Yeah.... my experience in the St. Louis, MO area is similar. I used Verizon for years, and then US Cellular for a couple years, before reluctantly switching to AT&T (only because I wanted to use the iPhone when it first came out).
If AT&T actually has the audacity to challenge Verizon's advertising claims, then I think someone needs to challenge AT&T on their "More bars in more places" ad campaign, and ridiculous promises of "The least dropped calls of any network"!
The only truth I found to the former ad was when hanging around parts of our south city area where there's lots of nightlife. Yep, more bars in more places SERVING ALCOHOL.... On my phone, not so much!
I had NO dropped calls I can remember on US Cellular, and that was using a Razr phone, which wasn't exactly notorious for its great abilities to keep calls connected or anything. As soon as I got the iPhone w/AT&T, dropped calls became a daily occurrence. I've upgraded to the 3G iPhone since then, and sure, the data network runs better - but just as many dropped call issues as before (so that kind of rules out an isolated defective iPhone incident).
I have other friends who switched from Sprint and T-Mobile to AT&T, and they ALL say the same basic thing.... More dropped calls and "no service" areas with AT&T than they ever had before.
I thought Oregon Trail had been re-released and updated multiple times over the years, already? I know it's not exactly a big seller anymore, so I suspect it quietly receives a new "version X" upgrade and only briefly hits store shelves before dying out.... but only 2-3 years ago, I'm pretty sure I saw a new version of it at the local Office Depot or OfficeMax?
I'm glad you mentioned this one, because I was just about to post the same thing!
Back in the day, the Wing Commander series kind of pushed the envelope of making a video-game feel like you were "playing an interactive movie". They featured real Hollywood actors with some measure of credibility in the genre, yet advanced the story without making you feel like you were "on rails", only allowed to play the game a certain pre-programmed way. (It's been a LONG time since I played it, but as I recall, you didn't have to win each battle to move to the next piece of the story. It was perfectly acceptable to fight and LOSE individual battles, although certain ones were "key", and others might take the story a different direction if you didn't win them before continuing.)
I think there needs to be a middle ground here, and frankly, I'd say your ISP goes over the line with all of those demands. If I was using your ISP and was told I had to "bring in a receipt as proof that my PC was cleaned by a professional", I'd laugh and ask for my account to be canceled, right after that.
Among other things, I own my own business doing on-site service, much of which involves cleaning viruses and spyware off customer PCs - so I would obviously do this kind of work myself. (Or would you accept a receipt where I billed myself for my time?)
This stuff can happen to anyone, especially when 90% or more use the inherently insecure Windows operating system. In fact, severa of my very computer-savvy friends have managed to infect their PCs with nasty trojan horse viruses, not because they're "clueless" -- but because they took some risks downloading pirated software from Usenet, and someone decided to infect the self-extracting.EXE file that extracted the multi-sgement.RAR files they downloaded.
(Before you "throw the first stone" - consider that most computer professionals have a real need to evaluate fully-functional commercial software packages, without limitations or hassles of arbitrary "30 day trial periods" and so on. Many of us say "Screw the letter of the law!" in such instances. The reality is, it's YOUR butt on the line if you recommend some expensive software package be purchased at your workplace, only to find out months later that it has shortcomings that make it far less useful or reliable than you promised everyone it would be. Better to get your hands on a pirated copy to put through its paces for a while, so you know what you're getting into.)
And considering most people I know who use their computer enough to order broadband Internet in the first place own SEVERAL computers, typically networked together at home - it's not at all inconceivable they'd clean ONE machine, only to find out a second one was causing some/all of the spamming or flooding issues.
Well, it seems to me the genetic issues you bring up could ALSO be considered an ethical dilemma, because someone is (rather arrogantly) assuming they're making the "superior choice" by creating clones of a particular human being, despite the negative ramifications the lack of diversity will ultimately cause the human race.
Additionally, while no, I don't think most people are really concerned we'd clone humans to "use them as food", we very well *might* regard cloning as a "more acceptable" way to fight wars. Create human clone soldiers, so if they die, the "original people" they were cloned from are still around?
Umm, yeah -- because people who like to shop and buy from the iTunes music store have SUCH a vastly superior experience when they use other music players/indexers for Windows, right?
Apple has often stated that they have no interest in providing people with "budget" computers. I think that's an excellent choice, too. It parallels what most industries do. Do you think premium home stereo manufacturers find it beneficial to cater to the budget-minded consumers? (See any entry-level priced speakers from B&O lately?) Any budget priced camera from Hasselblad?
I don't care for your designer sunglasses comparison, because those are truly an example of products that offer practically nothing for the extra money besides branding and arguably, style (though cheap copies look practically identical to me, in most cases). Studies have been done on the quality and UV filtering abilities of the expensive designer sunglasses vs. the cheap generics at the corner drug store - and in those respects, they're pretty much equal.
I think many Mac purchasers are looking for a superior computing experience, which they feel Apple gives them by way of OS X and an elegant, well-engineered machine with above-average support after the sale. If all of these people simply wanted the "absolute latest and greatest regardless of added value" - Apple would have no luck selling the lower-spec configurations of their machines! (Why settle for a 20" iMac with the slower video card when you could get the 24" one with faster CPU and video!? Why buy the dual, quad-core 2.66Ghz Mac Pro when they also offer a 3.06Ghz variation?) Entire web sites are devoted to trying to find the "sweet spot" of price vs. performance for given lines of Mac systems (www.lowendmac.com for example).
