Again...this is what kills me, and why their business is such a damned train wreck. They are letting people with no fucking business sense make the decisions (namely the legal teams). Their accountants probably have a much more realistic view of the numbers and their martketing guys have got to be screaming bloody murder as more and more artists jump ship and go to this new "give it away so they buy it" style model and are taking all the money home themselves instead of giving the big labels their cut.
Unfortunately this is just a really shitty problem. Like the burning oil wells...you can't stop it. You just have to wait for it to run out of fuel and clean up the mess.
I dunno...young kids think pee drinking and worm eating is funny and often do strange things of that nature. What killed it for me was "Oh wow, Astronaut Ice Cream!" *munch* *munch* "This is disgusting semiflavored chalk! To hell with this nonsense."
It doesn't help that the previous generation had Apollo 11 and that "one small step" thing as a huge success. Then they had Apollo 13 and "Houston we've had a problem" that while missing the moon turned into a huge survival story success. My generation has had the Challenger and Columbia *kaboom* everyone dead stories. Now...building the Mir space station was a big story when I was a little kid. I remember our science teacher had us save our little milk carton things from lunch until we could build a huge one to hang up. Of course that one ended in a publicity stunt with Taco Bell promising free tacos if Mir hit some giant floating target in the ocean.
The previous generation got all the really cool and amazing space stories. My generation has gotten a few monumental failures, some publicity stunts, and space robots (which are pretty cool, but not a whole lot of that man to the moon excitement stuff).
Seriously...where the hell are their accountants at? Anyone who actually has gone through the required business classes would be well aware of how insane their imaginary losses are. Now, that is not the same as using those insane numbers to further a media blitz, but internally that nonsense does not stand up to any kind of sanity test. So...with a more realistic number on "lost sales" I can't imagine that there is a terribly high real return on their lawsuit happy nonsense. I imagine the costs of these constant legal battles take a pretty huge chunk of change.
Except that once you do it online 72hrs or more in advance you don't have to do it again for 2 years instead of on every flight. Had you filled out the same information on that little green form on their new fancy schmancy web thing 72hrs in advance you would not have had to fill it out again in 2008 or 2009. I suspect this will actually be welcomed by people who travel frequently in this situation rather than just once every few years. This also leaves you free to get piss drunk on the plane without worrying about having to fill out some crappy little form every time.
Now...I will give you that for people who don't travel frequently enough to make good use of that 2 year window it might be a bit of a pain, but I suspect the Visa Waiver program is in place to avoid the massive piles of paperwork generated by all of those people requesting Visas all the time. This would further reduce the time and money wasted digging through the piles of little green forms and further what I suspect is one of the goals of the waiver program in the first place.
Government streamlining beaurocracy is such a rare event we should actually be celebrating this news. Not all of these types of things are done with nefarious goals in mind...governments thrive on beaurocracy because it makes more government jobs which makes bigger government which makes for more...well you get the idea.
1. You do realize that this only affects travelers from places under the visa waiver program right? So instead of going through the hastle of getting a visa they go to a website say "Hey, coming over for a visit" rather than being put through the rigamarole of a visa. This is hardly some massive rights violating change.
2. Fingerprints and DNA are put to good use more often than nefarious use. Identifying remains such as murder/accident victims or soldiers. Putting criminals in jail. Clearing wrongly convicted people of crimes they did not commit. The real solution here is not to kneejerk panic at this, but to force the process to be very open and monitored for violations. It is completely unreasonable to stop a government from doing anything just because people with power have a tendancy to abuse it. The trick is to make it harder to abuse and make the penalties severe. You are more at risk than having someone frame you for crimes or kill you than you are of big brother coming after you. When governments do proceed to the "make people go away" stage they frequently don't do it with the rule of law. They do horrible things and then use a PR campaign to demonize their targets for public support.
3. I hope you have never paid taxes or gone to the dentist. I mean really...just with the information they have from you paying taxes, or really doing pretty much anything in the economy other than getting paid cash under the table, never opening any accounts, and never paying taxes they can pretty much track you down. By not paying taxes you give them quite the incentive to do so as well since they typically get the big dogs with tax evasion type charges rather than anything else. Also...your dental records can be used to identify you as well... So unless you go about reconstructing your jaw every so often you should probably never go to the dentist.
4. I would be more interested in methods to prevent the abuse of these types of databases and such. You cannot stop them and it is stupid to think you can. Technology is advancing far faster than we are, and even outside of nefarious purpose, humans have a tendancy to gather and catolog data as much as possible. The better solution is to fix the social aspects rather than bickering about the technological aspects. This explosion of technological capabilities certainly allows for some rather nasty powers that be abuse, but in the long term it leads to more freedom.
NONONO NO you cant! The government said so! Remember? You know, when they said "no on has ever thought of flying planes into buildings, we were totally taken by surprise". Except for everyone who has ever played ANY kind of flying game. I bet at LEAST 75% of all people who have played a flying game have gotten frustrated and flown into something.
Side note. In 2004 I was at an arcade and they had a huge sim plane thing $1 to play...the goal...take off in a fucking airliner and fly through checkpoint rings in the city on a timer. The thing even flew like a airliner all slow and winged whale like. I remember in the last 20 seconds before it kicked me off I tried to get it to do a loop into a spiral and the timer hit 0 just before I slammed into the scenery leaving a nice continue screen with a hair away from a building. Awesome!
