All true, but furthermore, I don't think you can really fault the guy for his "smug attitude" at this point in time. After all, he was essentially booted out of his own company, while he watched them fail miserably. Then, after they were almost dead, he was asked to step back in and save them (which he did!). Not only that, but all of this happened while he was heading up Pixar at the SAME TIME -- and they were pretty successful in their own right!
All this talk of such things being "no win" for Apple is ridiculous.
From Apple's point of view, they can't really go wrong.
1. All these clone-makers trying to find loopholes to sell OS X compatible systems just generate more publicity for Apple and their OS. Brand-awareness is something companies spend millions a year on, and this amounts to getting some of it free.
2. If Apple opts to completely ignore this guy selling "Mac clones", they stand to sell a few more retail copies of OS X out of the deal -- so whatever. More money in their pockets, and pretty much all from folks who weren't going to be much of a Mac hardware customer in the first place. (Come on... do you REALLY believe there are many people out there who were all ready to buy a Mac, but saw one of these generic clones on the Inet and said "Hey, never knew I had THAT option! I'm buying that instead!" ?? A real Mac includes such things as an elegant case design that runs quietly, and walk-in support after the sale at any Apple retail store. Things like free product training sessions are even provided for people, and even their phone support is consistently ranked above the rest.)
3. Say Apple *does* decide to sue? Worst case for them is they lose -- so out some legal fees and potentially the ability to claim their current EULA stands as legally enforceable. Ok - so where does that really put them? They're STILL selling all those copies of OS X with each clone sold, because nobody ever said they suddenly have to give the OS out FREE to clone-users. They can simply change things for the next OS X version, so it checks your machine serial number against some kind of online database of registered Mac hardware owners before installing, or quit selling a retail stand-alone boxed version, or ??? Lots of ways to accomplish their goals....
First, companies wanted to (generally) make a big deal out of the idea that your email send/received in the workplace didn't really belong to you. It was COMPANY property, because you were using their hardware, bandwidth, and company time to write any outgoing messages.
But all of a sudden, they're expressing legal concerns that shouldn't even have come about if the mail was recognized as belonging to its recipients, vs. being of corporate-ownership.
(EG. You couldn't very well demand to view all the mail on a server to investigate something. You'd have to get permission to search the mail of each individual employee you believed was involved directly in whatever you were suing over, and you'd have to justify the intrusion into their privacy.)
I'm not so sure about that.... I suspect spamming really doesn't generate the amount of money it did at its "peak" of usefulness. (I imagine the income levels it produced over time could be plotted on a typical bell curve. It started out a little-known practice that generated good profits per email spammed out, and quickly grew, with profits rising as well. At some point, it reached its peak "money-making efficiency" and has been on a downward fall ever since. You've got all the public awareness that the stuff is just "junk" that you shouldn't reply to, plus all the commercial anti-spam filters killing off massive amounts of it before it even reaches inboxes, AND legislation starting to outlaw it.)
I'd say there's a really good chance that a "successful" spammer, today, is just somebody able to pay all their bills and live a relatively "middle class" lifestyle off doing it as a full-time job. (I think one of the other notorious spammers they busted a year or so ago was found living in a trailer park... so not exactly a millionaire.)
Nah.... this won't fly. That's just my unsubstantiated opinion - but let's see if I'm right.
For starters, "green" isn't really all that big a selling point/attraction for computer users. It may be a big "buzzword" in the media right now, but buying habits aren't really being driven by it in this sector.
Why? Well, for starters, no matter what the power draw is of a given PC, it draws pretty much nothing when it's powered off (or in a "hibernation" type mode, which is very similar). The typical PC *workstation* customer doesn't need/want to leave their machine on all the time. They just want a fast, enjoyable and reliable machine that boots up quickly whenever they need to use it. Sacrificing processing power for lower power consumption? Really only of interest to the average customer when it directly relates to improved battery life on a portable.
But secondly, anything done on the ad-based model? Comes across as a "toy" and "unprofessional" product from the get-go. Feels like something you should have received FREE, yet the business model can't sustain giving these mini PCs away free....
You buy the product because you like most (or all) of the things they've done with it. I love the multi-touch interface, and the capabilities of the Safari browser built into it. I love the screen that's big and bright enough to easily read my email on, and the way I can configure everything on the phone with clear-cut setup screens, vs. level after level of menus made of 1 or 2 word titles (like every Motorola phone I've used!). I also like the level of integration. (EG. Support for my work's Exchange mail server, out of the box, and the fact that it's also an iPod music player, so integrates with iTunes on my Mac or PC just like my last 2 iPods did.)