.. gray collar, because much of I.T. lies in this fuzzy area between blue and white collar job descriptions.
On one hand, you need to have education and intelligence above what's typically needed for a "blue collar" job. (I realize there are plenty of jobs, like various areas of construction, where one needs to use their brain, have some math skills, etc. etc. But they probably re-use the same basic set of skills for years, as long as they specialize in the same job, like flooring installation, or drywalling, or ??) With I.T., everything changes regularly -- if for no other reason, simply because companies need excuses to keep reselling people the same items they already bought 2 or 3 years earlier. Also, the fact that I.T. workers usually work in climate-controlled office environments compares to the norm for a "white collar" position. All in all, I.T. workers are paid for their knowledge more than for their physical labor.
On the other hand, like a "blue collar" job, I.T. workers usually get stuck doing everything from cleaning dust and dirt out of the insides of workstations to crawling under tables and desks, along dirty floors, and climbing ladders to reach drop ceilings or duct-work, to get network cabling run. They may spend a good part of a workday un-boxing new systems, carrying them around to their destinations, and hooking up cables - plus carting off the old ones. They may be asked to clear printer jams, or go out on a shop floor in a factory environment, and disassemble equipment that has a computer board and processor at the heart of it (maybe even to fix an issue as simple as the CMOS battery having gone dead, so the BIOS no longer holds settings).
I think the issue is a lot more complex. True, if you hold a phone to your ear, other drivers can see you're on the phone and take that into account. But there are additional "risks" involved with people holding phones to their ear while driving. For example, what about people who accidentally drop the phone while driving? Not only will they feel strongly compelled to reach around for it to pick it back up as quickly as possible (creating a very high risk of having an accident in the process), but what about those "freak accident" cases where said phone goes right under the brake or accelerator pedal and blocks it? I've actually had something similar happen once. It's no fun when you try to ignore something you just dropped, only to realize it's preventing you from operating the vehicle properly so you HAVE to try to reach down or kick it out of the way.....
You're right about item #1, but the car stereo has always been a cause of accidents when people looked down at it to change a station or otherwise manipulate it, and crashed into someone else. I don't know if anyone bothered to study it, but I'll bet if they did, they'd find the aftermarket stereos are statistically even more likely to cause accidents than the original factory ones, since they almost always have smaller buttons, more options, and more complex displays.
Still, we seem to generally agree that having some music or talk radio to listen to in the background while driving relaxes us and makes a trip much more tolerable -- so we accept it as a "good" thing, regardless of the statistics.
As for item #2, it's a good theory -- but I don't think many passengers really do any of this as often as you give them credit for. In my experience, a passenger in the middle of some discussion they think is important will keep on talking, without paying any attention to the situation around them, assuming "the driver has that under control". Passengers only tend to interrupt their speech when a driver actually scares them (by running a red light, for example, or missing an exit). When passengers DO take a cue to pause their speech for a few seconds, it's more often because the driver is making some sort of verbal noise (perhaps an "Ummm...." as they try to read a road sign, or they actually say "Uhh.... do you see a sign for around here?" They're likely to utter similar statements while talking on the phone. (Might not ask the person if they SEE a particular item, but they're likely to mutter something about trying to find it.)
I've got to say, I found this whole debate/thread very interesting.
I've considered myself an atheist, yet the "agnostics" have put forth a rather intriguing argument, that at least some of them consider themselves such, because they simply believe it's "unknowable" if a god or gods exist.
I guess I've always felt, previously, that the "agnostics" simply felt "uncertain" about the type/nature of god(s) that might be out there, so simply didn't want to subscribe to a particular "faith". (So in effect, it was sort of a label for "I very generically believe in some sort of creator, but don't want to follow any one religion.")
I'd also agree that organized religions have done considerable harm to society, but wouldn't go so far as to say religion is universally a "bad" concept. If nothing else, it probably serves as a "scare tactic" that tends to keep a lot of people away from a life of crime. Their reasoning is arguably simplistic and flawed, but in the end, the results are the only thing that really matter to the rest of us. (If someone decides not to shoot and kill you out of anger, only because of their fear of "eternal punishment", you should be glad your life was spared, period!)
But beyond that, many organized religions believe in charitable works, which do benefit society as a whole. I'd much rather see these things being done on a strictly volunteer basis by church groups, than as government mandates, with the funding forcibly taken out of my paycheck every week!
When you speak of "religions holding humanity back", I'm not really convinced this is so. Lumping all of us together as "humanity" is a pretty BROAD brush to paint with. Individuals will always vary, from the most clever, insightful and philosophical among us to the most simple-minded and disinterested. If you eliminated religion, I'm not sure what would replace it for some people?
Back in the earlier days of CDR, a "high speed recorder" was recording at a whopping 4x or so. As drive recording speeds increased, the CDRs rated for those higher speeds had to become more responsive to the laser hitting it for a shorter period of time. How do you accomplish that? One big way was spreading the dye out in a thinner layer. That's likely to have a negative effect on longevity.
