Web developers often assume that most page-loading performance problems originate on the back-end, and thus the developers have little control over performance on the front-end, i.e., directly in the visitor's browser. But Steve Souders, head of site performance at Yahoo, argues otherwise in his book, High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Frontend Engineers."
Let's correct this summary a little bit. First, it's NOVICE Web developers who would think this. Any web developer worth their weight knows the basic idea that java, flash, and other things like it make a PC work hard. The website sends code, but the PC has to execute the code, rather than the website pushing static or dynamic HTML and having it simply render. We bitch and moan enough here on slashdot about flash/java heavy pages, I feel this summary is misdirected as if web developers here didn't know this.
Secondly, there's no argument, so Steve doesn't have to argue with anyone. It's a commonly accepted principle. If someone didn't learn it yet, they simply haven't learned it yet.
Now, I welcome a book like this because #1 it's a great tool for novices to understand the principle of optimization on both the server and the PC, and #2 because it hopefully has tips that even the above average admin will learn from. But I scratch my head when the summary makes it sound like it's a new concept.
Hey while we are at it, I don't want to pump my own gas either. How about I pay Ford 5 times the price of gas and have them pump it for me every night?
Or, I could save a whole shitload of money and learn to pump it myself.
Installers these days are that easy. Apple, Windows, and even many of the latest Linux installs are simply step by step, hit next and answer questions. It's not that hard! People are intimidated for no reason than they are taught to believe it's complicated.
And if they don't want to learn, they can pay Best Buy/circuit city/compUSA/Joe's computer imporium a fee to install it, or save the money and have their geek friend/relative do it.
"It's a machine, CmdrTaco. It isn't Neurotic. It doesn't get pissed off, it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes... IT JUST PWNS j00r A$$!!!"
The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements.
I was about to have a slashtantrum about this not being news. As everyone should be thinking "You can't be wasting your employers time working for anyone else like that, even if it is Wikipedia." That would have been 'nuff said.
However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.
First of all, a bone marrow transplant is not currently something Joey Pants can do for you in his brooklyn apartment in 30 minutes just to change your DNA. And the cost and time in the procedure is far greater than simply shaving your body hair, washing down throughly to get dead skin off your body, and wearing thick tight clothes to keep you from shedding any DNA.
Second, there are plenty of documented cases of someone being a "Chimera" where they contain two sets of DNA in their body. It's usually when an embryo absorbs a twin in the womb. I don't know if there are any true cases out there in the books where a Chimera was tried for a case, but it's known. Science is well aware that DNA is not 100% foolproof, which is why you have probability matches when testing DNA normally. These will simply be bumps in the road and science will adapt. This is nothing new to DNA research. Most likely forensics labs will begin to require taking multiple samples from multiple areas depending on the DNA evidence found. If you left blood at the scene of the crime, why take DNA from your cheek if there's a chance the criminal is a Chimera or a bone marrow transplantee.
Third, the law will catch up with this. Defense attorneys will use this to create reasonable doubt, and prosecutors will counter to learn about this, while forensics keeps up with the latest scientific trends.
On the other hand, DNA identification methods for businesses will be completely fucked if someone gets a marrow transplant or is a Chimera and doesn't know it.
I'm not into FPS but I hear halo is pretty good. Marathon was good back in it's day. Another title you may not have known about was the Myth series. Hot damn I loved that series. It's classified under strategy games but it's really an early foray into tactical unit management and it was brilliant. I miss it so. It was one game that I wasn't good at, never once won an online game I played. And yet I couldn't get enough multiplayer. All that 3D work and physics modelling you see in WC3 and SC2... Myth pioneered that in "strategy" games ten years ago.
I want to see new Mac games from Bungie again. I liked playing all their games, even FPS. Doom and quake never interested me. Marathon... there was just something about Marathon. The best companies invest in the mythos and storyline of their game. Bungie does that so well. When Bungie was purchased by Microsoft and halo taken to xbox, I lost all interest.
And hell, it's about time they just came up with something completely new.
A real question about the editors
on
Ask Rob Malda
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Many readers seem to have a lot of animosity over certain editors, both in history and present day.
Years ago, it was JohnKatz and what we considered his pointless inflamatory articles that were rewritten 5 times yet all 5 said the same thing.
