> I own and love a Palm, and I still wouldn't buy the stock.
You're absolutely correct. If I were going to buy a PDA today, it would be a Palm, hands down. However, their business is doing poorly, and I see no way for them to fix themselves in the long run. That doesn't mean their PDAs aren't good; it's just that they're not positioned to be a strong business in the long term.
An additional problem is where will PDAs be in 3 years? The problem is, when people travel, three common things to carry are:
1. Mobile phone 2. PDA 3. MP3 player
The problem is the functions are starting to overlap. Mobile phones can store hundreds of contacts, and with iSync, they can be synched automatically. And since it's kind of silly to have to look up the number in a PDA and then type it into a phone, it makes sense that for plain phone numbers, the phone takes precedence.
Now for MP3 players, the iPod is the coolest. And it can store phone numbers and addresses too (although why you can't assign categories to the addresses so I can easily find one address out of the 600 in my iPod is beyond me!). So out of the three devices, if you have to give up one, it will likely be the PDA.
Therefore, between cell phones and MP3 players like the iPod, I think the regular PDA will eventually be squeezed out.
Perhaps Palm should have bought Rio a few years ago (before the iPod) and gone that route instead of stagnating with their PDA line. Or maybe they should have partnered with cell phone companies (and I don't mean that funky SprintPCS phone thing they built) to build a small phone with excellent synching capabilities.
but not someone who can run a multibillion dollar company.
Analysts are notoriously conservative, and they like what's been proven to work. So by saying
> A separate Apple software unit would be far better able > to challenge Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system > for market share.
they're forgetting that Microsoft got to their dominant position by illegally abusing their monopoly. And no software company can compete on that level.
He seems to think that shareholders reacted poorly to the rumored purchase of Universal music because they don't want an integrated company. Not necessarily -- shareholders always react negatively to any activity that results in a large outlay of cash, with that deal certainly would have done.
Banking on Palm's success in splitting their company is a silly idea. Palm is quickly on their way to becoming the "Iomega" of PDAs -- fast start, no forward momentum, and eventually moribund.
Apple's success stems from their understanding that a large number of people want to buy a fully-integrated product -- that is, the hardware and software from the same vendor. As Apple's financials show, this business can be very profitable. On the other hand, if they only did software, it's unlikely that they would have as elegant of computer systems. So it doesn't seem like a sure thing for Apple to grow by splitting their business. Instead, they need to aggressively expand their market. They're trying to do this with their Switcher campaign, and according to the figures they released to analysts, they doubled their market share in the consumer space. Perhaps this means their strategy is working.
> I'm not that much afraid of malicious hacker parking a > big black van in front of my house
Two of my neighbors put up wireless Ethernet systems recently, and neither has very good security on them. In fact, one neighbor didn't password-protect his network, use WEP, or even change the default password on his router.
Here's what's scary. If a person parked a car outside his house and started downloading something illegal, like child pornography, the NAT capabilities of the wireless base station would make it look like to the outside world that the owner of the house was downloading this info. Moreover, it's not really illegal for someone to access your network like this because it wasn't secure to begin with.
Most people are throwing these wireless networks up, but they're not considering what kind of havoc they're risking by not securing their networks.
Before we bought the DVD, the VHS for Pulp Fiction was pan/scan. The movie was unwatchable. The panning was so bad that we tossed out the VHS.
In fact, the only version of the movie Babe that is available on DVD is pan/scan, so my wife and I won't buy it. They released the sequal as wide screen, but not the original, which is very annoying.
The masses choose wide screen over full screen! Next, we have to wean them off of pro wrestling, Brittany Spears, and lite beer and the 2000s won't end up being an embarrassment to history! Or at least we'll be cooler than the 1920s, with their flagpole sitting and zootsuits.
> The Titanium PowerBook G4s also had a huge probelm > with chiping > The band around the center of the unit as well as the > screen hinges would chip (paint ?
What do you people do with your Apples? I had a Titanium PowerBook (Rev B), and I had no problems with chipping. The unit looks the same as it did when I got it a year and a half ago. I wear a watch, too. I make sure I carry it in a sleeve, and I keep it away from sandblasting equipment, but maybe that means I treat it with unusual delicateness.
