I agree on the Windows wizards. I think they make sense in *applications*, where the user might request assistance with performing a common task, but one which normally requires several steps. (For example, "mail merge" is something that benefits from a wizard. People who use it are often users who RARELY need it, and don't remember how it works. When they do want it (say, for a Christmas card mailing list generated from Outlook contacts?), a friendly UI that walks them through all the options and steps isn't a bad thing.
But in the operating system itself, I think MS used them far too often. It feels really unprofessional to me, for example, when I see wizards offering to handle user account management functions on a server. If the people administering a corporate server really need a wizard to assist them, I think the company may have some problems with the quality of their admins! I know in Windows Server 2000 and 2003, the only times I ever launched one of those wizards was out of curiosity. I wondered what they could possibly help me with.... and was totally disappointed. Besides insulting my knowledge of the product, I didn't see any real speed increase or advantage they gave me at all? I could at least see it, if they set up some default folders in a new user's home directory, and let you configure some default mapped network printers when running a "new user creation" wizard or what-not. But there's nothing even that advanced or helpful.
The "troubleshooters" are equally poor and annoying. Everyone I know who ran into things like wireless connectivity issues HATED the "Windows troubleshooter" that popped up and offered to assist! Instead of solving anything, it usually just makes them go through a loop of answering questions and performing functions that don't fix the real problem. (EG. Reset the wireless network adapter and force it to grab an IP address again, when the underlying issue is actually an incorrect saved WEP or WPA key.)
Not sure how much I agree with you here. Yes, there are a few insane dictators of some of these nations, who WANT to propagate those beliefs to further their own goals. But the REAL key, as usual, is educating the masses. Despite efforts to censor and block Internet web sites, information is leaking out that way, and people in these countries are getting smarter about reality.
In North Korea, it may be easier to fool the masses than in many nations, because it appears they barely even have electrical power for the general populace. (Those satellite photos showing the points of light at night all over the world show N. Korea as surprisingly dark.) But certainly, most of the Arab nations and Communist countries like China and the USSR do have a populace with Internet access available. And even before that, people in the USSR caught on about how life really was in the USA, despite propaganda films trying to depict the USA as an unpleasant place to live by showing prohibition era footage and cherry-picking footage of unpleasant events like big traffic jams and making it appear it was the norm.
Whether or not they "happily kill each other" over events that only affect them and their immediate neighbors is pretty irrelevant. That has no bearing on a perceived need to come half way around the globe to terrorize us. IMHO, the only good reason this happens is because of Western nations' continued involvement and meddling in their government. Yeah, we might pull our military forces out tomorrow and find that we're still hated for another generation or two. But it would die down, IF we didn't have organizations like the CIA secretly manipulating their elections or having people killed whenever they thought it benefited the Western world in some fashion.
If you weren't posting anonymously, I'd mod this one up.... (Why give a mod point to some unknown individual who won't get proper credit for it?)
But exactly.... the whole idea that we can spend money to "make airlines safe from terrorists" is flawed, because "terror" is not, by definition, limited to airline flights, or for that matter, to passengers boarding said airplanes. To measure the efficiency of the devices government has employed at airline gates, we have to know how many potential terrorists they actually stopped. (No, I'm not talking about how many times they stopped a person from flying, simply because their name was on some "do not fly" list. I'm talking about detecting explosives or other weapons on their person.) My guess is, they'll refuse to give out that statistic, claiming it's a matter of "national security" but the TRUTH is, the number is shocking low, vs. money spent to achieve the goal. In other words, incredibly ineffective for your taxpayer dollar!
It's *always* harder to take something away that you used to give people than it is to lay out the ground rules from day 1, explaining it's not a "freebie".
Where I work, they've had a policy as long as anyone here can remember where coffee isn't free. Rather, the company supplies it, but expects all the coffee-drinkers to contribute a monthly fee towards it. If you don't contribute to the "coffee fund", you're banned from the coffee maker.
Personally, I thought it was rather petty and senseless -- but I simply shrugged and said "Ok... whatever." and didn't ever drink the company coffee. I just bring in my own (which is better stuff anyway), when I feel like it.
I guess management thinks they scored another small "cost savings" by running things this way... and perhaps they did. All I know is, people are odd about things like this. If we used to give it away free and someone changed the policy to the current one, you'd hear all sorts of complaining and moaning. But as it is, everyone seems to be fine with the status quo. Go figure.
Nah, I didn't see it either. I'm somewhat interested in seeing the 3D special effects, but not enough to pay the going rate for movie passes to do so.
It started out as a "Wow, I may want to see that one!" when I saw the first movie trailer for it, but all the reviews of it turned me off to it completely. Maybe it's kind of a sore point with me, but I'm really bothered by how often the science-fiction genre of films seems to be treated like "Viewers won't care if the storyline is thin or a re-hash, as long as all the cool CGI is there!"
I'm much more accepting of it for a typical action movie, where people don't really go in expecting a truly original, intelligent and thought-provoking experience. They just want to be entertained and see some cool explosions. But to me, good sci-fi REQUIRES a script that makes people think. Avatar lacks it, if only because it's a re-hash of re-hashes. (Might have been different if nobody tackled the theme before....)
I can see doing this for your kids, where you're trying to build a safe environment for them to web surf in. (The kidzui plug-in for Firefox is a good example.) But in a corporate environment, whitelisting seems extreme to me. I'd not only be an employee who complained, but one who would quit and seek employment elsewhere, if I was treated that way, (Do you happen to only allow outgoing phone calls to whitelisted numbers, to make sure they aren't spending time talking to someone who doesn't directly benefit the company? I recommend screening the books and newspapers they bring in, as well. Wouldn't want them to read something on their lunch break that doesn't benefit the business, would you?)
There are ways to protect a PC reasonably well from malware attacks without resorting to this.... That's just laziness on the part of I.T., really. I've done this stuff for close to 20 years, and I can only remember a total of about 3 virus infections anyone had on a PC, at any of the places I worked. Honestly, in all cases, they were easy to eradicate too. A properly configured router that blocks access on all ports except specific ones stops a lot of that junk from spreading or downloading "helper apps" that result it in completely taking over and embedding itself in a PC. Beyond that, you run good anti-virus software AND a package providing real-time malware detection and removal (commercial version of Malware Bytes might be a good recommendation here... NOT junk like Symantec or McAfee want to sell you as an "add-on" to their main product). Lastly, you run things through a web proxy that does know how to block known IPs of sites that distribute the stuff.
As I said in another post, I'm all for blocking SOME web sites. Filter out as much porn as possible, because you really don't want a sexual harassment lawsuit over some co-worker stupidly downloading porn and making it into Windows wallpaper and offending someone, or what-not. You may want to filter known sites promoting violence and racism too. Again, it has no conceivable useful purpose in the workplace. But all in all, people DO expect to be able to use the Internet for a little bit of socializing, checking personal emails, and keeping up with news throughout the day. A happy employee is more productive, and all of this encourages them to be content.