I agree with you... The biggest energy users in a typical home are items that pretty much need to stay on consistently day and night, anyway. My water heater is like that. No point having it if I only get hot water on demand *some* of the times I want it. The refrigerator will spoil all the food if it shuts down to save energy during "peak hours" of the day. And I already have a programmable thermostat for the A/C and furnace, but I've never seen any real cost savings by setting it up to run less often during the day when nobody's home. (Once the walls and floors and ceilings warm up (or cool down in the winter) to a certain point, then the A/C or furnace has to work a lot harder to move the temperature back to the comfort zone for your return home.
I've been using the OS X version of Firefox 3.5 on a Mac Pro and I've experienced a problem where the browser freezes (spinning beach-ball icon) every time I log onto my EasyNews account and do a search or request a list of content in a newsgroup that has a large number of results.
Typically, it will quickly display the first page full of results, then freeze a second or two after that. If I wait long enough (several minutes or more) and come back to the browser, then sometimes I find it's no longer frozen and I can scroll on down to the bottom of the page. Other times, it seemed to be permanently frozen (but I honestly never tried waiting HOURS or anything to see if it ever un-froze).
I anxiously applied the 3.51 update, hoping it addressed this problem... but nope. Exact same issue.
Oddly enough, my friend using a 24" iMac says he can't replicate my problem in Firefox at all, though we're both on the same version of OS X and both have EasyNews accounts.
I already tried the usual "Mac troubleshooting"... running a "repair permissions" in Disk Utility, deleting all the "prefs" files related to Firefox, etc. No luck.
You'd be surprised how often people get upset about junk mail they're receiving, when in reality, they receive it because when they made a legitimate purchase a year or so previous, they left some option on the form check-marked that said "Allow us to contact you about our sales and other information."
It's also VERY often the case that once a legitimate business has your email address, they proceed to "spam" you with advertising on a regular basis, until you click someplace to opt out. Unfortunately, so many spammers provide fake 'opt out" or "unsubscribe" links these days, people are afraid to even try to use them anymore. (If it's a fake, clicking "unsubscribe" only confirms that a live human is still receiving and reading the mail they're spamming out -- so they can mark it as a "good" address to resell to others and keep using themselves.)
Lastly, I actually have been spammed by companies I never contacted before, yet they were selling legitimate products. I think that practice is pretty unethical and shady, but it happens with such places as discount cellphone accessory dealers and inkjet cartridge and laser toner discounters. Sometimes, they really *do* have pretty good deals on their products, and if you buy from them, you will receive what was advertised. I can easily see how "John Q. Public" might get such a junk mail ad, discover he can get that replacement cellphone battery for his phone for only $9 instead of the $49 the local stores are asking, and takes them up on it.
If the Rorschach is simply a tool for the person administering it to "better understand the patient's mental state in a way that doesn't allow them to employ the usual defensive responses" - then there's no reason to believe releasing a specific set of 10 of these ink splotches into the public domain would affect the outcome!
You're essentially saying it's just a way to show people a bunch of unique but meaningless splotches (vs. actual questions that a reader can perceive the "correct" responses to and tailor his/her answers to suit), so you can study their responses in a more "pure" way. That means you could accomplish the same things by presenting them with 10 different pieces of string in uniquely wavy or twisted patterns, or with 10 randomly torn chunks from a sheet of construction paper, or ?? The patterns themselves are insignificant.
I didn't know about CompleteFTP before. Just looked at the web site. It sounds pretty full-featured, but I'm not so impressed by the pricing.
$299 for a single sever "professional" license, I could swallow, IF it included unlimited free updates for the life of the product or something. But that "1 year support + updates" thing doesn't do much for me.
I realize it's far cheaper than Serv-U (which wants something like $1000 for an equivalent-featured product with 1 year of support). But that pricing is WAY out of line, IMHO.
You guys selling these Windows FTP servers aren't so much competing against each other, as you are, competing against my cost of putting together a free Linux or BSD server solution instead.
The longer I use one of your product, the more costly it becomes, if "support" has to be constantly re-purchased.... That heavily tilts the value equation towards Linux or BSD.
Seriously, the economic conditions are the #1 reason our company won't be deploying Windows 7 within the next year.
Our business is heavily tied to the housing market and new business construction (shopping centers, gas stations, dept. stores, etc.) We're still on Windows XP on our workstations and laptops (about 50 machines total). A migration to Windows 7 would basically involve buying all new hardware too, because other than maybe 3 or 4 of the desktops we bought most recently, the rest are SLOW with XP, much less Windows 7.
Right now, we have no interest in changing anything unless the economy improves (which is doubtful it will lead to a big increase in sales for us before the next year is out).
And honestly, like another person said who posted here - there's a very real possibility to moving to Macs if we had to do a wholesale purchase of new hardware.... A few years ago, that would have been unthinkable around here. But since then, several employees have purchased new iMacs for use at home, and all have very positive things to say about them. We have a few applications we use which are only available for the Windows platform, but honestly, we could serve these just fine over our Terminal Server. The Microsoft remote desktop client for OS X works pretty well. As the systems administrator, I'd like a Mac workstation environment here, because it would practically eliminate spyware/virus hassles and save thousands per year on anti-virus software subscriptions. From what I've seen with Windows 7 so far, it has a HUGE number of configurable options buried in it, for everything imaginable. It embodies the typical MS idea that "more is more!", and it's going to be a huge undertaking building a comprehensive group policy to enforce across a LAN/WAN to lock down all the settings the way you want them for your corporate deployment. OS X tends to present the OS to the user the way Apple intended it to be, and many things aren't even configurable without 3rd. party "hacks". That's not always something a home "power user" finds as a positive, but I think it's beneficial for a business setting.
