It's free. If ANY other company (Apple, HP, anyone) decided they were going to release free antivirus software, anti-malware, blah blah blah, it'd probably be a good thing. MS does it and it can't be good, they're just fixing their own software, it is their own fault to begin with, etc. One would think we'd have gotten at least more creative at blasting MS.
On a more constructive note, it doesn't matter if MS ships it free with Windows. IE ships free with Windows, Safari ships free with Mac, Konqueror ships free, etc. The user that doesn't know any better to begin with is not going to go out and look for the best (out of 25) anti-virus and anti-malware solution possible. The user that doesn't know any better will use what Windows comes with. So what's wrong with MS providing free software with it's own product? Nobody seems to gripe about Konqueror being default in KDE, even though I presonally dislike it as a web browser.
Now, if they do other shady things like make it hard to uninstall, or whatever, that's different. But "free anti-virus software" and "shipped with Windows" in the same sentence doesn't mean we should get out a Gates-shaped guillotine.
According to Google pound-to-USD... $2700 for a laptop? And it has more ram than your main desktop machine? I somehow get the feeling that you definitely did *not* spend $2700 on your desktop. I spent roughly $1000 and have 4GB ram, a 512mb 8800, and a quad core cpu. Does his mac book pro have a quad cpu or anything close to the performance of an 8800?
Secondly, the low-power/high-power dual gpu... did that start with Mac? I am not sure it did. I remember reading a slashdot story recently about it and I'm not sure it started with macs.
At any rate.. $2700 for a laptop is way up there. IMO, with Apple, you get less than what you pay for, unless you're interested in the "whoa, you have a mac, you are cool" thing. Personally, I'd rather have $400-$500 extra in my pocket than people thinking I'm hip or whatever. Not to say I don't think the $2700 mac book pro is nice or good or whatever... just I'd prefer to go a much cheaper route for a machine that will be outdated in two years.
Erm, clarification... Symphony is more or less similar to OO which I don't really dislike... but Symphony/Java stuff in general is so slow. Sometimes painfully slow. Especially with spreadsheets, I have found.
I actually do use openoffice, simply because it's free.
I also use Lotus Notes, because I have to, and dislike it very much.
I also use Symphony... dislike that very much, too.
And I use MS Office occasionally because I have to. But the point is, Office is actually a pretty good product and there isn't much substitute for it when it comes to actual professional document stuff... unless you can "get away" with OO.org.
Name a useful, good, and professional-document-producing office suite that is light weight, fast, and effective. OO.org is *not* all that. In my experience, it is slower.
I realize that. Point was that we HAVE been thinking of paying to run power to the cabin, but it's expensive... on the other hand, though, being able to get broadband over it would be pretty cool and more compelling to pay for the power line.
If internet was available there, one could envision the potential for "working from home" there. Without it, there is no potential....
Lastly, I was not promoting it, just commenting on a potential usage. At the moment in that area, even for those that live right on the main road (which happens to be a highway), dialup IS the only option, even for those who live there year round.
We have a cabin in the mountains, with no power and no phone line. Power has been an option we've been thinking about, but expensive. But no phone line and forest basically means no internet period... powerline broadband would be pretty cool.
Yes, it is quite obvious, but apparently people don't think that Microsoft understands it. Thus, as is also quite obvious, MS is stating that they understand that.
I'm happy, generally, with open office, with the exception of Impress. I am NOT happy with Impress. It's very slow (and I'm running on some pretty fast computers), even slide transitions get bogged down. It is not at all on par with Powerpoint.
I have not figured out why Apple, the shining knight/star of software development according to some, has not released iTunes for Linux. Surely it's not hard to release a somewhat Unix based operating system to Unix based operating system port? Yeah I know, Wine, blah blah blah... iffy at best. I ended up using a VM.
Regardless of what people say, there IS no competition right now, because of iPods, iPhones, etc. Everyone and their mother's cook's dog has an iPod (except me, and proud of it!), so until that is implemented... or allowed to be implmented by Apple... there won't be much competition for iTunes.
Another annoying thing about iTunes that I find VERY frustrating is the playback. I like the library system, more or less, but the playback is awful... even in comparison to Windows Media Player. Especially if my speakers are set up with 5.1 or something like that, it only comes out the front speakers and I have not been able to find an iTunes option to enable 5.1 playback or even 4 speaker playback, etc.