Nowadays, it's people like Zonk and his complete lack of editing, posting the most slanted version of an article or a version which gets the summary completely wrong.
My question is how to do deal with these complaints? Do you deal with these complaints in any way with more than the filters in preferences that allows you to block articles by a certain editor?
To tackle the problem, a slew of start-ups are producing gear and software to accelerate Internet traffic or to increase the network's capacity. These include companies run by Messrs. Roberts and Bosack, as well as Riverbed Technology Inc. and Big Band Networks Inc. Other companies, such as BitGravity Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc., are creating "parallel networks" -- essentially scaled-down versions of the Internet -- to escape the glut of traffic on current networks.
Of course, the gentlemen crying wolf are the same people who run companies who can sell you stuff to fix the problem. There's no new problem here. The tubes, according to business people, always seem to be in a sorry state, about ready to crumble the moment the wrong person clicks one more time on that link promising Brittney Spears porn. And yet, I have been able to get my email every morning since 1993 when I got my first email account.
Typical fearmongering article designed to drum up new business. Mod me up, give me my karma now, and move along, nothing to see here.
The point of DST is just that, to conserve daylight, duh. It works because it takes electricity to light things, and since more people are awake at 6:00 PM than at 6:00 AM, you just "move the light around" to what's convenient for the majority of the populace. Less electricity means less expense, and more energy savings!
The problem is that this no longer makes sense thanks to air conditioning. Savings of light are offset by running air conditioners longer during the daylight times. Perhaps in places with lights but no air conditioning DST still makes sense but not really in developed nations.
Sir Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were obvious. Sir Galahad: I don't think I was. Sir Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were very obvious Sir Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and be obvious Sir Lancelot: No, it's too obvious Sir Galahad: Look, it's my duty as a knight to be as obvious as I can. Sir Lancelot: No, we've got to find the Holy Patent. Come on. Sir Galahad: Oh, let me have just a little bit obviousness? Sir Lancelot: No. It's unhealthy. Sir Galahad: I bet you're Jeff Bezos. Sir Lancelot: Am not.
I had a power mac 7300 way back in the day. It used a 604e motorola chip at 180 Mhz. The 7300 also had an upgrade card slot which allowed me to pop in a G3 card eventually and upgrade my processor. It also had 4 DIMM slots for lots of extra memory capacity.
When the 7300 came out, it cost around $1200. I bought it used for $500. The card cost me $300, memory was $50-$100, plus a $150 upgraded video card when it became available. I got about 7 years use out of that machine for the money invested.
A midrange iMac now costs twice as much, and has fewer upgrade paths than previous Macs. The white iMacs had options for 128 and 256 mb video cards but you could only buy them in that flavor, you could not upgrade them later.
To get a mac with upgrade options, you have to go with the $2500+ Mac pros. I bought a G4 1ghz about 4 years ago. I have no option to upgrade to a G5, and obviously can't upgrade to an intel. I can do surfing and wordprocessing on it just fine, but I can't play any new games on it, and the latest graphics programs and compression codecs for movies will drag to a crawl unless all other programs are shut down.
Now, the summary is utter crap. In fact, they are upping the requirement from 800 mhz to 867 mhz G4, and not ending it all together. However, this chops off 6 popular lines of Macs from being upgraded. My point is, however, upgrade paths are slowly getting shorter and shorter, and small changes like this are exposing that problem. The problem isn't the fact that Apple is upping the minimum requirements, it's the fact that without shelling out money for an entirely new computer, it's getting harder and harder to meet the minimum requirements. These 800 mhz machines were new just 4 years ago, and you can't pop in a $200 upgrade to get more life out of them.
I love Apple's products, and I'm still not considering a PC, but as a consumer, I want to be clear that keeping up with Apple is becoming more and more expensive, and there are no signs that Steve really cares (why should he, he's a CEO and his company is making gobs of money). I'm not comparing Macs to PCs, I'm comparing Macs to history costs of other Macs. The inflationary curve is out of control. At this rate will be back to the $10,000 price tag the Mac 2 had back in 1986 somewhere in 2015.
I have yet to receive a telemarketing call that I actually wanted to hear from. I don't want to hear from them... ever. I'm pretty sure the american population can go without hearing from a telemarketer... ever.
The shit telemarketers sell is crap, they use high pressure tactics that are rude, they ignore requests to take you off their do not call list, and they don't care that they bother you at odd times.
