What did you really expect from CompuFluffWorld anyway? As far as I've been able to tell, they're just another one of those thrown together publications they give away for free to anyone working in I.T. who's willing to answer 6 or 7 page long surveys about all the aspects of their business. (EG. The publication is primarily a carrot hung over people's heads to collect data on I.T. and corporate spending habits.)
I'm not saying they don't occasionally have a good article. (They do.) But for real serious performance reviews of systems, I'd look elsewhere. These guys generally write watered-down summaries of things, digestable by middle-management.
(In this case, the author even admits he had to be told by readers to hook up the supplied wi-fi external antenna! He couldn't even be bothered to read the instructions after having poor wi-fi performance, yet you think he's going to give you a thorough set of benchmark tests?)
Well, in Apple's case, this "speed bump" was needed much more than the incremental speed increases seen every few months on the PC side.
Apple was lagging at least a generation behind the PC competition in system bus speed, RAM architecture, and processor power.
The whole debate of "can the new G5 beat the latest PC offerings?" is more of a side issue, only popular with the usual publications that are more interested in graphing benchmark numbers than real-world usability. The REAL reason the new G5's are so significant is that they boost the Mac back up to a competitive level - where everything works at the speeds users are used to seeing.
(If you work in Photoshop 7, or even Microsoft Office on a PC at work, you expect at least comparable performance of those applications on the computer you use at home. Apple was slipping on delivering that. Now they're not.)
Well, ultimately, I'm all for people running whatever hardware/OS/software combination they like best and think makes them most productive.
I just don't quite agree that it makes sense to try to hold Apple up on a pedestal as "superior to Microsoft" simply based on the idea that they haven't "taken active measures to lock other operating systems out of their hardware".
Apple has, arguably, done even worse things; attempting to lock users out from upgrading their Apple hardware to run more recent Apple OS's and upgraded 3rd. party hardware.
They've done firmware updates to the Blue & White G3 systems to stop people from using 3rd. party processor upgrades (Sonnet G4's and so forth). The vendors had to develop work-arounds just so people could keep using the upgrades they purchased. They've taken steps to prevent adding certain types of expansion cards. (The latest OS X update removed compatibility for several types of PCI USB cards, for example. Doesn't really make sense to spend effort to take out perfectly good, working code - unless you have ulterior motives, does it? I'd wager it's another attempt to make life difficult for people trying to keep OS X going on "legacy" PowerMacs that didn't have built-in USB ports.)
As for OS's like Linux (developed by community effort), I don't know if it matters much at all if manufacturers "take active measures" to lock them out. Precious few manufacturers have been exactly "open" with Linux developers about putting together working code for their products anyway. (Look at the hassles and time it took just to get software "Winmodems" going in Linux, and many still don't. Look at all the problems getting printers to work. Look at the video card manufacturers who refused to release info on how to use their acceleration features in their chipsets. Every time Linux clears one of these hurdles, it's because people worked hard at decyphering it on their own.)
Yes, I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head with this one!
I almost never saw some "average Joe" buy a new Apple system and then comment about it being "the same one shown in movie Z" or "TV show X"!
The only people who enjoy pointing out that their favorite PC or PDA was featured in a movie or TV show are the people who are already computer-savvy, and already purchased what they use for other reasons.
Honestly, I've seen more reaction from the general public when a movie featured some make-believe OS. People comment "Which kind of computer does that cool thing with the spinning envelope and talks to you when you get new mail?", and so forth....
As I understand it, Apple doesn't even pay for most of their product placements in Hollywood films. When the Mac is prominently shown, it's typically only because the director or producer really likes Apple - and wants to put it there. Microsoft, on the other hand, is pretty much going to have to "pay to play" - and it won't be worth their dollars.
Umm... It seems to me you're only one small step away from "trolling", but I'll comment anyway.
As a Mac (and occasional PC) user myself, I see the benefits and disadvantages to both platforms.
The Apple Mac is most certainly geared towards running only MacOS (OS X in the case of current hardware). Sure, you can load BSD or Linux on it, but given the prices of new Mac systems, who would really do that?
The whole "draw" of OS X is that fact that it's already BSD Unix based, but with a nicer GUI welded on top. Opting to run a new Mac with a free Unix variant seems silly to me. You already paid for OS X in the price of the system, for starters - but you'd also be crippling some of your hardware compatibility and ease of use. (I've run Debian for PPC and it's great for older, obsolete Macs that have devalued to almost no cost to purchase. I just wouldn't want it on a current Mac. USB support is questionable in it for some devices, and I'd lose all the software like the Apple iApps too.)
Yes, Apple did use "OpenFirmware" - but that's a rather meaningless "standard". Apple had so many bugs and unsupported functions in their OpenFirmware implementations that you could barely make use of it on many of their previous products. (I'd call it pretty "broken" when you, for example, can't even see what you're typing on your attached display - and get forced to acces it through a serial port on a remote terminal! That was the case on a number of their PowerMacs/Performas.)
I think it's still too early to tell if this is a good or a bad thing. It all depends on how its implemented.
If Microsoft uses it to let companies build "Windows only" PCs or to enforce their form of DRM, then I suspect most I.T. managers and staff will realize it's *NOT* a good thing. (Even if I work for a company that runs all Windows products on the desktop today, that doesn't mean I'd prefer products that don't let me have any other alternatives.) As computers age, they tend to become good candidates for alternate OS's - even in environments using strictly Windows on the user desktops. (If you're not going to elminiate your current crop of dated Pentium 1 and 2 systems, for example, they still make good Linux web servers or print servers. They also make good pseudo thin clients running the Citrix ICA connector. (You can still do that even under plain old MS-DOS, with some limitations, and serve Windows 2000 or XP desktops to an old 486.)