I was going to ask that. Either someone, 16 years ago, decided he wanted to try this, or it is sorta like the fish in the back of the freezer that you caught 20 years ago, don't want to eat, and don't want to throw away... (of course, I don't like fish in the first place)
Fix racism? He should have tried to fix it in his church before he tried to fix it in his country. He apparently didn't mind believing inherently racist theology, why should I believe he will mind believing inherently racist politics? (e.g., affirmative action, etc).
"I'm sure if he was Catholic you people would be saying or implying he was a child molester."
Only if his particular Catholic church actually had that in their theological statement. Have you read the theological statement of the church? Have you heard anything Wright has said? Or are you just going based on what you see or read in the media, Obama's words/books/ads, etc. If the latter, you're only getting one side (the Obama side). If the former, I would be interested to know your take on the church's theological statements. (Wikipedia has information on it, even, it's not that hard to find).
My question to you is - have you read about what the church he attended for so many years actually believes? One usually does not attend a church for 20 years unless you actually believe some of what the church holds to.
Secondly, I find it interesting that you basically are willing to accept whatever Obama says in his book or says on the campaign trail. Have you ever considered looking at other sources of information other than an autobiography? For example, if McCain wrote an autobiography or two, and I cited that as my main source of information about why I thougth McCain was such a great guy, would that be credible? I kinda doubt it.
Whether or not McCain shied away from challenging his beliefs is, IMO, irrelevant. I am honestly not a fan of McCain, other than the fact that he did go through some very hard times for his country, and that is to be respected (interestingly, Obama appears to have no respect for anything - not McCain's beliefs, not McCain's age, not McCain's life, not McCain's bipartisanship [something that annoys me - McCain is too liberal for me], not even McCain's servitude of his country. Why can't Obama respect something other than himself?)
So, for the evolutionist side - shouldn't this be part of natural selection? Survival of the fittest? Shouldn't evolutionary scientists expect extinction... in fact, isn't that the only way species will continue to evolve?
I've always been confused at the modern day evolutionist's perspective that somehow, death and extinction is very bad, even though it's pretty much the primary part of the theory of evolution.
The same is true for those that complain the loudest about humans ruining the planet. I'm completely FOR treating the planet correctly, but for entirely different reasons. The evolutionist perspective, it seems, should not criticize the highest form of evolution (humans) for their natural behavior; by killing off much of the life in the world, am I not just helping prove what is fittest to survive? Certainly, you can't blame me, the product of evolution, for the way I naturally act.
On the other hand, and this is the part where I get modded troll, flamebait, or "stupid" (not sure what the Slashdot equivalent of "stupid" is:) guess I'll find out), preserving and taking care of different species and the world in general makes more sense in a Judeo-Christian worldview, because Biblically, humans were given that responsibility. "Responsibility" is not really in an ahteistic evolutionary worldview. Or if it is, I see no reason why you should tell me what my responsibility is.
I wasn't trying to go for Mac vs. Windows necessarily, at least not from an OS perspective.
As for fussing with hardware, I have built many PC's over the last few years and rarely have to "fuss" with it. I don't know where this presumed hardware failure all the time comes, but I have not had that experience really since I stopped buying generic RAM about 10 years ago.
OS X never breaking - I have worked with Macs, in very limited capacities. However, in that limited capacity, I've actually seen quite a few Macs crash, have network card configuration issues, etc. Granted, probably not as often as a PC, but the "Mac OS X never crashes!" thing is about as valid as saying there is a [good] Linux software replacement for any Windows software. (My hobby and ultimate goal as a profession is music composition, and I can veritably say that Sibelius (or even Finale) beats pretty much anything I've seen on Linux.) I admit there are pro's to having a Mac, I am simply submitting that it is not as black and white as many like to make it (Mac rules for a tiny bit more of a price tag, while PC is cheaper but is horribly faulty, full or hardware issues, etc).
"well, doesn't have virus and worm issues:" - I grant you that. On the other hand, I personally have not had a virus for many years on anything from Windows 2K, XP, to Vista.