I disagree to a small extent, but I think you're ultimately correct.
If taken to extremes, sure - it becomes ineffective, because users find ways around broken environments. If they want to visit web sites X,Y, and Z and find they're constantly blocked, they'll get frustrated and start looking for ways around it (web proxies or setting up a VPN tunnel to a PC back home that has full net access, or??).
On the other hand, there are legitimate liability issues an employer probably wants to take some basic steps to prevent, and it really shouldn't be a problem for 99.9% of the people trying to use the Internet at work. For example, where I work now, I put a web proxy filter in place (running Squidguard and using a free blacklist provided by shalla.de). Since they break everything down by category, I simply enforce only blocks on categories of primary concern (such as "porn" or "spyware"). They offer the ability to block things like "social networking sites", "travel sites" and all sorts of other options -- but I leave most of those untouched.
I find that if users generally can't even tell a filter is in place, they're more likely to respect a block when they finally come across it (probably trying to do something they know is "off limits" for the workplace anyway). They're not motivated to employ complicated work-arounds like they would be if they felt it was necessary for MANY sites they wanted to view.
When I, as a consumer, purchase a pre-paid card with X number of usable minutes on it, I typically plan on using the whole thing, OR I'm not that concerned, because the ability to make some phone calls, as needed, is what I'm really paying for to begin with. If the fine print on the card informs me, before the purchase, that there's an expiration date on the card - then fine. I can opt to accept that, or decline the purchase if I think that's unacceptable.
I don't really have a problem with the phone company selling the cards keeping expired, unused balances as a profit. It makes no sense to me that govt. should expend resources of its own to "manage" these unused balances. How much does it really cost the taxpayers annually to keep that system going? (They've got to keep paying to place those unclaimed property ads in the newspapers, I assume.... and keep a staff employed to keep track of everything.)
Inactivity fees are a different issue, though... because most of the time, they were designed to catch the unaware by surprise. People who assumed a $100 gift card would still be worth $100 when they got around to visiting the store 6 months after issuance shouldn't be suddenly told "You only have $40 left because we deducted $10 for each month you didn't use it!" You don't see manufacturer coupons or rebates deducting portions of the total discount depending on how quickly you use them. But you DO almost always see expiration dates clearly stated on them, and we all understand that concept.
That didn't work either.... Disk Utility showed the drive partitions as greyed-out and I had no options except to delete them and re-create new ones.
The last resort was to back up everything I could onto an external USB drive, from inside Windows 7 (since it could still read the OS X partitions it mangled), and do a reformat/reinstall.
Actually, I ran across a nasty bug when I first put Windows 7 on a drive in my Mac Pro.
My system has 4 physical hard drives in it. The first was labeled "OS X Boot" and the 2nd. and 3rd. had labels of "Data 1" and "Data 2". I installed Windows 7 on the 4th. drive. All went well, except when booted into Windows 7, it displayed the OS X drives out of order. (With the latest version of Boot Camp drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD, they provide "read only" support of the OS X HFS+ volumes in Windows.) It was assigning my "Data 1" drive as drive G" while "Data 2" was drive F:, and "OS X Boot" was given letter H:.
I figured "No big deal. I know how to fix it when Windows does this stuff....", and went into Computer Management and Disk Management under Administrative Tools, and told it to reassign the drive letters in the order I wanted them. It did, as requested, and all seemed to be well.
EXCEPT, on reboot into OS X, I discovered my OS X drives were rendered unbootable/unusable! Windows 7 could see them just fine - but the Mac didn't like them natively anymore! Worse yet, I tried all sorts of disk repair utilities on them and the usual result was being shown that the drives were of an "unrecognized partition type" and options to repair them were "greyed out"! One program, Drive Genius, actually let me verify and repair the volumes - but after running through everything, insisted the drives were "ok" and there was nothing to repair!
Apparently, the Disk Management in Windows actually rewrites something in the partition table when it reassigns drive letters (not just a registry update), and whatever it does changes things JUST enough to screw up OS X from using the HFS+ volumes normally. Apple really needs to update their drivers so they prevent people from being able to write to the drives from Windows' disk management tool, since this is the case. "Read only HFS+ support" should mean just that!
Usually, this sort of thing winds up being a problem with one of the big cable trunks underground with hundreds (thousands?) of pairs of copper in it. Their "fiddling around" amounts to trying to move you from one static-filled pair of wires to another unused one that "sounds cleaner" at the time they're doing the work.
We've dealt with some of that at my workplace in St. Louis, MO too. We're in a rather "dead" part of town, where no new businesses have opened up in decades. We're across from a huge cemetery (so not much of a potential customer base there), and much of the property is taken up by a railroad switching yard and tracks. After a good rain, we get static and disconnected calls left and right, as often as not.
I'd be curious to know how many complaints it takes before AT&T is willing to undergo the expense to actually rip out and replace one of these trunks? I bet it VERY rarely ever happens though. Around here, my guess is, at least 50% of their copper wires are in nearly unusable condition, but they don't care because they don't have enough customer demand to require more than that anyway.... They just keep juggling things around, and even if they start running out of clean pairs, they probably play a game of stalling a complaining customer until someone else on that trunk disconnects service, so they can re-use their pair.
True, but I don't think this was nearly as much about "going green" as it was "saving green". Local govt. all over the country has been proving time and time again that their *true* primary goal revolves around generating revenue and cutting costs, vs. motorist safety. Look at all the red light cameras they've been installing. Studies keep showing they cause MORE rear-end collisions, and they certainly create a number of legal and ethical questions. (EG. Most police departments have an internal policy or "code of ethics" stating they will keep private business out of their revenue collection process - yet they hire private contractors to both install AND run the red light cameras, with them getting a lion's share of the "cut" of each ticket that's paid!) But they really like the big boost to their bottom line they create, so screw the detractors!
And in this case, you see the same behavior.... Problem identified with new LED traffic signals and snow, but obvious solutions SLOW to be implemented, because it negatively impacts their cost-savings potential.
It's no different than advertisers spending gobs of money to hire celebrities as spokespeople for their products. Do you really think some football player is the "authority figure" for determining that a new Ford truck is the best value for your dollar, or that some ex baseball player is an expert on spray paint, or??
The thing is, it's people like Hollywood movie makers, rock stars and sports figures who have access to the media mouthpiece. When they want to deliver a message, they've got the ability to get it delivered to a large audience easily. Many of the people who *really* have deep knowledge of subject DON'T have access to (or even an interest in) broadcasting their opinions and insights.
Seems to me this is completely parallel with the music industry today..... A lot of people are quick to claim the big record companies are "no longer relevant", yet currently, it's still primarily the people signed to major labels who get the majority of radio airplay and exposure in the mass media. It's all in transition, but it's probably still premature to declare the traditional "big publishers" dead.