Right, and before the days of Windows on servers, this same thing was being done by other vendors, too.
I used to work for a company that had all Digital hardware, with servers running VMS.
They dictated what could and couldn't go on their network without voiding any support contract you paid for. (I remember the frustration they had when AMD started putting out really good 486 clone CPUs, but Digital insisted you could only use real Intel CPUs on any of your desktops.)
In some cases, there's some validity to this way of doing business, too - but it's generally only sensible for specialized situations. For example, there's a niche market for building PCs "certified" to work as digital recording workstations. Music studios don't want to hassle with all the Windows optimizations required to get the lowest possible latency for MIDI devices, do all the custom configuration needed (such as disabling ACPI power management in the BIOS *before* installing Windows XP - so you can make sure it doesn't do "IRQ sharing"), etc. Anyone selling such a customized system would be a fool to place any sort of guarantee on it while still allowing users to load any other additional software they wanted on it. (Programs as innocuous as Roxio CD Creator often make changes to your IDE CD-ROM drive's configuration, such as enabling DMA transfers. This could easily wreak havock with a carefully tuned digital audio workstation.)
Yes, your logic is correct - but I'm talking about doing the things which motivate people.
It's fine to speak of the "big picture" and how "recycling helps you have cleaner air and water" - but that's far too broad a scope for most people to take seriously. (Let's face it: You and I both know that there's enough clean air and water to last us the rest of our lives, whether we throw away our aluminum cans or recycle them. If we take an attitude of "let future generations fend for themselves" - then recycling is going to offer us nothing.)
On the other hand, when you see recycling centers paying you cold, hard cash in return for the garbage you drop off, or you get rewarded with new sodas for every X number of empties you return, that's motivating.
By forcing the producers of goods to provide for their recycling, you at least potentially gain the cost advantage that it's being done by one, central place. (EG. Dell can probably work out a more cost-effective contract for recycling all the used monitors they ever sold in 2002 than what you or I would pay, individually, to find someone we could pay to properly dispose of them/recycle them.)
Well, actually, I can't figure out exactly why things changed - but when I was a kid (in the 1970's), I remember all the soda in glass bottles having 5 cent deposits on it. My parents would always put the empty bottles back in the cardboard carriers they were brought home in, and take the carriers filled with empties back to the store the next time they went shopping.
When they started going to plastic 2 litre bottles and even plastic 1 litres, the deposits vanished.
I don't ever recall deposits on aluminum soda cans, but it used to be, lots of places (at least where I lived) had these trailers they'd park on grocery store parking lots. You'd bring your bags full of aluminum cans, dump them onto the conveyor belt, and the thing would tally up what you dropped off and spit out some cash for you.
I haven't seen any of those trailers in at least 5 or 6 years though. Now, we have a couple of "community recycling centers" where you're supposed to drop off such items as aluminum cans or 1 gallon plastic milk containers, but they don't pay you a thing for doing it. It's strictly done on a volunteer basis. We did it a couple times, just to be a "good citizen", but soon realized the hassle wasn't worth it. You'd end up with a garage cluttered with empty soda cans attracting bees and flies (unless you actually rinsed out each and every empty can with water first), and it cost you time and gas to bring the stuff out there.
I was visiting friends in a college town a couple years ago, and noticed they were doing deposits (7 cents or so?) on beer cans. So I guess some cities still do this sort of thing, on a case by case basis. I've never seen a deposit on a beer can where I live though.
Yeah, this was really stupid on the RIAA's part - but I'm also wondering: Was this just a mistake of the RIAA making too narrow of an accusation?
What I mean is, instead of automatically claiming the file-swappers use "Kazaa" - can't they just generically claim they were using a "Gnutella" network?
The Mac, after all, does have other p2p clients (Limewire/Limewire Pro, for example).
If you live in Hawaii in the United States, you're subject to quite similar problems. Everything costs more because things have to be imported. Land is at a premium, so you can't just go buy a plot of empty land and build your new house on it - like you could at a reasonable price, say, in the Midwestern continental U.S.
Recycling is sort of a pet-peeve of mine, though. It's not that I'm against recycling. I think it's very sensible. The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
EG. Take the hype about "the energy used to create a single aluminum soda can being enough power to run your home for 30 minutes". Yeah, that's an impressive figure and all - but if I recycle (at my time and expense), do you really think the energy I save Pepsi or Coca-Cola will come back to me, the consumer, in the form of price cuts on soda? Much more likely, any savings goes into the owner's pockets.
If a manufacturer chooses to build products that can cause problems if they aren't recycled, it seems like it should be part of THEIR responsibility to cover the costs. As it stands now, they can crank out products (like CRTs with lead in the glass) without a care in the world. The customer ends up suffering if he/she needs to dispose of it a few years later, and finds out the local trash people designated it as "hazardous waste" and won't take it.
Being a 32 year old "computer geek" myself, I'm also finding I use the Internet as almost my only source of information for most things.
I don't get the local newspaper, for example. I do occasionally peek at the Sunday paper when I visit my parents (mainly for the advertisements). I'm sure I do miss out on a lot of "local news", but honestly - the Internet makes me realize how unimportant most of that is anyway. The newspapers and TV stations have been brainwashing us into believing we need their "fix" of local information, or else we're going to fall behind. In reality, I think I'm spending my time more wisely keeping up with bills in Congress that might affect our privacy rights, change copyright/patent law, or what-have-you, than knowing which building downtown caught fire last night, or the fact that (as usual), someone was killed in a fatal car crash on one of our highways.
Even for such things as "how to" guides for home improvement, I find better, more relevant information on the net than I do in the $20-40 books on the subject.