As for dual-booting/VMWare Fusion/etc, I agree. If I had a Mac, I would do that. Since I run PC, I'm slightly annoyed that Apple won't let me try to run Mac OS X on my system, simply for kicks (and the extremely few Mac only applications that I would like to be able to run)... other than that, I'm happy to agree to disagree with the Mac Rules people and happily use my PC.:)
No, he isn't Muslim. He did not go to a Mosque for the last 20 years.
However, he DID go to a rather interesting "Christian" church the last 20 years, one that Oprah left before Obama even got there because of the "incendiary" sermons (according to wikipedia, which is not known for conservatism). No, he's not Muslim, but his attending a rather radical black theology church with a rather strange pastor combined with other "interesting" seeming Muslim-sympathetic beliefs or actions do seem to point to a non-full disclosure of his beliefs, etc. Even the simple idea that he's just a normal, very faithful Christian is misleading. His careful choice of church for 20 years (and the pastor began this way long before Obama arrived at the church, it wasn't something that happened in the last 6 months, the pastor did not just recently go off his rocker or something like that) is not one that is exactly a mainstream Christian church. I myself am quite a conservative Christian (theologically, but politically as well) and I would consider myself less radical than the Trinity United Church of Christ (wikipedia entry)
As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux? It seems to be that Linux and OS X are redundant, not to mention that most things you can run on OS X can be run on Windows as well... why buy the Apple hardware?
The only reason I can think of is the image of the Mac, honestly. If there were major redeeming qualities of OS X (especially as compared to Linux?), I could understand that as well, but I am not aware of them (granted, I don't use Macs much, but if you're going to install a Unix based OS, Linux, in addition to a Unix based OS, Mac OS... hm!).
Or am I missing something - i.e., Apple hardware actually is that much better to warrant a higher price tag? Back when they were using RISC based processors, I would readily believe that there might be a difference... but now that even the CPU architecture is the same (Intel...)... ?
I would be tempted to say that about most Apple products. They do have some good ones, and they have some overpriced hyped ones that really aren't that amazing... although, with some (like the iPhone) there wasn't much competition for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
It's free. If ANY other company (Apple, HP, anyone) decided they were going to release free antivirus software, anti-malware, blah blah blah, it'd probably be a good thing. MS does it and it can't be good, they're just fixing their own software, it is their own fault to begin with, etc. One would think we'd have gotten at least more creative at blasting MS.
On a more constructive note, it doesn't matter if MS ships it free with Windows. IE ships free with Windows, Safari ships free with Mac, Konqueror ships free, etc. The user that doesn't know any better to begin with is not going to go out and look for the best (out of 25) anti-virus and anti-malware solution possible. The user that doesn't know any better will use what Windows comes with. So what's wrong with MS providing free software with it's own product? Nobody seems to gripe about Konqueror being default in KDE, even though I presonally dislike it as a web browser.
Now, if they do other shady things like make it hard to uninstall, or whatever, that's different. But "free anti-virus software" and "shipped with Windows" in the same sentence doesn't mean we should get out a Gates-shaped guillotine.
No, only about half of them.
(the word is "superfluous.")
According to Google pound-to-USD ... $2700 for a laptop? And it has more ram than your main desktop machine? I somehow get the feeling that you definitely did *not* spend $2700 on your desktop. I spent roughly $1000 and have 4GB ram, a 512mb 8800, and a quad core cpu. Does his mac book pro have a quad cpu or anything close to the performance of an 8800?
Secondly, the low-power/high-power dual gpu... did that start with Mac? I am not sure it did. I remember reading a slashdot story recently about it and I'm not sure it started with macs.
At any rate.. $2700 for a laptop is way up there. IMO, with Apple, you get less than what you pay for, unless you're interested in the "whoa, you have a mac, you are cool" thing. Personally, I'd rather have $400-$500 extra in my pocket than people thinking I'm hip or whatever. Not to say I don't think the $2700 mac book pro is nice or good or whatever... just I'd prefer to go a much cheaper route for a machine that will be outdated in two years.
Erm, clarification... Symphony is more or less similar to OO which I don't really dislike... but Symphony/Java stuff in general is so slow. Sometimes painfully slow. Especially with spreadsheets, I have found.
I actually do use openoffice, simply because it's free.
I also use Lotus Notes, because I have to, and dislike it very much.
I also use Symphony... dislike that very much, too.