OK, I look for credit card mailings. I can find them in the trash since most people just ignore them and toss them or I find them in the mailbox before they get to them. I open it...then I have a prewritten check with account number and everything with all of the fancy logo crap from the credit card agency and whatnot, printed on both sides all nice official looking.
OR! I have to find a way to get your account information, then find the right software or design my own check. Then print said check hoping it looks all official like enough to not raise any eyebrows.
So you are right...there is nothing special in a check...assuming you already have the method to produce a valid looking check with a valid account number. Now, even if places had to accept handwritten checks that is all well and good only if it is your information and the closer scrutiny that you will get for doing something VERY out of the norm will check out as clear. Do you know how fast you would get busted if you tried to handwrite a check with bad information on it?
This I must say is a bit dense. Not that I don't agree with you that they do face "tough regulation" or whatnot, but let us speak of their actual behavior for a moment.
They send out piles of "you are pre approved!" nonsense and then pretty much hand out a card with precious little verification. My personal favorite was the story where the guy took one, tore it into little bits, then taped it all back together and filled it out with slightly screwy info to make it look as suspicious as possible...and then he got his card in the mail. I have personally seen them send out blank checks with your account information already on them. Now, of course the fine print of this "check" is that the check being cashed or used actually adds that to your account under some strange special offer loan thing. Oh yes..these fuckers are SO scared to get out of bed in the morning...
You can face the toughest regulations in the world, but if the enforcement end of it comes down to "Well, we didn't see anything" then the point is moot. I mean for christs sake these assholes default opt in on all the private data sharing programs and then send you a tinly little brochure with 3pt font explaining what to do to opt out. Then you call the stupid number and follow the prompts and they ask strange double negative questions to trick you into pushing the wrong answer to opt out.
Now...in all likelyhood you are probably right about how they got the info in question, however, that certainly doesn't eliminate the possibilty of sheisty CC company dealings making it happen.
Yeah, I can see it in that situation. I just see so many people buying the uber 17" laptop because its uber and 17". Which for a bizarre reason has recently flipped a bit of a 180 and now people are buying up those netbooks at an alarming rate. I don't want to have to carry a 12+lb monster everywhere I go, but I also don't want to have to hunker down with my nose 6 inches away from the screen and hands smushed together like a child just to do anything. I know people have uses for them, but I really really don't see any use for a netbook. These days my small ultraportable needs are met by my phone that has more computing power than my first real PC and my portable needs are met by my laptop.
Ok look. I love my Apple gear. My MacBookPro is by far the best laptop I have owned in a long series of laptops. I like hearing about interesting new tech stuff coming from Apple. New gadgets like the new MBP and its battery, the dropping of DRM, those are geek worthy stories. But seriously, how many damned times is slashdot going to rehash this "What will we ever do without our beloved Steve Jobs!?" story?
How about we just leave it at this. Regardless of who takes over the company next I am sure we can all agree, regardless if you love or hate Apple, that he will probably be more stable and qualifed that the Chair Tossing Google Killer that took over that other really big tech company...
Well, Cisco tends to have a bit of language barrier, but I have never been treated with anything but politeness and professionalism by them. I have also never had to deal with the department merry go round where everyone claims its another departments issue. I have always gotten reasonably quick responses that were of infinitely higher quality that "put CD CDROM den Reboot".
That's why I bring mine home and hook it to my 22" desktop monitor and use a wireless keyboard/mouse with it so it sits happily on the corner of my desk.:) (Ok, well not exactly why, I don't do video, but havint 22" of screen realestate is really nice when coding.)
That isn't far from what I was thinking. I mean really...how many lawyers have YOU met that had a code of ethics beyond getting paid? I suppose there is Jack Thompson...but then you kinda get into the realm of lawyers with codes of ethics aren't very good lawyers. (Yes...Jack Thompson had "ethics", he believed in his little crusade against the immorality of blah blah blah...that doesn't mean his ethics are anywhere near rational)
Now...to be fair...criminal defense lawyers that defend murderers and rapists should not allow their personal beliefs to get in the way. There have been so many mock trials in this country where the defense lawyer basically refused to put up a fight for an innocent man because he had already decided himself that he was guilty (typically based on things like skin color and the like). They should do their best job regardless of what they think. Of course...RIAA lawyers have a little more freedom in their choice of clients...but hey, if the paycheck is big enough...
I have called Apple support once. 10.5.5 update dorked up iCal. I spoke with someone who's native language was english, he forwarded me on to the engineers, they gathered some info, and said they would look into it. I figured meh, brushoff, but at least they were polite and it was a short call because I didn't spend 45 minutes trying to explain technical details of the problem across a language barrier to someone who is just reading a script off a screen. A few days later they called me back... I was stunned. This was consumer level stuff. I expect this kind of treatment when I am calling people like Cisco for expensive enterprise stuff.
So after the many years of having to deal with HP or Dell or Microsoft support and speaking to a guy who claims "I am in the USA" and that his name is "Mike" and receiving NO help whatsoever, or getting the openenly hostile treatment from Microsoft I was completely sold on Apple support. Even beyond the value I give to the better design of their laptops, the value of being treated like a valued customer instead of some schmuck that already paid or at worst a criminal is well worth the extra money.
I harp on people getting Macs because I am tired of fixing every stupid Windows problem they manage to wander into.
