No, no, it can't be. God no, it can't be. "You know what we all need? Prostitutes! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES!" (Balmer on stage sweating like a pig, with playboy bunnies.)
If anything, the corporate community should learn something from this. Dressing like a "professional" doesn't make you a "perfessional". It just makes you a boring suit that has no imagination or creativity. (I'm reminded of the classic "Lemmings" commercial apple put out to describe IBM bots just doing the same old boring thing day in and day out.)
Maybe that's what the corporate world wants. But the smaller, faster companies know that putting their key producers in little cubicals and crippling their imagination also cripples their productivity. What, haven't people learned anything yet from Google's "al of you can spend this X amount of time per day just having fun doing your own project" strategy?
Immediately, the corporate world should put in these standards: 1) No dress code. Business attire is reserved for "serious" presetation meetings or other times when respect need to be demonstrated. (Literally people should have lockers at work and change into "uniform" when necessary. Otherwise they should be left alone.)
2) Repeated breaks throughout the day. The standard 30 minute lunch break is just pathetic. People are burned out because they work to much, and they are burned out because the mind needs constant breaks in state in order to assimilate and learn new information.
3) People should be able to take a nap during the midday slump when body temperature goes down (see circadian rhythm - i.e. your "body clock")
4) The cubical should die and people should be forced to interact personally much more then they do now. Kill the 5 hours a day spent on the computer (unless you are in an IT job)
5) The workplace should be filled to the brim with high energy rituals and events. People work better when they are in high energy states. Anything which ads negative energy to the workplace environment should be removed.
6) "Nature" should be added. More sunlight, more water, more natural sounds. This immediately relaxes people and again, puts them in an optimal state of free flowing productivity.
I would say the number one reason why the US has fallin behind in technology is a failure to understand how to properly create an optimal environment for people to work in. "Work" should not be work at all- it should be fun. If it's not fun, then people are going to be doing their best, and getting people doing their best should be the major focus of every company.
And again, if you buy Windows software, you'll get Windows software.
This is a popular falicy, and I get really annoyed me that the mac community seems to use it so often. I guess it comes from the fact that most mac users have a minority-mentality. (Afraid of the mac at some point being killed off, and so overly defensive about everything mac.)
So let's get to it. Your statement above implies that all Windows software is bad, simply because it runs on Windows. You are incorrect. Some Windows software is actually good. Which is why mac users are making a big deal out of being able to run windows on their macs. See at some level, we all know that some windows software is good. For example, Quicken for windows kicks the crap out of the mac version. We all know this. Yet because we are mac users, we have to get all defensive when people try to say they don't like something that has to do with the mac. It's as if the mac is some annointed idol, and everything that runs on it immediately has to be better.
Sorry to say guys, but it's not true. The mac has some good programs and some bad programs, just like windows. Some mac programs will aways be better then what's on windows. And vice versa.
The point is, just because some windows software is good, does not in any way detract from the mac. Being overly defensive about the mac is counter-productive. The mac doesn't have anything to prove. We've been around for 20+ years. Apple's stock is the strongest it's ever been. iPod users are seriously considering switching to the mac. We have some of the fastest, most productive computers around. Things haven't been brighter.
Really gusy, there's no real reason to get on windows anymore. The OS race was decided a long time ago. So Windows copied the mac. So many windows programs are poor. So what? Windows people are just going to like windows. Maybe they will come around, maybe they won't. Why not just let them be, and enjoy the mac that you have? That's a novel concept!
I'm just trying to say that you're not going to make any converts if you keep trying to do the "all windows software is bad" thing. Really, it just flat out doesn't make any sense. You know it, and I know it. So don't say it, ok?
While it seems trite, the fact is that you're voting with your wallet, and if you buy a Windows game, there's little impetus for the developers to develop for Mac
I've heard this point before, and it remains invalid. Developers are not discontinuing support for the mac because of people switching to windows or because of low mac marketshare. Developers are discontinuing support for the mac because gaming on the mac basically sucks, and has sucked for a very long time.
There have been a few mac-only decent games. Myth. Mist. Alice. Marathon. But 99% of the good mac games today are all ports of PC games. Doom 3 is a port. World of Warcraft is a port. Halo is a port. There's no drive at all to make good mac-only games. And you'll notice that few of the lower-selling PC games get ported. That's because the mac marketshare is so small, the only games that can make any money are the big titles. That tells me that mac gaming is pretty much dead, and the only reason it hasn't completely disappeared is because of the efforts of fanatical mac users desperately pounding on the doors of id, blizzard, etc. to port stuff to the mac.