And I use MS Office occasionally because I have to. But the point is, Office is actually a pretty good product and there isn't much substitute for it when it comes to actual professional document stuff... unless you can "get away" with OO.org.
Name a useful, good, and professional-document-producing office suite that is light weight, fast, and effective. OO.org is *not* all that. In my experience, it is slower.
I realize that. Point was that we HAVE been thinking of paying to run power to the cabin, but it's expensive... on the other hand, though, being able to get broadband over it would be pretty cool and more compelling to pay for the power line.
The "driveway" is 1/4 mile.
If internet was available there, one could envision the potential for "working from home" there. Without it, there is no potential....
Lastly, I was not promoting it, just commenting on a potential usage. At the moment in that area, even for those that live right on the main road (which happens to be a highway), dialup IS the only option, even for those who live there year round.
We have a cabin in the mountains, with no power and no phone line. Power has been an option we've been thinking about, but expensive. But no phone line and forest basically means no internet period... powerline broadband would be pretty cool.
That is presuming the government doesn't increase its spending to match it's increase in "income."
So since I paid them more money than I should have, do I get $30x#numberScreensBought out of this $585M fine? Who gets the fine money?
Yes, it is quite obvious, but apparently people don't think that Microsoft understands it. Thus, as is also quite obvious, MS is stating that they understand that.
I'm happy, generally, with open office, with the exception of Impress. I am NOT happy with Impress. It's very slow (and I'm running on some pretty fast computers), even slide transitions get bogged down. It is not at all on par with Powerpoint.
IMO... because you are paying for two things - the Apple name and the lack of competition for Apple, since they have closed OS X to only Mac hardware.
My gripes with iTunes.
I have not figured out why Apple, the shining knight/star of software development according to some, has not released iTunes for Linux. Surely it's not hard to release a somewhat Unix based operating system to Unix based operating system port? Yeah I know, Wine, blah blah blah... iffy at best. I ended up using a VM.
Regardless of what people say, there IS no competition right now, because of iPods, iPhones, etc. Everyone and their mother's cook's dog has an iPod (except me, and proud of it!), so until that is implemented... or allowed to be implmented by Apple... there won't be much competition for iTunes.
Another annoying thing about iTunes that I find VERY frustrating is the playback. I like the library system, more or less, but the playback is awful... even in comparison to Windows Media Player. Especially if my speakers are set up with 5.1 or something like that, it only comes out the front speakers and I have not been able to find an iTunes option to enable 5.1 playback or even 4 speaker playback, etc.
I was going to ask that. Either someone, 16 years ago, decided he wanted to try this, or it is sorta like the fish in the back of the freezer that you caught 20 years ago, don't want to eat, and don't want to throw away... (of course, I don't like fish in the first place)
Fix racism? He should have tried to fix it in his church before he tried to fix it in his country. He apparently didn't mind believing inherently racist theology, why should I believe he will mind believing inherently racist politics? (e.g., affirmative action, etc).
"I'm sure if he was Catholic you people would be saying or implying he was a child molester."
Only if his particular Catholic church actually had that in their theological statement. Have you read the theological statement of the church? Have you heard anything Wright has said? Or are you just going based on what you see or read in the media, Obama's words/books/ads, etc. If the latter, you're only getting one side (the Obama side). If the former, I would be interested to know your take on the church's theological statements. (Wikipedia has information on it, even, it's not that hard to find).
My question to you is - have you read about what the church he attended for so many years actually believes? One usually does not attend a church for 20 years unless you actually believe some of what the church holds to.
Secondly, I find it interesting that you basically are willing to accept whatever Obama says in his book or says on the campaign trail. Have you ever considered looking at other sources of information other than an autobiography? For example, if McCain wrote an autobiography or two, and I cited that as my main source of information about why I thougth McCain was such a great guy, would that be credible? I kinda doubt it.
Whether or not McCain shied away from challenging his beliefs is, IMO, irrelevant. I am honestly not a fan of McCain, other than the fact that he did go through some very hard times for his country, and that is to be respected (interestingly, Obama appears to have no respect for anything - not McCain's beliefs, not McCain's age, not McCain's life, not McCain's bipartisanship [something that annoys me - McCain is too liberal for me], not even McCain's servitude of his country. Why can't Obama respect something other than himself?)