I think your point about them functioning as "filters" is key. That's the real double-edged sword of the problem, for both the music and book publishing industries. The general public doesn't really have the time (or wants to invest the time) to dig through all the content out there, to discover what's good and what's not. They like to *think* they're intelligently making those selections for themselves, but what they ACTUALLY expect (often without even consciously realizing it) is to only have to pick and choose from a limited pool. (EG. I can get on Usenet right now, and go visit an alt.binaries group specializing in complete music albums uploaded as MP3s. Unfortunately, despite all that content having ZERO cost to me, I wouldn't even waste my time downloading most of what I see there, because there are literally thousands of artists and albums up there I've never heard of before! Until I download, save, and individually listen to them, I have no clue what to expect. That doesn't strike me as entertaining or fun at all. Rather, it strikes me as a considerable amount of work!) The record labels serve that purpose of filtering and organizing the content, so at least when you or I visit the local record store (or virtual one by way of iTunes or what-not), everything is placed in categories, and we have certain expectations about the quality of the sound recording we're getting. (The major labels do at least use good quality microphones and recording equipment to make the recordings.)
On the flip-side, there are certainly some very talented writers (and musicians) out there who fall through the cracks, when forced to go through major publishers. They tend to promote material that's similar enough to a previously successful work so their risk of having a "dud" is minimized. That means people bucking the current trend are at an automatic disadvantage, if they don't find alternate channels to publish themselves.
If you read my comment more carefully, you'd see where I said people guesstimated it at around $899 BEFORE Kevin Rose commented that it looked like it'd be selling for a lot less than people were expecting. That means a lot less than $899....
There's also been quite a bit of rumbling about Apple planning on selling 2 different tablets, not just one. Most likely, the first model out will be around 9" or 10" in size, and be the cheaper model. That sets the stage for a second variant to come out that might have a larger surface-area and be more of a complete OS X based tablet computer. It may well be the later which caused people to have those "over $1,000" estimates, and that'd make sense if it's going to be a full-blown portable computer, potentially replacing an existing model like a Macbook or Macbook Air.
(Personally, I think Apple would do well to design a new iMac which lets you detach the system from the base, and then carry it around as a tablet... but who knows?)
IMHO, it would be pure stupidity for Apple to release a plain old e-book reader, "e-ink" based or not. The market is already flooded with such devices, and early adopters have jumped all over the Kindle, over most of the competitors. The main reason Apple might want to join in is so they can sell book content on the iTunes store (which is basically becoming the 'iTunes media store" anyway, vs. the "music store" title it still retains to date). That's why I'm sure they're going to aim a little bigger than just another book reader.
You make a valid point about the potential killing off of the art of home-brewing... but other than that (very valid) issue, I'm not so sure your other complaints would really matter in the long-run. At the end of the day, the drugs society considers "more acceptable to consume regularly" are really just a matter of how popularized they've become. Caffeine, for example, is pretty much treated like a major food group, since it's found in everything from soda to cappuccino. Heck, they've even got caffeinated water you can buy. But if some other drug (like a small dose of the contents of ADD/ADHD medications, perhaps?) was the drug of choice to insert into carbonated beverages and such, instead? It might have been caffeine people generally thought was a little "unsettling" or "weird" to ingest as part of recreational drinking.
Actual translation: Another Slashdot user is unhappy with everything Apple makes or does, so he claims to have all the facts on a device that's not even released yet.
First of all, the rumors I've heard from people in the industry like Kevin Rose were saying the new tablet is going to come in at a "surprisingly low price". I'd say that means definitely in the under $1000 range -- since most of the rumor sites were guesstimating it at a price point around $899 or so, before that.
It only makes sense that this tablet would support 3G cellular, so it's possible it will be sold with contracts by a carrier of choice, meaning its cost will be further subsidized. If that happens, you may well be able to buy one of these with only $200-300 down.
I don't get your worry about the "battery sucking screen" either? There are possibilities like LED backlighting that runs the perimeter of the screen, casting light in towards the center. This gives the low power consumption advantages found with OLED backlit displays, coupled with a major cost-savings over the expense of doing a full OLED display with a grid of LEDs across the whole back of the panel.
In any case, a 9" or 10" tablet would have FAR more room for a battery than an iPhone or iPod Touch does, and both of those devices run for 4-5 hours on a charge.
Apple has tried to build a tablet device for many years now, and has aborted at least 2 previous attempts when Jobs decided one piece or another of the technology needed to make it successful wasn't ready or available.... I don't doubt it may "only have one button" on the front, but that's a good thing, for a device that claims to be a tablet. How many buttons are there on your *real* tablets or pads of paper? I'm pretty excited to see what Apple releases, because I know this has been thought out by Apple for a long time. If it was just a "big iPod touch" and little more, they would have released it at least a year ago already - and it wouldn't have been a really big deal.
Seems obvious to me. They were still getting paid SOMETHING (if not "market rate"), while basically not having to do a lot of real WORK.... Why not stay and ride it out until the very end? Many of them were probably good friends with each other after all that time, so coming to work there was kind of like a big social club. And I'm sure they figured it wasn't going to be THAT big a deal to find something else whenever it did finally die out. (After all, the whole Duke Nukem franchise was VERY well known and liked. It's easy enough to explain that you did lots of "great work" on the project, but its ultimate failure wasn't some direct result of YOUR poor code, right?)
I'd tend to agree with you too. My theory is that basically, an individual who would be willing to put up with the "taboo" nature of the industry, the labeling of your character that comes with the territory, and the relatively high risk to one's personal safety -- all because it's "easy money, compared to other jobs out there" is the type who isn't likely to do well in school either.
Good intentions don't count for much, if you're too lazy to act on them.
Honestly, I don't have any problems with a woman deciding to market her body/looks/dance moves by way of a strip club. It's no less "valid" a way to earn a living than anything else. But most of the time, I think they attract immature ladies who just want to "party and have a good time", and aren't thinking long-term enough to realize their looks aren't going to last forever. The fact they receive so much cash money that there's strong motivation to hide from the IRS is another factor (at least here in the USA). I was good friends with a former stripper who told me she literally raked in thousands per week when she was 18 or 19, working at the right clubs in New York. But after a while, her biggest problem was literally figuring out what to do with the cash. Most of the strippers bought a lot of clothes, and a used sports or luxury car or something... But after that? They tend to blow it on drugs and drinking, partying, going out to eat at expensive places, hotels and travel... Actually saving it would quickly mean you had traceable income, and you'd get stuck getting taxed on it.
There's probably an untapped niche market here for financial advisors/money managers for people in the adult entertainment industry... but again, the challenge would be getting immature 18 year olds to take any interest in it and TRUST someone with their money.
AT&T worked out a deal where the hotspots at McDonalds are partnered up with them, so iPhone customers can automatically get signed in and use them for free. It's been that way for months now. I've used the one in my neighborhood a number of times, as well as a couple of them when I was on a road trip.