And the reason for that comes back to apple. The truth is, Apple has seemingly done everything possible to keep the mac from becoming a serious gaming machine. The list of infractions is long. Shipping computers with one button mice year after year. Not tweaking OS X to support fast rendering of full-screen games (to this day, there is no easy way to make OS X devote most of it's processing power to a game without re-nicing the process.) Not working with microsoft to get support for Direct X 9. Not making it easy for gamers to overclock or tweak their hardware. Not including a sound card or a way of easily doing surround sound. And finally (some would say most importantly), not releasing computers with current graphics processors. Typically macs are released with graphics processors that are at least 2-3 times older in generation then the fastest available graphics card at the time. The only way to get a top-of-the-line GPU was to buy a tower, and even then, you typically had to buy the highest end tower or fork up extra cash to buy your card on the side, since there was no BTU option.
While the X1600 seems to break the trend as it's at least a current mid-range graphics card, the fact remains that it's fully 2-3x slower then the fastest graphics card available today. With no ablity to upgrade. What has screwed apple is not the G5 and the lack of IBM's ablity to ramp up processor speed. What has screwed them is not catering to gamers and their demanding requirements.
That all being said, what I don't think people realize is that 90% of people out there are never going to know that they can boot into windows unless either apple or microsoft specifically markets that feature. You, me, the people on slashdot, are not the normal people out there. For most people, installing more then one OS on their machine is a hassle, and too confusing to try to deal with. People are not going to suddenly buy macs so they can play PC games on them- if that's what they care about, then it's far cheaper for them to simply get a PC. If anything, MORE macs will get sold because people will know that if they want to, they can run a fully functional version of windows. So they can play a few PC games if they want. IMHO, that plugs a major hole in why a person might not want to buy a mac.
My thinking is that it will turn out to be a win-win. I was always annoyed at the fact that apple didn't put OS X and Windows side-by-side and show people that "It Just Works Better (TM). Now, curious PC users can hack OS X to run on their machines, play around with it, and maybe consider using it full-time. And Mac users on their computers, they can play PC games and run that occational windows program they need to run. It's a win-win situation.
And people aren't going to just buy "cheap PCs". Apple has spent a long time on brand, and quite frankly, apple's hardware is sexy. You don't get anything like that when you buy a PC. So people are still going to think about buying a mac vs a PC, even if they know they can get the mac OS on cheaper hardware.
Wow. The amount of wrong and/or useless information in this article is pretty astounding. I found out more information by reading the onmac wiki in 5 minutes then the 5 minutes I've wasted writing this reply.
"Sure, we all know that Windows can now run on intel Apple Computers."
Yup, and we knew this from a former article. Nothing new here.
"Alas, the solution does not include drivers"
Wrong. Read wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Users/Drivers. Most drivers work perfectly. The only things missing are iSight and IR drivers. Sound drivers don't work unless you use headphones. And graphics drivers only work on the Mac mini.
"and until now Mac users could still only hope to be able to use every application available to their Windows counterparts."
Um, yea that is the hope. Duh. Obviously the things that are not working are mostly the things that rely on the unwritten drivers. Again, 5 minutes on the onmac wiki and you would see wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Users/Software, which has the current list of working software that's been tested.
"However, with drivers now working 100% on the Mac Mini and drivers for the MacBook Pro only lacking video (which, by the looks of the 2nd link is only days away), Mac users now have a complete and working Windows solution."
Um, no. Reading the forums, there are serious issues with coming out with working graphics drivers. The graphics driver forum post is like 36 pages long. At any rate, this article tells us absolutely nothing. Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to release an article AFTER the graphics drivers have been made, informing people about that fact? People don't want to know that drivers are ALMOST ready, because they've been almost ready for like a month now.
Messages are always censored to some degree, becauses ultimately, some system has to decide which messages get through. Either that system is a computer that uses some algorithm, or it's a human who manually decides. Usually it's the popular message that gets through, regardless if the message is accurate or not.
Ultimately it comes down to your level of trust in whatever system is doing the filtering. What most people don't get is there's almost always some "non-partial" element to messages. News media can't report on messages that the government deems as critical to national security. And now we are finding the same thing with google. And people are suprised?