Jailbreaking my phone is just one more way to make something "great" even "better"! Apple reduced the "coolness factor" of jailbreaking quite a bit, when they finally rolled out their "App Store" with firmware 2.0.... but there are still things they'll never allow people to distribute on their store. (For example, tethering the phone to use it a a cellular modem for a PC is against the "terms of service" for AT&T and many other providers. They want you to buy a cellular card for your laptop from THEM instead, and sign it up to its own plan.) I understand someone has tethering working as a freeware app for the iPhone now -- but obviously, Apple won't ever host THAT program on their store.
I strongly disagree! When you're talking about a month after month fee that you'll likely be paying for as long as 24 months straight, even an extra $10 quickly becomes an extra $240 you're paying in that time period. Unless you're independently wealthy or something, that's not just some "small change" worthy of just ignoring! That's about what I paid, total, for my original iPhone I bought off Apple's refurbished store.
And the issue I have with AT&T is, I suspect their "taxes" also include a lot of dubious charges. Being a govt. regulated company, it seems it's easier for them to get approval for more funding through a new or increased tax than by actually getting FTC approval for a rate increase.
I know I initially did the $79.99 per month plan, thinking like my old US Cellular plan that was priced about the same, I'd wind up paying around $85 after taxes. But somehow, AT&T wound up billing me more like $97 each month.
I agree with you here. As a rule, I like to think the "best" course of action is to allow your kid(s) as much freedom as they can handle. When they show a lack of caution or abuse of the privileges you give them, then you have to reign them back in - reminding them WHY it was done.
I'd like to think I'd never resort to GPS tracking of where my daughter was driving in my car, once she reaches that age. I know it wouldn't be something I'd do from the start. But if she kept taking the car, using all the gas up, and getting into trouble with it? Sure... that might become one option.
Really? All the Vista issues from a year ago are gone now?
Please tell me, then, how to get our HP Designjet 500 42" plotter working in Vista? Because apparently, HP has no drivers for anything newer than Windows XP for it (or many other older, but expensive large format plotters of theirs).
That alone is a great reason for our company to stick with XP Pro.
I happen to be a divorced dad raising my daughter by myself, and like you, my ex doesn't pay a dime of her court ordered child-support. (Well, she did send me about $200 once, when she took a Christmas holiday job at a retail store.)
So yeah, it *is* a lot of work raising a kid by yourself, and I know all about it. Still, I manage to work a full-time job AND have my own business on the side too. I have to get help from my family to watch my kid while I'm working (when she's not in school, anyway). But I certainly never felt like my situation "entitled" me to free govt. benefits. Certainly, not to free education (without even a requirement of maintaining a specific GPA), or free car repair to ensure I can attend.
Govt. run "assistance" programs do more harm than good, DESPITE people's attempts to defend them by illustrating the good they do.
It's still a FACT that if a parent can't financially handle raising a kid, he or she can legally put the kid up for adoption. Plenty of people who DO have the financial ability are begging for kids to adopt. If things are so bad off for an individual that they can't pay to keep a roof over their head or keep food on their table without govt. handing it to them? Then I'm sorry... but they really don't have their OWN life together enough to do a good job raising a kid.
Actually, a while back, a fellow I.T. worker told me about the term, "gray collar", that was developing. The idea was, the fields of software development, network administration and PC support were a weird combination of "blue collar" and "white collar" work.
After all, like most traditional "white collar" jobs, you're probably working in a climate-controlled office, and paid more for your knowledge and ability to problem-solve than for your physical labor. BUT, like a "blue collar" job, you're typically expected to do things the "white collar" workers usually assign to others. For example, you probably get to crawl around on dirty floors tracing network cabling, unbox and set up computer hardware, and spend time with hand tools removing and replacing defective components inside machines.
I'd have to say though, people like this govt. worker in the story, seem to be paid fairly well to me? I know cost of living is high in San Francisco, but still... earning well over $110K/yr. salary isn't exactly "scraping by".
I agree with you, that a strength of OS X is that they've limited it in scope to running on their own selection of hardware, and specific peripherals subject to Apple's review. (EG. They only provide video driver support for cards they've decided are appropriate for their systems.)
I also find this whole argument of people claiming "Apple's a HARDWARE company", vs. "Apple's a SOFTWARE company!" amusing. The whole POINT to Apple is that they're the last vendor selling computers the "old fashioned" way. They're marketing a full computer SOLUTION to people. They bundle the hardware AND operating system, AND they sell a line of application software, AND they have full-service retail stores where you can get training or assistance after the sale. They even offer a line of "related" peripherals like the AppleTV box or the iPod, or the iPhone. They're not strictly "computers" - but they benefit from a network connection to one, and again, would be supported under the same roof as your system, if you went with all Apple products.
Uh, you mean the "cool facade" of choosing Unix as the core operating system for their whole product line, instead of using the same, tired Microsoft code that all the other PC vendors dump on their systems' hard drives?