Only complaint I've had, in general, with Mc Wi-Fi is, I think someone needs to do site surveys on those things and improve the reception! I've always gotten pretty weak signals that are still generally usable, but worse than I get throughout most of my house with my own wireless router.
I think what you're lamenting is really just the inevitable growth of the industry as a whole.
I used to have an 8-bit TRS-80 computer, myself, and it, too had circuit diagrams floating around for it, and 3rd. party add-ons that required opening the case and attaching colored leads to certain parts of the circuit board. Expansion cards? Yep, it had them too, by way of "cartridges" that enhanced the basic hardware (speech synthesizer, etc.).
But can you *really* expect that not to have changed, as the personal computer moved from a hobbyist interest to a staple item for the general public?
Truthfully, the expansion cards for PC clones became their single biggest "weak spot" and support headache. That's why the PC industry tried to hard to integrate most of that stuff onto motherboards over time, from the sound card to the serial/parallel/IDE controllers, to the ethernet card. I remember PLENTY of times I bought an expansion card, only to discover my PC no longer booted at all with it installed!
What "crazy", in my opinion, are all of these people who don't set their privacy settings on Facebook with a bit of care, before spouting off all sorts of random statements!
I agree with many people here, that her comments sound like venting by a typical angry/exhausted student. But all I know is, if I was attending school someplace, I sure wouldn't set up my Facebook or MySpace account so my teachers could view my comments!
Even if you never plan on saying anything negative towards them on there, don't you think it's giving away a bit too much information about your personal life? As a rule, your professors or teachers are people you essentially HIRED to do the job of teaching you some material. They're NOT your friends/buddies.
People who don't know you really well are the most likely to grossly misinterpret your comments, photos or videos you post online.... Why take the risk?
Apple is essentially running their business the SAME way *all* personal computer businesses did back in the 1980's, before the "PC clone" became the de-facto standard machine. Many of the people I encounter who have a strong dislike of Microsoft are simply saying they hate the way the company's products homogenized everything in the personal computer world. They essentially got things to the point where you either ran Microsoft's OS and flagship applications (like Office), or else your alternatives were pretty much all non-commercial products developed by community (like Linux or BSD). These people LIKE Apple because they're the last holdout of the "old way" of selling computers, where each manufacturer had a proprietary system that they tried to enhance and prove was the "best way" to use a computer. They're pretty much the last relevant competitor to Microsoft products that goes "toe to toe" with them, claiming they offer an "easy to use" solution appropriate for anybody -- even opening hundreds of retail stores to ensure the "average Joe" can view and purchase their offerings locally (since Microsoft products had that same visibility on store shelves everywhere).
In my mind, Apple is *far* from becoming "Microsoft 2.0". For starters, Steve Jobs has stated on multiple occasions that he has no interest in having the MOST market-share. He's not interested in playing the "grow as fast as possible, as large as possible" game. Sure, he wants Apple to be successful and its market-share to grow... but if being the "biggest" was his true goal, why would he sit on HUGE cash reserves and not re-invest them in growing the company larger? Additionally, he's refrained from putting any type of Product Activation in any version of OS X. There's not even so much as a CD key to be entered. It simply verifies you're trying to install it on a machine Apple actually built for the purpose, and installs with no hassles. Apple is able to do that primarily because they actually sell their own computer systems, unlike Microsoft. (Hey, another difference!)
I'm not defending Steve Jobs on a personal level. I get the idea that like many successful CEO types, he's arrogant, demanding, and tends to be rude and judgmental. (I'd also question his claimed religious beliefs, given the realities of his lifestyle and character... but maybe that's a bit unfair, since religion is such a personal thing to begin with.) But none of that is really relevant to whether or not I think he's running his company well. I think without Steve Jobs stepping in, Apple would be dead or at best, completely irrelevant today.
Funny... but I'd say your reply sounds pretty "asshat" to me. (If that hack job of a word really HAS any meaning in the first place?)
Are you going to constantly stand around, right behind a 3 year old, every hour they're awake, to make sure they don't stick something in their mouth that doesn't belong there? Really?
The world is FULL of risks. I'm not saying it's 100% safe for a young kid to play outside. It's not and NEVER was. So what? You put your kid at greater statistical risk of harm every time you put him or her in your car or truck and drive someplace! And how often do you hear of 3 year olds dying because they got trampled by neighbor's dogs? That's practically in the "freak accident" category, if you ask me! And it's ALSO why we have leash laws, and why DOG owners carry some responsibility for their pets. My kid shouldn't have to be locked indoors because of fear of an over-eager dog someone owns!
(Incidentally, the risk of getting struck by lightning thing was directly taken from Penn & Teller's B.S. Season 6, episode 8, titled "Stranger Danger". I made no effort to prove or disprove their claim, but they do quote sources for it in the episode.)
And I wasn't saying there was a problem with a 6 and a 7 year old not wanting to play with a 3 year old, either. My point was, the parent who freaked out about the situation seemed to be the one who thought it was a problem. (As long as they were all playing together, he wasn't going to run down the street and start knocking on my door about anything.)
I'm 38 years old, but I still remember my own childhood pretty vividly, and I also remember the later years of living with my parents, at home. In the former, it was *commonplace* for parents on the block to let their kids outside to play, without any worries at all, at least until dinner-time. Then, you'd hear parents go out and ring a bell or yell for their kid to come home - and they did. It was really that simple. In the latter, I recall, for example, a 4 or 5 year old kid (a teenage friend's little brother), who would walk up and down the street by himself all the time. He often came by, ringing our doorbell, and just wanted to talk or play with my younger brother or what-not. Sure, we thought of him as a bit of a nuisance... but nobody thought, "Wow! How unsafe! I better run and tell his parents he's down here!"
Nope... you're correct, but metering electric usage is, IMHO, a little more of a necessity than metering Internet usage. Electric power generation involves very real and substantial costs that aren't really a matter of one-time investments and minimal upkeep to "upgrade" so more power is supplied. EG. If I put several large businesses on a power grid and they start drawing a lot of electric power, I very well might be looking at putting another generator online to handle the load. Every hour that generator turns, it's using up coal or oil or natural gas. Or let's say bigger dollars were invested up-front to go with a nuclear plant instead? Ok, great... but that's kind of like trying to avoid paying for spent inkjet cartridges by purchasing a more expensive color laser printer to do your heavy color printing jobs on. Eventually, the bill comes due by way of a set of 4 expensive toner cartridges, a new fuser and drum. With a nuclear plant, you're looking at a HUGE cost of disposal of radioactive waste at some point.. and don't forget the cost of hiring all the employees who keep it operating safely.
By contrast, dealing with "heavy bandwidth users" is a different beast. Yeah, eventually, you might need to upgrade some back-end circuits, or even invest in new routing/switching gear. But that new Cisco switch you put in isn't going to require a whole crew of employees operating it 24 hours/7 days to keep it functional. The new optical fiber you put in isn't going to consume more natural resources you're paying for, the more data moves through it.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree on the Windows wizards. I think they make sense in *applications*, where the user might request assistance with performing a common task, but one which normally requires several steps. (For example, "mail merge" is something that benefits from a wizard. People who use it are often users who RARELY need it, and don't remember how it works. When they do want it (say, for a Christmas card mailing list generated from Outlook contacts?), a friendly UI that walks them through all the options and steps isn't a bad thing.
