a problem. Ditto my e-mail, 4 terminals, calendar, two Web browsers, a proxy server, a PDF viewer, two text editors, a chat client, and some assorted widgets. This is called decent resource management, something Windows has not managed.
Windows shapes your workflows around having only a few applications open, especially major ones. Whether it is gaming of image processing, it is one at a time. OS X does not force you to work around the same deficiency. I'm always amused at LAN parties when Windows aficionados gasp when I don't shut down all my work programs before firing up a game.
when I close it, I want it to close. If it doesn't close, or I leave it open, I want an indication of that.
There is a little triangle next to running applications in the dock. There isn't one next to ones that aren't running. Most people figure it out in about 5 minutes.
As for the start menu, it is basically just another implementation of the same functionality as the dock. Until indexed searching/launching became a reality (with Quicksilver then Spotlight) most OS X users just dropped their applications folder on the dock- presto all your applications in an ever-present hierarchical menu. Now of course it is faster to keyboard it with cmd-space-letterletterletter-arrow-enter. seven quick key-presses to launch anything you know the name of. We adapt our workflows to the tools provided to us, but you have to be careful not to be so hung up on tools that you forget about the goal of your task.
The truth is, the dock makes a lot of sense for most users. Most people only use a handful of programs, and it is faster and easier to have an ever-present menu with just those applications you use, that doubles as a task monitor, than it it is to have a large, hierarchical menu of everything. Open windows obscure the desktop, so launching from icons there is a pain in the butt. It requires less fine motor skills and is just plain easier. More advanced users can always adapt the system with ease and build the interface that best suits them.
I'm going to have to disagree with you almost completely on this one. I use Windows, OS X, Linux, and NetBSD pretty much daily. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but Compared to the OS X dock, the Windows start menu is certainly not one of Window's strong points.
Okay... backwards compared to an OS that insists that you put your disks in the trash (the place you put things when you want them deleted) in order to eject them ... I think it's safer to say that both OS's have shortcomings, not that one is "backwards."
You're more than a little out of date here. First, there's an eject button on the keyboard. Second there's and eject button in the Finder right next to each volume. Third, if you're dragging a disk, the trash disappears to be replaced by an eject icon.
Still, you're conceptually right to some degree. The OS X UI is not perfect and Windows does some things better. Still, it is my opinion that, in general, OS X gets a lot more right than Windows with their current releases.
And when you change the setting to something you don't want by mistake?
You change it back. This has the advantage that you see the changes as you make them, with no restarts or delays. In this way you don't end up changing five things, restarting and then hunting in safe mode for the different changes to find which one messed things up. Sorry, I just fundamentally disagree with you on this one. From a UI design and usability standpoint, instant feedback on your actions and elimination of unnecessary steps is a clear win.
Everything I've ever installed on Mac OSX has involved an installer except for a tiny few homebrew applications.
You mean tiny home brew applications like MS Office or Mathematica? Still, your point is taken. Too many software developers are stuck in a Windows mindeset. They want to break the install conventions and add their own drivers, kernel modules, and other DRM laden crap. Hopefully the move to MAC/jails/VMs will further discourage them. And some software has legitimate need for these features or needs to use the BSD-like environment. Apple needs to improve this aspect of their OS by adding a proper application manager that can manage version, keep things up to date, ease uninstalling "messy" programs, and provide an official and approved way to manage licensing.
Still, compared to Windows, it is bloody nice to be able to easily IM, e-mail, or otherwise transfer fully functional applications. I remember seeing someone in CompUSA once with an iPod, plug into a demo machine and copy a fully functional MS office onto it with a quick mouse drag. I can't even count the number of times I was chatting with someone, they asked me about a tool for some tasks, and I just sent them a copy of the program I use. Also, for those of us who like to tinker, it is really nice to be able to just navigate into a program and access the resources it uses, without a hex editor. That's a cool song in this game, I think I'll copy it into iTunes... poof, done. I still mark this one as win for OS X, but I do agree there is room for improvement.