Or did you mean the "cool facade" of offering complete solutions for home users and creative professionals? (Microsoft will sell you an OS, but they don't even make their own computers to run it on. In hind-sight, that's probably wise - since they'd actually have to make the thing run well enough not to embarrass their hardware division.)
Oh... maybe you meant the "cool facade" of offering the #1 best selling portable music player, that has more 3rd. party accessories available for it than any other?
The "Mac vs. PC" commercials, obviously are exaggerated... but that's what advertising does. Or do you also believe all those Microsoft "studies" they put in ads, promising Windows Server had better return on investment for companies than Linux?
IMHO, "liability" shouldn't even be a factor. This reminds me a lot of the "mom and pop" ISPs like a buddy of mine used to run. He tried to cater to a customer base that included several churches and religious organizations from the small town he was born in... and wound up creating a big liability mess where none existed initially.
(He decided to start censoring out Usenet groups he deemed as having "unsuitable content" for said customers. Well, as soon as you take that first step of voluntarily censoring ONE group, you lose all hope of protection as a "common carrier". People start holding you to your promises, stated or implied, and every time something slips through - it's a potential legal problem for you.)
If auction sites would simply leave it up to the USERS to police auctions (the way Craigslist does), providing the service itself, without any attempt to "police" what's there, I think they'd have a "best possible scenario".
You have a good suggestion, but I think it would pose complications too. For example, say a vehicle has a worn out or defective battery that barely holds a charge? A less than honest driver could "unload" the bad battery, getting a free upgrade to a good one, just by dropping by the "charging station".
Conversely, the recipient of the dud battery would be inconvenienced, angered, and might even go as far as filing a suit against the charging station - claiming they owe him/her a new battery.
(Granted, your proposal of having microprocessors on the batteries would *theoretically* offer a solution to this dilemma. A station could refuse to swap a battery that was "out of spec" without paying a fee. But how long do you think it'd be before someone programs false values into the chip to cheat the system? We do it now with ink cartridge refills for printers as a matter of course!
I don't disagree with you, really. Mac ports of many of the popular 3D PC games DO have worse performance. Not surprising though, when you look at "ports" in general. Ports of console games for the PC generally have worse performance too, from what I've seen.
A game developed natively for a particular type of system is always going to run better than somebody trying to hack/edit that same code into running on totally different hardware. Windows games typically use "Direct-X/Direct 3D", while the Mac running OS X has no such equivalent. Therefore, they're usually stuck only trying to port over things that support OpenGL instead. That poses some serious limitations right away, but doesn't mean the Mac hardware itself is inferior.
As for Mac video editing/production apps not doing 3D though? What about Apple Motion?
I'm a regular subscriber to Popular Science magazine, and I recall seeing several similar-sounding devices covered in there over the years.
Maybe the problem is, most of them work great in a lab environment, as a "demo", but can't scale up to cost-effective, usable/functional products for the real world?
Like what's going on with Frank Pringle's microwave emitter:
I, too, tried to limit buying new video cards... but I also discovered I really wasn't getting the full potential out of the newer games, when I finally got to sit down and play them on systems with newer video boards in them.
For example, when Bioshock came out, it was using DirectX 10, but most people's video boards still only supported DX 9. I had JUST bought a new video card about 2 months before-hand, and it didn't do DX 10. So I was stuck playing the game without seeing all of its capabilities.
There are currently some good values in "relatively high end, capable video cards" that didn't really exist at the same price point in the past. (The nVidia 8800GT is already considered an "older" card, and sells for under $200 - but can run everything you throw at it quite nicely right now, even at a native resolution used by a typical 22" LCD panel.) But traditionally, this wasn't the case. People with larger LCD monitors had video cards that just couldn't keep frame-rates up at the native resolutions, so gaming suffered.
If current trends continue, I suspect the "window of opportunity" will once again close up, and everyone's card that "runs everything I throw at it, and only cost me $179") will soon need upgrading again, if you want to use whatever the next big innovation is in gaming graphics.
PC Gaming is dying because people are tired of the "latest, greatest" games not only including a $50 price tag, but also another $250 price tag for a new video card to play them well!
People constantly complain that the Mac is "not a viable computer" for them because they don't have enough games out for them, not enough graphics card options, etc. But I can see the flip-side of that. Sometimes it's nice watching Apple "hold the line", saying "What?! These configurations REALLY aren't good enough for you? They're good enough for all the *real* applications we sell. They're good enough for Hollywood to edit movies on and create special f/x with. They're good enough for pro photographers and artists. They're even good enough for the people who DO bother to port the "best of breed" PC games over to our platform, here and there. If you'd rather play "musical video card swap" every few months, go get a regular Wintel PC instead!"
The low-end, ultra-small notebooks are a booming market-segment right now, too. Another sign that people realize their computers are just FINE for everything they do BUT the games with insane requirements. So sure, people just invest in the one-time cost of a console, and focus their gaming budget on titles for it, instead.