But in the operating system itself, I think MS used them far too often. It feels really unprofessional to me, for example, when I see wizards offering to handle user account management functions on a server. If the people administering a corporate server really need a wizard to assist them, I think the company may have some problems with the quality of their admins! I know in Windows Server 2000 and 2003, the only times I ever launched one of those wizards was out of curiosity. I wondered what they could possibly help me with.... and was totally disappointed. Besides insulting my knowledge of the product, I didn't see any real speed increase or advantage they gave me at all? I could at least see it, if they set up some default folders in a new user's home directory, and let you configure some default mapped network printers when running a "new user creation" wizard or what-not. But there's nothing even that advanced or helpful.
The "troubleshooters" are equally poor and annoying. Everyone I know who ran into things like wireless connectivity issues HATED the "Windows troubleshooter" that popped up and offered to assist! Instead of solving anything, it usually just makes them go through a loop of answering questions and performing functions that don't fix the real problem. (EG. Reset the wireless network adapter and force it to grab an IP address again, when the underlying issue is actually an incorrect saved WEP or WPA key.)
Not sure how much I agree with you here. Yes, there are a few insane dictators of some of these nations, who WANT to propagate those beliefs to further their own goals. But the REAL key, as usual, is educating the masses. Despite efforts to censor and block Internet web sites, information is leaking out that way, and people in these countries are getting smarter about reality.
In North Korea, it may be easier to fool the masses than in many nations, because it appears they barely even have electrical power for the general populace. (Those satellite photos showing the points of light at night all over the world show N. Korea as surprisingly dark.) But certainly, most of the Arab nations and Communist countries like China and the USSR do have a populace with Internet access available. And even before that, people in the USSR caught on about how life really was in the USA, despite propaganda films trying to depict the USA as an unpleasant place to live by showing prohibition era footage and cherry-picking footage of unpleasant events like big traffic jams and making it appear it was the norm.
Whether or not they "happily kill each other" over events that only affect them and their immediate neighbors is pretty irrelevant. That has no bearing on a perceived need to come half way around the globe to terrorize us. IMHO, the only good reason this happens is because of Western nations' continued involvement and meddling in their government. Yeah, we might pull our military forces out tomorrow and find that we're still hated for another generation or two. But it would die down, IF we didn't have organizations like the CIA secretly manipulating their elections or having people killed whenever they thought it benefited the Western world in some fashion.
If you weren't posting anonymously, I'd mod this one up.... (Why give a mod point to some unknown individual who won't get proper credit for it?)
But exactly .... the whole idea that we can spend money to "make airlines safe from terrorists" is flawed, because "terror" is not, by definition, limited to airline flights, or for that matter, to passengers boarding said airplanes. To measure the efficiency of the devices government has employed at airline gates, we have to know how many potential terrorists they actually stopped. (No, I'm not talking about how many times they stopped a person from flying, simply because their name was on some "do not fly" list. I'm talking about detecting explosives or other weapons on their person.) My guess is, they'll refuse to give out that statistic, claiming it's a matter of "national security" but the TRUTH is, the number is shocking low, vs. money spent to achieve the goal. In other words, incredibly ineffective for your taxpayer dollar!
It's *always* harder to take something away that you used to give people than it is to lay out the ground rules from day 1, explaining it's not a "freebie".
Where I work, they've had a policy as long as anyone here can remember where coffee isn't free. Rather, the company supplies it, but expects all the coffee-drinkers to contribute a monthly fee towards it. If you don't contribute to the "coffee fund", you're banned from the coffee maker.
Personally, I thought it was rather petty and senseless -- but I simply shrugged and said "Ok... whatever." and didn't ever drink the company coffee. I just bring in my own (which is better stuff anyway), when I feel like it.
I guess management thinks they scored another small "cost savings" by running things this way ... and perhaps they did. All I know is, people are odd about things like this. If we used to give it away free and someone changed the policy to the current one, you'd hear all sorts of complaining and moaning. But as it is, everyone seems to be fine with the status quo. Go figure.
Nah, I didn't see it either. I'm somewhat interested in seeing the 3D special effects, but not enough to pay the going rate for movie passes to do so.
It started out as a "Wow, I may want to see that one!" when I saw the first movie trailer for it, but all the reviews of it turned me off to it completely. Maybe it's kind of a sore point with me, but I'm really bothered by how often the science-fiction genre of films seems to be treated like "Viewers won't care if the storyline is thin or a re-hash, as long as all the cool CGI is there!"
I'm much more accepting of it for a typical action movie, where people don't really go in expecting a truly original, intelligent and thought-provoking experience. They just want to be entertained and see some cool explosions. But to me, good sci-fi REQUIRES a script that makes people think. Avatar lacks it, if only because it's a re-hash of re-hashes. (Might have been different if nobody tackled the theme before....)
So I'll wait and watch it as a rental.
I can see doing this for your kids, where you're trying to build a safe environment for them to web surf in. (The kidzui plug-in for Firefox is a good example.) But in a corporate environment, whitelisting seems extreme to me. I'd not only be an employee who complained, but one who would quit and seek employment elsewhere, if I was treated that way, (Do you happen to only allow outgoing phone calls to whitelisted numbers, to make sure they aren't spending time talking to someone who doesn't directly benefit the company? I recommend screening the books and newspapers they bring in, as well. Wouldn't want them to read something on their lunch break that doesn't benefit the business, would you?)
There are ways to protect a PC reasonably well from malware attacks without resorting to this.... That's just laziness on the part of I.T., really. I've done this stuff for close to 20 years, and I can only remember a total of about 3 virus infections anyone had on a PC, at any of the places I worked. Honestly, in all cases, they were easy to eradicate too. A properly configured router that blocks access on all ports except specific ones stops a lot of that junk from spreading or downloading "helper apps" that result it in completely taking over and embedding itself in a PC. Beyond that, you run good anti-virus software AND a package providing real-time malware detection and removal (commercial version of Malware Bytes might be a good recommendation here ... NOT junk like Symantec or McAfee want to sell you as an "add-on" to their main product). Lastly, you run things through a web proxy that does know how to block known IPs of sites that distribute the stuff.
As I said in another post, I'm all for blocking SOME web sites. Filter out as much porn as possible, because you really don't want a sexual harassment lawsuit over some co-worker stupidly downloading porn and making it into Windows wallpaper and offending someone, or what-not. You may want to filter known sites promoting violence and racism too. Again, it has no conceivable useful purpose in the workplace. But all in all, people DO expect to be able to use the Internet for a little bit of socializing, checking personal emails, and keeping up with news throughout the day. A happy employee is more productive, and all of this encourages them to be content.