Honestly, I don't think people will be able to cope with the power of the net, longterm. Once you discover the additive power of being able to know ANY answer to almost ANYTHING just by searching google, you're doomed to spending large hours on the net just searching for anything you may be interested in.
People's brains haven't evolved to cope with such power. One of the major mechanisms for learning anything is repitition - repeating the same, message over and over so it goes into the unconscious. Likewise if the repetition is to be effective, then the mind must be focused on it for a significant amount of time. The net does not promote this structure - what it promotes is instant gratification and unstructured information wandering. At some point deal with this, either the person saturates and cannot take in any more messages, or they become a dumb slave - searching constantly on anything their mind can come up with. My guess is we will start to see more and more people choosing to leave the internet due to drops in productivity.
I guess that means even you don't know what you're doing?
"I swear mom! I was stoned when I went to that porn site! I don't even know what porn is!"
Honestly, what good would it do if you were shown what data is collected? So you could correct it, and thereby make it even easier for companies to know more about you? (It's not like correcting your credit report so that you can get that $5000 loan you need.)
Though you are joking, the exact same thing is often done with programs which attempt to gauge search engine keyword popularity. If a competitor performs a lot of searches for an irrelevant keyword (ex: through Wordtracker) it can screw up your data.
Pretty easy, really. Log onto any torrent search engine, look at the files, and count the number of seeders and leechers of any one file. Since bittorrent is the largest filesharing system, a sample of this data would provide a pretty good gauge as to the popularity of a particular file at any one time.
The press is imperfect, and downright wrong from time to time.
Very true. As an analogy, I would compare what these guys did to what altruistic crackers attempt to do when they break into someone's system, and then leave the sys-admin a note as to how the attack was accomplished.
Now when a system breach occurs, it's likely the sys-admin is going to be pissed. Security of the system was compromised. Users' productivity was harmed. The cracker broke the law and should be punished. Blah, blah, blah. But if the cracker had a good heart, the point of the break-in was not to disrupt the system, but to say "Hey dude. You need to work on your security. Fix the damn thing before someone else does something worse!" It's a kick in the pants, so to speak. And a wise sys-admin, no matter how upset they are about the breach, is going to get the message and fix the problem.
Are there flaws in the press system? Yes there are. But unlike Microsoft who tries to hide those flaws under the covers, the flaws should be revealed, so someone can do something about them. Hopefully, what happened is the western press stopped a moment to think a little bit about what they are doing. And hopefully if they are smart, they will take steps to correct their fact-checking procedures, so that such a thing doesn't happen again.
Big difference between slaves who died 150-300 years ago, and protesters who died less than twenty years ago.
This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard. It's ok to kill people, just make sure nobody knows about it until 150-300 years go by.
God damn, man. No wonder the rest of the world hates the US. How can you trust a country that still seems to think it's great even when the government is blatently spying on it's own citizens? Do people here even care how stupid we look trying to tell other countries they are immoral?
He obviously intended the results he got. So instead of demonstrating anything about "irresponsible" freedom of speech in the West, he managed to demonstrate that his blog is unreliable and that he is, ultimately, irresponsible. Good show.
Interesting how much/. thrashing is going on over this article. Obviously the point he was trying to make is a good one, otherwise people wouldn't be so pissed off about it. It's actually pretty funny how hypocritical people can be. On one hand we want China to be a democracy and have free speech. On the other if that free speech is used to make a point about people being irresponsible in their use of it, then obviously "he should just shut the hell up."
What shall it be guys? Free speech means I have the ability to say something that might piss you off. Guess what? Deal with it.
You don't actually have to *say* "this blog was closed due to the evil Chinese government censor" to be lying; if you *deliberately* put up information that you *know* will lead the observer to reaching a wrong conclusion, you're lying, too.
Umm, no. Someone mis-interpreting you is not your fault, is the fault of the person doing the interpreting. I am responsible for what I say, but you are responsible for what you think about what I say.
Do you realize what you're even implying? If I say something to you, and you believe different then I intend, I am somehow an evil lier? Wow, that's good. Quite a pretty convient way for you to blame your confusion/stupidity on me now, isn't it? I should try that idea sometime - thanks.
It's not that far fetched that the Chinese government would be up to some of their pretty old, tried, and true techniques of squelching any information not explicitly approved for public consumption.
Or, you could choose to hear and understand the argument being made that people immediately jump to conclusions as far as the Chinese government is concerned, and that doing so is irresponsible. The awareness of that point was the purpose of the action, and the message that is supposed to be taken from it. What the Chinese government did in the past or what they may do in the future is irrelvant to the purpose of the story.