I've been saying the same for years now, but it's finally starting to become so blatantly obvious, people are starting to agree with me who I never thought would "see the light".
(One of my former co-workers, for example, emailed me recently, commenting about the old "political debates we used to get into during happy hour get-togethers". He used to be a strong Democrat/Liberal. He said after reading Ron Paul's book and keeping up with what's going on in politics lately, he simply wishes "he kept his mouth shut" back then.)
Right now, it's almost immaterial if we get a Republican or Democrat elected. Both parties are on course to dismantle our Constitution and build an authoritarian government that co-operates more "in step" with other nations of the world.
Will we really become the "American Union", merged with Canada and Mexico? I don't know... but big changes of a similar magnitude loom on the horizon. National ID cards? Check! Unlimited federal govt. power to spy at will? Check! Special highway to deliver goods from Mexico to Canada, non-stop, through the U.S., yet not even U.S. owned? Check! Experiments at the state level with laws designed to force citizens to spy on each other or face criminal charges? Check! (See Texas and the new requirement you hold a Private Investigator's license and Criminal Justice degree to be a COMPUTER TECH!) See still more removal of individual freedoms at the state level to bring us closer to accepting a "police state"; EG. Austin, TX now allowing officers to FORCIBLY draw blood samples from anyone suspected of a DUI. Check!
Sure, a lot of people aren't very good with writing or page layout, and wind up with gaudy, ugly web "presences". But I *also* put a lot of that blame on some of the "social networking" sites that most people turn to these days to create their pages.
I consider MySpace the biggest contributor to the problem. They may be VERY well known, but it seems like it's difficult NOT to create a cluttered mess out of your profile there! Even small businesses and rock bands trying to use them for some free publicity manage to create a collage of slop, 99% of the time.
By contrast, the older (and less "hip") competitor, Friendster, tends to build clean, neat pages, even when you fill out their forms with a considerable amount of info about yourself.
But the concept itself seems sound to me. If you don't want people running across others (real or fake) with your same name, and mistaking them for you - you need to put your OWN info out there for them to find. At least that way, it's clear when they do a search, that there's more than one possibility for which one is you.
Rather than buying a costly extended warranty, I generally do some research for smaller shops that would be willing to do repairs on a "greater than 1 year old but less than 3 year old" laptop.
In my area, I've found that the small ones come and go, but at any given time, you can find at least ONE reputable computer tech. working out of his home or small business who sources parts from eBay, and does repairs inexpensively on Apple or other notebooks.
(EG. Yes, Apple will charge and arm and a leg for a logic board. But there's always somebody out there who just dropped their same model of laptop, smashed the screen, and decided they'd rather just sell it for parts value than get it repaired. Voila, there's the logic board you need for well under $100 in most cases!)
If the laptop in question is 3+ years old, it's almost a sure bet you're best off just replacing it when it breaks. (Faster, better stuff is out there by then.)
Agreed... People are throwing big fits about this behavior of their software, and perhaps yes, it could have been implemented in a more "bandwidth and site friendly manner". But anyone who has dealt with some of these trojans and spyware infections before knows, it's hard to care a lot about skewing someone's site statistic counter vs. making sure you don't accidentally visit some site that screws you up that badly again!
AVG has always had a pretty good, reliable and value-priced line of products... and AVG 8 is no exception. Free for home/personal use, and cheap for anyone else (half the price of crap like Norton that doesn't work as well), plus they now incorporate spyware AND virus scanning in one product. Used to be you had to load 2 products for that.
I agree with you, *except* honestly, I think Apple markets their product with much less of a focus on the "scared to death to open the computer" types of users than in the past.
Rather, they like to build high-end products that please the "power user" (who can actually appreciate many of the small details in Mac designs that would go unnoticed by many others), while charging a "stupid tax" for those who refuse to learn a little more about what they're buying.
I mean, look at something like a modern Mac Pro. The RAM is on riser boards that slide out easily, letting someone add FB-DIMM modules without so much as having to fish their hand down inside the case. There's no BIOS to go into either, to reconfigure anything to see the additional RAM. You don't even need a screwdriver to open the case. Just pull a level down in back and take the side panel off, and there it is! If that's too "intimidating" for (we assume) an educated professional of some sort (who would have a need for such a computer to begin with), then I don't blame Apple for charging them a big premium to put the RAM in for them!
Same deal with the hard drives. They're just standard SATA drives, in slide-out carriers. If you can use a Phillips screwdriver to bolt the drive to the carrier in the right orientation, you can add a drive to a Mac Pro.