I can't remember the last time I restarted Windows after installing something.
I can. Try almost anything from Adobe.
The learning curve on OSX has made me want to shoot people every step of the way. Most notably, its antiquated and nigh-unpredictable way of handling files. Is there a way in OSX to make it so that every, say, GIF image opens in a particular program? I always have to deal with the problem of them wanting to open up in the program that spawned them, and sometimes I don't want to fire up Photoshop in order to look at an image.
You sir, are in the minority. The common use case is for people to open a given file only with one application. Very few people want to use multiple programs (preview and photoshop) to open the same image. Those that do are assumed smart enough to figure it out. Select a file and go to "File: Get Info." Under the "Open with" section, select the application you want it to open in. Click the "Change All" button to make all files with this extension open in the application you just selected (there is text explaining this on the tab).
The thing is, most of us would rather that
Strangely, "tying" does not appear anywhere in the document, let alone in section one.
You're right of course. The NY Times improperly cited their reference and I did not bother to check it. I have not yet tracked down the real reference they were quoting.
The very first offense listed in the Clayton Act is "..." Again, this is not tying.
Actually, that one is tying.
Tying refers to forcing a customer to purchase one product in order to be able to purchase another product, often a product that the company has a monopoly on.
Actually, tying refers to any method used to provide incentive for a purchaser to purchase a second product based upon the characteristics the first product. What you have described is one form of tying, usually referred to as bundling.
As long as the tying product is available independent of the purchase of the tied product, there is no illegality.
This is not true, based upon numerous court precedents in both the US and the EU. For example, MS was ruled guilty of tying their Server OS with their desktop OS via undocumented, intentionally obscured protocols (exchange and AD mostly). You have to buy both OS's separately, but built-in compatibility with those protocols in the desktop (monopoly) gave purchasers significant incentive to buy their server OS, despite it otherwise being an obviously inferior product. The result is MS makes money and their competitors lose money, based not on innovation by through the leveraging of a monopoly. This harms consumers, competitors, and innovation and the courts were right to convict them of it.
Tying the search to the desktop OS is no less illegal, and whatever happens in the US, Microsoft is unlikely to escape being convicted of it in other jurisdictions where they have not lobbied (bribed) government officials as effectively.
As IE is freely available, as is Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and others, we get into a bit of a grey area, considering one does not really purchase something that is free (although Microsoft's initial entry into a marketplace where every other product DID have a price was a pretty good case of tying).
Direct purchase is not a consideration for the law. It deals only with markets. The market for advertising dollars generated in conjunction with a free download is just as real as a direct purchase in a store. All it does is give more "wiggle room" and make the case harder to prove.
However, if you read the court ruling against Microsoft, you will see that the court believed that simply giving OEMs the option to remove bundled software and provide their own alternatives was sufficient to bring Microsoft into compliance with the law.
Yeah that was the third judge right? After the other two actually made reasonable decisions? The point is providing the option neither solves the abuse of the market nor punishes MS for breaking the law in the first place. Lawyers and yourself as well can argue that it barely meets with the letter of the law, but it certainly violates the intention of the law.
Hence, my point that as long as Microsoft is not using its monopoly to bully OEMs into not using Firefox that there is no basis for a blaming Firefox's meger market share on Microsoft.
So you're arguing that if Firefox owned the monopoly on desktop OS's instead of MS and had bundled Firefox with it, then MS would still have the dominant browser? Bullshit!
MS leveraged their monopoly to gain a second monopoly. That is illegal.
Despite assertions to the contrary, in a world where everyone plays fairly, the emergence of a better product will not magically spread to dominate inferior products.
Nope, but eventually the market does work. That is the whole point of capitalism. Removing the competitive element from it will not work, and all the arguing that other things (like marketing) can make it not work are moot. Capitalism works via competition. Monopoly bundling bypasse
Bundling is NOT an anti-trust violation. There is nothing illegal about having an advantage.