Vista...wireless...networking...holy fucking god does that insane bullshit send me into a homicidal rage every time I have to configure it. What the fuck where they thinking?! Do you want to configure this, yes. Connect to a network, yes. Welcome to the creating a network share wizard, wait what? no back damnit. Do you want to connect to a network? yes. No networks found, mine doesnt broadcast! Welcome to the build an adhoc wireless network, GOD DAMNIT!. RIGHT CLICK PROPERTIES RIGHT CLICK PROPERTIES WHERE IS IT, I WILL KILL YOU ALL!!! Now throw in a "You said yes, do I have permission to do it?" dialog every 3 clicks that pops under instead of on top half the time so you wonder why the hell it isn't actually doing anything. Yeah... Wireless Vista is fun to set up.:) I used to think setting up wireless in Linux was a bit of a hastle...Vista learned me good on that one...
I imagine it has to do with the speaker/ambient light sensor placement. Personally I don't understand 17" laptops. The weight is typically pretty high and I have had so many battles trying to shove them into backpacks that I refused to ever purchase one myself. Weighing in at 6.6lbs makes it seem a bit anorexic, but that certainly would be a welcome improvement. Still the dimenions of the thing would make it a pain in the ass to carry around. With Apple gear you also get into the realm of do you really want to carry something that expensive around with you when you deal with the larger laptops.
On the battery...the ONLY laptops I have ever had to travel with extra batteries were for 17inch models because they sucked down so much damned juice so quickly. If this battery really does have the life they claim there really isn't a whole lot of reason for a removable battery. The only time I have ever had to screw with a laptop battery is when the shitty design HP battery failed. It was under warranty, but it still took me 3 damned months for them to send me a replacemnt (first they sent a power cable, then the ac adapter, THEN the battery). I was ready to fly to india with the bad battery to beat the support guy to death just to get it through his head that I when I said battery I meant battery. Of the 6 or 7 laptops I have gone through over the years(counting personal as well as work) over the years the HP was the only one that became such a total failure with the battery. Of the many more laptops in my organization I haven't seen any of them go completely bad either. That much of a reduction in weight and longer battery life definitely seems worth the trade off of a removable battery. Removable batteries are nice, but seriously, how often is it really necessary?
I got my MBP with 10.5 and haven't had any of the problems. I pretty much stick to the F/OSS stuff regardless of what OS I use since I don't like paying for software. I have a Vista desktop that I use for the rare game that I find time to play, but it feels like a poorly copied interface from Aqua...and they still don't have virtual desktops despite linux having had it for ages and OS X even finally getting the hint on it.
I used to love tinkering, Gentoo was fun. Then I had kids. I have the kids using linux so they learn how a computer works rather than just pretty point n click. For me, OS X has enough of the unix under the hood to let me do my power user stuff and has a really nice UI and things that mostly "just work". I don't have time to unfucker gconf because an update screwed up settings, or to figure out what the hell went wrong in the registry after my daughter hit the power button while it was installing something. I certainly don't think any OS is perfect. I think each OS has its uses. I just think Window's uses don't extend much past software availability because as an OS and UI it just isn't worth much. The big selling point of Windows is that "well you can't install XYZ on OSX/Linux" and when that changes I think OS X and Linux will gain a hell of a lot more ground. With any luck MS will actually be forced to compete rather than just feature creep the golden handcuffs of WGA/DRM/TPA and all the silly shit they include these days.
Well now you know one. That first goaround of WGA triggered false positive on my wife's Dell desktop. I called MS and they just said "purchase a new copy". So fuck that...legit OEM locked out because their stupid thing went false positive and their solution is for me to buy ANOTHER legit copy of their crap? I eventually had to dig up the disable WGA crap to get it usable again. Now at work, I have had their stupid activation bullshit screw me on multiple occasions because we have had to recover from failed hardware, try and boot the machine elsewhere and it immediately goes into expired activation mode. Now sometimes it reactivates without trouble, but almost every time I have done it it failed and MS is helpful enough to tell me "sorry, reinstall with a new copy". Having the default status of a criminal with their support staff for being a customer is total bullshit.
Convicted monopolist, punishment with no teeth. That isn't quite the same as practices every other company does. To say Microsoft engages in the same behavior as everyone else is laughable at best. It is a tremendous insult to the numerous tech industry companies that don't engage in the same kind of bullshit.
Apple, Secure Computing, Cisco, and a few others have gone out of their way to provide incredible support in my experience. As far as commercial OS goes, OS X and Solaris both require neither product keys nor some silly bullshit call home activation crap, let alone a tool that constantly calls back to check to see if it should lock you out at the whim of it's masters. Apple can be a little control freak about their stuff, but they sure as hell don't take the same consumers = criminals approach that MS takes.
Fair enoughish. To discount that as a Microsoft behavior is a little naieve given their consistently horrible track record, but I do agree it is a bit far out there in this context. The big issue I have is that Apple wasn't deliberatly trying to impair users (though fixing their flaw did impair users from coloring outside the lines with the device they purchased. Microsoft does deliberately impair their users with shit like WGA.
You kinda proved my point there. Most people don't like spending a bunch of time customizing just to get it behave in a sane fashion. Power users frequently do. Personally my family is more important than spending "a ton of time customizing" just to get the damned thing to behave in a sane fashion. If it is "just a fucking computer" why did you bother to spend "a ton of time" customizing it? Clearly it is more than "just a fucking computer" to you if you are willing to spend "a ton of time" customizing it. You mentioned something about stupid hyperbolic assertions?