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All true, but furthermore, I don't think you can really fault the guy for his "smug attitude" at this point in time. After all, he was essentially booted out of his own company, while he watched them fail miserably. Then, after they were almost dead, he was asked to step back in and save them (which he did!). Not only that, but all of this happened while he was heading up Pixar at the SAME TIME -- and they were pretty successful in their own right!
All this talk of such things being "no win" for Apple is ridiculous.
From Apple's point of view, they can't really go wrong.
1. All these clone-makers trying to find loopholes to sell OS X compatible systems just generate more publicity for Apple and their OS. Brand-awareness is something companies spend millions a year on, and this amounts to getting some of it free.
2. If Apple opts to completely ignore this guy selling "Mac clones", they stand to sell a few more retail copies of OS X out of the deal -- so whatever. More money in their pockets, and pretty much all from folks who weren't going to be much of a Mac hardware customer in the first place. (Come on... do you REALLY believe there are many people out there who were all ready to buy a Mac, but saw one of these generic clones on the Inet and said "Hey, never knew I had THAT option! I'm buying that instead!" ?? A real Mac includes such things as an elegant case design that runs quietly, and walk-in support after the sale at any Apple retail store. Things like free product training sessions are even provided for people, and even their phone support is consistently ranked above the rest.)
3. Say Apple *does* decide to sue? Worst case for them is they lose -- so out some legal fees and potentially the ability to claim their current EULA stands as legally enforceable. Ok - so where does that really put them? They're STILL selling all those copies of OS X with each clone sold, because nobody ever said they suddenly have to give the OS out FREE to clone-users. They can simply change things for the next OS X version, so it checks your machine serial number against some kind of online database of registered Mac hardware owners before installing, or quit selling a retail stand-alone boxed version, or ??? Lots of ways to accomplish their goals....
First, companies wanted to (generally) make a big deal out of the idea that your email send/received in the workplace didn't really belong to you. It was COMPANY property, because you were using their hardware, bandwidth, and company time to write any outgoing messages.
But all of a sudden, they're expressing legal concerns that shouldn't even have come about if the mail was recognized as belonging to its recipients, vs. being of corporate-ownership.
(EG. You couldn't very well demand to view all the mail on a server to investigate something. You'd have to get permission to search the mail of each individual employee you believed was involved directly in whatever you were suing over, and you'd have to justify the intrusion into their privacy.)
I'm not so sure about that.... I suspect spamming really doesn't generate the amount of money it did at its "peak" of usefulness. (I imagine the income levels it produced over time could be plotted on a typical bell curve. It started out a little-known practice that generated good profits per email spammed out, and quickly grew, with profits rising as well. At some point, it reached its peak "money-making efficiency" and has been on a downward fall ever since. You've got all the public awareness that the stuff is just "junk" that you shouldn't reply to, plus all the commercial anti-spam filters killing off massive amounts of it before it even reaches inboxes, AND legislation starting to outlaw it.)
I'd say there's a really good chance that a "successful" spammer, today, is just somebody able to pay all their bills and live a relatively "middle class" lifestyle off doing it as a full-time job. (I think one of the other notorious spammers they busted a year or so ago was found living in a trailer park ... so not exactly a millionaire.)
Nah.... this won't fly. That's just my unsubstantiated opinion - but let's see if I'm right.
For starters, "green" isn't really all that big a selling point/attraction for computer users. It may be a big "buzzword" in the media right now, but buying habits aren't really being driven by it in this sector.
Why? Well, for starters, no matter what the power draw is of a given PC, it draws pretty much nothing when it's powered off (or in a "hibernation" type mode, which is very similar). The typical PC *workstation* customer doesn't need/want to leave their machine on all the time. They just want a fast, enjoyable and reliable machine that boots up quickly whenever they need to use it. Sacrificing processing power for lower power consumption? Really only of interest to the average customer when it directly relates to improved battery life on a portable.
But secondly, anything done on the ad-based model? Comes across as a "toy" and "unprofessional" product from the get-go. Feels like something you should have received FREE, yet the business model can't sustain giving these mini PCs away free....
You buy the product because you like most (or all) of the things they've done with it. I love the multi-touch interface, and the capabilities of the Safari browser built into it. I love the screen that's big and bright enough to easily read my email on, and the way I can configure everything on the phone with clear-cut setup screens, vs. level after level of menus made of 1 or 2 word titles (like every Motorola phone I've used!). I also like the level of integration. (EG. Support for my work's Exchange mail server, out of the box, and the fact that it's also an iPod music player, so integrates with iTunes on my Mac or PC just like my last 2 iPods did.)
Jailbreaking my phone is just one more way to make something "great" even "better"! Apple reduced the "coolness factor" of jailbreaking quite a bit, when they finally rolled out their "App Store" with firmware 2.0 .... but there are still things they'll never allow people to distribute on their store. (For example, tethering the phone to use it a a cellular modem for a PC is against the "terms of service" for AT&T and many other providers. They want you to buy a cellular card for your laptop from THEM instead, and sign it up to its own plan.) I understand someone has tethering working as a freeware app for the iPhone now -- but obviously, Apple won't ever host THAT program on their store.