I've really found the net useful for learning about problems with my car and truck, too. Most problems seem to be experienced by at least a handful of other people, who talk about them on Usenet discussion groups. I may not want to do the repairs myself, but at least I can get a real good idea of what's broken - and feel like I'm not getting ripped off when they diagnose it and quote me a repair cost.
For computer or electronics purchases, there's absolutely no better method of research! Just do a Google search for "product-name opinion" or "product-name review" and you'll get everything you need to know, just about every time.
Well, the only sticking point is, these chat services are free of charge to use, yet the companies offering them have to spend a considerable amount of money providing servers for them (bandwidth, employees maintaining them, etc. etc.).
That's why they get to choose "what consumers want/need" in this case. They're the ones footing the bill for the "back end" that the clients require to be useful.
Ultimately, sure - consumers force the market to conform to their desires, but that's only valid when they can vote with their dollars, and stop purchasing products that don't meet their needs. When you're using free handouts, you don't have that same leverage.
I have to agree with you too, as a general rule. Where I've found exceptions is with larger firms. Where I live, I can think of at least 3 major firms off the top of my head that basically only hire I.T. people through consulting firms. They simply don't advertise the positions anyplace else, or take you seriously if you apply to them directly. I don't think that's a sensible policy, but that's how they conduct their employee searches - so if you'd like to work for them, you have to play by those rules.
Most often though, yes, the headhunters I've wasted my time working with were trying to place me in jobs that either had no real future, or were places not very serious about hiring in the first place.
I remember, as one example, a firm where after I went for an initial interview - was asked to "come back on Friday for a second interview". Only, when Friday rolled around, the manager I was supposed to talk with was gone for the day, and nobody else had any idea he scheduled me to come back in. When I did get ahold of him the next week, he didn't even seem apologetic. He just said "Oh, yeah... I forgot all about that. I was taking a day off. We'll have to find some other time to meet up." and wouldn't commit to a new date or time! I later found out they never did fill the opening at all. It was just an idea they were "tossing around", so they asked a few consulting firms to send people their way.
Might technically be, but think about the logic behind this move before blowing it off as "plainly illegal - so what's the point?"
The government pays for these libraries to purchase CDs so they can be loaned out to anyone who asks for a library card. There's no real limit on how often you can check a CD back out after the first time you borrow it, and no restrictions on your personal listening while you've got it checked out.
Yet, if you copy it (allowing others to borrow the original, and possibly even saving the library from spending money to purchase a second copy to loan out), then you're breaking the law and subject to punishment by the government.
Unfortunately, our nation has a long history of struggling with the (seemingly basic) idea of "separation of Church and State".
It's hard to make a good case for taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allgeiance when all the U.S. money still has "In God We Trust" stamped on it.
In the South, we've just now settled a dispute with a judge who was convinced it was the "right thing to do" to put a huge, granite copy of the 10 Commandments right in the court's lobby area.
(Personally, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable about that judge's ruling on anything. If he felt that strongly about bringing his Christian religion into the courtroom, why would I put it past him to do such things as rule against anyone who appeared to be gay/lesbian - simply because his religion says they're wrong?)
Again, I say - people need to watch more closely who they elect as judges in their district.
I'm not sure I really see anything changing too drastically, whether they embrace or oppose 3rd. party clients.
Look at IRC. It's pretty much the original chat environment for the Internet, and still going strong after all these years. While the IRC client itself might be standard for all IRC servers, many different IRC networks are around that are cut off from each other.
If you're on EFNet, you can't see what's happening over on Undernet, without establishing a completely seperate connection to their network first.
IM chat is the same way. If I'm using ICQ, I can't chat with the people over on MSN Messenger. So what? You can run multiple IM clients if you desire, or you can try to come to agreement with your friends on which IM software they're going to standardize on so you can all talk to each other.
There will always be people trying to "break the rules" by building cross-network compatible clients, but it'll just be a "cat and mouse game" unless the network providers decide those clients are "ok" for use with their systems.
I get enough "spam IM's" as it is that I don't really want to be connected to several IM networks at one time! I chose to stick with ICQ, as did most of the people I want to chat with - and it serves the purpose.
The problem with letting the "washed-ups" in on a label trying to promote "new talent", though, is it's not a level playing field. The has-beens had the advantage of millions of marketing dollars behind them in the past - so people, #1 already know who they are, and #2 tend to have preconceived notions that the artist's work is somehow "superior" to the stuff alongside it they haven't heard of.
If they pay to download the latest album from (just a random example) Billy Squier, and they decide "Oh wow, that kinda sucked. I was expecting more from the guy." They're likely to completely skip over the new artists without giving them a fair listen - thinking "If Billy Squier can't even put a good album on this web site, these other guys probably REALLY stink!"
Ultimately, your last statement is probably the most importanr and significant one.
Like it or not, most of the important changes made by the common man in America (as opposed to the politicians) were done through violence and killing.
Equality for blacks? Look at the race riots of the 60's. Freedom to have our own country in the first place? Took a whole war. Getting across the message that a good number of folks weren't going along with the Vietname War? Loads of draft-dodgers risking imprisonment and inciting riots.
If you want radical change, you have to use radical measures. Most of the time, it makes much more sense to work for a gradual change/improvement - which our political system does allow.
The biggest impediment to progress in this country is the legal system. The Judicial arm of government has gone from their appointed task of "interpreting the law" to effectively "re-creating the law in new form", by stretching interpretations as far as possible in one case, and then using that case as precident to stretch further the next time around.
As I've pointed out before, it's really almost too bad we spend so much time and energy on presidential elections, yet most of us hardly bother to note what our judges believe in when it comes time to vote them in or out.