The re-iteration of your viewpoint, regardless of facts which have nothing to do with it, brings up an interesting memory of mine. There's an important idea I learned while studying the history of science in collage.
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
They are ridiculed
They are violently opposed
They are accepted as self-evident.
I find this applies to almost everything people believe. We reach some point where we accept certain things as being set in stone. Then what happens is we refuse to accept any new information which disrupts what we believe. The unfortunately thing in doing so is we waste years applying the wrong information, when such a struggle was unnecessary.
Teach yourself to be able to accept evidence which may contradict your current viewpoint, no matter how strongly you believe in it. The world is full of polarity. Just because there is evidence to the contrary of what you believe doesn't mean you have to change your belief. But be open to doing so if the evidence should prove overwhelming.
Getting back to the current issue, the point to take is that automatically damning ANYTHING is a bad idea. Don't accuse people of evil before they actually do it. As the US should have learned from the post 9/11 hell-hole that is Iraq, demonizing people just makes them hate you more. It doesn't solve any problem.
I wonder of patent judges ever include "consumers" on the list of parties involved in these things. I mean in this dispute, you have eBay on one side and MercExchange on the other. But in really there is a 3rd party - the consumers who are using the ByItNow feature. Those are the real people who are affected if eBay is forced to remove the feature or not.
I know me as an ebay customer, I would be royally pissed off if ebay suddenly had to pull an important feature just because of some jackass patent dispute.
What I'm getting at is I think one factor that should be involved in these disputes is the number of users affected by the dispute and their overall opinion of how a particular outcome will impact their lives.
It seems to me that "freedom of the press" was added to the constitution expressly for the purpose of stopping a future government from being able to do something like this. Which is quite a brilliant thing, if you think about it. To become aware and design in laws capable of combating mankind's main failing nature - that is, a tendancy towards greed. Somehow the Founders knew that in the future, a governement may become too powerful and try to control information to such a degree that the people become it's slaves.
No government should ever be able to disrupt certain laws. The wise laws, the laws that took hundreds of guys months to create. I think those things supercede some sniveling senator with an agenda, or some other jackass who just has to get their little word in there. Because god knows, they are much smarter then some 100 year old dead guy, right?
but I make a practice of never commenting on websites that try to force me to sign up with them just to make a simple post. Especially since I know their sole reason for existance is to get me to opt-in to some newletter so they can claim I actually wanted them to send me offers for crappy stuff.
Wrong. Money IS important. If you don't believe me, then have you ever gone to a bank and ever tried to cash in some "love"? Seriously, if money weren't important, then people wouldn't constantly be getting up to go to work every day. Why would people go to work a job they don't like, if not for the money?
The truth is, money is just as important as love. Not more and not less. Here's a novel concept - why not have both? Why does it have to be one or the other?
I disagree. "Making a living" is a horrible way to live. Unfortunately, most people choose that, because it's easier. The fear of losing is more important then the thrill of winning. But who wants to go 30 years in a job they hate? You might as well kill yourself now and get it over with! Seriously (and I know that may seem harsh), but I don't believe people are supposed to have a crappy life. It's other people that have crappy lives that tell you you're supposed to have a crappy life. Get away from them! They drag you down. Plenty of people out there are happy- you just have to find them and learn from them. And trust your own heart.
I think parents do their kids a great disservice when they constantly tell them to "be careful", "be practical", etc., rather then telling their kids to go for what they want. How can you tell your own kid that they are destined to fail, to become dissappointed, before they even start anything? How silly! How selfish! Just because YOU had something bad happen to you or YOU are not as successful at doing what you're doing, doesn't mean someone else might not be successful at it. So you are going to drag someone down by telling them they can't do it? Congradulations, you just cursed another person out of their change to have a happy, successful life. Even if it's your own kids. You made them doubt themselves, when they were perfectly set up for wild success. And becoming afraid, they resign themselves to a desk job, to hate life for the rest of their days.
Don't do it. Be a positive force in the world- tell people they can do it. And give your kids a chance to be happy. Maybe, just maybe, they will be.