AirPort reception was bad when I bought it, but for some reason, one the system updates seemed to fix it. For example, I keep my AirPort in my study, and when I had my PowerBook G3 in the kitchen, I got four bars. Then I got my PowerBook G4, and at first, I only got 1 or 2 bars sporadically, which was annoying. Then after a while, Apple came out with one of the System updates, and the reception was up to 4 bars. Now, I didn't try to reboot in Mac OS 9 to see if the problem occurred there; I was just satisfied the reception was fine while I was eating my lunch.
So maybe the reason why Apple discounted the complaints is because they attributed the paint chipping to abuse since the problem wasn't universal.
With the first generation iPods, Apple originally had a 90-day warranty. However, they later increased the warranty to a full year, and they grandfathered all the iPod owners to this period.
I had a 1st gen iPod and it quit working after about 10 months (apparently, the first iPods could have a problem if you didn't keep them charged, they wouldn't turn back on). I went to the Apple Store, and they replaced the unit at no charge. No muss, no fuss. The replacement has had no problems, and I've had no such problem with my 10 GB iPod either.
Apple realizes that good customer service is not only the right thing to do, but it also pays dividends. I just bought a 17" PowerBook, something I would have been loathe to do if Apple had nickle-and-dimed me on the iPod.
So if the new iPods do have this problem, I suspect the answer is a quick firmware update. Or they'll replace the unit. Of course, I'd just go down the Apple Store, and listen to a real unit. Maybe the problem is with bad encoding or a corrupted track.
P.S.: I have a 1st generation AirPort, too, and I have yet to have a problem with it.
> So you could technically burn it on a CD and then rip it > immediately and have it as mp3s... Sounds reasonable, > so long as the loss of quality isn't noticeable.
Correct. From what I've heard you can rip from AAC protected to AIFF back to AAC unprotected and not have a noticable decrease in sound quality. AAC Protected -> AIFF -> MP3 might have some artifacts since they use two different encoding mechanisms. I haven't done it, but I think Mossberg or someone like him did it, and there wasn't a problem.
What's cool is that this is similar to the copy protection on the iPod; it's difficult to use an iPod to copy songs (through iTunes), but not impossible. The idea is to discourage casual pirating, without keeping people from doing what they want with their music.
I stayed away from online music (for pay) before because I didn't want to deal with the DRM or poor quality music files. But Apple's system seems generally transparent, so I'm interested. I've bought about 15 songs so far, and I'm going back through my collection to purchase any "questionable" MP3s I've got.
What we need now is a software "CD-burning/ripping" application to unprotect the AACs for backup purposes. And I do mean backup purposes; these tracks are reasonably priced and easy to get -- there's no need to resort to file sharing as far as I'm concerned.
> And after hearing the friends with TiBooks complain > about the finish coming off, heat, the case cracking, etc
I've had plenty of PowerBooks over the years. I started with a Duo 230, then a G3 (Wallstreet model), then a G3 (PDQ model), then a G3 (Pismo), then a Titanium G4 (Rev B, I think). I've got a 17" PowerBook now. Crap, I've owned a lot of PowerBooks. Anyway on the whole they've been pretty sturdy.
With my 15" TiBook before this, and I had absolutely no problems with the paint flaking off, case cracking, or anything like that.
> If you didn't like the movies don't take this post as an > invitation for you to bash it
Well, there's a lot of people who want their disappointment in Star Wars to be legitimized by seeing Star Wars-bashing on every Star Wars story. They don't like the idea that some people may have liked Episodes 1 and 2. So they want to drown those people out by describing in hyperbolic terms how much they utterly loathed Episode 1 and 2.
They ignore that Jar-Jar is no more annoying than C3PO and that the acting and dialog is no better than in Episodes 4-6.
I guess they hope that Lucas will suddenly become a Slashdot reader and miraculously turn Episode 3 into The Matrix, complete with bullet-time Jedi, electronica music, sunglasses, and plenty of machine gun fire.
I for one liked the Episodes 1 and 2, and after repeated viewings, I like Jar-Jar. He makes me laugh, so sue me.