All you're saying is that established artists wouldn't see a reason to move to something this small and experimental. That hardly makes it a bad thing. Do you think all the other record companies just arose from nowhere and were instantly respected as "major mega labels"? Highly doubtful....
What happens is you put together something promising and work hard at signing formerly unknown artists putting out good material. Eventually, if/when one or more of those artists gets discovered by enough people - your label becomes more respected. Repeat, and voila!
Frankly, the thing I wouldn't want is some washed-up artist coming to me trying to get signed on, if I was a new, innovative label. Let them stick with whatever sorry label they're contractually obligated to until that runs out, and then - let them go it on their own or retire, or whatever they feel they need to do.
I write a little bit of music myself and played guitar in a working local band before (years ago). These days, I don't look at it as anything more than a spare time hobby (and I occasionally submit something when people are competing to get their background music used for someone's movie or videotape production). But if I was more serious and/or focused on making a record, I'd sign on with these guys. Why not?
Well, what disturbed me most was the comment someone made over on MacFixIt when 10.2.8 was first released. He claimed he had good friends working at Apple who told him that the "in house" word was, the new 10.2.8 release still needed some tweaking, and wasn't really quite ready for public release.
Since it turned out to have all these issues and got recalled, it looks like this guy was correct.
Assuming this is true, why did Apple go ahead and push 10.2.8 out the door when their own employees knew it wasn't ready yet?
My theory is, it contained security fixes such as patches for SSH - and Apple felt they couldn't risk waiting any longer to roll it out, and have a Microsoft-like fiasco develop where OS X got exploited before fixes were available.
This probably begs the question: Should security patches/fixes always be released by themselves, instead of rolled into general system updates? It may not be a bad idea.
As far as Apple getting paranoid about giving out pre-release software to developers, I think that's mainly due to all the Safari builds that leaked onto Usenet. Apple hates not being able to surprise people with cool new features, and that element of surprise keeps getting stolen out from under them when code gets leaked. (We all knew about Safari adding tabbed browsing long before Apple announced it, for example.)
Still, you have to balance those concerns with the risk of not having enough people testing/pre-screening your code for serious problems. In the end, writing a solid, bug-free product is the most important goal.
Right.... I think people may be too quick to assume that it's not possible/cost-effective enough for folks in other "poorer" countries to obtain decent PC hardware.
PC's have become such a commodity item nowdays that there truly is no excuse for someone with any kind of computer savvy to be forced to use an old XT or 286 class machine - poor nation or not!
Just recently, I was trying to fix up and resell a number of old machines people were throwing away - and these were all Pentium class machines at the very least. Not only that,but SVGA and VGA monitors smaller than 17" have reached the point where the average person or business using them considers them "zero value" items. In most offices where one or two people originally were given larger monitors, everyone else in the surrounding area demanded the same thing - claiming it relieved eyestrain, allowed easier working on large spreadsheets, etc. etc. Before long, you had offices all over the U.S. where the perfectly good 15" displays were costing more than they were worth in storage space, stored away in basements and closets. Whenever I've needed one for a cheap system I'm reselling, I just ask - and can almost always find a small business happy to give me a few of them for nothing.
If you live in the Ukraine and can scrape together the cost for shipping - you can surely get a moderately recent, quite usable complete system sent to you from the U.S. for hardly anything.
Actually, I've felt that the "Out of Office" auto-reply is a bit of a security risk anyway, when it's used anyplace besides within the company's internal network.
This is just one more example of why it's not necessarily a good idea to use it.
My original concern was with advertising to the world that you're not at work. Granted, it's common practice to record this type of message on your corporate voice mail system - but that's not quite the same thing. People have to know enough about you to know your company's phone number and get to your private extension to hear it.
The idea of any random spammer finding out that I'm away on vacation until date X/Y strikes me as a bad idea. That's like making public announcements to would-be hackers, saying "Hey, hack in using my account! I won't even notice for 2 more weeks!"
All of the post dot-com survivors still seem to be fixated on the same, flawed concept that got most of the web sites in trouble to begin with. It's *not* about doing anything and everything to maximize your "eyeballs" viewing your site.
It's *really* about focusing intensely on one particular service or offering that a decent-sized group of users think is useful.
If you're going to sell books, be the biggest, best-priced and most convenient bookseller on the net - but DON'T try to be a patent-monger, or an auction mega-site, or a toy store, or anything else unrelated!
As you said, Google is so highly regarded because it was always designed, from day one, to be a search engine - and to do the best possible job of indexing pages. They've added a lot of features - but they're all related to their core functionality (such as the ability to calculate math equations that are entered in the search field, or the ability to do phone number lookups). You use their site when you seek answers to something, and it tries to provide those answers (whether by directly giving you results, or pointing you to sites that have the information you seek).
eBay has, in my opinion, also been the only truly successful online auction site because they've kept their focus on that one area without straying. Everyone who wants to "be the next eBay" or your "eBay alternative" (aka. Yahoo auctions) can't quite penetrate that market, because they've all tried it as a side offering. Folks think "Hmm... Why use this auction link off this e-commerce or search engine site, when I can use eBay, that's completely dedicated to auctions? More people will see my listings that way, and there's likely to be more of the stuff I'm looking to buy."
Actually, I believe it was a combination of the two. I saw a few recording industry quotes where they made it fairly clear that the only reason they gave Apple the go-ahead to sell their music online was because the limited market-share of Apple Mac users made a perfect trial audience. If something went horribly wrong and the public hated it, they could save face by knowing 95% of the public never used the service to begin with. It could easily be brushed aside as a failure only because PC/Windows users didn't get a chance to be a part of the program.
Once it was proven to work (and sell well), Apple was free to go ahead with developing a PC version of the music store without record company backlash.