What problem by the way? I didn't say there weren't problems in OS X. In fact I called Apple about a problem that happened after the 10.5.5 update. I spoke with someone whose native language was English. They forwarded me on to the engineering guys who gathered some data. Then a few days later they actually called me back with an update on what was going wrong. Imagine that... I have had to deal with other vendor's support for AGES and have NEVER in my life been treated that well as a generic caller.
Now if it doesn't have the software you need then it isn't the right tool. But everyone I have met that bitches and moans about Mac users have never actually spent a significant amount of time actually using one. They might have fiddled with one, and it didn't behave exactly the same as what they were used to, called it stupid and left it at that (which is exactly what I did for many years before actually devoting some time to trying to learn it).
That depends on the app. The most I have seen happen from the drag/drop variety are plist files created elsewhere that hold the preferences and whatnot. The few that I have bumped into that do much more than that often have installers/uninstallers. Though I do agree, the ones that do toss other stuff around with no sane way to clean up are pretty irritating, however losing some disk space is not even remotely in the same ballpark as the registry nightmare that Windows does. Personally my favorite is the apt/dpkg toolset.
I used to think Apple just equated to overpriced junk. Played around with a Mac Book Pro in the store and was impressed with design (Yes... Computers, ESPECIALLY laptops are more than just a processor, RAM, and a hard drive). I picked one up on refurb. I had long since converted to Linux for everything except the occasional game (like one every year or two) and this is what I have learned.
The OS does indeed make a huge difference. PC users mock Mac users for their "fanboy" stuff, but it is because PC users don't understand what it is like to have a computer that is actually nice to use. PC users will use their frame of reference of their experience with computers and think Mac users are just babbling nonsense. They go off on things like "Mac is an Intel PC now" and write it off as that.
You are 100% right. With the exception of the occasional MS zealot (that frequently has a rather weak or warped understanding of computing anyways) I have never met anyone that enjoyed Windows. At best they "like" Windows because of the games, which has nothing to do with Windows itself. People pretty much loathe Windows itself universally.
Linux users are a different variety. It appeals to the power user that likes to tinker. Desktop linux is definitely coming a long way, but it does not have the same polished UI that OS X has. There is certainly way more freedom under the hood, but that appeals to a relatively small group. Linux users tend to enjoy their linux desktops because they like to tinker. Distros tend to get chosen based on how much you must tinker to get everything working the way you want.
This leaves OS X. OS X has that nice unix underbelly these days so power users can get things like fink and macports and still have Aqua with their X11 stuff and so on and so forth. I keep hearing Windows users badmouth linux with "Windows just works" and after using OS X for about a year I do not think it means what they think it means. I work with computers... I don't want to have to go home and work on my damned computer. OS X has an interesting way of making unixy things terribly simple. Installing software...you click on the dmg file, drag the app to Applications, done. At the lower level, you just mounted a disk image, copied a foo.app folder that has a file in it that tells OS X to display it as a pretty icon instead of a folder, and your application is "installed". No silly registry BS, no complicated digging and wondering where the hell it put your files, etc. It is a joy to use it as a generic use computer. That is why Mac users advocate for Mac so much...it makes computers nice to use rather than a constant battle of bullshit like Windows.
That said I think OS X servers are kinda goofy, the major appeal to Apple is their nice hardware, superior design, and nice UI... In the server market where the box stays in a rack all day it pretty much kills any superior hardware/design stuff since you never see it, and the fancy UI on a server is a waste I think. All my servers that I am not forced to use Windows on are all linux. Linux is a joy to use as a server.
First of all, this was a braindead stupid bug. Unbelievably poor implementation of what should have been a fairly simple thing leads to an infinite loop on special days. Just looking at the damned loop without actually tracing through every possibility reveals a infinite loop at first glance. This was mindbogglingly stupid.
Second...Apple didn't "deliberately brick" devices. Your bias here is unbelievable. What Apple did was fix a bug that was allowing people to jailbreak and that caused problems from jailbroken phones. They fixed a security flaw that caused something that took advantage of that security flaw to cease to function correctly. Now, personally I would like it if the iPhone didn't require jailbreaking to open it up, but fixing the flaw that allows people to break your security model is not "deliberatly bricking". WGA is deliberately bricking, where it arbitrarily decides that you are invalid and shuts you off. In both cases it is incorrect useage of the word "brick" since either device can be easily recovered. So...to recap. Apple fixed a security flaw that caused bad news for people jailbreaking. Microsoft told your computer to call home every day so they could arbitrarily decide if you were valid or not and then shut you off if you werent.
It is easier to hate the large monolitic rich company that uses illegal business practices, breaks the standards, and buys off the DoJ to avoid punishment (Go look at MS political contributions to either party before the trial...virtually nil...then the year they get busted...they contribute big bucks to both sides and walk away with a wrist slap). Trust me...big time criminals don't need cheerleaders like you to help them out. People like you are like the wife that geats her ass kicked and says "no, but he really loves me, he really is a good guy".
I kinda hope they get sued. The folks have already said they don't want the money (which in my opinion makes them much more dangerous court opponents...nothing more determined and vicious than a lawyer with a cause). Should send a clear message to others to not risk some bullshit.