Bundling is a an anti-trust violation when it is the bundling of a product in a monopolized market and product in another market. If you bother to read through the Sherman act you'll see "tying" listed in section one. In 1962 the supreme court ruled that bundling was one form of tying. If you read the Clayton antitrust act you'll see a number of specific examples of illegal behavior. Bundling is the very first one listed.
The illegality comes when you use your monopoly to threaten others if they do not play by your rules.
Threatening is not the main point of antitrust law. The point of anti-trust law is to prevent companies from bypassing the free market. I think you are more than a little confused about the law. Bundling is one of the main methods used to extend a monopoly and it has been entrenched in legal precedent for decades.
MS took an action that gave it an advantage (bundling). It was able to do this because it has a monopoly, which it used. As a result an inferior product won out in the market.
How is this not a clear case of anti-trust law violation? The law bans companies from using a monopoly to gain any advantage in another market. You're just plain wrong.
If there ever was an organization dedicated to mediocrity, impeding productivity and forcing people to be on strike and not earning money when they want to, a union would be it.
I agree that unions promote mediocrity, but they also help balance the very unbalanced power struggle between individual workers and corporate employers.
So here's the deal. Everyone is a unique an wonderful individual. Life is anarchy. Every person defends their own and bargains with one another and negotiations are balanced, or at least based upon the abilities of each individual. The system more or less works.
Some bright people have an idea. They form a club. As a group they can go to anyone they want and demand whatever they want. One person can't effectively bargain against a large, united group since they have more collective power. One person in the group can spend all their time countering the individual while being supported by the group. The individual must either give in, perish, or be exceptionally better than the collective group (very rare). You can call the group a government or a corporation or a union or whatever you want. The point is collective bargaining works to advantage members.
Business in the US is a poster child of this process. Corporations are some of the biggest "groups" and have disproportionate power. Some individuals might be able to play one corporation off of another, but most do not have that option. Enter unions. All they are is another group dedicated to counter-balancing the first group in negotiations.
Take a look at the history of the average person in the US before unions. The working conditions were horrendous and the government was so corrupt and controlled by business as to be nothing more than another oppressive regime. Unions have partially balanced that out at this point.
So here's the problem. Bureaucracies are inefficient and prone to the failing of human nature. They attract the greedy and power hungry and likely become sources of even more abuses. It is sort of like fighting evil with evil. The balance of the two evils is usually better than having just one, but not always.
You say you don't like unions. That is fine. The stated purpose of a union, however is to benefit the members and improve their working conditions and daily lives. They are trying to counter-balance corporations whose stated purpose is to concentrate as much money as possible into the hands of the shareholders. I find the first stated goal much more admirable than the second. I also think that unions are a necessary evil. As long as corporations are hiring people on a massive scale, unions are needed to negotiate for employees on a massive scale. Otherwise, the abuses become horrendous.
It seems to me the article's poster expects the world owes him/her something. Get over yourself, I say. The world owes you nothing, isn't fair, and a Union won't do anything but take your money, impose restrictions that hamper the hard workers and the competent, and drive the work away faster.
This isn't about entitlement, it is about fair bargaining. Like it or not, unions do a lot of good. They are the reason we america has some of the safest workplaces in the world, rather than abusive sweatshops and near slave-labor conditions.
Unions... no thanks. I'm doing just fine without them.
The tech industry is still very young and specialized. Give it a few decades when the average programmer or technician is a real commodity and the industry has weeded out all the small players (as it almost certainly will).
The only people who need unions are lazy folks, people without foresight, or people without initiative.
Statements like this are so misguided they make me ill. Before making blanket statements like this, go read a history book and learn about the brave men and women who died establishing the first unions in this country and take a look at the working conditions of the average person before them. Your ignorance