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What did you really expect from CompuFluffWorld anyway? As far as I've been able to tell, they're just another one of those thrown together publications they give away for free to anyone working in I.T. who's willing to answer 6 or 7 page long surveys about all the aspects of their business. (EG. The publication is primarily a carrot hung over people's heads to collect data on I.T. and corporate spending habits.)
I'm not saying they don't occasionally have a good article. (They do.) But for real serious performance reviews of systems, I'd look elsewhere. These guys generally write watered-down summaries of things, digestable by middle-management.
(In this case, the author even admits he had to be told by readers to hook up the supplied wi-fi external antenna! He couldn't even be bothered to read the instructions after having poor wi-fi performance, yet you think he's going to give you a thorough set of benchmark tests?)
Well, in Apple's case, this "speed bump" was needed much more than the incremental speed increases seen every few months on the PC side.
Apple was lagging at least a generation behind the PC competition in system bus speed, RAM architecture, and processor power.
The whole debate of "can the new G5 beat the latest PC offerings?" is more of a side issue, only popular with the usual publications that are more interested in graphing benchmark numbers than real-world usability. The REAL reason the new G5's are so significant is that they boost the Mac back up to a competitive level - where everything works at the speeds users are used to seeing.
(If you work in Photoshop 7, or even Microsoft Office on a PC at work, you expect at least comparable performance of those applications on the computer you use at home. Apple was slipping on delivering that. Now they're not.)
Well, ultimately, I'm all for people running whatever hardware/OS/software combination they like best and think makes them most productive.
I just don't quite agree that it makes sense to try to hold Apple up on a pedestal as "superior to Microsoft" simply based on the idea that they haven't "taken active measures to lock other operating systems out of their hardware".
Apple has, arguably, done even worse things; attempting to lock users out from upgrading their Apple hardware to run more recent Apple OS's and upgraded 3rd. party hardware.
They've done firmware updates to the Blue & White G3 systems to stop people from using 3rd. party processor upgrades (Sonnet G4's and so forth). The vendors had to develop work-arounds just so people could keep using the upgrades they purchased. They've taken steps to prevent adding certain types of expansion cards. (The latest OS X update removed compatibility for several types of PCI USB cards, for example. Doesn't really make sense to spend effort to take out perfectly good, working code - unless you have ulterior motives, does it? I'd wager it's another attempt to make life difficult for people trying to keep OS X going on "legacy" PowerMacs that didn't have built-in USB ports.)
As for OS's like Linux (developed by community effort), I don't know if it matters much at all if manufacturers "take active measures" to lock them out. Precious few manufacturers have been exactly "open" with Linux developers about putting together working code for their products anyway. (Look at the hassles and time it took just to get software "Winmodems" going in Linux, and many still don't. Look at all the problems getting printers to work. Look at the video card manufacturers who refused to release info on how to use their acceleration features in their chipsets. Every time Linux clears one of these hurdles, it's because people worked hard at decyphering it on their own.)
Yes, I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head with this one!
I almost never saw some "average Joe" buy a new Apple system and then comment about it being "the same one shown in movie Z" or "TV show X"!
The only people who enjoy pointing out that their favorite PC or PDA was featured in a movie or TV show are the people who are already computer-savvy, and already purchased what they use for other reasons.
Honestly, I've seen more reaction from the general public when a movie featured some make-believe OS. People comment "Which kind of computer does that cool thing with the spinning envelope and talks to you when you get new mail?", and so forth....
As I understand it, Apple doesn't even pay for most of their product placements in Hollywood films. When the Mac is prominently shown, it's typically only because the director or producer really likes Apple - and wants to put it there. Microsoft, on the other hand, is pretty much going to have to "pay to play" - and it won't be worth their dollars.
Umm... It seems to me you're only one small step away from "trolling", but I'll comment anyway.
As a Mac (and occasional PC) user myself, I see the benefits and disadvantages to both platforms.
The Apple Mac is most certainly geared towards running only MacOS (OS X in the case of current hardware). Sure, you can load BSD or Linux on it, but given the prices of new Mac systems, who would really do that?
The whole "draw" of OS X is that fact that it's already BSD Unix based, but with a nicer GUI welded on top. Opting to run a new Mac with a free Unix variant seems silly to me. You already paid for OS X in the price of the system, for starters - but you'd also be crippling some of your hardware compatibility and ease of use. (I've run Debian for PPC and it's great for older, obsolete Macs that have devalued to almost no cost to purchase. I just wouldn't want it on a current Mac. USB support is questionable in it for some devices, and I'd lose all the software like the Apple iApps too.)
Yes, Apple did use "OpenFirmware" - but that's a rather meaningless "standard". Apple had so many bugs and unsupported functions in their OpenFirmware implementations that you could barely make use of it on many of their previous products. (I'd call it pretty "broken" when you, for example, can't even see what you're typing on your attached display - and get forced to acces it through a serial port on a remote terminal! That was the case on a number of their PowerMacs/Performas.)
I think it's still too early to tell if this is a good or a bad thing. It all depends on how its implemented.
If Microsoft uses it to let companies build "Windows only" PCs or to enforce their form of DRM, then I suspect most I.T. managers and staff will realize it's *NOT* a good thing.
(Even if I work for a company that runs all Windows products on the desktop today, that doesn't mean I'd prefer products that don't let me have any other alternatives.) As computers age, they tend to become good candidates for alternate OS's - even in environments using strictly Windows on the user desktops. (If you're not going to elminiate your current crop of dated Pentium 1 and 2 systems, for example, they still make good Linux web servers or print servers. They also make good pseudo thin clients running the Citrix ICA connector. (You can still do that even under plain old MS-DOS, with some limitations, and serve Windows 2000 or XP desktops to an old 486.)