I disagree to a small extent, but I think you're ultimately correct.
If taken to extremes, sure - it becomes ineffective, because users find ways around broken environments. If they want to visit web sites X,Y, and Z and find they're constantly blocked, they'll get frustrated and start looking for ways around it (web proxies or setting up a VPN tunnel to a PC back home that has full net access, or??).
On the other hand, there are legitimate liability issues an employer probably wants to take some basic steps to prevent, and it really shouldn't be a problem for 99.9% of the people trying to use the Internet at work. For example, where I work now, I put a web proxy filter in place (running Squidguard and using a free blacklist provided by shalla.de). Since they break everything down by category, I simply enforce only blocks on categories of primary concern (such as "porn" or "spyware"). They offer the ability to block things like "social networking sites", "travel sites" and all sorts of other options -- but I leave most of those untouched.
I find that if users generally can't even tell a filter is in place, they're more likely to respect a block when they finally come across it (probably trying to do something they know is "off limits" for the workplace anyway). They're not motivated to employ complicated work-arounds like they would be if they felt it was necessary for MANY sites they wanted to view.
When I, as a consumer, purchase a pre-paid card with X number of usable minutes on it, I typically plan on using the whole thing, OR I'm not that concerned, because the ability to make some phone calls, as needed, is what I'm really paying for to begin with. If the fine print on the card informs me, before the purchase, that there's an expiration date on the card - then fine. I can opt to accept that, or decline the purchase if I think that's unacceptable.
I don't really have a problem with the phone company selling the cards keeping expired, unused balances as a profit. It makes no sense to me that govt. should expend resources of its own to "manage" these unused balances. How much does it really cost the taxpayers annually to keep that system going? (They've got to keep paying to place those unclaimed property ads in the newspapers, I assume .... and keep a staff employed to keep track of everything.)
Inactivity fees are a different issue, though ... because most of the time, they were designed to catch the unaware by surprise. People who assumed a $100 gift card would still be worth $100 when they got around to visiting the store 6 months after issuance shouldn't be suddenly told "You only have $40 left because we deducted $10 for each month you didn't use it!" You don't see manufacturer coupons or rebates deducting portions of the total discount depending on how quickly you use them. But you DO almost always see expiration dates clearly stated on them, and we all understand that concept.
That didn't work either.... Disk Utility showed the drive partitions as greyed-out and I had no options except to delete them and re-create new ones.
The last resort was to back up everything I could onto an external USB drive, from inside Windows 7 (since it could still read the OS X partitions it mangled), and do a reformat/reinstall.
Actually, I ran across a nasty bug when I first put Windows 7 on a drive in my Mac Pro.
My system has 4 physical hard drives in it. The first was labeled "OS X Boot" and the 2nd. and 3rd. had labels of "Data 1" and "Data 2". I installed Windows 7 on the 4th. drive. All went well, except when booted into Windows 7, it displayed the OS X drives out of order. (With the latest version of Boot Camp drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD, they provide "read only" support of the OS X HFS+ volumes in Windows.) It was assigning my "Data 1" drive as drive G" while "Data 2" was drive F:, and "OS X Boot" was given letter H:.
I figured "No big deal. I know how to fix it when Windows does this stuff ....", and went into Computer Management and Disk Management under Administrative Tools, and told it to reassign the drive letters in the order I wanted them. It did, as requested, and all seemed to be well.
EXCEPT, on reboot into OS X, I discovered my OS X drives were rendered unbootable/unusable! Windows 7 could see them just fine - but the Mac didn't like them natively anymore! Worse yet, I tried all sorts of disk repair utilities on them and the usual result was being shown that the drives were of an "unrecognized partition type" and options to repair them were "greyed out"! One program, Drive Genius, actually let me verify and repair the volumes - but after running through everything, insisted the drives were "ok" and there was nothing to repair!
Apparently, the Disk Management in Windows actually rewrites something in the partition table when it reassigns drive letters (not just a registry update), and whatever it does changes things JUST enough to screw up OS X from using the HFS+ volumes normally. Apple really needs to update their drivers so they prevent people from being able to write to the drives from Windows' disk management tool, since this is the case. "Read only HFS+ support" should mean just that!
Usually, this sort of thing winds up being a problem with one of the big cable trunks underground with hundreds (thousands?) of pairs of copper in it. Their "fiddling around" amounts to trying to move you from one static-filled pair of wires to another unused one that "sounds cleaner" at the time they're doing the work.
We've dealt with some of that at my workplace in St. Louis, MO too. We're in a rather "dead" part of town, where no new businesses have opened up in decades. We're across from a huge cemetery (so not much of a potential customer base there), and much of the property is taken up by a railroad switching yard and tracks. After a good rain, we get static and disconnected calls left and right, as often as not.
I'd be curious to know how many complaints it takes before AT&T is willing to undergo the expense to actually rip out and replace one of these trunks? I bet it VERY rarely ever happens though. Around here, my guess is, at least 50% of their copper wires are in nearly unusable condition, but they don't care because they don't have enough customer demand to require more than that anyway.... They just keep juggling things around, and even if they start running out of clean pairs, they probably play a game of stalling a complaining customer until someone else on that trunk disconnects service, so they can re-use their pair.
True, but I don't think this was nearly as much about "going green" as it was "saving green". Local govt. all over the country has been proving time and time again that their *true* primary goal revolves around generating revenue and cutting costs, vs. motorist safety. Look at all the red light cameras they've been installing. Studies keep showing they cause MORE rear-end collisions, and they certainly create a number of legal and ethical questions. (EG. Most police departments have an internal policy or "code of ethics" stating they will keep private business out of their revenue collection process - yet they hire private contractors to both install AND run the red light cameras, with them getting a lion's share of the "cut" of each ticket that's paid!) But they really like the big boost to their bottom line they create, so screw the detractors!
And in this case, you see the same behavior.... Problem identified with new LED traffic signals and snow, but obvious solutions SLOW to be implemented, because it negatively impacts their cost-savings potential.
It's no different than advertisers spending gobs of money to hire celebrities as spokespeople for their products. Do you really think some football player is the "authority figure" for determining that a new Ford truck is the best value for your dollar, or that some ex baseball player is an expert on spray paint, or??
The thing is, it's people like Hollywood movie makers, rock stars and sports figures who have access to the media mouthpiece. When they want to deliver a message, they've got the ability to get it delivered to a large audience easily. Many of the people who *really* have deep knowledge of subject DON'T have access to (or even an interest in) broadcasting their opinions and insights.
Seems to me this is completely parallel with the music industry today..... A lot of people are quick to claim the big record companies are "no longer relevant", yet currently, it's still primarily the people signed to major labels who get the majority of radio airplay and exposure in the mass media. It's all in transition, but it's probably still premature to declare the traditional "big publishers" dead.