SFTP support is still spotty ....
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Switching from FTP to SFTP on the server side is great, in theory, but it's really only a trivial task for people running Unix type operating systems.
SSH isn't an integral part of most Windows operating systems, and nearly all of the well-regarded, commercial FTP servers for Windows have no SFTP support in them.
(I understand the Serv-U FTPD for Windows does support it, but it's an exception to the rule.)
I recently ran into this at my workplace. We've run the commercial WFTPD product (from Texas Imperial software) for years, but I had to get rid of it when our bank started requiring SFTP connections to send us electronic scans of daily check deposits.
One of my friends just tried deploying Google Apps to their entire company, switching everyone off of Outlook for email. 95% of the people were perfectly ok with it (at least after a bit of "coaching" so they didn't fear the changes). The problem was with the remaining 5%, who tended to be corporate "big wigs" and top producing sales staff. They took issue with things most of us would consider so minor, it was ridiculous -- yet were difficult to impossible to change.
EG. One guy had a hard time with the idea that auto-quoting of email replies didn't retain the exact same format Outlook used. Google uses the old-fashioned (familiar to all of us in the BBS days) method of quoting with ">" signs in front of each line. The user just couldn't cope with that change, insisting it looked totally "unprofessional".
It only figures that if blacks get the idea they're regularly getting verbally and physically attacked by whites, they're going to do the same right back.
And yes, you just exposed the fallacy of the "hate crime"... It's not applied universally. Rather, it's a tool to try to combat perceived inequalities between "minorities" and white males. (Heck, even a white female can qualify as long as she can show it was a male of ANY race who attacked her. Women are minorities too, you know....)
The way things work in society today, it's really the white male vs. all others. And until we eliminate all the favoritism based one someone's race or ethnic background, we're probably stuck with things this way for a long time to come. (Everyone believes the white male is about the only one who isn't "owed" some sort of compensation or assistance, at least here in the USA -- and if the white male happens to be homosexual, he might STILL be able to claim a need for that extra help.)
Honestly, I think the single biggest thing that might eventually tear this down is inter-racial dating. When enough of the population is asked for their race and has to check-mark "mixed", then we'll reach a crossroads where it no longer makes sense to try to categorize people by race.
Last time I was traveling, I was flying out to Portland, and I had connectivity issues with the free wi-fi offered by the airports. At one of them, I'd detect their SSID and successfully connect with a reasonably strong signal, but after going through their initial "terms of service" type page and using it for a couple minutes, I'd lose communications. The wi-fi said it was still connected but pings were just timing out and nothing would come up. I could disconnect, search for available wireless networks, and try to reconnect, which worked about half the time (but again, only for a few minutes).
All things considered, I'd rather find and use a rogue offering, set up a VPN tunnel, and use THAT!
Yep... but honestly, the biggest hurdle I couldn't get past with the old G3 iMac I tried to set up for my kid was lack of modern Flash support. Practically all those kids' web sites are written using Flash, and the last version they released for classic MacOS is so dated, it constantly crashes/freezes, or sites tell you "Sorry, but you need a newer version." and won't even try to display the content.
If someone was able to port an up-to-date version of the Flash plug-in for the old MacOS, that'd go a LONG way towards revitalizing older Macs as web browsing machines for the kids.
I'd argue that a second reason is for the challenge of it. It's been a while, but several years ago, I got ahold of a couple really old PCs (original IBM AT) and decided to see how much useful stuff could still be accomplished with one. (I had a female friend in a college dorm who didn't have a computer at all, and she was happy to use one of these if it could connect to the Internet and let her check her email and so forth.)
It was an interesting little project, actually. I wound up using a copy of the old "PFS First Choice" menu software, so it booted to a user-friendly and decent-looking "launcher" menu, where I created sub-menus for things like "Games", "Internet", and "Applications". I was able to find an IRC client for MS-DOS, as well as a suite of DOS-based programs for things like ftp, email and old Internet search tools like Archie and Veronica. I found a DOS port of the Lynx text-based web browser, but with a VGA video card upgrade in the machine, was able to use the Arachne browser too. (http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1047073.html)
No doubt, it's EASIER to just use a more modern PC. But there's some reward in knowing you gave one of these old systems a new lease on life and saved it from the scrap heap. To me, the bigger reward was just in trying to solve the "puzzle" of how to get it to do tasks we expect of our computers today.
If I find a random, unprotected WAP and decide to make use of it, I'm simply getting on the Internet without paying to do so. I have no knowledge of WHY the person providing the connection is doing so - but could reasonably assume they INTENDED to make it freely accessible. (After all, many people do this for the sake of providing their community with a public service. You can find web sites dedicated to it, with tips on the best antennas to place outdoors so people get the best connections, etc. etc.)
If I dial up some celebrity's personal cellphone, go into their voicemail, and enter a default PIN, I'm attempting to listen to their messages... a totally different thing. I'm not viewing someone's personal email, simply because I'm using an unprotected WAP they provided.
