I haven't seen that phrase or anything like it used in the mainstream press since before the first iMac came out. Most of the articles and reports I see on Apple today see the company as FAR from "beleaguered." The only reports about Apple I've seen recently that were even remotely negative were some reports about their stock dropping due to Jobs illness, and some questions of whether Apple can survive without him.
Apple's problem isn't so much the "Apple tax," it's that they just don't have a very diverse product line for varied budgets (especially on the low end). When you buy a Dell, they will have something for you whatever your budget is. With Apple, the only thing they have under $1200 is the Mini (sans monitor). There is nothing wrong with that, mind you (a lot of companies specialize in higher-end PC's too). But it does create the perception that you're not getting much "bang for your buck" (since most of their stuff is well above the value "sweet spot" in the sub-$1000 range).
Are you kidding me? Apple has been the darling of newsrooms for as long as I can remember. There was a time you could walk into any newspaper or television newsroom in the country and not see anything BUT Apple computers. The press LOVES Apple. They slovenly follow every Apple product launch with almost rapturous attention (at the iPhone launch, I think I saw more than one reporter have an on-camera orgasm) and talk up even the most mundane Apple announcement. Hell, they've been treating Steve Jobs' recent illness as if the Pope himself had cancer.
Only the most rabid Apple fanboy (who thinks NOTHING good should ever be said of MS, and Apple can do no wrong) would think there is anything even resembling a "pro-Microsoft press conspiracy" out there. Most of the positive press coverage I see about MS is either when they have a MAJOR launch (the 360, a new Halo game, etc.) or is related to Bill Gates' considerable charitable activities (which *deserves* to be covered and extolled, if nothing more than to encourage other rich guys to do it). Most of their stuff barely gets a nod. I don't remember a single mainstream, non tech-press, story on the Zune launch, for example.
If anyone is getting cheated by the mainstream press, it's Linux. I've yet to see a single mainstream news story on THAT. It wasn't even mentioned in any of the news stories on the OLPC program (which got considerable press).
Yeah, because AT&T and other DSL providers aren't going to set download caps just as soon as Time Warner does.
Seriously, you think they want a bunch of heavy users as customers--when they lose money on each one of them? If you're the kind of user who wants to fight download caps, odds are your the kind of broadband customer that NO ISP WANTS; cable, dsl or otherwise.
Look, one way or the other, almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD
video and streaming services. The hard fact is that they cannot (and never could) deliver "unlimited" bandwidth. So either
they:
a) Raise their prices considerably on all their "unlimited" plans--sucks for the light users, who are basically
subsidizing the heavy users who want to stream HD video and movies
b) Covertly start throttling back heavy users--sucks for everyone, since no one even knows how much they're being
throttled and there is no option of paying a premium to escape it
c) Set download caps--sucks compared to the "free ride" heavy users are getting now, but at least it's out in the open
with no throttling bullshit (and light users don't get penalized).
Personally, I'll gladly take c. But there is for sure one option that is *NOT* on the table:
d) Everything stays priced the same as now, without throttling or download caps
So pick a, b, or c. And stop kidding yourself that you can pick d.
Yet-another-Viking probe
the successful repair/upgrade missions to the Hubble Space Telescope
Unremarkable low-orbit mission
building a space station
Unremarkable low-orbit mission
any of the 2700 other successes they've had
All unremarkable low-orbit missions and yet-another-Viking probes, exactly as my original post indicated--and all wasting billions of $ doing nothing particularly remarkable or original.
As a sane and law-abiding citizen, I want the gun in my hand when the shit hits the fan, thank you very much. I don't want the gun in the hands of the nut or the criminal--but since when has the nut or criminal obeyed the law?
And I'm not some right-winger either. I'm a liberal--a liberal who knows he can't trust the cops to either protect him from the nuts/criminals or to not abuse their power. Now of course, the cops and government don't want YOU to have a gun. If they're the only ones with them, they'll have *all* the power with absolutely nothing to check it.
Where have you been? PR is pretty much *all* they've done since the 70's. Never has so much hype been generated over so many unremarkable low-orbit missions and yet-another-Viking probes.
I'm sure that everyone will also point out the many flaws and shortcomings of MS's OSS competitor ("Linux") as well. As all/.er's know, it's just not as robust as Vista.
"You seem to think that that's a lot more common than it is. Just because Fawlty Towers (which Americans are obsessed with) ran for two series doesn't mean it's typical."
The Office and Spaced were also widely popular here and followed this model.
Not just games, but all software apps. Not being able to use GOM, Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere, Vegas, et al on Linux sucks WAY more for me than not being able to play Crysis.