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Again...this is what kills me, and why their business is such a damned train wreck. They are letting people with no fucking business sense make the decisions (namely the legal teams). Their accountants probably have a much more realistic view of the numbers and their martketing guys have got to be screaming bloody murder as more and more artists jump ship and go to this new "give it away so they buy it" style model and are taking all the money home themselves instead of giving the big labels their cut.
Unfortunately this is just a really shitty problem. Like the burning oil wells...you can't stop it. You just have to wait for it to run out of fuel and clean up the mess.
I dunno...young kids think pee drinking and worm eating is funny and often do strange things of that nature. What killed it for me was "Oh wow, Astronaut Ice Cream!" *munch* *munch* "This is disgusting semiflavored chalk! To hell with this nonsense."
It doesn't help that the previous generation had Apollo 11 and that "one small step" thing as a huge success. Then they had Apollo 13 and "Houston we've had a problem" that while missing the moon turned into a huge survival story success. My generation has had the Challenger and Columbia *kaboom* everyone dead stories. Now...building the Mir space station was a big story when I was a little kid. I remember our science teacher had us save our little milk carton things from lunch until we could build a huge one to hang up. Of course that one ended in a publicity stunt with Taco Bell promising free tacos if Mir hit some giant floating target in the ocean.
The previous generation got all the really cool and amazing space stories. My generation has gotten a few monumental failures, some publicity stunts, and space robots (which are pretty cool, but not a whole lot of that man to the moon excitement stuff).
Seriously...where the hell are their accountants at? Anyone who actually has gone through the required business classes would be well aware of how insane their imaginary losses are. Now, that is not the same as using those insane numbers to further a media blitz, but internally that nonsense does not stand up to any kind of sanity test. So...with a more realistic number on "lost sales" I can't imagine that there is a terribly high real return on their lawsuit happy nonsense. I imagine the costs of these constant legal battles take a pretty huge chunk of change.
Except that once you do it online 72hrs or more in advance you don't have to do it again for 2 years instead of on every flight. Had you filled out the same information on that little green form on their new fancy schmancy web thing 72hrs in advance you would not have had to fill it out again in 2008 or 2009. I suspect this will actually be welcomed by people who travel frequently in this situation rather than just once every few years. This also leaves you free to get piss drunk on the plane without worrying about having to fill out some crappy little form every time.
Now...I will give you that for people who don't travel frequently enough to make good use of that 2 year window it might be a bit of a pain, but I suspect the Visa Waiver program is in place to avoid the massive piles of paperwork generated by all of those people requesting Visas all the time. This would further reduce the time and money wasted digging through the piles of little green forms and further what I suspect is one of the goals of the waiver program in the first place.
Government streamlining beaurocracy is such a rare event we should actually be celebrating this news. Not all of these types of things are done with nefarious goals in mind...governments thrive on beaurocracy because it makes more government jobs which makes bigger government which makes for more...well you get the idea.
1. You do realize that this only affects travelers from places under the visa waiver program right? So instead of going through the hastle of getting a visa they go to a website say "Hey, coming over for a visit" rather than being put through the rigamarole of a visa. This is hardly some massive rights violating change.
2. Fingerprints and DNA are put to good use more often than nefarious use. Identifying remains such as murder/accident victims or soldiers. Putting criminals in jail. Clearing wrongly convicted people of crimes they did not commit. The real solution here is not to kneejerk panic at this, but to force the process to be very open and monitored for violations. It is completely unreasonable to stop a government from doing anything just because people with power have a tendancy to abuse it. The trick is to make it harder to abuse and make the penalties severe. You are more at risk than having someone frame you for crimes or kill you than you are of big brother coming after you. When governments do proceed to the "make people go away" stage they frequently don't do it with the rule of law. They do horrible things and then use a PR campaign to demonize their targets for public support.
3. I hope you have never paid taxes or gone to the dentist. I mean really...just with the information they have from you paying taxes, or really doing pretty much anything in the economy other than getting paid cash under the table, never opening any accounts, and never paying taxes they can pretty much track you down. By not paying taxes you give them quite the incentive to do so as well since they typically get the big dogs with tax evasion type charges rather than anything else. Also...your dental records can be used to identify you as well... So unless you go about reconstructing your jaw every so often you should probably never go to the dentist.
4. I would be more interested in methods to prevent the abuse of these types of databases and such. You cannot stop them and it is stupid to think you can. Technology is advancing far faster than we are, and even outside of nefarious purpose, humans have a tendancy to gather and catolog data as much as possible. The better solution is to fix the social aspects rather than bickering about the technological aspects. This explosion of technological capabilities certainly allows for some rather nasty powers that be abuse, but in the long term it leads to more freedom.
Wow...I just had a horrible image of a Jobs at their little Mac shindig running around all nasty, sweaty, clapping, and screaming...
The downloaders, the downloaders, the downloaders...
NONONO NO you cant! The government said so! Remember? You know, when they said "no on has ever thought of flying planes into buildings, we were totally taken by surprise". Except for everyone who has ever played ANY kind of flying game. I bet at LEAST 75% of all people who have played a flying game have gotten frustrated and flown into something.
Side note. In 2004 I was at an arcade and they had a huge sim plane thing $1 to play...the goal...take off in a fucking airliner and fly through checkpoint rings in the city on a timer. The thing even flew like a airliner all slow and winged whale like. I remember in the last 20 seconds before it kicked me off I tried to get it to do a loop into a spiral and the timer hit 0 just before I slammed into the scenery leaving a nice continue screen with a hair away from a building. Awesome!