For full disclosure, I didn't like The Matrix, I liked Lord of the Rings, I liked Minority Report, and I didn't see Spiderman.
I guess some people just don't like diversity of opinions.
> Two guys, neighbors, both running Jaguar, both on the > same cable modem subnet.
> I mean, what are the odds?
I was thinking the same thing. I think the odds are better that one has two convicted sex offenders on the same subnet than two Jaguar users.
However, I think this is starting to change. At work, in my immediate area, the number of people buying new Macintoshes is starting to increase. The top cited reasons? In no particular order:
1. The new iMac 2. The fact that it "just works." It's funny to see a new Mac user who's been using Windows for years get kind of a confused look on their face, and say, "I can't explain it, but it just works." 3. Mac OS X and its Unix underpinnings -- this seems to influence the more technical people 4. Microsoft's copy restrictions in Windows XP. It surprises me how many people are turned off by this. Not that they're out pirating software or music or anything, but they mention that they just don't like it.
Rendezvous is designed to work on a subnet, and likely your dad and his neighbor are on the same subnet, thus the inintended sharing.
Since he has a broadband connection, I'd recommend that you buy him a router, so that all of his Rendezvous packets stay in his house. No muss, no fuss. And routers can be as cheap as $30 -- I just bought a cool NetGear router to replace my LinkSys and it cost about $50. With the router, he can have multiple computers on his network, keep his LAN separate from the WAN, and have some basic security protection above and beyond the built-in firewall in Mac OS X.
Or you can convince him to buy a new AirPort base station that has a built-in router so he can solve his problem as well as allow you to surf the 'Net on your PowerBook while you're over visiting.
> It wasn't because he wanted to cover up the > statues, it was to provide a better backdrop for > the cameras.
What a great idea! I'm sure he wanted only to ensure that the press had better access to him. I can see future moves by Ashcroft:
1. Deletion of the Bill of Rights: it doesn't take away anyone's rights; it's to enable better clarification of the rights they have. "Too many people couldn't remember all the rights anyway. This will help people because all they have to know is that I'll remind them of the rights they have."
2. Allowing secret court proceedings to gain a search warrent to force a public library to divulge the reading list of its patrons and forbid the library from informing said patrons of any particular instance. The only reason for this is so the F.B.I. can let us know if our books are overdue. And if libraries told their patrons it may unnecessarily worry their "pretty little heads"
Wow, so he is from the government and he really is here to help!
> You saw the sanitized war which is exactly what > the DOD wanted you to see.
This is a good point. Salon recently had an interesting article that featured an interesting observation from Dennis Dunleavy, a professor of photojournalism at San Jose State University in California on the media's coverage of the war.
He said that there are basically 3 "angles" for the news stories and photos:
1. Technology: "It's our power against the rest of the world and these images reflect that. Tanks, soldiers, shots from aircraft carriers, night-vision pictures. That's all about technology."
2. Victims: "But not casualties. It's images of refugees, displaced people squatting on the ground while soldiers stand above them. The dominant interest is the coalition troops against a background of helping the homeless or disenfranchised."
3. Soldiers: "Lots of clear pictures of soldiers giving directions, on the move. They're technically beautiful photographs and amazingly well shot for being in a war zone."
So from the American press's standpoint, this is a war about America's soldiers, not really the war itself. Contrast this with the view that other countries, particularly in the Arab world, which are seeing a more complete picture: dead and injured civilians, bombed cities, dead soldiers, as well as the other stuff we see.
America is seeing a sanitized view of the war, which is part of the reason it feels so remote from our daily lives.
> those curtains were bought to hide the breasts > simply to stop the press from acting like 5th > graders trying to get politicians into a shot > with the breast. if you see the actual setting, > the statue would hardly be seen from a normal > point of view, but photographers would go out of > their way to include them in a shot.
I've seen this written a couple of times on Slashdot. Do you have any proof of this?
It doesn't make sense to me, because I can't imagine an editor of a major newsagency allowing hundreds of photos to be shown with the same pair of statue's breasts in them. So why would professional photographers go out of their way to immaturely compose their pictures that won't get printed anyway. I mean, it's not like the breasts improve the photo's newsworthyness.