I think your point about them functioning as "filters" is key. That's the real double-edged sword of the problem, for both the music and book publishing industries. The general public doesn't really have the time (or wants to invest the time) to dig through all the content out there, to discover what's good and what's not. They like to *think* they're intelligently making those selections for themselves, but what they ACTUALLY expect (often without even consciously realizing it) is to only have to pick and choose from a limited pool. (EG. I can get on Usenet right now, and go visit an alt.binaries group specializing in complete music albums uploaded as MP3s. Unfortunately, despite all that content having ZERO cost to me, I wouldn't even waste my time downloading most of what I see there, because there are literally thousands of artists and albums up there I've never heard of before! Until I download, save, and individually listen to them, I have no clue what to expect. That doesn't strike me as entertaining or fun at all. Rather, it strikes me as a considerable amount of work!) The record labels serve that purpose of filtering and organizing the content, so at least when you or I visit the local record store (or virtual one by way of iTunes or what-not), everything is placed in categories, and we have certain expectations about the quality of the sound recording we're getting. (The major labels do at least use good quality microphones and recording equipment to make the recordings.)
On the flip-side, there are certainly some very talented writers (and musicians) out there who fall through the cracks, when forced to go through major publishers. They tend to promote material that's similar enough to a previously successful work so their risk of having a "dud" is minimized. That means people bucking the current trend are at an automatic disadvantage, if they don't find alternate channels to publish themselves.
If you read my comment more carefully, you'd see where I said people guesstimated it at around $899 BEFORE Kevin Rose commented that it looked like it'd be selling for a lot less than people were expecting. That means a lot less than $899....
There's also been quite a bit of rumbling about Apple planning on selling 2 different tablets, not just one. Most likely, the first model out will be around 9" or 10" in size, and be the cheaper model. That sets the stage for a second variant to come out that might have a larger surface-area and be more of a complete OS X based tablet computer. It may well be the later which caused people to have those "over $1,000" estimates, and that'd make sense if it's going to be a full-blown portable computer, potentially replacing an existing model like a Macbook or Macbook Air.
(Personally, I think Apple would do well to design a new iMac which lets you detach the system from the base, and then carry it around as a tablet ... but who knows?)
IMHO, it would be pure stupidity for Apple to release a plain old e-book reader, "e-ink" based or not. The market is already flooded with such devices, and early adopters have jumped all over the Kindle, over most of the competitors. The main reason Apple might want to join in is so they can sell book content on the iTunes store (which is basically becoming the 'iTunes media store" anyway, vs. the "music store" title it still retains to date). That's why I'm sure they're going to aim a little bigger than just another book reader.
You make a valid point about the potential killing off of the art of home-brewing ... but other than that (very valid) issue, I'm not so sure your other complaints would really matter in the long-run. At the end of the day, the drugs society considers "more acceptable to consume regularly" are really just a matter of how popularized they've become. Caffeine, for example, is pretty much treated like a major food group, since it's found in everything from soda to cappuccino. Heck, they've even got caffeinated water you can buy. But if some other drug (like a small dose of the contents of ADD/ADHD medications, perhaps?) was the drug of choice to insert into carbonated beverages and such, instead? It might have been caffeine people generally thought was a little "unsettling" or "weird" to ingest as part of recreational drinking.
Actual translation: Another Slashdot user is unhappy with everything Apple makes or does, so he claims to have all the facts on a device that's not even released yet.
First of all, the rumors I've heard from people in the industry like Kevin Rose were saying the new tablet is going to come in at a "surprisingly low price". I'd say that means definitely in the under $1000 range -- since most of the rumor sites were guesstimating it at a price point around $899 or so, before that.
It only makes sense that this tablet would support 3G cellular, so it's possible it will be sold with contracts by a carrier of choice, meaning its cost will be further subsidized. If that happens, you may well be able to buy one of these with only $200-300 down.
I don't get your worry about the "battery sucking screen" either? There are possibilities like LED backlighting that runs the perimeter of the screen, casting light in towards the center. This gives the low power consumption advantages found with OLED backlit displays, coupled with a major cost-savings over the expense of doing a full OLED display with a grid of LEDs across the whole back of the panel.
In any case, a 9" or 10" tablet would have FAR more room for a battery than an iPhone or iPod Touch does, and both of those devices run for 4-5 hours on a charge.
Apple has tried to build a tablet device for many years now, and has aborted at least 2 previous attempts when Jobs decided one piece or another of the technology needed to make it successful wasn't ready or available.... I don't doubt it may "only have one button" on the front, but that's a good thing, for a device that claims to be a tablet. How many buttons are there on your *real* tablets or pads of paper? I'm pretty excited to see what Apple releases, because I know this has been thought out by Apple for a long time. If it was just a "big iPod touch" and little more, they would have released it at least a year ago already - and it wouldn't have been a really big deal.
Seems obvious to me. They were still getting paid SOMETHING (if not "market rate"), while basically not having to do a lot of real WORK.... Why not stay and ride it out until the very end? Many of them were probably good friends with each other after all that time, so coming to work there was kind of like a big social club. And I'm sure they figured it wasn't going to be THAT big a deal to find something else whenever it did finally die out. (After all, the whole Duke Nukem franchise was VERY well known and liked. It's easy enough to explain that you did lots of "great work" on the project, but its ultimate failure wasn't some direct result of YOUR poor code, right?)
I'd tend to agree with you too. My theory is that basically, an individual who would be willing to put up with the "taboo" nature of the industry, the labeling of your character that comes with the territory, and the relatively high risk to one's personal safety -- all because it's "easy money, compared to other jobs out there" is the type who isn't likely to do well in school either.
Good intentions don't count for much, if you're too lazy to act on them.
Honestly, I don't have any problems with a woman deciding to market her body/looks/dance moves by way of a strip club. It's no less "valid" a way to earn a living than anything else. But most of the time, I think they attract immature ladies who just want to "party and have a good time", and aren't thinking long-term enough to realize their looks aren't going to last forever. The fact they receive so much cash money that there's strong motivation to hide from the IRS is another factor (at least here in the USA). I was good friends with a former stripper who told me she literally raked in thousands per week when she was 18 or 19, working at the right clubs in New York. But after a while, her biggest problem was literally figuring out what to do with the cash. Most of the strippers bought a lot of clothes, and a used sports or luxury car or something ... But after that? They tend to blow it on drugs and drinking, partying, going out to eat at expensive places, hotels and travel ... Actually saving it would quickly mean you had traceable income, and you'd get stuck getting taxed on it.
There's probably an untapped niche market here for financial advisors/money managers for people in the adult entertainment industry ... but again, the challenge would be getting immature 18 year olds to take any interest in it and TRUST someone with their money.
AT&T worked out a deal where the hotspots at McDonalds are partnered up with them, so iPhone customers can automatically get signed in and use them for free. It's been that way for months now. I've used the one in my neighborhood a number of times, as well as a couple of them when I was on a road trip.