OK, I look for credit card mailings. I can find them in the trash since most people just ignore them and toss them or I find them in the mailbox before they get to them. I open it...then I have a prewritten check with account number and everything with all of the fancy logo crap from the credit card agency and whatnot, printed on both sides all nice official looking.
OR! I have to find a way to get your account information, then find the right software or design my own check. Then print said check hoping it looks all official like enough to not raise any eyebrows.
So you are right...there is nothing special in a check...assuming you already have the method to produce a valid looking check with a valid account number. Now, even if places had to accept handwritten checks that is all well and good only if it is your information and the closer scrutiny that you will get for doing something VERY out of the norm will check out as clear. Do you know how fast you would get busted if you tried to handwrite a check with bad information on it?
This I must say is a bit dense. Not that I don't agree with you that they do face "tough regulation" or whatnot, but let us speak of their actual behavior for a moment.
They send out piles of "you are pre approved!" nonsense and then pretty much hand out a card with precious little verification. My personal favorite was the story where the guy took one, tore it into little bits, then taped it all back together and filled it out with slightly screwy info to make it look as suspicious as possible...and then he got his card in the mail. I have personally seen them send out blank checks with your account information already on them. Now, of course the fine print of this "check" is that the check being cashed or used actually adds that to your account under some strange special offer loan thing. Oh yes..these fuckers are SO scared to get out of bed in the morning...
You can face the toughest regulations in the world, but if the enforcement end of it comes down to "Well, we didn't see anything" then the point is moot. I mean for christs sake these assholes default opt in on all the private data sharing programs and then send you a tinly little brochure with 3pt font explaining what to do to opt out. Then you call the stupid number and follow the prompts and they ask strange double negative questions to trick you into pushing the wrong answer to opt out.
Now...in all likelyhood you are probably right about how they got the info in question, however, that certainly doesn't eliminate the possibilty of sheisty CC company dealings making it happen.
Yeah, I can see it in that situation. I just see so many people buying the uber 17" laptop because its uber and 17". Which for a bizarre reason has recently flipped a bit of a 180 and now people are buying up those netbooks at an alarming rate. I don't want to have to carry a 12+lb monster everywhere I go, but I also don't want to have to hunker down with my nose 6 inches away from the screen and hands smushed together like a child just to do anything. I know people have uses for them, but I really really don't see any use for a netbook. These days my small ultraportable needs are met by my phone that has more computing power than my first real PC and my portable needs are met by my laptop.
Ok look. I love my Apple gear. My MacBookPro is by far the best laptop I have owned in a long series of laptops. I like hearing about interesting new tech stuff coming from Apple. New gadgets like the new MBP and its battery, the dropping of DRM, those are geek worthy stories. But seriously, how many damned times is slashdot going to rehash this "What will we ever do without our beloved Steve Jobs!?" story?
How about we just leave it at this. Regardless of who takes over the company next I am sure we can all agree, regardless if you love or hate Apple, that he will probably be more stable and qualifed that the Chair Tossing Google Killer that took over that other really big tech company...
Well, Cisco tends to have a bit of language barrier, but I have never been treated with anything but politeness and professionalism by them. I have also never had to deal with the department merry go round where everyone claims its another departments issue. I have always gotten reasonably quick responses that were of infinitely higher quality that "put CD CDROM den Reboot".
That's why I bring mine home and hook it to my 22" desktop monitor and use a wireless keyboard/mouse with it so it sits happily on the corner of my desk. :) (Ok, well not exactly why, I don't do video, but havint 22" of screen realestate is really nice when coding.)
That isn't far from what I was thinking. I mean really...how many lawyers have YOU met that had a code of ethics beyond getting paid? I suppose there is Jack Thompson...but then you kinda get into the realm of lawyers with codes of ethics aren't very good lawyers. (Yes...Jack Thompson had "ethics", he believed in his little crusade against the immorality of blah blah blah...that doesn't mean his ethics are anywhere near rational)
Now...to be fair...criminal defense lawyers that defend murderers and rapists should not allow their personal beliefs to get in the way. There have been so many mock trials in this country where the defense lawyer basically refused to put up a fight for an innocent man because he had already decided himself that he was guilty (typically based on things like skin color and the like). They should do their best job regardless of what they think. Of course...RIAA lawyers have a little more freedom in their choice of clients...but hey, if the paycheck is big enough...
I have called Apple support once. 10.5.5 update dorked up iCal. I spoke with someone who's native language was english, he forwarded me on to the engineers, they gathered some info, and said they would look into it. I figured meh, brushoff, but at least they were polite and it was a short call because I didn't spend 45 minutes trying to explain technical details of the problem across a language barrier to someone who is just reading a script off a screen. A few days later they called me back... I was stunned. This was consumer level stuff. I expect this kind of treatment when I am calling people like Cisco for expensive enterprise stuff.
So after the many years of having to deal with HP or Dell or Microsoft support and speaking to a guy who claims "I am in the USA" and that his name is "Mike" and receiving NO help whatsoever, or getting the openenly hostile treatment from Microsoft I was completely sold on Apple support. Even beyond the value I give to the better design of their laptops, the value of being treated like a valued customer instead of some schmuck that already paid or at worst a criminal is well worth the extra money.
I harp on people getting Macs because I am tired of fixing every stupid Windows problem they manage to wander into.