There is nothing redeeming about their antics and the reason why this is a law now is because, of all the issues in the united states, this is the ONE issue where there is overwhelming support for, there's no strong business lobby to stop and the solution is exceedingly simple, even for the Bush administration. The law should work in effect to permanently ban this practice entirely.
"I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic computer adventure like your father did. It's your father's WiiMote. This is the weapon of a Wii Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a Joystick, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Wii Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the PS3."
This is a media clusterfuck. The guy should have been removed, he should have been arrested, he should have been dragged out. He should NOT have been tasered.
The guy wanted to cause a scene and wanted to get tasered. The officers should not have given him the satisfaction. If not for the tasering, this would not have made national news, and would not have crossed a line.
The truth of it is that the officers should be reprimanded somewhat severely (suspensions, formal marks in their permanent record, but not fired) and the guy should be kicked out of any organizations involving media he's in on campus, and perhaps some media majors in his class should be allowed to beat him for a while for being a dick.
If there were an awards group for computers akin to the emmys or oscars, and not these individual magazine awards, Apple would be winning a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot.
For some people, shows like the Sopranos and Heroes are exeptional shows and deserve the award they are nominated for. However, most of america is watching Survivor, Big Brother, Real World, or American Idol, which is shlocky crap that will never win a real award (that Emmy for best reality show is a joke, since they are all crap). It's this shlocky crap though that gets the stations more money.
Apple is fine with having the mindshare among their loyal customers they are good quality machines. I know several people I know at work who've switched to Macs in recently years, and I consider them very intelligent and thoughtful consumers. In that way they have been winning for quite some time and are continuing to do so.
I really needed to have the cosplay image of a very stupid looking link with a cheesy slingshot burned into my retina this morning. Absolutely necessary to the whole Wii Zapper thing.
Interesting point, but completely a red herring. If RFID is not the ultimate invasion of privacy, then it ranks just an insignificant smidge behind Echelon and warrantless phone tapping.
It's important, it's a huge invasion of privacy, and it should not be allowed. There should be a NATIONAL law, but having a state law is a step in the right direction. If a politician wants to use, what I consider, a small hyperbole to help get his point across, I have no problem since his cause is just. He's not even a national politician so he can't currently affect ECHELON or the wire tapping at the moment so it's not a matter that his priorities aren't straight. This is one hair that should remain unsplit.
Every company, including game companies like to bet on what they think is a sure thing. In the console market, the Wii is a disruptive technology. Few mainstream titles bet on disruptive technologies. And the larger the company, the less likely the CEO is going to have some kind of innovative idea or an innovative team that explains to the CEO why this disruptive technology would be good. Every game maker was going by historical numbers based on the gamecube, which weren't good compared to the PS2 or xbox.
Same thing happened with the dot com bust. Everyone was going gung ho, expecting higher sales in 2001, when suddenly, everyone stopped buying and the bottom fell out of everyone's earnings. Customers were buying because of the Y2k scare, but when it never came, they didn't have to buy any more.
The CEOs are praised for having such good earnings before 2001, and then bemoan their luck after 2001 when they say "oh well we didn't see the crash coming." Everyone saw the damn market crash coming EXCEPT these slow CEOs. I'll admit no one knew exactly when it was coming, but it was coming soon enough.
Same with the Wii. They all were geared towards the old consoles, and now they all are getting bitten in the ass because the PS3 is overpriced and buggy, and the xbox is "eh, whatever." But the Wii is something that is getting new customers, and requires new thinking. Big slow corporations don't like to think in new ways until they are forced to.
There are of course exceptions, but the ones that do everything like everyone else don't tend to care that much or get severely penalized. They are average humans after all.
This will get modded flamebait, but I doubt that this bump in sales will be sustainable.
Probably. You realize you haven't said anything else any other Apple basher. I hear "this will not be sustainable" and yet this statement is proven wrong over and over. Like it or not, Steve Jobs has combined all the right things to sustain sales and growth since he took over. It's what he does.
I expect that lot of these new Apple buyers are people who, like me, just grew weary of Microsoft,their attitude, and the endless virus and other problems.
Of that you are absolutely correct.
The problem for Apple is that they, and the fanboys, are selling the product as perfection, as complete out of the box, as seamless and needing no attention beyond plugging in the power supply once a day.