I strongly disagree! When you're talking about a month after month fee that you'll likely be paying for as long as 24 months straight, even an extra $10 quickly becomes an extra $240 you're paying in that time period. Unless you're independently wealthy or something, that's not just some "small change" worthy of just ignoring! That's about what I paid, total, for my original iPhone I bought off Apple's refurbished store.
And the issue I have with AT&T is, I suspect their "taxes" also include a lot of dubious charges. Being a govt. regulated company, it seems it's easier for them to get approval for more funding through a new or increased tax than by actually getting FTC approval for a rate increase.
I know I initially did the $79.99 per month plan, thinking like my old US Cellular plan that was priced about the same, I'd wind up paying around $85 after taxes. But somehow, AT&T wound up billing me more like $97 each month.
I agree with you here. As a rule, I like to think the "best" course of action is to allow your kid(s) as much freedom as they can handle. When they show a lack of caution or abuse of the privileges you give them, then you have to reign them back in - reminding them WHY it was done.
I'd like to think I'd never resort to GPS tracking of where my daughter was driving in my car, once she reaches that age. I know it wouldn't be something I'd do from the start. But if she kept taking the car, using all the gas up, and getting into trouble with it? Sure ... that might become one option.
Really? All the Vista issues from a year ago are gone now?
Please tell me, then, how to get our HP Designjet 500 42" plotter working in Vista? Because apparently, HP has no drivers for anything newer than Windows XP for it (or many other older, but expensive large format plotters of theirs).
That alone is a great reason for our company to stick with XP Pro.
When I built a PC for my kid's use in her room, I let her click on the "I Agree" buttons on the software licensing agreements during the installation.
Since a minor (age 6) agreed, does that invalidate them?
Just curious....
I happen to be a divorced dad raising my daughter by myself, and like you, my ex doesn't pay a dime of her court ordered child-support. (Well, she did send me about $200 once, when she took a Christmas holiday job at a retail store.)
So yeah, it *is* a lot of work raising a kid by yourself, and I know all about it. Still, I manage to work a full-time job AND have my own business on the side too. I have to get help from my family to watch my kid while I'm working (when she's not in school, anyway). But I certainly never felt like my situation "entitled" me to free govt. benefits. Certainly, not to free education (without even a requirement of maintaining a specific GPA), or free car repair to ensure I can attend.
Govt. run "assistance" programs do more harm than good, DESPITE people's attempts to defend them by illustrating the good they do.
It's still a FACT that if a parent can't financially handle raising a kid, he or she can legally put the kid up for adoption. Plenty of people who DO have the financial ability are begging for kids to adopt. If things are so bad off for an individual that they can't pay to keep a roof over their head or keep food on their table without govt. handing it to them? Then I'm sorry... but they really don't have their OWN life together enough to do a good job raising a kid.
Actually, a while back, a fellow I.T. worker told me about the term, "gray collar", that was developing. The idea was, the fields of software development, network administration and PC support were a weird combination of "blue collar" and "white collar" work.
After all, like most traditional "white collar" jobs, you're probably working in a climate-controlled office, and paid more for your knowledge and ability to problem-solve than for your physical labor. BUT, like a "blue collar" job, you're typically expected to do things the "white collar" workers usually assign to others. For example, you probably get to crawl around on dirty floors tracing network cabling, unbox and set up computer hardware, and spend time with hand tools removing and replacing defective components inside machines.
I'd have to say though, people like this govt. worker in the story, seem to be paid fairly well to me? I know cost of living is high in San Francisco, but still ... earning well over $110K/yr. salary isn't exactly "scraping by".
I agree with you, that a strength of OS X is that they've limited it in scope to running on their own selection of hardware, and specific peripherals subject to Apple's review. (EG. They only provide video driver support for cards they've decided are appropriate for their systems.)
I also find this whole argument of people claiming "Apple's a HARDWARE company", vs. "Apple's a SOFTWARE company!" amusing. The whole POINT to Apple is that they're the last vendor selling computers the "old fashioned" way. They're marketing a full computer SOLUTION to people. They bundle the hardware AND operating system, AND they sell a line of application software, AND they have full-service retail stores where you can get training or assistance after the sale. They even offer a line of "related" peripherals like the AppleTV box or the iPod, or the iPhone. They're not strictly "computers" - but they benefit from a network connection to one, and again, would be supported under the same roof as your system, if you went with all Apple products.
Uh, you mean the "cool facade" of choosing Unix as the core operating system for their whole product line, instead of using the same, tired Microsoft code that all the other PC vendors dump on their systems' hard drives?