:) I used to think setting up wireless in Linux was a bit of a hastle...Vista learned me good on that one...
Vista...wireless...networking...holy fucking god does that insane bullshit send me into a homicidal rage every time I have to configure it. What the fuck where they thinking?! Do you want to configure this, yes. Connect to a network, yes. Welcome to the creating a network share wizard, wait what? no back damnit. Do you want to connect to a network? yes. No networks found, mine doesnt broadcast! Welcome to the build an adhoc wireless network, GOD DAMNIT!. RIGHT CLICK PROPERTIES RIGHT CLICK PROPERTIES WHERE IS IT, I WILL KILL YOU ALL!!! Now throw in a "You said yes, do I have permission to do it?" dialog every 3 clicks that pops under instead of on top half the time so you wonder why the hell it isn't actually doing anything. Yeah... Wireless Vista is fun to set up.
I imagine it has to do with the speaker/ambient light sensor placement. Personally I don't understand 17" laptops. The weight is typically pretty high and I have had so many battles trying to shove them into backpacks that I refused to ever purchase one myself. Weighing in at 6.6lbs makes it seem a bit anorexic, but that certainly would be a welcome improvement. Still the dimenions of the thing would make it a pain in the ass to carry around. With Apple gear you also get into the realm of do you really want to carry something that expensive around with you when you deal with the larger laptops.
On the battery...the ONLY laptops I have ever had to travel with extra batteries were for 17inch models because they sucked down so much damned juice so quickly. If this battery really does have the life they claim there really isn't a whole lot of reason for a removable battery. The only time I have ever had to screw with a laptop battery is when the shitty design HP battery failed. It was under warranty, but it still took me 3 damned months for them to send me a replacemnt (first they sent a power cable, then the ac adapter, THEN the battery). I was ready to fly to india with the bad battery to beat the support guy to death just to get it through his head that I when I said battery I meant battery. Of the 6 or 7 laptops I have gone through over the years(counting personal as well as work) over the years the HP was the only one that became such a total failure with the battery. Of the many more laptops in my organization I haven't seen any of them go completely bad either. That much of a reduction in weight and longer battery life definitely seems worth the trade off of a removable battery. Removable batteries are nice, but seriously, how often is it really necessary?
I got my MBP with 10.5 and haven't had any of the problems. I pretty much stick to the F/OSS stuff regardless of what OS I use since I don't like paying for software. I have a Vista desktop that I use for the rare game that I find time to play, but it feels like a poorly copied interface from Aqua...and they still don't have virtual desktops despite linux having had it for ages and OS X even finally getting the hint on it.
I used to love tinkering, Gentoo was fun. Then I had kids. I have the kids using linux so they learn how a computer works rather than just pretty point n click. For me, OS X has enough of the unix under the hood to let me do my power user stuff and has a really nice UI and things that mostly "just work". I don't have time to unfucker gconf because an update screwed up settings, or to figure out what the hell went wrong in the registry after my daughter hit the power button while it was installing something. I certainly don't think any OS is perfect. I think each OS has its uses. I just think Window's uses don't extend much past software availability because as an OS and UI it just isn't worth much. The big selling point of Windows is that "well you can't install XYZ on OSX/Linux" and when that changes I think OS X and Linux will gain a hell of a lot more ground. With any luck MS will actually be forced to compete rather than just feature creep the golden handcuffs of WGA/DRM/TPA and all the silly shit they include these days.
Well now you know one. That first goaround of WGA triggered false positive on my wife's Dell desktop. I called MS and they just said "purchase a new copy". So fuck that...legit OEM locked out because their stupid thing went false positive and their solution is for me to buy ANOTHER legit copy of their crap? I eventually had to dig up the disable WGA crap to get it usable again. Now at work, I have had their stupid activation bullshit screw me on multiple occasions because we have had to recover from failed hardware, try and boot the machine elsewhere and it immediately goes into expired activation mode. Now sometimes it reactivates without trouble, but almost every time I have done it it failed and MS is helpful enough to tell me "sorry, reinstall with a new copy". Having the default status of a criminal with their support staff for being a customer is total bullshit.
Convicted monopolist, punishment with no teeth. That isn't quite the same as practices every other company does. To say Microsoft engages in the same behavior as everyone else is laughable at best. It is a tremendous insult to the numerous tech industry companies that don't engage in the same kind of bullshit.
Apple, Secure Computing, Cisco, and a few others have gone out of their way to provide incredible support in my experience. As far as commercial OS goes, OS X and Solaris both require neither product keys nor some silly bullshit call home activation crap, let alone a tool that constantly calls back to check to see if it should lock you out at the whim of it's masters. Apple can be a little control freak about their stuff, but they sure as hell don't take the same consumers = criminals approach that MS takes.
Fair enoughish. To discount that as a Microsoft behavior is a little naieve given their consistently horrible track record, but I do agree it is a bit far out there in this context. The big issue I have is that Apple wasn't deliberatly trying to impair users (though fixing their flaw did impair users from coloring outside the lines with the device they purchased. Microsoft does deliberately impair their users with shit like WGA.
"which I've spent a ton of time customizing".
You kinda proved my point there. Most people don't like spending a bunch of time customizing just to get it behave in a sane fashion. Power users frequently do. Personally my family is more important than spending "a ton of time customizing" just to get the damned thing to behave in a sane fashion. If it is "just a fucking computer" why did you bother to spend "a ton of time" customizing it? Clearly it is more than "just a fucking computer" to you if you are willing to spend "a ton of time" customizing it. You mentioned something about stupid hyperbolic assertions?