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Yeah.... my experience in the St. Louis, MO area is similar. I used Verizon for years, and then US Cellular for a couple years, before reluctantly switching to AT&T (only because I wanted to use the iPhone when it first came out).
If AT&T actually has the audacity to challenge Verizon's advertising claims, then I think someone needs to challenge AT&T on their "More bars in more places" ad campaign, and ridiculous promises of "The least dropped calls of any network"!
The only truth I found to the former ad was when hanging around parts of our south city area where there's lots of nightlife. Yep, more bars in more places SERVING ALCOHOL.... On my phone, not so much!
I had NO dropped calls I can remember on US Cellular, and that was using a Razr phone, which wasn't exactly notorious for its great abilities to keep calls connected or anything. As soon as I got the iPhone w/AT&T, dropped calls became a daily occurrence. I've upgraded to the 3G iPhone since then, and sure, the data network runs better - but just as many dropped call issues as before (so that kind of rules out an isolated defective iPhone incident).
I have other friends who switched from Sprint and T-Mobile to AT&T, and they ALL say the same basic thing.... More dropped calls and "no service" areas with AT&T than they ever had before.
I thought Oregon Trail had been re-released and updated multiple times over the years, already? I know it's not exactly a big seller anymore, so I suspect it quietly receives a new "version X" upgrade and only briefly hits store shelves before dying out.... but only 2-3 years ago, I'm pretty sure I saw a new version of it at the local Office Depot or OfficeMax?
You can still play the original for free online, here: http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html
Oh, and GameLoft just released a new version that plays on the iPhone too.
I'm glad you mentioned this one, because I was just about to post the same thing!
Back in the day, the Wing Commander series kind of pushed the envelope of making a video-game feel like you were "playing an interactive movie". They featured real Hollywood actors with some measure of credibility in the genre, yet advanced the story without making you feel like you were "on rails", only allowed to play the game a certain pre-programmed way. (It's been a LONG time since I played it, but as I recall, you didn't have to win each battle to move to the next piece of the story. It was perfectly acceptable to fight and LOSE individual battles, although certain ones were "key", and others might take the story a different direction if you didn't win them before continuing.)
I think there needs to be a middle ground here, and frankly, I'd say your ISP goes over the line with all of those demands.
If I was using your ISP and was told I had to "bring in a receipt as proof that my PC was cleaned by a professional", I'd laugh and ask for my account to be canceled, right after that.
Among other things, I own my own business doing on-site service, much of which involves cleaning viruses and spyware off customer PCs - so I would obviously do this kind of work myself. (Or would you accept a receipt where I billed myself for my time?)
This stuff can happen to anyone, especially when 90% or more use the inherently insecure Windows operating system. In fact, severa of my very computer-savvy friends have managed to infect their PCs with nasty trojan horse viruses, not because they're "clueless" -- but because they took some risks downloading pirated software from Usenet, and someone decided to infect the self-extracting .EXE file that extracted the multi-sgement .RAR files they downloaded.
(Before you "throw the first stone" - consider that most computer professionals have a real need to evaluate fully-functional commercial software packages, without limitations or hassles of arbitrary "30 day trial periods" and so on. Many of us say "Screw the letter of the law!" in such instances. The reality is, it's YOUR butt on the line if you recommend some expensive software package be purchased at your workplace, only to find out months later that it has shortcomings that make it far less useful or reliable than you promised everyone it would be. Better to get your hands on a pirated copy to put through its paces for a while, so you know what you're getting into.)
And considering most people I know who use their computer enough to order broadband Internet in the first place own SEVERAL computers, typically networked together at home - it's not at all inconceivable they'd clean ONE machine, only to find out a second one was causing some/all of the spamming or flooding issues.
Well, it seems to me the genetic issues you bring up could ALSO be considered an ethical dilemma, because someone is (rather arrogantly) assuming they're making the "superior choice" by creating clones of a particular human being, despite the negative ramifications the lack of diversity will ultimately cause the human race.
Additionally, while no, I don't think most people are really concerned we'd clone humans to "use them as food", we very well *might* regard cloning as a "more acceptable" way to fight wars. Create human clone soldiers, so if they die, the "original people" they were cloned from are still around?
Umm, yeah -- because people who like to shop and buy from the iTunes music store have SUCH a vastly superior experience when they use other music players/indexers for Windows, right?
Apple has often stated that they have no interest in providing people with "budget" computers. I think that's an excellent choice, too. It parallels what most industries do. Do you think premium home stereo manufacturers find it beneficial to cater to the budget-minded consumers? (See any entry-level priced speakers from B&O lately?) Any budget priced camera from Hasselblad?
I don't care for your designer sunglasses comparison, because those are truly an example of products that offer practically nothing for the extra money besides branding and arguably, style (though cheap copies look practically identical to me, in most cases). Studies have been done on the quality and UV filtering abilities of the expensive designer sunglasses vs. the cheap generics at the corner drug store - and in those respects, they're pretty much equal.
I think many Mac purchasers are looking for a superior computing experience, which they feel Apple gives them by way of OS X and an elegant, well-engineered machine with above-average support after the sale. If all of these people simply wanted the "absolute latest and greatest regardless of added value" - Apple would have no luck selling the lower-spec configurations of their machines! (Why settle for a 20" iMac with the slower video card when you could get the 24" one with faster CPU and video!? Why buy the dual, quad-core 2.66Ghz Mac Pro when they also offer a 3.06Ghz variation?) Entire web sites are devoted to trying to find the "sweet spot" of price vs. performance for given lines of Mac systems (www.lowendmac.com for example).