Course, you could make the argument that the Fararri is broken because for some reason, you can't play Call of Duty 2 or Quake 4. So it's rather like a Fararri where everything is perfect, except you are only allowed to drive on the same three roads and only during a full moon.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No. I see a big difference between spyware, which is software installed without my consent and which sends information to anyone who may want it and what iTunes is doing, which is collecting information for the purposes of improving my user experience in iTMS. The difference for me I think is the amount of value the company provides for my agreeing to them collecting information. Random information collected about me while I use my computer does not benifit me in any way- it only benifits the company that installed the spyware. Thus it has no use to me, and I delete it. But what google, amazon, and now iTunes do actually helps me, so I allow it.
Slashdot Mirror
Google stole my brain cells! Er wait.... Google stole my genes! Er that's not it...
(Honestly, will the media give up trying to find something wrong with Google already? I've heard of identity theft, but this is rediculus.)
Wait a minute. That must mean.... oh no.
Steve.....Balmer.....had.....SEX?
No, no, it can't be. God no, it can't be. "You know what we all need? Prostitutes! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES! PROSTITUTES!" (Balmer on stage sweating like a pig, with playboy bunnies.)
Please rip that image out of my head.
If anything, the corporate community should learn something from this. Dressing like a "professional" doesn't make you a "perfessional". It just makes you a boring suit that has no imagination or creativity. (I'm reminded of the classic "Lemmings" commercial apple put out to describe IBM bots just doing the same old boring thing day in and day out.)
Maybe that's what the corporate world wants. But the smaller, faster companies know that putting their key producers in little cubicals and crippling their imagination also cripples their productivity. What, haven't people learned anything yet from Google's "al of you can spend this X amount of time per day just having fun doing your own project" strategy?
Immediately, the corporate world should put in these standards:
1) No dress code. Business attire is reserved for "serious" presetation meetings or other times when respect need to be demonstrated. (Literally people should have lockers at work and change into "uniform" when necessary. Otherwise they should be left alone.)
2) Repeated breaks throughout the day. The standard 30 minute lunch break is just pathetic. People are burned out because they work to much, and they are burned out because the mind needs constant breaks in state in order to assimilate and learn new information.
3) People should be able to take a nap during the midday slump when body temperature goes down (see circadian rhythm - i.e. your "body clock")
4) The cubical should die and people should be forced to interact personally much more then they do now. Kill the 5 hours a day spent on the computer (unless you are in an IT job)
5) The workplace should be filled to the brim with high energy rituals and events. People work better when they are in high energy states. Anything which ads negative energy to the workplace environment should be removed.
6) "Nature" should be added. More sunlight, more water, more natural sounds. This immediately relaxes people and again, puts them in an optimal state of free flowing productivity.
I would say the number one reason why the US has fallin behind in technology is a failure to understand how to properly create an optimal environment for people to work in. "Work" should not be work at all- it should be fun. If it's not fun, then people are going to be doing their best, and getting people doing their best should be the major focus of every company.
And again, if you buy Windows software, you'll get Windows software.
This is a popular falicy, and I get really annoyed me that the mac community seems to use it so often. I guess it comes from the fact that most mac users have a minority-mentality. (Afraid of the mac at some point being killed off, and so overly defensive about everything mac.)
So let's get to it. Your statement above implies that all Windows software is bad, simply because it runs on Windows. You are incorrect. Some Windows software is actually good. Which is why mac users are making a big deal out of being able to run windows on their macs. See at some level, we all know that some windows software is good. For example, Quicken for windows kicks the crap out of the mac version. We all know this. Yet because we are mac users, we have to get all defensive when people try to say they don't like something that has to do with the mac. It's as if the mac is some annointed idol, and everything that runs on it immediately has to be better.
Sorry to say guys, but it's not true. The mac has some good programs and some bad programs, just like windows. Some mac programs will aways be better then what's on windows. And vice versa.
The point is, just because some windows software is good, does not in any way detract from the mac. Being overly defensive about the mac is counter-productive. The mac doesn't have anything to prove. We've been around for 20+ years. Apple's stock is the strongest it's ever been. iPod users are seriously considering switching to the mac. We have some of the fastest, most productive computers around. Things haven't been brighter.
Really gusy, there's no real reason to get on windows anymore. The OS race was decided a long time ago. So Windows copied the mac. So many windows programs are poor. So what? Windows people are just going to like windows. Maybe they will come around, maybe they won't. Why not just let them be, and enjoy the mac that you have? That's a novel concept!
I'm just trying to say that you're not going to make any converts if you keep trying to do the "all windows software is bad" thing. Really, it just flat out doesn't make any sense. You know it, and I know it. So don't say it, ok?