True, that is Apple's selling point. Compare it to windows. There is plenty of truth to that statement, which is what the ads are trying to say. And macs aren't perfect. But pound for pound those macs are showing how much more reliable they are. And the idea that you can't play games or do work related things is slowly being eroded for many different reasons (RDC for mac, VPN applications, Bootcamp for windows dual boots).
The reality of course is much different. Macs have some pretty serious deficiencies, even in the much vaunted user interface. Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
Crashing, nope. My G4 has never... NEVER crashed in 3 years. My PC at work has crashed. Not often, but it has, which is more than my G4. Yes Macs do crash, but I've yet to see any serious statistics show that PCs are more reliable than Macs. Most that do are the same type of "review shops" that say Windows is more reliable than Linux, and most of them can quickly be tied back as a Microsoft schill. Macs experience hardware issues, but not as often as PCs as a whole. Some brands of PCs are up there with Macs, so there is some truth to that. But Macs never need serious maintenance. PCs need antispyware and virus protection. I have neither on my mac, and I've run a disk check twice on My current Mac ever. The only maintenance they need is the same maintenance everyone needs... backups.
After two years with a Mac I tell people that really it's no more or less easy to use than a Windows machine, and has just as many irritations and problems. They're just different irritations and problems.
As for ease of use, Windows mostly closed the gap, and Apple caught up with lots more professional level features when they went to OS X so complexity increased quite a bit, but as for irritations, see above... no spyware or viruses, low instance of system problems. And for power users, there's now a command line running unix.
Because Apple sells their computers as the most perfect thing in the world, all of those day to day issues seem that much more disappointing.
I think you are getting too caught up negatively in the hype. Microsoft has the same kind of hype going. Hype is hype. Yes it sucks, but hype doesn't have an effect on real quality.
My guess is that a lot of these "switchers" will hang onto their MacBooks for one cycle, then revert back to Windows in order to avoid compatibility issues, cost issues, and in some situations the lack of specific software that isn't available on the Mac.
Maybe you will, but I know a number of switchers where I work, and they are all very happy right now, and they work for a software company which is making windows software. this evidence is anecdotal, but this trend has been occuring for YEARS now, again, ever since Jobs came back. This is evidence that you are mistaken that people are going to macs and switching back.
At the end of the day there just isn't that much about the Mac that makes it a slam dunk for every user.
Very true, there is no one size fits all, but none of the facts you've presented actually support that statement.
... it's called Webhosting. We've been offering this stuff for years. "Software as a service" is just a new buzzword for people who want to offer ASP-style apps in a windows environment.
Good webhosts have 99.99999% up time. The entire hosting industry measures success by uptime. If it didn't, the industry would collapse.
Dvorak attacks the WGA server that went down, rightfully so. However, he then goes into hyperbole mode and subtly lumps googles offerings in the same category. After using google.com for years, and google maps almost since it was launched, I can tell you I can remember only once significant outage, and it was some kind of DoS attack, I think, which was quickly dealt with. I can remember no minor outages in my experience, nor am I aware of any other outages reported in any major online media.
Yes, you have to be worried about losing your documents. The best ASPs should provide some kind of user data backup (I don't know if Google does this but if they don't they need to) or some kind of contractual obligation to users in case of data loss (more appropriate for Business to business apps). However, if someone provides you with excellent up time and reliability, why can't you trust them?
Microsoft has a lousy track record of reliability. Also, tying hundreds of ASP apps into a single WGA server is ludicrous.
Trust is about experience. Anyone using Microsoft based ASP apps is asking for trouble because the experience of most users is that MS is not reliable. If you want reliability, you need to look elsewhere, and there are plenty of options.
That's what this outage is really telling us. As usual, Dvorak has completely missed the point.
I've recently had problems with my local post office fucking up my mail, and basically sending stuff back to everyone as "Return to sender" when I haven't moved in 3 years. It started with Netflix, so I contacted them to discuss it and found out more information that I could take to my post office. They are very friendly and helpful!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Web developers often assume that most page-loading performance problems originate on the back-end, and thus the developers have little control over performance on the front-end, i.e., directly in the visitor's browser. But Steve Souders, head of site performance at Yahoo, argues otherwise in his book, High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Frontend Engineers."