Or did you mean the "cool facade" of offering complete solutions for home users and creative professionals? (Microsoft will sell you an OS, but they don't even make their own computers to run it on. In hind-sight, that's probably wise - since they'd actually have to make the thing run well enough not to embarrass their hardware division.)
Oh... maybe you meant the "cool facade" of offering the #1 best selling portable music player, that has more 3rd. party accessories available for it than any other?
The "Mac vs. PC" commercials, obviously are exaggerated... but that's what advertising does. Or do you also believe all those Microsoft "studies" they put in ads, promising Windows Server had better return on investment for companies than Linux?
IMHO, "liability" shouldn't even be a factor. This reminds me a lot of the "mom and pop" ISPs like a buddy of mine used to run. He tried to cater to a customer base that included several churches and religious organizations from the small town he was born in ... and wound up creating a big liability mess where none existed initially.
(He decided to start censoring out Usenet groups he deemed as having "unsuitable content" for said customers. Well, as soon as you take that first step of voluntarily censoring ONE group, you lose all hope of protection as a "common carrier". People start holding you to your promises, stated or implied, and every time something slips through - it's a potential legal problem for you.)
If auction sites would simply leave it up to the USERS to police auctions (the way Craigslist does), providing the service itself, without any attempt to "police" what's there, I think they'd have a "best possible scenario".
You have a good suggestion, but I think it would pose complications too. For example, say a vehicle has a worn out or defective battery that barely holds a charge? A less than honest driver could "unload" the bad battery, getting a free upgrade to a good one, just by dropping by the "charging station".
Conversely, the recipient of the dud battery would be inconvenienced, angered, and might even go as far as filing a suit against the charging station - claiming they owe him/her a new battery.
(Granted, your proposal of having microprocessors on the batteries would *theoretically* offer a solution to this dilemma. A station could refuse to swap a battery that was "out of spec" without paying a fee. But how long do you think it'd be before someone programs false values into the chip to cheat the system? We do it now with ink cartridge refills for printers as a matter of course!
I don't disagree with you, really. Mac ports of many of the popular 3D PC games DO have worse performance. Not surprising though, when you look at "ports" in general. Ports of console games for the PC generally have worse performance too, from what I've seen.
A game developed natively for a particular type of system is always going to run better than somebody trying to hack/edit that same code into running on totally different hardware. Windows games typically use "Direct-X/Direct 3D", while the Mac running OS X has no such equivalent. Therefore, they're usually stuck only trying to port over things that support OpenGL instead. That poses some serious limitations right away, but doesn't mean the Mac hardware itself is inferior.
As for Mac video editing/production apps not doing 3D though? What about Apple Motion?
I'm a regular subscriber to Popular Science magazine, and I recall seeing several similar-sounding devices covered in there over the years.
Maybe the problem is, most of them work great in a lab environment, as a "demo", but can't scale up to cost-effective, usable/functional products for the real world?
Like what's going on with Frank Pringle's microwave emitter:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html
Or Joseph Longo's plasma trash converter thing:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage?page=1
I, too, tried to limit buying new video cards ... but I also discovered I really wasn't getting the full potential out of the newer games, when I finally got to sit down and play them on systems with newer video boards in them.
For example, when Bioshock came out, it was using DirectX 10, but most people's video boards still only supported DX 9. I had JUST bought a new video card about 2 months before-hand, and it didn't do DX 10. So I was stuck playing the game without seeing all of its capabilities.
There are currently some good values in "relatively high end, capable video cards" that didn't really exist at the same price point in the past. (The nVidia 8800GT is already considered an "older" card, and sells for under $200 - but can run everything you throw at it quite nicely right now, even at a native resolution used by a typical 22" LCD panel.) But traditionally, this wasn't the case. People with larger LCD monitors had video cards that just couldn't keep frame-rates up at the native resolutions, so gaming suffered.
If current trends continue, I suspect the "window of opportunity" will once again close up, and everyone's card that "runs everything I throw at it, and only cost me $179") will soon need upgrading again, if you want to use whatever the next big innovation is in gaming graphics.
Yes, someone please mod the parent post up!
PC Gaming is dying because people are tired of the "latest, greatest" games not only including a $50 price tag, but also another $250 price tag for a new video card to play them well!
People constantly complain that the Mac is "not a viable computer" for them because they don't have enough games out for them, not enough graphics card options, etc. But I can see the flip-side of that. Sometimes it's nice watching Apple "hold the line", saying "What?! These configurations REALLY aren't good enough for you? They're good enough for all the *real* applications we sell. They're good enough for Hollywood to edit movies on and create special f/x with. They're good enough for pro photographers and artists. They're even good enough for the people who DO bother to port the "best of breed" PC games over to our platform, here and there. If you'd rather play "musical video card swap" every few months, go get a regular Wintel PC instead!"