A lot of American shows would have benefited with the "6-8 strong episodes a season for 2 seasons" BBC model. But a lot would have probably suffered too. Look, for example, at Star Trek: The Next Generation (and why I'm actually spelling that out on/. and not just using ST:TNG is beyond me). That show was ABYSMAL in its first season, pretty bad in its second season, but then it started to really hit its stride in the 3rd and later seasons. Can you imagine a ST:TNG with half the entire series run featuring an unbearded Riker? I shudder at the thought.
Obviously you've never seen the budget breakdown of a BBC show vs. and American one. Of course, in some ways that's a good thing (forces BBC casts and crews to really get creative with what they do have), but it's also limiting (there are some things they just can't afford to do that they would like to). The BBC, with its more open and less advertiser-driven nature, at its best can produce some really cutting-edge stuff (The Office, Ab Fab, Skins, etc.), but most of the time it produces silly fluff with production qualities that Norman Lear would have been ashamed of in the early 1970's.
I always laugh at those who think THEIR politician is different. EVERY politician is a hyper-ambitious, power-hungry scumbag who would gladly climb over his dead mother's body to advance his own political ambitions. And YES that means YOUR favorite too (I'm looking at you, Ron Paul worshipers).
No, if you want to see a REAL pissed off bunch, you should see what the Russians did to Germany after WWII (in retaliation for the earlier atrocities the Germans had visited on THEM). Making a prisoner watch a movie, however childish, rather pales in comparison.
Remind me how you Europeans are so far above war retaliation again? I seem to have forgotten your argument.
Cloud computing sounds like a great idea until you realize the scale and cost of the server farm needed and the crazy-insane bandwidth requirements. Maybe for simple games, but for anything even close to cutting edge, there is just no way.
My problem is similar, namely specific software apps I depend on or really like. GOM, Photoshop, Vegas, Premiere, Indesign, etc.--all are non-negotiable. Most of them don't work under WINE, and their OSS equivalents are jokes.:-(
Slashdot Mirror
And that makes them different from Apple how exactly?
I haven't seen that phrase or anything like it used in the mainstream press since before the first iMac came out. Most of the articles and reports I see on Apple today see the company as FAR from "beleaguered." The only reports about Apple I've seen recently that were even remotely negative were some reports about their stock dropping due to Jobs illness, and some questions of whether Apple can survive without him.
Lighten up, Francis. They're just another corporation, not a conspiracy to eat your children.
Apple's problem isn't so much the "Apple tax," it's that they just don't have a very diverse product line for varied budgets (especially on the low end). When you buy a Dell, they will have something for you whatever your budget is. With Apple, the only thing they have under $1200 is the Mini (sans monitor). There is nothing wrong with that, mind you (a lot of companies specialize in higher-end PC's too). But it does create the perception that you're not getting much "bang for your buck" (since most of their stuff is well above the value "sweet spot" in the sub-$1000 range).
Are you kidding me? Apple has been the darling of newsrooms for as long as I can remember. There was a time you could walk into any newspaper or television newsroom in the country and not see anything BUT Apple computers. The press LOVES Apple. They slovenly follow every Apple product launch with almost rapturous attention (at the iPhone launch, I think I saw more than one reporter have an on-camera orgasm) and talk up even the most mundane Apple announcement. Hell, they've been treating Steve Jobs' recent illness as if the Pope himself had cancer.
Only the most rabid Apple fanboy (who thinks NOTHING good should ever be said of MS, and Apple can do no wrong) would think there is anything even resembling a "pro-Microsoft press conspiracy" out there. Most of the positive press coverage I see about MS is either when they have a MAJOR launch (the 360, a new Halo game, etc.) or is related to Bill Gates' considerable charitable activities (which *deserves* to be covered and extolled, if nothing more than to encourage other rich guys to do it). Most of their stuff barely gets a nod. I don't remember a single mainstream, non tech-press, story on the Zune launch, for example.
If anyone is getting cheated by the mainstream press, it's Linux. I've yet to see a single mainstream news story on THAT. It wasn't even mentioned in any of the news stories on the OLPC program (which got considerable press).
Yeah, because AT&T and other DSL providers aren't going to set download caps just as soon as Time Warner does.
Seriously, you think they want a bunch of heavy users as customers--when they lose money on each one of them? If you're the kind of user who wants to fight download caps, odds are your the kind of broadband customer that NO ISP WANTS; cable, dsl or otherwise.