While it seems trite, the fact is that you're voting with your wallet, and if you buy a Windows game, there's little impetus for the developers to develop for Mac
I've heard this point before, and it remains invalid. Developers are not discontinuing support for the mac because of people switching to windows or because of low mac marketshare. Developers are discontinuing support for the mac because gaming on the mac basically sucks, and has sucked for a very long time.
There have been a few mac-only decent games. Myth. Mist. Alice. Marathon. But 99% of the good mac games today are all ports of PC games. Doom 3 is a port. World of Warcraft is a port. Halo is a port. There's no drive at all to make good mac-only games. And you'll notice that few of the lower-selling PC games get ported. That's because the mac marketshare is so small, the only games that can make any money are the big titles. That tells me that mac gaming is pretty much dead, and the only reason it hasn't completely disappeared is because of the efforts of fanatical mac users desperately pounding on the doors of id, blizzard, etc. to port stuff to the mac.
And the reason for that comes back to apple. The truth is, Apple has seemingly done everything possible to keep the mac from becoming a serious gaming machine. The list of infractions is long. Shipping computers with one button mice year after year. Not tweaking OS X to support fast rendering of full-screen games (to this day, there is no easy way to make OS X devote most of it's processing power to a game without re-nicing the process.) Not working with microsoft to get support for Direct X 9. Not making it easy for gamers to overclock or tweak their hardware. Not including a sound card or a way of easily doing surround sound. And finally (some would say most importantly), not releasing computers with current graphics processors. Typically macs are released with graphics processors that are at least 2-3 times older in generation then the fastest available graphics card at the time. The only way to get a top-of-the-line GPU was to buy a tower, and even then, you typically had to buy the highest end tower or fork up extra cash to buy your card on the side, since there was no BTU option.
While the X1600 seems to break the trend as it's at least a current mid-range graphics card, the fact remains that it's fully 2-3x slower then the fastest graphics card available today. With no ablity to upgrade. What has screwed apple is not the G5 and the lack of IBM's ablity to ramp up processor speed. What has screwed them is not catering to gamers and their demanding requirements.
That all being said, what I don't think people realize is that 90% of people out there are never going to know that they can boot into windows unless either apple or microsoft specifically markets that feature. You, me, the people on slashdot, are not the normal people out there. For most people, installing more then one OS on their machine is a hassle, and too confusing to try to deal with. People are not going to suddenly buy macs so they can play PC games on them- if that's what they care about, then it's far cheaper for them to simply get a PC. If anything, MORE macs will get sold because people will know that if they want to, they can run a fully functional version of windows. So they can play a few PC games if they want. IMHO, that plugs a major hole in why a person might not want to buy a mac.
My thinking is that it will turn out to be a win-win. I was always annoyed at the fact that apple didn't put OS X and Windows side-by-side and show people that "It Just Works Better (TM). Now, curious PC users can hack OS X to run on their machines, play around with it, and maybe consider using it full-time. And Mac users on their computers, they can play PC games and run that occational windows program they need to run. It's a win-win situation.
And people aren't going to just buy "cheap PCs". Apple has spent a long time on brand, and quite frankly, apple's hardware is sexy. You don't get anything like that when you buy a PC. So people are still going to think about buying a mac vs a PC, even if they know they can get the mac OS on cheaper hardware.
"Sure, we all know that Windows can now run on intel Apple Computers."
Yup, and we knew this from a former article. Nothing new here.
"Alas, the solution does not include drivers"
Wrong. Read wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Users/Drivers. Most drivers work perfectly. The only things missing are iSight and IR drivers. Sound drivers don't work unless you use headphones. And graphics drivers only work on the Mac mini.
"and until now Mac users could still only hope to be able to use every application available to their Windows counterparts."
Um, yea that is the hope. Duh. Obviously the things that are not working are mostly the things that rely on the unwritten drivers. Again, 5 minutes on the onmac wiki and you would see wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Users/Software, which has the current list of working software that's been tested.
"However, with drivers now working 100% on the Mac Mini and drivers for the MacBook Pro only lacking video (which, by the looks of the 2nd link is only days away), Mac users now have a complete and working Windows solution."
Um, no. Reading the forums, there are serious issues with coming out with working graphics drivers. The graphics driver forum post is like 36 pages long. At any rate, this article tells us absolutely nothing. Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to release an article AFTER the graphics drivers have been made, informing people about that fact? People don't want to know that drivers are ALMOST ready, because they've been almost ready for like a month now.