I guess you could use the same justification to censor the war photos: "We got rid of this whole free speech thing because people started acting like a bunch of fifth graders, you know showing pictures of injured civilians and stuff."
> I've also found that in really bad cases you can > suck a bit of ink through the printhead, but it > doesn't taste too good
You know that "Post Anonymously" feature? This is one of times when you should have used it. I'm not sure if fellating your printer is anything you want to admit with a traceable user name.
On the other hand, you might be able to take pictures of yourself in the said act, post them on the Internet, and use the membership revenue to offset some of the cost of buying new cartridges!:-)
> Borrow books from the state, and then get > suprised when they pay attention to what you are > borrowing?
The government isn't like a private or corporation; its powers are clearly defined in our Constitution. Our system of government is based on the idea that the citizens have certain unalienable rights -- you know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government's powers on the other hand are derived from the consent of the governed -- us. Therefore, one can clearly be "cranky" if the government steps out of those bounds.
As for other administrations, well, it's silly to argue about the hypothetical. That's like saying that an embezzler shouldn't be arrested because well, who wouldn't steal millions of dollars if given the chance?
We can only argue about what has actually happened. The Bush Administration asked for the Patriot Act and they've demonstrated they're not afraid to use it. The Bush Administration has also been steadily undoing the Watergate-era reforms that were designed to reign in the Executive branch and now they're running amuck.
> As anyone who studies political science will tell > you, a democracy only works well when you have an > educated public.
That explains what Karl Rove (you know, Bush's brain) was thinking when he said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans--unless they have too much education and vote Democratic."
You can easily steer the country on the road to fascism all the while calling it "democracy," if your citizens don't know any better. Republicans have made no secret of their anti-academic views (e.g. they want to teach Biblical Creation in science class, and the current president probably hasn't even read a book since The The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Utimately, they want to replace our democracy with a plutocratic theocracy under their brand of Christianity. Sounds a little extreme, right? Well, Bush already believes that he was elected by God to lead this country.
Wow, this post is probably one sentence away from violating Godwin's law. I should have read my sig before posting.
> So basically the Patriot Act says that library > records can be used in terrorist investigations. > Is that it, or is there something more sinister > I'm missing?
Among other things, the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to not only get a list of all web sites or books you've seen from a library, but it forbids the library to tell you that the FBI came-a lookin'.
Claiming that these brave new powers will only be used to combat terrorism is a bit misleading. "Terrorism" is whatever the government wants to call it. For example, the government at one time wanted to call computer cracking "computer terrorism". Or, consider the fact that Senate Bill 742 in Oregon, introduced by Republican John Minnis, would define as a terrorist, a person who "plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt" business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly." Keep in mind, that means if you start a food fight, you could be a terrorist under this law.
Brings to mind a line from Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, "Why don't you just put us all in solitary confinement and be done with it!"
> I'm told that somewhere between 95% and 93% of > the fiber-optic 'net backbone is unused
According to a March 2002 article by Carol Wilson of The NetEconomy, usage is a lot higher than people think. During peak traffic periods, it's estimated that more than 60% of fiber optic channels are "lit" -- that is, in active capacity. She cited two examples. Qwest reported 80% utilization and Telechoice reported more than 60%.
However, since networks are generally engineered for peak capacity, and the usage during peak traffic times can be 10 times greater than the usage during off-peak times, it can mistakenly appear as if the fiber optics networks are essentially unused.
Unfortunately, I can't link to the article, because The NetEconomy ceased operations back when the 'net economy ceased to exist.
I don't think this is necessarily trying to attack TiVo. They're probably trying to find a happy medium between pure TiVo (where the user has complete control over what they watch) and broadcast TV where the user has no control at all. Today, the number of programs is limited becasue the networks have to stream out programs regardless of if people actually watch them. With AOL's idea, they can store programs and only deliver them to people who want to watch them. So instead of segmenting programming lineups to geographic locations (the way it's done today), they can set up programming lineups and deliver them to targeted audiences. So, if you want to watch The Simpsons and Futurama during primetime on Monday? Fine, here you go, but we're going to sandwich some crappy cartoon we're plugging right in the middle. In the meantime, we'll push Law and Order to your next door neighbor at the same time, along with commericals that feature products that they recently looked at on Amazon. All of this without expanding the effective number of channels in the area.