The low-end, ultra-small notebooks are a booming market-segment right now, too. Another sign that people realize their computers are just FINE for everything they do BUT the games with insane requirements. So sure, people just invest in the one-time cost of a console, and focus their gaming budget on titles for it, instead.
Quite so!
I've been saying the same for years now, but it's finally starting to become so blatantly obvious, people are starting to agree with me who I never thought would "see the light".
(One of my former co-workers, for example, emailed me recently, commenting about the old "political debates we used to get into during happy hour get-togethers". He used to be a strong Democrat/Liberal. He said after reading Ron Paul's book and keeping up with what's going on in politics lately, he simply wishes "he kept his mouth shut" back then.)
Right now, it's almost immaterial if we get a Republican or Democrat elected. Both parties are on course to dismantle our Constitution and build an authoritarian government that co-operates more "in step" with other nations of the world.
Will we really become the "American Union", merged with Canada and Mexico? I don't know ... but big changes of a similar magnitude loom on the horizon. National ID cards? Check! Unlimited federal govt. power to spy at will? Check! Special highway to deliver goods from Mexico to Canada, non-stop, through the U.S., yet not even U.S. owned? Check! Experiments at the state level with laws designed to force citizens to spy on each other or face criminal charges? Check! (See Texas and the new requirement you hold a Private Investigator's license and Criminal Justice degree to be a COMPUTER TECH!) See still more removal of individual freedoms at the state level to bring us closer to accepting a "police state"; EG. Austin, TX now allowing officers to FORCIBLY draw blood samples from anyone suspected of a DUI. Check!
Sure, a lot of people aren't very good with writing or page layout, and wind up with gaudy, ugly web "presences". But I *also* put a lot of that blame on some of the "social networking" sites that most people turn to these days to create their pages.
I consider MySpace the biggest contributor to the problem. They may be VERY well known, but it seems like it's difficult NOT to create a cluttered mess out of your profile there! Even small businesses and rock bands trying to use them for some free publicity manage to create a collage of slop, 99% of the time.
By contrast, the older (and less "hip") competitor, Friendster, tends to build clean, neat pages, even when you fill out their forms with a considerable amount of info about yourself.
But the concept itself seems sound to me. If you don't want people running across others (real or fake) with your same name, and mistaking them for you - you need to put your OWN info out there for them to find. At least that way, it's clear when they do a search, that there's more than one possibility for which one is you.
Rather than buying a costly extended warranty, I generally do some research for smaller shops that would be willing to do repairs on a "greater than 1 year old but less than 3 year old" laptop.
In my area, I've found that the small ones come and go, but at any given time, you can find at least ONE reputable computer tech. working out of his home or small business who sources parts from eBay, and does repairs inexpensively on Apple or other notebooks.
(EG. Yes, Apple will charge and arm and a leg for a logic board. But there's always somebody out there who just dropped their same model of laptop, smashed the screen, and decided they'd rather just sell it for parts value than get it repaired. Voila, there's the logic board you need for well under $100 in most cases!)
If the laptop in question is 3+ years old, it's almost a sure bet you're best off just replacing it when it breaks. (Faster, better stuff is out there by then.)
Agreed... People are throwing big fits about this behavior of their software, and perhaps yes, it could have been implemented in a more "bandwidth and site friendly manner". But anyone who has dealt with some of these trojans and spyware infections before knows, it's hard to care a lot about skewing someone's site statistic counter vs. making sure you don't accidentally visit some site that screws you up that badly again!
AVG has always had a pretty good, reliable and value-priced line of products ... and AVG 8 is no exception. Free for home/personal use, and cheap for anyone else (half the price of crap like Norton that doesn't work as well), plus they now incorporate spyware AND virus scanning in one product. Used to be you had to load 2 products for that.
I agree with you, *except* honestly, I think Apple markets their product with much less of a focus on the "scared to death to open the computer" types of users than in the past.
Rather, they like to build high-end products that please the "power user" (who can actually appreciate many of the small details in Mac designs that would go unnoticed by many others), while charging a "stupid tax" for those who refuse to learn a little more about what they're buying.
I mean, look at something like a modern Mac Pro. The RAM is on riser boards that slide out easily, letting someone add FB-DIMM modules without so much as having to fish their hand down inside the case. There's no BIOS to go into either, to reconfigure anything to see the additional RAM. You don't even need a screwdriver to open the case. Just pull a level down in back and take the side panel off, and there it is! If that's too "intimidating" for (we assume) an educated professional of some sort (who would have a need for such a computer to begin with), then I don't blame Apple for charging them a big premium to put the RAM in for them!
Same deal with the hard drives. They're just standard SATA drives, in slide-out carriers. If you can use a Phillips screwdriver to bolt the drive to the carrier in the right orientation, you can add a drive to a Mac Pro.