.. gray collar, because much of I.T. lies in this fuzzy area between blue and white collar job descriptions.
On one hand, you need to have education and intelligence above what's typically needed for a "blue collar" job. (I realize there are plenty of jobs, like various areas of construction, where one needs to use their brain, have some math skills, etc. etc. But they probably re-use the same basic set of skills for years, as long as they specialize in the same job, like flooring installation, or drywalling, or ??) With I.T., everything changes regularly -- if for no other reason, simply because companies need excuses to keep reselling people the same items they already bought 2 or 3 years earlier. Also, the fact that I.T. workers usually work in climate-controlled office environments compares to the norm for a "white collar" position. All in all, I.T. workers are paid for their knowledge more than for their physical labor.
On the other hand, like a "blue collar" job, I.T. workers usually get stuck doing everything from cleaning dust and dirt out of the insides of workstations to crawling under tables and desks, along dirty floors, and climbing ladders to reach drop ceilings or duct-work, to get network cabling run. They may spend a good part of a workday un-boxing new systems, carrying them around to their destinations, and hooking up cables - plus carting off the old ones. They may be asked to clear printer jams, or go out on a shop floor in a factory environment, and disassemble equipment that has a computer board and processor at the heart of it (maybe even to fix an issue as simple as the CMOS battery having gone dead, so the BIOS no longer holds settings).
I think the issue is a lot more complex. True, if you hold a phone to your ear, other drivers can see you're on the phone and take that into account. But there are additional "risks" involved with people holding phones to their ear while driving. For example, what about people who accidentally drop the phone while driving? Not only will they feel strongly compelled to reach around for it to pick it back up as quickly as possible (creating a very high risk of having an accident in the process), but what about those "freak accident" cases where said phone goes right under the brake or accelerator pedal and blocks it? I've actually had something similar happen once. It's no fun when you try to ignore something you just dropped, only to realize it's preventing you from operating the vehicle properly so you HAVE to try to reach down or kick it out of the way.....
You're right about item #1, but the car stereo has always been a cause of accidents when people looked down at it to change a station or otherwise manipulate it, and crashed into someone else. I don't know if anyone bothered to study it, but I'll bet if they did, they'd find the aftermarket stereos are statistically even more likely to cause accidents than the original factory ones, since they almost always have smaller buttons, more options, and more complex displays.
Still, we seem to generally agree that having some music or talk radio to listen to in the background while driving relaxes us and makes a trip much more tolerable -- so we accept it as a "good" thing, regardless of the statistics.
As for item #2, it's a good theory -- but I don't think many passengers really do any of this as often as you give them credit for. In my experience, a passenger in the middle of some discussion they think is important will keep on talking, without paying any attention to the situation around them, assuming "the driver has that under control". Passengers only tend to interrupt their speech when a driver actually scares them (by running a red light, for example, or missing an exit). When passengers DO take a cue to pause their speech for a few seconds, it's more often because the driver is making some sort of verbal noise (perhaps an "Ummm...." as they try to read a road sign, or they actually say "Uhh.... do you see a sign for around here?" They're likely to utter similar statements while talking on the phone. (Might not ask the person if they SEE a particular item, but they're likely to mutter something about trying to find it.)
I've got to say, I found this whole debate/thread very interesting.
I've considered myself an atheist, yet the "agnostics" have put forth a rather intriguing argument, that at least some of them consider themselves such, because they simply believe it's "unknowable" if a god or gods exist.
I guess I've always felt, previously, that the "agnostics" simply felt "uncertain" about the type/nature of god(s) that might be out there, so simply didn't want to subscribe to a particular "faith". (So in effect, it was sort of a label for "I very generically believe in some sort of creator, but don't want to follow any one religion.")
I'd also agree that organized religions have done considerable harm to society, but wouldn't go so far as to say religion is universally a "bad" concept. If nothing else, it probably serves as a "scare tactic" that tends to keep a lot of people away from a life of crime. Their reasoning is arguably simplistic and flawed, but in the end, the results are the only thing that really matter to the rest of us. (If someone decides not to shoot and kill you out of anger, only because of their fear of "eternal punishment", you should be glad your life was spared, period!)
But beyond that, many organized religions believe in charitable works, which do benefit society as a whole. I'd much rather see these things being done on a strictly volunteer basis by church groups, than as government mandates, with the funding forcibly taken out of my paycheck every week!
When you speak of "religions holding humanity back", I'm not really convinced this is so. Lumping all of us together as "humanity" is a pretty BROAD brush to paint with. Individuals will always vary, from the most clever, insightful and philosophical among us to the most simple-minded and disinterested. If you eliminated religion, I'm not sure what would replace it for some people?
Back in the earlier days of CDR, a "high speed recorder" was recording at a whopping 4x or so. As drive recording speeds increased, the CDRs rated for those higher speeds had to become more responsive to the laser hitting it for a shorter period of time. How do you accomplish that? One big way was spreading the dye out in a thinner layer. That's likely to have a negative effect on longevity.