Although this idea is marginally better than broadcast television, it still pales in comparison to user-centric viewing like with TiVo.
> Mandatory addition of a correct label on a product > is almost never a good idea.
I agree! I hate the idea of the government telling companies what to do. The industry can easily regulate itself, and if the market wants some sort of label on a CD that says, "this CD could damage your CD player because of copy-restrictions we put on it, bee-yatch!", then they'll do it. And if they're not doing it, it means consumers don't want some sort of stupid label that mucks up the jewel box or covers up part of the liner art. And I say, if you buy a disc that you find is copy protected or it damages your computer or whatever, then too bad. Life's full of risks, and buying a CD or some software is no different from running across a busy highway with your eyes closed. Remember, if you outlaw deliberate obfuscation of potentially damaging product attributes, then only outlaws will have deliberately obfuscated potentially damaging products.
I kind of expected that someone at Apple posted the link to "Bush Demands Recount" on their Hot News site late at night and no one had noticed yet, but it's been there all day.
I think it shows that Apple has a pretty good sense of humor that they kept it up there, even though some conservative Mac users are probably pretty steamed.
Well, probably not as steamed as the thousands people in Florida who didn't get to vote in the 2000 election because the private auditing firm hired by Jeb Bush arranged for legitimate voters to have their votes tossed out if they had a similar name to that of a felon's.
> Interesting side note, President Clinton and > Jobs were pretty tight, while Michael Dell was a > big supporter of Dubya. I think that says a lot
It sure does. Plus Microsoft was a big supporter of Dubya as well. Back during the election, Microsoft hired one of Bush's consultants to help them lobby the Bush administration about the anti trust case: (from the NY Times article, Apr 11, 2000)
The Microsoft Corporation has quietly hired Ralph Reed, a senior consultant to Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign, to lobby Mr. Bush in opposition to the government's antitrust case against the software giant.
Microsoft's aim, the company says, is to curry favor with the apparent Republican presidential nominee, hoping he will speak out against the government's case -- and, perhaps, take a softer approach toward the company if he is elected president.
Mr. Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, is well situated to take on the assignment since his firm, Century Strategies, is one of Mr. Bush's top consultants. During the primary campaign, Mr. Reed frequently appeared on television to talk on behalf of the campaign.
According to a Mercury News article from 1999, Microsoft also helped finance his inaugural celebration for his second term as Texas governor, and their COO was one of GWB's chief fundraisers for the Northeast.
One good thing you can say about Bush is that when he's bought, he stays bought!
Slashdot Mirror
> I own and love a Palm, and I still wouldn't buy the stock.
You're absolutely correct. If I were going to buy a PDA today, it would be a Palm, hands down. However, their business is doing poorly, and I see no way for them to fix themselves in the long run. That doesn't mean their PDAs aren't good; it's just that they're not positioned to be a strong business in the long term.
An additional problem is where will PDAs be in 3 years? The problem is, when people travel, three common things to carry are:
1. Mobile phone
2. PDA
3. MP3 player
The problem is the functions are starting to overlap. Mobile phones can store hundreds of contacts, and with iSync, they can be synched automatically. And since it's kind of silly to have to look up the number in a PDA and then type it into a phone, it makes sense that for plain phone numbers, the phone takes precedence.
Now for MP3 players, the iPod is the coolest. And it can store phone numbers and addresses too (although why you can't assign categories to the addresses so I can easily find one address out of the 600 in my iPod is beyond me!). So out of the three devices, if you have to give up one, it will likely be the PDA.
Therefore, between cell phones and MP3 players like the iPod, I think the regular PDA will eventually be squeezed out.
Perhaps Palm should have bought Rio a few years ago (before the iPod) and gone that route instead of stagnating with their PDA line. Or maybe they should have partnered with cell phone companies (and I don't mean that funky SprintPCS phone thing they built) to build a small phone with excellent synching capabilities.
but not someone who can run a multibillion dollar company.