Let's correct this summary a little bit. First, it's NOVICE Web developers who would think this. Any web developer worth their weight knows the basic idea that java, flash, and other things like it make a PC work hard. The website sends code, but the PC has to execute the code, rather than the website pushing static or dynamic HTML and having it simply render. We bitch and moan enough here on slashdot about flash/java heavy pages, I feel this summary is misdirected as if web developers here didn't know this.
Secondly, there's no argument, so Steve doesn't have to argue with anyone. It's a commonly accepted principle. If someone didn't learn it yet, they simply haven't learned it yet.
Now, I welcome a book like this because #1 it's a great tool for novices to understand the principle of optimization on both the server and the PC, and #2 because it hopefully has tips that even the above average admin will learn from. But I scratch my head when the summary makes it sound like it's a new concept.
Pardon me for nitpicking.
Hey while we are at it, I don't want to pump my own gas either. How about I pay Ford 5 times the price of gas and have them pump it for me every night?
Or, I could save a whole shitload of money and learn to pump it myself.
Installers these days are that easy. Apple, Windows, and even many of the latest Linux installs are simply step by step, hit next and answer questions. It's not that hard! People are intimidated for no reason than they are taught to believe it's complicated.
And if they don't want to learn, they can pay Best Buy/circuit city/compUSA/Joe's computer imporium a fee to install it, or save the money and have their geek friend/relative do it.
As opposed to todays political leaders who are all striking examples of stable minds?
I read this and the phrase "stable minds" led me in a straight line to "horse's ass."
I leave you, the reader, to see the pun-ic significance.
"It's a machine, CmdrTaco. It isn't Neurotic. It doesn't get pissed off, it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes... IT JUST PWNS j00r A$$!!!"
From TFA:
The ministry, however, did not object to their limited contributions on the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements.
I was about to have a slashtantrum about this not being news. As everyone should be thinking "You can't be wasting your employers time working for anyone else like that, even if it is Wikipedia." That would have been 'nuff said.
However this above statement disturbs me. It's okay if they spend time updating WTO and free trade articles, but not anime pages? They shouldn't be updating either pages. Anime pages are one thing, and they can and should be reprimanded for that. But I shudder at the thought of governments paying employees to update Wikipedia. Why aren't the head bureaucrats getting reprimanded by someone!!! ugh.
First of all, a bone marrow transplant is not currently something Joey Pants can do for you in his brooklyn apartment in 30 minutes just to change your DNA. And the cost and time in the procedure is far greater than simply shaving your body hair, washing down throughly to get dead skin off your body, and wearing thick tight clothes to keep you from shedding any DNA.
Second, there are plenty of documented cases of someone being a "Chimera" where they contain two sets of DNA in their body. It's usually when an embryo absorbs a twin in the womb. I don't know if there are any true cases out there in the books where a Chimera was tried for a case, but it's known. Science is well aware that DNA is not 100% foolproof, which is why you have probability matches when testing DNA normally. These will simply be bumps in the road and science will adapt. This is nothing new to DNA research. Most likely forensics labs will begin to require taking multiple samples from multiple areas depending on the DNA evidence found. If you left blood at the scene of the crime, why take DNA from your cheek if there's a chance the criminal is a Chimera or a bone marrow transplantee.
Third, the law will catch up with this. Defense attorneys will use this to create reasonable doubt, and prosecutors will counter to learn about this, while forensics keeps up with the latest scientific trends.
On the other hand, DNA identification methods for businesses will be completely fucked if someone gets a marrow transplant or is a Chimera and doesn't know it.
I'm not into FPS but I hear halo is pretty good. Marathon was good back in it's day. Another title you may not have known about was the Myth series. Hot damn I loved that series. It's classified under strategy games but it's really an early foray into tactical unit management and it was brilliant. I miss it so. It was one game that I wasn't good at, never once won an online game I played. And yet I couldn't get enough multiplayer. All that 3D work and physics modelling you see in WC3 and SC2... Myth pioneered that in "strategy" games ten years ago.
I want to see new Mac games from Bungie again. I liked playing all their games, even FPS. Doom and quake never interested me. Marathon... there was just something about Marathon. The best companies invest in the mythos and storyline of their game. Bungie does that so well. When Bungie was purchased by Microsoft and halo taken to xbox, I lost all interest.
And hell, it's about time they just came up with something completely new.
Many readers seem to have a lot of animosity over certain editors, both in history and present day.