Right, and before the days of Windows on servers, this same thing was being done by other vendors, too.
I used to work for a company that had all Digital hardware, with servers running VMS.
They dictated what could and couldn't go on their network without voiding any support contract you paid for. (I remember the frustration they had when AMD started putting out really good 486 clone CPUs, but Digital insisted you could only use real Intel CPUs on any of your desktops.)
In some cases, there's some validity to this way of doing business, too - but it's generally only sensible for specialized situations. For example, there's a niche market for building PCs "certified" to work as digital recording workstations. Music studios don't want to hassle with all the Windows optimizations required to get the lowest possible latency for MIDI devices, do all the custom configuration needed (such as disabling ACPI power management in the BIOS *before* installing Windows XP - so you can make sure it doesn't do "IRQ sharing"), etc. Anyone selling such a customized system would be a fool to place any sort of guarantee on it while still allowing users to load any other additional software they wanted on it. (Programs as innocuous as Roxio CD Creator often make changes to your IDE CD-ROM drive's configuration, such as enabling DMA transfers. This could easily wreak havock with a carefully tuned digital audio workstation.)
Yes, your logic is correct - but I'm talking about doing the things which motivate people.
It's fine to speak of the "big picture" and how "recycling helps you have cleaner air and water" - but that's far too broad a scope for most people to take seriously. (Let's face it: You and I both know that there's enough clean air and water to last us the rest of our lives, whether we throw away our aluminum cans or recycle them. If we take an attitude of "let future generations fend for themselves" - then recycling is going to offer us nothing.)
On the other hand, when you see recycling centers paying you cold, hard cash in return for the garbage you drop off, or you get rewarded with new sodas for every X number of empties you return, that's motivating.
By forcing the producers of goods to provide for their recycling, you at least potentially gain the cost advantage that it's being done by one, central place. (EG. Dell can probably work out a more cost-effective contract for recycling all the used monitors they ever sold in 2002 than what you or I would pay, individually, to find someone we could pay to properly dispose of them/recycle them.)
Well, actually, I can't figure out exactly why things changed - but when I was a kid (in the 1970's), I remember all the soda in glass bottles having 5 cent deposits on it. My parents would always put the empty bottles back in the cardboard carriers they were brought home in, and take the carriers filled with empties back to the store the next time they went shopping.
When they started going to plastic 2 litre bottles and even plastic 1 litres, the deposits vanished.
I don't ever recall deposits on aluminum soda cans, but it used to be, lots of places (at least where I lived) had these trailers they'd park on grocery store parking lots. You'd bring your bags full of aluminum cans, dump them onto the conveyor belt, and the thing would tally up what you dropped off and spit out some cash for you.
I haven't seen any of those trailers in at least 5 or 6 years though. Now, we have a couple of "community recycling centers" where you're supposed to drop off such items as aluminum cans or 1 gallon plastic milk containers, but they don't pay you a thing for doing it. It's strictly done on a volunteer basis. We did it a couple times, just to be a "good citizen", but soon realized the hassle wasn't worth it. You'd end up with a garage cluttered with empty soda cans attracting bees and flies (unless you actually rinsed out each and every empty can with water first), and it cost you time and gas to bring the stuff out there.
I was visiting friends in a college town a couple years ago, and noticed they were doing deposits (7 cents or so?) on beer cans. So I guess some cities still do this sort of thing, on a case by case basis. I've never seen a deposit on a beer can where I live though.
Yeah, this was really stupid on the RIAA's part - but I'm also wondering: Was this just a mistake of the RIAA making too narrow of an accusation?
What I mean is, instead of automatically claiming the file-swappers use "Kazaa" - can't they just generically claim they were using a "Gnutella" network?
The Mac, after all, does have other p2p clients (Limewire/Limewire Pro, for example).
If you live in Hawaii in the United States, you're subject to quite similar problems. Everything costs more because things have to be imported. Land is at a premium, so you can't just go buy a plot of empty land and build your new house on it - like you could at a reasonable price, say, in the Midwestern continental U.S.
Recycling is sort of a pet-peeve of mine, though. It's not that I'm against recycling. I think it's very sensible. The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
EG. Take the hype about "the energy used to create a single aluminum soda can being enough power to run your home for 30 minutes". Yeah, that's an impressive figure and all - but if I recycle (at my time and expense), do you really think the energy I save Pepsi or Coca-Cola will come back to me, the consumer, in the form of price cuts on soda? Much more likely, any savings goes into the owner's pockets.
If a manufacturer chooses to build products that can cause problems if they aren't recycled, it seems like it should be part of THEIR responsibility to cover the costs. As it stands now, they can crank out products (like CRTs with lead in the glass) without a care in the world. The customer ends up suffering if he/she needs to dispose of it a few years later, and finds out the local trash people designated it as "hazardous waste" and won't take it.
Being a 32 year old "computer geek" myself, I'm also finding I use the Internet as almost my only source of information for most things.
I don't get the local newspaper, for example. I do occasionally peek at the Sunday paper when I visit my parents (mainly for the advertisements). I'm sure I do miss out on a lot of "local news", but honestly - the Internet makes me realize how unimportant most of that is anyway. The newspapers and TV stations have been brainwashing us into believing we need their "fix" of local information, or else we're going to fall behind. In reality, I think I'm spending my time more wisely keeping up with bills in Congress that might affect our privacy rights, change copyright/patent law, or what-have-you, than knowing which building downtown caught fire last night, or the fact that (as usual), someone was killed in a fatal car crash on one of our highways.
Even for such things as "how to" guides for home improvement, I find better, more relevant information on the net than I do in the $20-40 books on the subject.