I agree with you... The biggest energy users in a typical home are items that pretty much need to stay on consistently day and night, anyway. My water heater is like that. No point having it if I only get hot water on demand *some* of the times I want it. The refrigerator will spoil all the food if it shuts down to save energy during "peak hours" of the day. And I already have a programmable thermostat for the A/C and furnace, but I've never seen any real cost savings by setting it up to run less often during the day when nobody's home. (Once the walls and floors and ceilings warm up (or cool down in the winter) to a certain point, then the A/C or furnace has to work a lot harder to move the temperature back to the comfort zone for your return home.
I've been using the OS X version of Firefox 3.5 on a Mac Pro and I've experienced a problem where the browser freezes (spinning beach-ball icon) every time I log onto my EasyNews account and do a search or request a list of content in a newsgroup that has a large number of results.
Typically, it will quickly display the first page full of results, then freeze a second or two after that. If I wait long enough (several minutes or more) and come back to the browser, then sometimes I find it's no longer frozen and I can scroll on down to the bottom of the page. Other times, it seemed to be permanently frozen (but I honestly never tried waiting HOURS or anything to see if it ever un-froze).
I anxiously applied the 3.51 update, hoping it addressed this problem ... but nope. Exact same issue.
Oddly enough, my friend using a 24" iMac says he can't replicate my problem in Firefox at all, though we're both on the same version of OS X and both have EasyNews accounts.
I already tried the usual "Mac troubleshooting" ... running a "repair permissions" in Disk Utility, deleting all the "prefs" files related to Firefox, etc. No luck.
You'd be surprised how often people get upset about junk mail they're receiving, when in reality, they receive it because when they made a legitimate purchase a year or so previous, they left some option on the form check-marked that said "Allow us to contact you about our sales and other information."
It's also VERY often the case that once a legitimate business has your email address, they proceed to "spam" you with advertising on a regular basis, until you click someplace to opt out. Unfortunately, so many spammers provide fake 'opt out" or "unsubscribe" links these days, people are afraid to even try to use them anymore. (If it's a fake, clicking "unsubscribe" only confirms that a live human is still receiving and reading the mail they're spamming out -- so they can mark it as a "good" address to resell to others and keep using themselves.)
Lastly, I actually have been spammed by companies I never contacted before, yet they were selling legitimate products. I think that practice is pretty unethical and shady, but it happens with such places as discount cellphone accessory dealers and inkjet cartridge and laser toner discounters. Sometimes, they really *do* have pretty good deals on their products, and if you buy from them, you will receive what was advertised. I can easily see how "John Q. Public" might get such a junk mail ad, discover he can get that replacement cellphone battery for his phone for only $9 instead of the $49 the local stores are asking, and takes them up on it.
If the Rorschach is simply a tool for the person administering it to "better understand the patient's mental state in a way that doesn't allow them to employ the usual defensive responses" - then there's no reason to believe releasing a specific set of 10 of these ink splotches into the public domain would affect the outcome!
You're essentially saying it's just a way to show people a bunch of unique but meaningless splotches (vs. actual questions that a reader can perceive the "correct" responses to and tailor his/her answers to suit), so you can study their responses in a more "pure" way. That means you could accomplish the same things by presenting them with 10 different pieces of string in uniquely wavy or twisted patterns, or with 10 randomly torn chunks from a sheet of construction paper, or ?? The patterns themselves are insignificant.
I didn't know about CompleteFTP before. Just looked at the web site. It sounds pretty full-featured, but I'm not so impressed by the pricing.
$299 for a single sever "professional" license, I could swallow, IF it included unlimited free updates for the life of the product or something. But that "1 year support + updates" thing doesn't do much for me.
I realize it's far cheaper than Serv-U (which wants something like $1000 for an equivalent-featured product with 1 year of support). But that pricing is WAY out of line, IMHO.
You guys selling these Windows FTP servers aren't so much competing against each other, as you are, competing against my cost of putting together a free Linux or BSD server solution instead.
The longer I use one of your product, the more costly it becomes, if "support" has to be constantly re-purchased.... That heavily tilts the value equation towards Linux or BSD.
Seriously, the economic conditions are the #1 reason our company won't be deploying Windows 7 within the next year.
Our business is heavily tied to the housing market and new business construction (shopping centers, gas stations, dept. stores, etc.) We're still on Windows XP on our workstations and laptops (about 50 machines total). A migration to Windows 7 would basically involve buying all new hardware too, because other than maybe 3 or 4 of the desktops we bought most recently, the rest are SLOW with XP, much less Windows 7.
Right now, we have no interest in changing anything unless the economy improves (which is doubtful it will lead to a big increase in sales for us before the next year is out).
And honestly, like another person said who posted here - there's a very real possibility to moving to Macs if we had to do a wholesale purchase of new hardware.... A few years ago, that would have been unthinkable around here. But since then, several employees have purchased new iMacs for use at home, and all have very positive things to say about them. We have a few applications we use which are only available for the Windows platform, but honestly, we could serve these just fine over our Terminal Server. The Microsoft remote desktop client for OS X works pretty well. As the systems administrator, I'd like a Mac workstation environment here, because it would practically eliminate spyware/virus hassles and save thousands per year on anti-virus software subscriptions. From what I've seen with Windows 7 so far, it has a HUGE number of configurable options buried in it, for everything imaginable. It embodies the typical MS idea that "more is more!", and it's going to be a huge undertaking building a comprehensive group policy to enforce across a LAN/WAN to lock down all the settings the way you want them for your corporate deployment. OS X tends to present the OS to the user the way Apple intended it to be, and many things aren't even configurable without 3rd. party "hacks". That's not always something a home "power user" finds as a positive, but I think it's beneficial for a business setting.