Years ago, it was JohnKatz and what we considered his pointless inflamatory articles that were rewritten 5 times yet all 5 said the same thing.
Nowadays, it's people like Zonk and his complete lack of editing, posting the most slanted version of an article or a version which gets the summary completely wrong.
My question is how to do deal with these complaints? Do you deal with these complaints in any way with more than the filters in preferences that allows you to block articles by a certain editor?
So many possible obligatories... so little time.
From TFA
To tackle the problem, a slew of start-ups are producing gear and software to accelerate Internet traffic or to increase the network's capacity. These include companies run by Messrs. Roberts and Bosack, as well as Riverbed Technology Inc. and Big Band Networks Inc. Other companies, such as BitGravity Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc., are creating "parallel networks" -- essentially scaled-down versions of the Internet -- to escape the glut of traffic on current networks.
Of course, the gentlemen crying wolf are the same people who run companies who can sell you stuff to fix the problem. There's no new problem here. The tubes, according to business people, always seem to be in a sorry state, about ready to crumble the moment the wrong person clicks one more time on that link promising Brittney Spears porn. And yet, I have been able to get my email every morning since 1993 when I got my first email account.
Typical fearmongering article designed to drum up new business. Mod me up, give me my karma now, and move along, nothing to see here.
The point of DST is just that, to conserve daylight, duh. It works because it takes electricity to light things, and since more people are awake at 6:00 PM than at 6:00 AM, you just "move the light around" to what's convenient for the majority of the populace. Less electricity means less expense, and more energy savings!
The problem is that this no longer makes sense thanks to air conditioning. Savings of light are offset by running air conditioners longer during the daylight times. Perhaps in places with lights but no air conditioning DST still makes sense but not really in developed nations.
Sir Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were obvious.
Sir Galahad: I don't think I was.
Sir Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were very obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and be obvious
Sir Lancelot: No, it's too obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, it's my duty as a knight to be as obvious as I can.
Sir Lancelot: No, we've got to find the Holy Patent. Come on.
Sir Galahad: Oh, let me have just a little bit obviousness?
Sir Lancelot: No. It's unhealthy.
Sir Galahad: I bet you're Jeff Bezos.
Sir Lancelot: Am not.
I had a power mac 7300 way back in the day. It used a 604e motorola chip at 180 Mhz. The 7300 also had an upgrade card slot which allowed me to pop in a G3 card eventually and upgrade my processor. It also had 4 DIMM slots for lots of extra memory capacity.
When the 7300 came out, it cost around $1200. I bought it used for $500. The card cost me $300, memory was $50-$100, plus a $150 upgraded video card when it became available. I got about 7 years use out of that machine for the money invested.
A midrange iMac now costs twice as much, and has fewer upgrade paths than previous Macs. The white iMacs had options for 128 and 256 mb video cards but you could only buy them in that flavor, you could not upgrade them later.
To get a mac with upgrade options, you have to go with the $2500+ Mac pros. I bought a G4 1ghz about 4 years ago. I have no option to upgrade to a G5, and obviously can't upgrade to an intel. I can do surfing and wordprocessing on it just fine, but I can't play any new games on it, and the latest graphics programs and compression codecs for movies will drag to a crawl unless all other programs are shut down.
Now, the summary is utter crap. In fact, they are upping the requirement from 800 mhz to 867 mhz G4, and not ending it all together. However, this chops off 6 popular lines of Macs from being upgraded. My point is, however, upgrade paths are slowly getting shorter and shorter, and small changes like this are exposing that problem. The problem isn't the fact that Apple is upping the minimum requirements, it's the fact that without shelling out money for an entirely new computer, it's getting harder and harder to meet the minimum requirements. These 800 mhz machines were new just 4 years ago, and you can't pop in a $200 upgrade to get more life out of them.
I love Apple's products, and I'm still not considering a PC, but as a consumer, I want to be clear that keeping up with Apple is becoming more and more expensive, and there are no signs that Steve really cares (why should he, he's a CEO and his company is making gobs of money). I'm not comparing Macs to PCs, I'm comparing Macs to history costs of other Macs. The inflationary curve is out of control. At this rate will be back to the $10,000 price tag the Mac 2 had back in 1986 somewhere in 2015.
You need to get laid.
This is slashdot, we all need to get laid.