So, for the evolutionist side - shouldn't this be part of natural selection? Survival of the fittest? Shouldn't evolutionary scientists expect extinction ... in fact, isn't that the only way species will continue to evolve?
I've always been confused at the modern day evolutionist's perspective that somehow, death and extinction is very bad, even though it's pretty much the primary part of the theory of evolution.
The same is true for those that complain the loudest about humans ruining the planet. I'm completely FOR treating the planet correctly, but for entirely different reasons. The evolutionist perspective, it seems, should not criticize the highest form of evolution (humans) for their natural behavior; by killing off much of the life in the world, am I not just helping prove what is fittest to survive? Certainly, you can't blame me, the product of evolution, for the way I naturally act.
On the other hand, and this is the part where I get modded troll, flamebait, or "stupid" (not sure what the Slashdot equivalent of "stupid" is :) guess I'll find out), preserving and taking care of different species and the world in general makes more sense in a Judeo-Christian worldview, because Biblically, humans were given that responsibility. "Responsibility" is not really in an ahteistic evolutionary worldview. Or if it is, I see no reason why you should tell me what my responsibility is.
I wasn't trying to go for Mac vs. Windows necessarily, at least not from an OS perspective.
As for fussing with hardware, I have built many PC's over the last few years and rarely have to "fuss" with it. I don't know where this presumed hardware failure all the time comes, but I have not had that experience really since I stopped buying generic RAM about 10 years ago.
OS X never breaking - I have worked with Macs, in very limited capacities. However, in that limited capacity, I've actually seen quite a few Macs crash, have network card configuration issues, etc. Granted, probably not as often as a PC, but the "Mac OS X never crashes!" thing is about as valid as saying there is a [good] Linux software replacement for any Windows software. (My hobby and ultimate goal as a profession is music composition, and I can veritably say that Sibelius (or even Finale) beats pretty much anything I've seen on Linux.) I admit there are pro's to having a Mac, I am simply submitting that it is not as black and white as many like to make it (Mac rules for a tiny bit more of a price tag, while PC is cheaper but is horribly faulty, full or hardware issues, etc).
"well, doesn't have virus and worm issues:" - I grant you that. On the other hand, I personally have not had a virus for many years on anything from Windows 2K, XP, to Vista.
As for dual-booting/VMWare Fusion/etc, I agree. If I had a Mac, I would do that. Since I run PC, I'm slightly annoyed that Apple won't let me try to run Mac OS X on my system, simply for kicks (and the extremely few Mac only applications that I would like to be able to run)... other than that, I'm happy to agree to disagree with the Mac Rules people and happily use my PC. :)
No, he isn't Muslim. He did not go to a Mosque for the last 20 years.
However, he DID go to a rather interesting "Christian" church the last 20 years, one that Oprah left before Obama even got there because of the "incendiary" sermons (according to wikipedia, which is not known for conservatism). No, he's not Muslim, but his attending a rather radical black theology church with a rather strange pastor combined with other "interesting" seeming Muslim-sympathetic beliefs or actions do seem to point to a non-full disclosure of his beliefs, etc. Even the simple idea that he's just a normal, very faithful Christian is misleading. His careful choice of church for 20 years (and the pastor began this way long before Obama arrived at the church, it wasn't something that happened in the last 6 months, the pastor did not just recently go off his rocker or something like that) is not one that is exactly a mainstream Christian church. I myself am quite a conservative Christian (theologically, but politically as well) and I would consider myself less radical than the Trinity United Church of Christ (wikipedia entry)
As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux? It seems to be that Linux and OS X are redundant, not to mention that most things you can run on OS X can be run on Windows as well... why buy the Apple hardware?
The only reason I can think of is the image of the Mac, honestly. If there were major redeeming qualities of OS X (especially as compared to Linux?), I could understand that as well, but I am not aware of them (granted, I don't use Macs much, but if you're going to install a Unix based OS, Linux, in addition to a Unix based OS, Mac OS... hm!).
Or am I missing something - i.e., Apple hardware actually is that much better to warrant a higher price tag? Back when they were using RISC based processors, I would readily believe that there might be a difference... but now that even the CPU architecture is the same (Intel...) ... ?
I would be tempted to say that about most Apple products. They do have some good ones, and they have some overpriced hyped ones that really aren't that amazing... although, with some (like the iPhone) there wasn't much competition for a while.