I've really found the net useful for learning about problems with my car and truck, too. Most problems seem to be experienced by at least a handful of other people, who talk about them on Usenet discussion groups. I may not want to do the repairs myself, but at least I can get a real good idea of what's broken - and feel like I'm not getting ripped off when they diagnose it and quote me a repair cost.
For computer or electronics purchases, there's absolutely no better method of research! Just do a Google search for "product-name opinion" or "product-name review" and you'll get everything you need to know, just about every time.
Well, the only sticking point is, these chat services are free of charge to use, yet the companies offering them have to spend a considerable amount of money providing servers for them (bandwidth, employees maintaining them, etc. etc.).
That's why they get to choose "what consumers want/need" in this case. They're the ones footing the bill for the "back end" that the clients require to be useful.
Ultimately, sure - consumers force the market to conform to their desires, but that's only valid when they can vote with their dollars, and stop purchasing products that don't meet their needs. When you're using free handouts, you don't have that same leverage.
I have to agree with you too, as a general rule. Where I've found exceptions is with larger firms. Where I live, I can think of at least 3 major firms off the top of my head that basically only hire I.T. people through consulting firms. They simply don't advertise the positions anyplace else, or take you seriously if you apply to them directly. I don't think that's a sensible policy, but that's how they conduct their employee searches - so if you'd like to work for them, you have to play by those rules.
Most often though, yes, the headhunters I've wasted my time working with were trying to place me in jobs that either had no real future, or were places not very serious about hiring in the first place.
I remember, as one example, a firm where after I went for an initial interview - was asked to "come back on Friday for a second interview". Only, when Friday rolled around, the manager I was supposed to talk with was gone for the day, and nobody else had any idea he scheduled me to come back in. When I did get ahold of him the next week, he didn't even seem apologetic. He just said "Oh, yeah... I forgot all about that. I was taking a day off. We'll have to find some other time to meet up." and wouldn't commit to a new date or time! I later found out they never did fill the opening at all. It was just an idea they were "tossing around", so they asked a few consulting firms to send people their way.
Might technically be, but think about the logic behind this move before blowing it off as "plainly illegal - so what's the point?"
The government pays for these libraries to purchase CDs so they can be loaned out to anyone who asks for a library card. There's no real limit on how often you can check a CD back out after the first time you borrow it, and no restrictions on your personal listening while you've got it checked out.
Yet, if you copy it (allowing others to borrow the original, and possibly even saving the library from spending money to purchase a second copy to loan out), then you're breaking the law and subject to punishment by the government.
Hmm.....
Unfortunately, our nation has a long history of struggling with the (seemingly basic) idea of "separation of Church and State".
It's hard to make a good case for taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allgeiance when all the U.S. money still has "In God We Trust" stamped on it.
In the South, we've just now settled a dispute with a judge who was convinced it was the "right thing to do" to put a huge, granite copy of the 10 Commandments right in the court's lobby area.
(Personally, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable about that judge's ruling on anything. If he felt that strongly about bringing his Christian religion into the courtroom, why would I put it past him to do such things as rule against anyone who appeared to be gay/lesbian - simply because his religion says they're wrong?)
Again, I say - people need to watch more closely who they elect as judges in their district.
I'm not sure I really see anything changing too drastically, whether they embrace or oppose 3rd. party clients.
Look at IRC. It's pretty much the original chat environment for the Internet, and still going strong after all these years. While the IRC client itself might be standard for all IRC servers, many different IRC networks are around that are cut off from each other.
If you're on EFNet, you can't see what's happening over on Undernet, without establishing a completely seperate connection to their network first.
IM chat is the same way. If I'm using ICQ, I can't chat with the people over on MSN Messenger. So what? You can run multiple IM clients if you desire, or you can try to come to agreement with your friends on which IM software they're going to standardize on so you can all talk to each other.
There will always be people trying to "break the rules" by building cross-network compatible clients, but it'll just be a "cat and mouse game" unless the network providers decide those clients are "ok" for use with their systems.
I get enough "spam IM's" as it is that I don't really want to be connected to several IM networks at one time! I chose to stick with ICQ, as did most of the people I want to chat with - and it serves the purpose.
The problem with letting the "washed-ups" in on a label trying to promote "new talent", though, is it's not a level playing field. The has-beens had the advantage of millions of marketing dollars behind them in the past - so people, #1 already know who they are, and #2 tend to have preconceived notions that the artist's work is somehow "superior" to the stuff alongside it they haven't heard of.
If they pay to download the latest album from (just a random example) Billy Squier, and they decide "Oh wow, that kinda sucked. I was expecting more from the guy." They're likely to completely skip over the new artists without giving them a fair listen - thinking "If Billy Squier can't even put a good album on this web site, these other guys probably REALLY stink!"
Ultimately, your last statement is probably the most importanr and significant one.
Like it or not, most of the important changes made by the common man in America (as opposed to the politicians) were done through violence and killing.
Equality for blacks? Look at the race riots of the 60's. Freedom to have our own country in the first place? Took a whole war. Getting across the message that a good number of folks weren't going along with the Vietname War? Loads of draft-dodgers risking imprisonment and inciting riots.
If you want radical change, you have to use radical measures. Most of the time, it makes much more sense to work for a gradual change/improvement - which our political system does allow.
The biggest impediment to progress in this country is the legal system. The Judicial arm of government has gone from their appointed task of "interpreting the law" to effectively "re-creating the law in new form", by stretching interpretations as far as possible in one case, and then using that case as precident to stretch further the next time around.
As I've pointed out before, it's really almost too bad we spend so much time and energy on presidential elections, yet most of us hardly bother to note what our judges believe in when it comes time to vote them in or out.