I have yet to receive a telemarketing call that I actually wanted to hear from. I don't want to hear from them... ever. I'm pretty sure the american population can go without hearing from a telemarketer... ever.
The shit telemarketers sell is crap, they use high pressure tactics that are rude, they ignore requests to take you off their do not call list, and they don't care that they bother you at odd times.
There is nothing redeeming about their antics and the reason why this is a law now is because, of all the issues in the united states, this is the ONE issue where there is overwhelming support for, there's no strong business lobby to stop and the solution is exceedingly simple, even for the Bush administration. The law should work in effect to permanently ban this practice entirely.
"I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic computer adventure like your father did. It's your father's WiiMote. This is the weapon of a Wii Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a Joystick, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Wii Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the PS3."
This is a media clusterfuck. The guy should have been removed, he should have been arrested, he should have been dragged out. He should NOT have been tasered.
The guy wanted to cause a scene and wanted to get tasered. The officers should not have given him the satisfaction. If not for the tasering, this would not have made national news, and would not have crossed a line.
The truth of it is that the officers should be reprimanded somewhat severely (suspensions, formal marks in their permanent record, but not fired) and the guy should be kicked out of any organizations involving media he's in on campus, and perhaps some media majors in his class should be allowed to beat him for a while for being a dick.
The editors edited something and actually improved upon the article?
*universe implodes*
If there were an awards group for computers akin to the emmys or oscars, and not these individual magazine awards, Apple would be winning a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot.
For some people, shows like the Sopranos and Heroes are exeptional shows and deserve the award they are nominated for. However, most of america is watching Survivor, Big Brother, Real World, or American Idol, which is shlocky crap that will never win a real award (that Emmy for best reality show is a joke, since they are all crap). It's this shlocky crap though that gets the stations more money.
Apple is fine with having the mindshare among their loyal customers they are good quality machines. I know several people I know at work who've switched to Macs in recently years, and I consider them very intelligent and thoughtful consumers. In that way they have been winning for quite some time and are continuing to do so.
I really needed to have the cosplay image of a very stupid looking link with a cheesy slingshot burned into my retina this morning. Absolutely necessary to the whole Wii Zapper thing.
Interesting point, but completely a red herring. If RFID is not the ultimate invasion of privacy, then it ranks just an insignificant smidge behind Echelon and warrantless phone tapping.
It's important, it's a huge invasion of privacy, and it should not be allowed. There should be a NATIONAL law, but having a state law is a step in the right direction. If a politician wants to use, what I consider, a small hyperbole to help get his point across, I have no problem since his cause is just. He's not even a national politician so he can't currently affect ECHELON or the wire tapping at the moment so it's not a matter that his priorities aren't straight. This is one hair that should remain unsplit.
Every company, including game companies like to bet on what they think is a sure thing. In the console market, the Wii is a disruptive technology. Few mainstream titles bet on disruptive technologies. And the larger the company, the less likely the CEO is going to have some kind of innovative idea or an innovative team that explains to the CEO why this disruptive technology would be good. Every game maker was going by historical numbers based on the gamecube, which weren't good compared to the PS2 or xbox.
Same thing happened with the dot com bust. Everyone was going gung ho, expecting higher sales in 2001, when suddenly, everyone stopped buying and the bottom fell out of everyone's earnings. Customers were buying because of the Y2k scare, but when it never came, they didn't have to buy any more.
The CEOs are praised for having such good earnings before 2001, and then bemoan their luck after 2001 when they say "oh well we didn't see the crash coming." Everyone saw the damn market crash coming EXCEPT these slow CEOs. I'll admit no one knew exactly when it was coming, but it was coming soon enough.
Same with the Wii. They all were geared towards the old consoles, and now they all are getting bitten in the ass because the PS3 is overpriced and buggy, and the xbox is "eh, whatever." But the Wii is something that is getting new customers, and requires new thinking. Big slow corporations don't like to think in new ways until they are forced to.
There are of course exceptions, but the ones that do everything like everyone else don't tend to care that much or get severely penalized. They are average humans after all.
This will get modded flamebait, but I doubt that this bump in sales will be sustainable.
Probably. You realize you haven't said anything else any other Apple basher. I hear "this will not be sustainable" and yet this statement is proven wrong over and over. Like it or not, Steve Jobs has combined all the right things to sustain sales and growth since he took over. It's what he does.