Ultimately it comes down to your level of trust in whatever system is doing the filtering. What most people don't get is there's almost always some "non-partial" element to messages. News media can't report on messages that the government deems as critical to national security. And now we are finding the same thing with google. And people are suprised?
People's brains haven't evolved to cope with such power. One of the major mechanisms for learning anything is repitition - repeating the same, message over and over so it goes into the unconscious. Likewise if the repetition is to be effective, then the mind must be focused on it for a significant amount of time. The net does not promote this structure - what it promotes is instant gratification and unstructured information wandering. At some point deal with this, either the person saturates and cannot take in any more messages, or they become a dumb slave - searching constantly on anything their mind can come up with. My guess is we will start to see more and more people choosing to leave the internet due to drops in productivity.
"I swear mom! I was stoned when I went to that porn site! I don't even know what porn is!"
Honestly, what good would it do if you were shown what data is collected? So you could correct it, and thereby make it even easier for companies to know more about you? (It's not like correcting your credit report so that you can get that $5000 loan you need.)
Though you are joking, the exact same thing is often done with programs which attempt to gauge search engine keyword popularity. If a competitor performs a lot of searches for an irrelevant keyword (ex: through Wordtracker) it can screw up your data.
Pretty easy, really. Log onto any torrent search engine, look at the files, and count the number of seeders and leechers of any one file. Since bittorrent is the largest filesharing system, a sample of this data would provide a pretty good gauge as to the popularity of a particular file at any one time.
Very true. As an analogy, I would compare what these guys did to what altruistic crackers attempt to do when they break into someone's system, and then leave the sys-admin a note as to how the attack was accomplished.
Now when a system breach occurs, it's likely the sys-admin is going to be pissed. Security of the system was compromised. Users' productivity was harmed. The cracker broke the law and should be punished. Blah, blah, blah. But if the cracker had a good heart, the point of the break-in was not to disrupt the system, but to say "Hey dude. You need to work on your security. Fix the damn thing before someone else does something worse!" It's a kick in the pants, so to speak. And a wise sys-admin, no matter how upset they are about the breach, is going to get the message and fix the problem.
Are there flaws in the press system? Yes there are. But unlike Microsoft who tries to hide those flaws under the covers, the flaws should be revealed, so someone can do something about them. Hopefully, what happened is the western press stopped a moment to think a little bit about what they are doing. And hopefully if they are smart, they will take steps to correct their fact-checking procedures, so that such a thing doesn't happen again.
Kinda a big slap in the face to Real Journalists(TM) who've studied journalism for 20 years complaining about "those silly bloggers" now, isn't it?
Score one for Wikipedia and the blogging generation.
This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard. It's ok to kill people, just make sure nobody knows about it until 150-300 years go by.
God damn, man. No wonder the rest of the world hates the US. How can you trust a country that still seems to think it's great even when the government is blatently spying on it's own citizens? Do people here even care how stupid we look trying to tell other countries they are immoral?
Interesting how much /. thrashing is going on over this article. Obviously the point he was trying to make is a good one, otherwise people wouldn't be so pissed off about it. It's actually pretty funny how hypocritical people can be. On one hand we want China to be a democracy and have free speech. On the other if that free speech is used to make a point about people being irresponsible in their use of it, then obviously "he should just shut the hell up."
What shall it be guys? Free speech means I have the ability to say something that might piss you off. Guess what? Deal with it.
Umm, no. Someone mis-interpreting you is not your fault, is the fault of the person doing the interpreting. I am responsible for what I say, but you are responsible for what you think about what I say.
Do you realize what you're even implying? If I say something to you, and you believe different then I intend, I am somehow an evil lier? Wow, that's good. Quite a pretty convient way for you to blame your confusion/stupidity on me now, isn't it? I should try that idea sometime - thanks.
Or, you could choose to hear and understand the argument being made that people immediately jump to conclusions as far as the Chinese government is concerned, and that doing so is irresponsible. The awareness of that point was the purpose of the action, and the message that is supposed to be taken from it. What the Chinese government did in the past or what they may do in the future is irrelvant to the purpose of the story.
The re-iteration of your viewpoint, regardless of facts which have nothing to do with it, brings up an interesting memory of mine. There's an important idea I learned while studying the history of science in collage.
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
I find this applies to almost everything people believe. We reach some point where we accept certain things as being set in stone. Then what happens is we refuse to accept any new information which disrupts what we believe. The unfortunately thing in doing so is we waste years applying the wrong information, when such a struggle was unnecessary.