Only complaint I've had, in general, with Mc Wi-Fi is, I think someone needs to do site surveys on those things and improve the reception! I've always gotten pretty weak signals that are still generally usable, but worse than I get throughout most of my house with my own wireless router.
I think what you're lamenting is really just the inevitable growth of the industry as a whole.
I used to have an 8-bit TRS-80 computer, myself, and it, too had circuit diagrams floating around for it, and 3rd. party add-ons that required opening the case and attaching colored leads to certain parts of the circuit board. Expansion cards? Yep, it had them too, by way of "cartridges" that enhanced the basic hardware (speech synthesizer, etc.).
But can you *really* expect that not to have changed, as the personal computer moved from a hobbyist interest to a staple item for the general public?
Truthfully, the expansion cards for PC clones became their single biggest "weak spot" and support headache. That's why the PC industry tried to hard to integrate most of that stuff onto motherboards over time, from the sound card to the serial/parallel/IDE controllers, to the ethernet card. I remember PLENTY of times I bought an expansion card, only to discover my PC no longer booted at all with it installed!
What "crazy", in my opinion, are all of these people who don't set their privacy settings on Facebook with a bit of care, before spouting off all sorts of random statements!
I agree with many people here, that her comments sound like venting by a typical angry/exhausted student. But all I know is, if I was attending school someplace, I sure wouldn't set up my Facebook or MySpace account so my teachers could view my comments!
Even if you never plan on saying anything negative towards them on there, don't you think it's giving away a bit too much information about your personal life? As a rule, your professors or teachers are people you essentially HIRED to do the job of teaching you some material. They're NOT your friends/buddies.
People who don't know you really well are the most likely to grossly misinterpret your comments, photos or videos you post online.... Why take the risk?
I guess I don't follow your "logic" here?
Apple is essentially running their business the SAME way *all* personal computer businesses did back in the 1980's, before the "PC clone" became the de-facto standard machine. Many of the people I encounter who have a strong dislike of Microsoft are simply saying they hate the way the company's products homogenized everything in the personal computer world. They essentially got things to the point where you either ran Microsoft's OS and flagship applications (like Office), or else your alternatives were pretty much all non-commercial products developed by community (like Linux or BSD). These people LIKE Apple because they're the last holdout of the "old way" of selling computers, where each manufacturer had a proprietary system that they tried to enhance and prove was the "best way" to use a computer. They're pretty much the last relevant competitor to Microsoft products that goes "toe to toe" with them, claiming they offer an "easy to use" solution appropriate for anybody -- even opening hundreds of retail stores to ensure the "average Joe" can view and purchase their offerings locally (since Microsoft products had that same visibility on store shelves everywhere).
In my mind, Apple is *far* from becoming "Microsoft 2.0". For starters, Steve Jobs has stated on multiple occasions that he has no interest in having the MOST market-share. He's not interested in playing the "grow as fast as possible, as large as possible" game. Sure, he wants Apple to be successful and its market-share to grow ... but if being the "biggest" was his true goal, why would he sit on HUGE cash reserves and not re-invest them in growing the company larger? Additionally, he's refrained from putting any type of Product Activation in any version of OS X. There's not even so much as a CD key to be entered. It simply verifies you're trying to install it on a machine Apple actually built for the purpose, and installs with no hassles. Apple is able to do that primarily because they actually sell their own computer systems, unlike Microsoft. (Hey, another difference!)
I'm not defending Steve Jobs on a personal level. I get the idea that like many successful CEO types, he's arrogant, demanding, and tends to be rude and judgmental. (I'd also question his claimed religious beliefs, given the realities of his lifestyle and character ... but maybe that's a bit unfair, since religion is such a personal thing to begin with.) But none of that is really relevant to whether or not I think he's running his company well. I think without Steve Jobs stepping in, Apple would be dead or at best, completely irrelevant today.
Funny... but I'd say your reply sounds pretty "asshat" to me. (If that hack job of a word really HAS any meaning in the first place?)
Are you going to constantly stand around, right behind a 3 year old, every hour they're awake, to make sure they don't stick something in their mouth that doesn't belong there? Really?
The world is FULL of risks. I'm not saying it's 100% safe for a young kid to play outside. It's not and NEVER was. So what? You put your kid at greater statistical risk of harm every time you put him or her in your car or truck and drive someplace! And how often do you hear of 3 year olds dying because they got trampled by neighbor's dogs? That's practically in the "freak accident" category, if you ask me! And it's ALSO why we have leash laws, and why DOG owners carry some responsibility for their pets. My kid shouldn't have to be locked indoors because of fear of an over-eager dog someone owns!
(Incidentally, the risk of getting struck by lightning thing was directly taken from Penn & Teller's B.S. Season 6, episode 8, titled "Stranger Danger". I made no effort to prove or disprove their claim, but they do quote sources for it in the episode.)
And I wasn't saying there was a problem with a 6 and a 7 year old not wanting to play with a 3 year old, either. My point was, the parent who freaked out about the situation seemed to be the one who thought it was a problem. (As long as they were all playing together, he wasn't going to run down the street and start knocking on my door about anything.)
I'm 38 years old, but I still remember my own childhood pretty vividly, and I also remember the later years of living with my parents, at home. In the former, it was *commonplace* for parents on the block to let their kids outside to play, without any worries at all, at least until dinner-time. Then, you'd hear parents go out and ring a bell or yell for their kid to come home - and they did. It was really that simple. In the latter, I recall, for example, a 4 or 5 year old kid (a teenage friend's little brother), who would walk up and down the street by himself all the time. He often came by, ringing our doorbell, and just wanted to talk or play with my younger brother or what-not. Sure, we thought of him as a bit of a nuisance ... but nobody thought, "Wow! How unsafe! I better run and tell his parents he's down here!"
Nope... you're correct, but metering electric usage is, IMHO, a little more of a necessity than metering Internet usage. Electric power generation involves very real and substantial costs that aren't really a matter of one-time investments and minimal upkeep to "upgrade" so more power is supplied. EG. If I put several large businesses on a power grid and they start drawing a lot of electric power, I very well might be looking at putting another generator online to handle the load. Every hour that generator turns, it's using up coal or oil or natural gas. Or let's say bigger dollars were invested up-front to go with a nuclear plant instead? Ok, great ... but that's kind of like trying to avoid paying for spent inkjet cartridges by purchasing a more expensive color laser printer to do your heavy color printing jobs on. Eventually, the bill comes due by way of a set of 4 expensive toner cartridges, a new fuser and drum. With a nuclear plant, you're looking at a HUGE cost of disposal of radioactive waste at some point .. and don't forget the cost of hiring all the employees who keep it operating safely.
By contrast, dealing with "heavy bandwidth users" is a different beast. Yeah, eventually, you might need to upgrade some back-end circuits, or even invest in new routing/switching gear. But that new Cisco switch you put in isn't going to require a whole crew of employees operating it 24 hours/7 days to keep it functional. The new optical fiber you put in isn't going to consume more natural resources you're paying for, the more data moves through it.