I expect that lot of these new Apple buyers are people who, like me, just grew weary of Microsoft,their attitude, and the endless virus and other problems.
Of that you are absolutely correct.
The problem for Apple is that they, and the fanboys, are selling the product as perfection, as complete out of the box, as seamless and needing no attention beyond plugging in the power supply once a day.
True, that is Apple's selling point. Compare it to windows. There is plenty of truth to that statement, which is what the ads are trying to say. And macs aren't perfect. But pound for pound those macs are showing how much more reliable they are. And the idea that you can't play games or do work related things is slowly being eroded for many different reasons (RDC for mac, VPN applications, Bootcamp for windows dual boots).
The reality of course is much different. Macs have some pretty serious deficiencies, even in the much vaunted user interface. Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
Crashing, nope. My G4 has never... NEVER crashed in 3 years. My PC at work has crashed. Not often, but it has, which is more than my G4. Yes Macs do crash, but I've yet to see any serious statistics show that PCs are more reliable than Macs. Most that do are the same type of "review shops" that say Windows is more reliable than Linux, and most of them can quickly be tied back as a Microsoft schill. Macs experience hardware issues, but not as often as PCs as a whole. Some brands of PCs are up there with Macs, so there is some truth to that. But Macs never need serious maintenance. PCs need antispyware and virus protection. I have neither on my mac, and I've run a disk check twice on My current Mac ever. The only maintenance they need is the same maintenance everyone needs... backups.
After two years with a Mac I tell people that really it's no more or less easy to use than a Windows machine, and has just as many irritations and problems. They're just different irritations and problems.
As for ease of use, Windows mostly closed the gap, and Apple caught up with lots more professional level features when they went to OS X so complexity increased quite a bit, but as for irritations, see above... no spyware or viruses, low instance of system problems. And for power users, there's now a command line running unix.
Because Apple sells their computers as the most perfect thing in the world, all of those day to day issues seem that much more disappointing.
I think you are getting too caught up negatively in the hype. Microsoft has the same kind of hype going. Hype is hype. Yes it sucks, but hype doesn't have an effect on real quality.
My guess is that a lot of these "switchers" will hang onto their MacBooks for one cycle, then revert back to Windows in order to avoid compatibility issues, cost issues, and in some situations the lack of specific software that isn't available on the Mac.
Maybe you will, but I know a number of switchers where I work, and they are all very happy right now, and they work for a software company which is making windows software. this evidence is anecdotal, but this trend has been occuring for YEARS now, again, ever since Jobs came back. This is evidence that you are mistaken that people are going to macs and switching back.
At the end of the day there just isn't that much about the Mac that makes it a slam dunk for every user.
Very true, there is no one size fits all, but none of the facts you've presented actually support that statement.
... it's called Webhosting. We've been offering this stuff for years. "Software as a service" is just a new buzzword for people who want to offer ASP-style apps in a windows environment.
Good webhosts have 99.99999% up time. The entire hosting industry measures success by uptime. If it didn't, the industry would collapse.
Dvorak attacks the WGA server that went down, rightfully so. However, he then goes into hyperbole mode and subtly lumps googles offerings in the same category. After using google.com for years, and google maps almost since it was launched, I can tell you I can remember only once significant outage, and it was some kind of DoS attack, I think, which was quickly dealt with. I can remember no minor outages in my experience, nor am I aware of any other outages reported in any major online media.
Yes, you have to be worried about losing your documents. The best ASPs should provide some kind of user data backup (I don't know if Google does this but if they don't they need to) or some kind of contractual obligation to users in case of data loss (more appropriate for Business to business apps). However, if someone provides you with excellent up time and reliability, why can't you trust them?
Microsoft has a lousy track record of reliability. Also, tying hundreds of ASP apps into a single WGA server is ludicrous.
Trust is about experience. Anyone using Microsoft based ASP apps is asking for trouble because the experience of most users is that MS is not reliable. If you want reliability, you need to look elsewhere, and there are plenty of options.
That's what this outage is really telling us. As usual, Dvorak has completely missed the point.
I've recently had problems with my local post office fucking up my mail, and basically sending stuff back to everyone as "Return to sender" when I haven't moved in 3 years. It started with Netflix, so I contacted them to discuss it and found out more information that I could take to my post office. They are very friendly and helpful! :)