Teach yourself to be able to accept evidence which may contradict your current viewpoint, no matter how strongly you believe in it. The world is full of polarity. Just because there is evidence to the contrary of what you believe doesn't mean you have to change your belief. But be open to doing so if the evidence should prove overwhelming.
Getting back to the current issue, the point to take is that automatically damning ANYTHING is a bad idea. Don't accuse people of evil before they actually do it. As the US should have learned from the post 9/11 hell-hole that is Iraq, demonizing people just makes them hate you more. It doesn't solve any problem.
I wonder of patent judges ever include "consumers" on the list of parties involved in these things. I mean in this dispute, you have eBay on one side and MercExchange on the other. But in really there is a 3rd party - the consumers who are using the ByItNow feature. Those are the real people who are affected if eBay is forced to remove the feature or not.
I know me as an ebay customer, I would be royally pissed off if ebay suddenly had to pull an important feature just because of some jackass patent dispute.
What I'm getting at is I think one factor that should be involved in these disputes is the number of users affected by the dispute and their overall opinion of how a particular outcome will impact their lives.
It seems to me that "freedom of the press" was added to the constitution expressly for the purpose of stopping a future government from being able to do something like this. Which is quite a brilliant thing, if you think about it. To become aware and design in laws capable of combating mankind's main failing nature - that is, a tendancy towards greed. Somehow the Founders knew that in the future, a governement may become too powerful and try to control information to such a degree that the people become it's slaves.
No government should ever be able to disrupt certain laws. The wise laws, the laws that took hundreds of guys months to create. I think those things supercede some sniveling senator with an agenda, or some other jackass who just has to get their little word in there. Because god knows, they are much smarter then some 100 year old dead guy, right?
but I make a practice of never commenting on websites that try to force me to sign up with them just to make a simple post. Especially since I know their sole reason for existance is to get me to opt-in to some newletter so they can claim I actually wanted them to send me offers for crappy stuff.
If you love it, then there's no "have to" about it. You do it because you love doing it.
Wrong. Money IS important. If you don't believe me, then have you ever gone to a bank and ever tried to cash in some "love"? Seriously, if money weren't important, then people wouldn't constantly be getting up to go to work every day. Why would people go to work a job they don't like, if not for the money?
The truth is, money is just as important as love. Not more and not less. Here's a novel concept - why not have both? Why does it have to be one or the other?
I disagree. "Making a living" is a horrible way to live. Unfortunately, most people choose that, because it's easier. The fear of losing is more important then the thrill of winning. But who wants to go 30 years in a job they hate? You might as well kill yourself now and get it over with! Seriously (and I know that may seem harsh), but I don't believe people are supposed to have a crappy life. It's other people that have crappy lives that tell you you're supposed to have a crappy life. Get away from them! They drag you down. Plenty of people out there are happy- you just have to find them and learn from them. And trust your own heart.
I think parents do their kids a great disservice when they constantly tell them to "be careful", "be practical", etc., rather then telling their kids to go for what they want. How can you tell your own kid that they are destined to fail, to become dissappointed, before they even start anything? How silly! How selfish! Just because YOU had something bad happen to you or YOU are not as successful at doing what you're doing, doesn't mean someone else might not be successful at it. So you are going to drag someone down by telling them they can't do it? Congradulations, you just cursed another person out of their change to have a happy, successful life. Even if it's your own kids. You made them doubt themselves, when they were perfectly set up for wild success. And becoming afraid, they resign themselves to a desk job, to hate life for the rest of their days.
Don't do it. Be a positive force in the world- tell people they can do it. And give your kids a chance to be happy. Maybe, just maybe, they will be.
Course, you could make the argument that the Fararri is broken because for some reason, you can't play Call of Duty 2 or Quake 4. So it's rather like a Fararri where everything is perfect, except you are only allowed to drive on the same three roads and only during a full moon.
No. I see a big difference between spyware, which is software installed without my consent and which sends information to anyone who may want it and what iTunes is doing, which is collecting information for the purposes of improving my user experience in iTMS. The difference for me I think is the amount of value the company provides for my agreeing to them collecting information. Random information collected about me while I use my computer does not benifit me in any way- it only benifits the company that installed the spyware. Thus it has no use to me, and I delete it. But what google, amazon, and now iTunes do actually helps me, so I allow it.