All you're saying is that established artists wouldn't see a reason to move to something this small and experimental. That hardly makes it a bad thing. Do you think all the other record companies just arose from nowhere and were instantly respected as "major mega labels"? Highly doubtful....
What happens is you put together something promising and work hard at signing formerly unknown artists putting out good material. Eventually, if/when one or more of those artists gets discovered by enough people - your label becomes more respected. Repeat, and voila!
Frankly, the thing I wouldn't want is some washed-up artist coming to me trying to get signed on, if I was a new, innovative label. Let them stick with whatever sorry label they're contractually obligated to until that runs out, and then - let them go it on their own or retire, or whatever they feel they need to do.
I write a little bit of music myself and played guitar in a working local band before (years ago). These days, I don't look at it as anything more than a spare time hobby (and I occasionally submit something when people are competing to get their background music used for someone's movie or videotape production). But if I was more serious and/or focused on making a record, I'd sign on with these guys. Why not?
Well, what disturbed me most was the comment someone made over on MacFixIt when 10.2.8 was first released. He claimed he had good friends working at Apple who told him that the "in house" word was, the new 10.2.8 release still needed some tweaking, and wasn't really quite ready for public release.
Since it turned out to have all these issues and got recalled, it looks like this guy was correct.
Assuming this is true, why did Apple go ahead and push 10.2.8 out the door when their own employees knew it wasn't ready yet?
My theory is, it contained security fixes such as patches for SSH - and Apple felt they couldn't risk waiting any longer to roll it out, and have a Microsoft-like fiasco develop where OS X got exploited before fixes were available.
This probably begs the question: Should security patches/fixes always be released by themselves, instead of rolled into general system updates? It may not be a bad idea.
As far as Apple getting paranoid about giving out pre-release software to developers, I think that's mainly due to all the Safari builds that leaked onto Usenet. Apple hates not being able to surprise people with cool new features, and that element of surprise keeps getting stolen out from under them when code gets leaked. (We all knew about Safari adding tabbed browsing long before Apple announced it, for example.)
Still, you have to balance those concerns with the risk of not having enough people testing/pre-screening your code for serious problems. In the end, writing a solid, bug-free product is the most important goal.
Right.... I think people may be too quick to assume that it's not possible/cost-effective enough for folks in other "poorer" countries to obtain decent PC hardware.
,but SVGA and VGA monitors smaller than 17" have reached the point where the average person or business using them considers them "zero value" items. In most offices where one or two people originally were given larger monitors, everyone else in the surrounding area demanded the same thing - claiming it relieved eyestrain, allowed easier working on large spreadsheets, etc. etc. Before long, you had offices all over the U.S. where the perfectly good 15" displays were costing more than they were worth in storage space, stored away in basements and closets. Whenever I've needed one for a cheap system I'm reselling, I just ask - and can almost always find a small business happy to give me a few of them for nothing.
PC's have become such a commodity item nowdays that there truly is no excuse for someone with any kind of computer savvy to be forced to use an old XT or 286 class machine - poor nation or not!
Just recently, I was trying to fix up and resell a number of old machines people were throwing away - and these were all Pentium class machines at the very least. Not only that
If you live in the Ukraine and can scrape together the cost for shipping - you can surely get a moderately recent, quite usable complete system sent to you from the U.S. for hardly anything.
Actually, I've felt that the "Out of Office" auto-reply is a bit of a security risk anyway, when it's used anyplace besides within the company's internal network.
This is just one more example of why it's not necessarily a good idea to use it.
My original concern was with advertising to the world that you're not at work. Granted, it's common practice to record this type of message on your corporate voice mail system - but that's not quite the same thing. People have to know enough about you to know your company's phone number and get to your private extension to hear it.
The idea of any random spammer finding out that I'm away on vacation until date X/Y strikes me as a bad idea. That's like making public announcements to would-be hackers, saying "Hey, hack in using my account! I won't even notice for 2 more weeks!"
All of the post dot-com survivors still seem to be fixated on the same, flawed concept that got most of the web sites in trouble to begin with. It's *not* about doing anything and everything to maximize your "eyeballs" viewing your site.
It's *really* about focusing intensely on one particular service or offering that a decent-sized group of users think is useful.
If you're going to sell books, be the biggest, best-priced and most convenient bookseller on the net - but DON'T try to be a patent-monger, or an auction mega-site, or a toy store, or anything else unrelated!
As you said, Google is so highly regarded because it was always designed, from day one, to be a search engine - and to do the best possible job of indexing pages. They've added a lot of features - but they're all related to their core functionality (such as the ability to calculate math equations that are entered in the search field, or the ability to do phone number lookups). You use their site when you seek answers to something, and it tries to provide those answers (whether by directly giving you results, or pointing you to sites that have the information you seek).
eBay has, in my opinion, also been the only truly successful online auction site because they've kept their focus on that one area without straying. Everyone who wants to "be the next eBay" or your "eBay alternative" (aka. Yahoo auctions) can't quite penetrate that market, because they've all tried it as a side offering. Folks think "Hmm... Why use this auction link off this e-commerce or search engine site, when I can use eBay, that's completely dedicated to auctions? More people will see my listings that way, and there's likely to be more of the stuff I'm looking to buy."
Actually, I believe it was a combination of the two. I saw a few recording industry quotes where they made it fairly clear that the only reason they gave Apple the go-ahead to sell their music online was because the limited market-share of Apple Mac users made a perfect trial audience. If something went horribly wrong and the public hated it, they could save face by knowing 95% of the public never used the service to begin with. It could easily be brushed aside as a failure only because PC/Windows users didn't get a chance to be a part of the program.
Once it was proven to work (and sell well), Apple was free to go ahead with developing a PC version of the music store without record company backlash.