Look, one way or the other, almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD video and streaming services. The hard fact is that they cannot (and never could) deliver "unlimited" bandwidth. So either they:
a) Raise their prices considerably on all their "unlimited" plans--sucks for the light users, who are basically subsidizing the heavy users who want to stream HD video and movies
b) Covertly start throttling back heavy users--sucks for everyone, since no one even knows how much they're being throttled and there is no option of paying a premium to escape it
c) Set download caps--sucks compared to the "free ride" heavy users are getting now, but at least it's out in the open with no throttling bullshit (and light users don't get penalized).
Personally, I'll gladly take c. But there is for sure one option that is *NOT* on the table:
d) Everything stays priced the same as now, without throttling or download caps
So pick a, b, or c. And stop kidding yourself that you can pick d.
Yet-another-Viking probe the successful repair/upgrade missions to the Hubble Space Telescope
Unremarkable low-orbit mission building a space station
Unremarkable low-orbit mission any of the 2700 other successes they've had
All unremarkable low-orbit missions and yet-another-Viking probes, exactly as my original post indicated--and all wasting billions of $ doing nothing particularly remarkable or original.
As a sane and law-abiding citizen, I want the gun in my hand when the shit hits the fan, thank you very much. I don't want the gun in the hands of the nut or the criminal--but since when has the nut or criminal obeyed the law?
And I'm not some right-winger either. I'm a liberal--a liberal who knows he can't trust the cops to either protect him from the nuts/criminals or to not abuse their power. Now of course, the cops and government don't want YOU to have a gun. If they're the only ones with them, they'll have *all* the power with absolutely nothing to check it.
Where have you been? PR is pretty much *all* they've done since the 70's. Never has so much hype been generated over so many unremarkable low-orbit missions and yet-another-Viking probes.
I'm sure that everyone will also point out the many flaws and shortcomings of MS's OSS competitor ("Linux") as well. As all /.er's know, it's just not as robust as Vista.
NASA represents America, son, not democracy!
"You seem to think that that's a lot more common than it is. Just because Fawlty Towers (which Americans are obsessed with) ran for two series doesn't mean it's typical."
The Office and Spaced were also widely popular here and followed this model.
Not just games, but all software apps. Not being able to use GOM, Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere, Vegas, et al on Linux sucks WAY more for me than not being able to play Crysis.
Don't forget:
* Promotes non-mainstream, rabid devotion to fanatical religions--including Linux and OSS.
A lot of American shows would have benefited with the "6-8 strong episodes a season for 2 seasons" BBC model. But a lot would have probably suffered too. Look, for example, at Star Trek: The Next Generation (and why I'm actually spelling that out on /. and not just using ST:TNG is beyond me). That show was ABYSMAL in its first season, pretty bad in its second season, but then it started to really hit its stride in the 3rd and later seasons. Can you imagine a ST:TNG with half the entire series run featuring an unbearded Riker? I shudder at the thought.
Obviously you've never seen the budget breakdown of a BBC show vs. and American one. Of course, in some ways that's a good thing (forces BBC casts and crews to really get creative with what they do have), but it's also limiting (there are some things they just can't afford to do that they would like to). The BBC, with its more open and less advertiser-driven nature, at its best can produce some really cutting-edge stuff (The Office, Ab Fab, Skins, etc.), but most of the time it produces silly fluff with production qualities that Norman Lear would have been ashamed of in the early 1970's.
I always laugh at those who think THEIR politician is different. EVERY politician is a hyper-ambitious, power-hungry scumbag who would gladly climb over his dead mother's body to advance his own political ambitions. And YES that means YOUR favorite too (I'm looking at you, Ron Paul worshipers).
No, if you want to see a REAL pissed off bunch, you should see what the Russians did to Germany after WWII (in retaliation for the earlier atrocities the Germans had visited on THEM). Making a prisoner watch a movie, however childish, rather pales in comparison.
Remind me how you Europeans are so far above war retaliation again? I seem to have forgotten your argument.
Yeah, because you Canadians are so mature. Do you realize how long it took to replace our Baldwins after that fucking war? DO YOU???
We had to go to Baldwin 3rd cousins, you bastards!
Cloud computing sounds like a great idea until you realize the scale and cost of the server farm needed and the crazy-insane bandwidth requirements. Maybe for simple games, but for anything even close to cutting edge, there is just no way.
Is there anything Robert E. Lee CAN'T do?
Data: In case of a water landing, I am designed to be used as a flotation device.
...Think like Father Steve tells you to.
My problem is similar, namely specific software apps I depend on or really like. GOM, Photoshop, Vegas, Premiere, Indesign, etc.--all are non-negotiable. Most of them don't work under WINE, and their OSS equivalents are jokes. :-(