What problem by the way? I didn't say there weren't problems in OS X. In fact I called Apple about a problem that happened after the 10.5.5 update. I spoke with someone whose native language was English. They forwarded me on to the engineering guys who gathered some data. Then a few days later they actually called me back with an update on what was going wrong. Imagine that... I have had to deal with other vendor's support for AGES and have NEVER in my life been treated that well as a generic caller.
Now if it doesn't have the software you need then it isn't the right tool. But everyone I have met that bitches and moans about Mac users have never actually spent a significant amount of time actually using one. They might have fiddled with one, and it didn't behave exactly the same as what they were used to, called it stupid and left it at that (which is exactly what I did for many years before actually devoting some time to trying to learn it).
That depends on the app. The most I have seen happen from the drag/drop variety are plist files created elsewhere that hold the preferences and whatnot. The few that I have bumped into that do much more than that often have installers/uninstallers. Though I do agree, the ones that do toss other stuff around with no sane way to clean up are pretty irritating, however losing some disk space is not even remotely in the same ballpark as the registry nightmare that Windows does. Personally my favorite is the apt/dpkg toolset.
I used to think Apple just equated to overpriced junk. Played around with a Mac Book Pro in the store and was impressed with design (Yes... Computers, ESPECIALLY laptops are more than just a processor, RAM, and a hard drive). I picked one up on refurb. I had long since converted to Linux for everything except the occasional game (like one every year or two) and this is what I have learned.
The OS does indeed make a huge difference. PC users mock Mac users for their "fanboy" stuff, but it is because PC users don't understand what it is like to have a computer that is actually nice to use. PC users will use their frame of reference of their experience with computers and think Mac users are just babbling nonsense. They go off on things like "Mac is an Intel PC now" and write it off as that.
You are 100% right. With the exception of the occasional MS zealot (that frequently has a rather weak or warped understanding of computing anyways) I have never met anyone that enjoyed Windows. At best they "like" Windows because of the games, which has nothing to do with Windows itself. People pretty much loathe Windows itself universally.
Linux users are a different variety. It appeals to the power user that likes to tinker. Desktop linux is definitely coming a long way, but it does not have the same polished UI that OS X has. There is certainly way more freedom under the hood, but that appeals to a relatively small group. Linux users tend to enjoy their linux desktops because they like to tinker. Distros tend to get chosen based on how much you must tinker to get everything working the way you want.
This leaves OS X. OS X has that nice unix underbelly these days so power users can get things like fink and macports and still have Aqua with their X11 stuff and so on and so forth. I keep hearing Windows users badmouth linux with "Windows just works" and after using OS X for about a year I do not think it means what they think it means. I work with computers... I don't want to have to go home and work on my damned computer. OS X has an interesting way of making unixy things terribly simple. Installing software...you click on the dmg file, drag the app to Applications, done. At the lower level, you just mounted a disk image, copied a foo.app folder that has a file in it that tells OS X to display it as a pretty icon instead of a folder, and your application is "installed". No silly registry BS, no complicated digging and wondering where the hell it put your files, etc. It is a joy to use it as a generic use computer. That is why Mac users advocate for Mac so much...it makes computers nice to use rather than a constant battle of bullshit like Windows.
That said I think OS X servers are kinda goofy, the major appeal to Apple is their nice hardware, superior design, and nice UI... In the server market where the box stays in a rack all day it pretty much kills any superior hardware/design stuff since you never see it, and the fancy UI on a server is a waste I think. All my servers that I am not forced to use Windows on are all linux. Linux is a joy to use as a server.
First of all, this was a braindead stupid bug. Unbelievably poor implementation of what should have been a fairly simple thing leads to an infinite loop on special days. Just looking at the damned loop without actually tracing through every possibility reveals a infinite loop at first glance. This was mindbogglingly stupid.
Second...Apple didn't "deliberately brick" devices. Your bias here is unbelievable. What Apple did was fix a bug that was allowing people to jailbreak and that caused problems from jailbroken phones. They fixed a security flaw that caused something that took advantage of that security flaw to cease to function correctly. Now, personally I would like it if the iPhone didn't require jailbreaking to open it up, but fixing the flaw that allows people to break your security model is not "deliberatly bricking". WGA is deliberately bricking, where it arbitrarily decides that you are invalid and shuts you off. In both cases it is incorrect useage of the word "brick" since either device can be easily recovered. So...to recap. Apple fixed a security flaw that caused bad news for people jailbreaking. Microsoft told your computer to call home every day so they could arbitrarily decide if you were valid or not and then shut you off if you werent.
It is easier to hate the large monolitic rich company that uses illegal business practices, breaks the standards, and buys off the DoJ to avoid punishment (Go look at MS political contributions to either party before the trial...virtually nil...then the year they get busted...they contribute big bucks to both sides and walk away with a wrist slap). Trust me...big time criminals don't need cheerleaders like you to help them out. People like you are like the wife that geats her ass kicked and says "no, but he really loves me, he really is a good guy".
I kinda hope they get sued. The folks have already said they don't want the money (which in my opinion makes them much more dangerous court opponents...nothing more determined and vicious than a lawyer with a cause). Should send a clear message to others to not risk some bullshit.