Switching from FTP to SFTP on the server side is great, in theory, but it's really only a trivial task for people running Unix type operating systems.
SSH isn't an integral part of most Windows operating systems, and nearly all of the well-regarded, commercial FTP servers for Windows have no SFTP support in them.
(I understand the Serv-U FTPD for Windows does support it, but it's an exception to the rule.)
I recently ran into this at my workplace. We've run the commercial WFTPD product (from Texas Imperial software) for years, but I had to get rid of it when our bank started requiring SFTP connections to send us electronic scans of daily check deposits.
One of my friends just tried deploying Google Apps to their entire company, switching everyone off of Outlook for email. 95% of the people were perfectly ok with it (at least after a bit of "coaching" so they didn't fear the changes). The problem was with the remaining 5%, who tended to be corporate "big wigs" and top producing sales staff. They took issue with things most of us would consider so minor, it was ridiculous -- yet were difficult to impossible to change.
EG. One guy had a hard time with the idea that auto-quoting of email replies didn't retain the exact same format Outlook used. Google uses the old-fashioned (familiar to all of us in the BBS days) method of quoting with ">" signs in front of each line. The user just couldn't cope with that change, insisting it looked totally "unprofessional".
It only figures that if blacks get the idea they're regularly getting verbally and physically attacked by whites, they're going to do the same right back.
And yes, you just exposed the fallacy of the "hate crime" ... It's not applied universally. Rather, it's a tool to try to combat perceived inequalities between "minorities" and white males. (Heck, even a white female can qualify as long as she can show it was a male of ANY race who attacked her. Women are minorities too, you know....)
The way things work in society today, it's really the white male vs. all others. And until we eliminate all the favoritism based one someone's race or ethnic background, we're probably stuck with things this way for a long time to come. (Everyone believes the white male is about the only one who isn't "owed" some sort of compensation or assistance, at least here in the USA -- and if the white male happens to be homosexual, he might STILL be able to claim a need for that extra help.)
Honestly, I think the single biggest thing that might eventually tear this down is inter-racial dating. When enough of the population is asked for their race and has to check-mark "mixed", then we'll reach a crossroads where it no longer makes sense to try to categorize people by race.
Last time I was traveling, I was flying out to Portland, and I had connectivity issues with the free wi-fi offered by the airports. At one of them, I'd detect their SSID and successfully connect with a reasonably strong signal, but after going through their initial "terms of service" type page and using it for a couple minutes, I'd lose communications. The wi-fi said it was still connected but pings were just timing out and nothing would come up. I could disconnect, search for available wireless networks, and try to reconnect, which worked about half the time (but again, only for a few minutes).
All things considered, I'd rather find and use a rogue offering, set up a VPN tunnel, and use THAT!
Yep... but honestly, the biggest hurdle I couldn't get past with the old G3 iMac I tried to set up for my kid was lack of modern Flash support. Practically all those kids' web sites are written using Flash, and the last version they released for classic MacOS is so dated, it constantly crashes/freezes, or sites tell you "Sorry, but you need a newer version." and won't even try to display the content.
If someone was able to port an up-to-date version of the Flash plug-in for the old MacOS, that'd go a LONG way towards revitalizing older Macs as web browsing machines for the kids.
I'd argue that a second reason is for the challenge of it. It's been a while, but several years ago, I got ahold of a couple really old PCs (original IBM AT) and decided to see how much useful stuff could still be accomplished with one. (I had a female friend in a college dorm who didn't have a computer at all, and she was happy to use one of these if it could connect to the Internet and let her check her email and so forth.)
It was an interesting little project, actually. I wound up using a copy of the old "PFS First Choice" menu software, so it booted to a user-friendly and decent-looking "launcher" menu, where I created sub-menus for things like "Games", "Internet", and "Applications". I was able to find an IRC client for MS-DOS, as well as a suite of DOS-based programs for things like ftp, email and old Internet search tools like Archie and Veronica. I found a DOS port of the Lynx text-based web browser, but with a VGA video card upgrade in the machine, was able to use the Arachne browser too. (http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1047073.html)
No doubt, it's EASIER to just use a more modern PC. But there's some reward in knowing you gave one of these old systems a new lease on life and saved it from the scrap heap. To me, the bigger reward was just in trying to solve the "puzzle" of how to get it to do tasks we expect of our computers today.
I fail to understand your point?
If I find a random, unprotected WAP and decide to make use of it, I'm simply getting on the Internet without paying to do so. I have no knowledge of WHY the person providing the connection is doing so - but could reasonably assume they INTENDED to make it freely accessible. (After all, many people do this for the sake of providing their community with a public service. You can find web sites dedicated to it, with tips on the best antennas to place outdoors so people get the best connections, etc. etc.)
If I dial up some celebrity's personal cellphone, go into their voicemail, and enter a default PIN, I'm attempting to listen to their messages ... a totally different thing. I'm not viewing someone's personal email, simply because I'm using an unprotected WAP they provided.