Analysts are notoriously conservative, and they like what's been proven to work. So by saying
> A separate Apple software unit would be far better able
> to challenge Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system
> for market share.
they're forgetting that Microsoft got to their dominant position by illegally abusing their monopoly. And no software company can compete on that level.
He seems to think that shareholders reacted poorly to the rumored purchase of Universal music because they don't want an integrated company. Not necessarily -- shareholders always react negatively to any activity that results in a large outlay of cash, with that deal certainly would have done.
Banking on Palm's success in splitting their company is a silly idea. Palm is quickly on their way to becoming the "Iomega" of PDAs -- fast start, no forward momentum, and eventually moribund.
Apple's success stems from their understanding that a large number of people want to buy a fully-integrated product -- that is, the hardware and software from the same vendor. As Apple's financials show, this business can be very profitable. On the other hand, if they only did software, it's unlikely that they would have as elegant of computer systems. So it doesn't seem like a sure thing for Apple to grow by splitting their business. Instead, they need to aggressively expand their market. They're trying to do this with their Switcher campaign, and according to the figures they released to analysts, they doubled their market share in the consumer space. Perhaps this means their strategy is working.
> I'm not that much afraid of malicious hacker parking a
> big black van in front of my house
Two of my neighbors put up wireless Ethernet systems recently, and neither has very good security on them. In fact, one neighbor didn't password-protect his network, use WEP, or even change the default password on his router.
Here's what's scary. If a person parked a car outside his house and started downloading something illegal, like child pornography, the NAT capabilities of the wireless base station would make it look like to the outside world that the owner of the house was downloading this info. Moreover, it's not really illegal for someone to access your network like this because it wasn't secure to begin with.
Most people are throwing these wireless networks up, but they're not considering what kind of havoc they're risking by not securing their networks.
> With incompetent editing it's unwatchable
Before we bought the DVD, the VHS for Pulp Fiction was pan/scan. The movie was unwatchable. The panning was so bad that we tossed out the VHS.
In fact, the only version of the movie Babe that is available on DVD is pan/scan, so my wife and I won't buy it. They released the sequal as wide screen, but not the original, which is very annoying.
The masses choose wide screen over full screen! Next, we have to wean them off of pro wrestling, Brittany Spears, and lite beer and the 2000s won't end up being an embarrassment to history! Or at least we'll be cooler than the 1920s, with their flagpole sitting and zootsuits.
> The Titanium PowerBook G4s also had a huge probelm
> with chiping
> The band around the center of the unit as well as the
> screen hinges would chip (paint ?
What do you people do with your Apples? I had a Titanium PowerBook (Rev B), and I had no problems with chipping. The unit looks the same as it did when I got it a year and a half ago. I wear a watch, too. I make sure I carry it in a sleeve, and I keep it away from sandblasting equipment, but maybe that means I treat it with unusual delicateness.
AirPort reception was bad when I bought it, but for some reason, one the system updates seemed to fix it. For example, I keep my AirPort in my study, and when I had my PowerBook G3 in the kitchen, I got four bars. Then I got my PowerBook G4, and at first, I only got 1 or 2 bars sporadically, which was annoying. Then after a while, Apple came out with one of the System updates, and the reception was up to 4 bars. Now, I didn't try to reboot in Mac OS 9 to see if the problem occurred there; I was just satisfied the reception was fine while I was eating my lunch.
So maybe the reason why Apple discounted the complaints is because they attributed the paint chipping to abuse since the problem wasn't universal.
> Judging from past experiences, no.
My experience has been otherwise.
With the first generation iPods, Apple originally had a 90-day warranty. However, they later increased the warranty to a full year, and they grandfathered all the iPod owners to this period.
I had a 1st gen iPod and it quit working after about 10 months (apparently, the first iPods could have a problem if you didn't keep them charged, they wouldn't turn back on). I went to the Apple Store, and they replaced the unit at no charge. No muss, no fuss. The replacement has had no problems, and I've had no such problem with my 10 GB iPod either.
Apple realizes that good customer service is not only the right thing to do, but it also pays dividends. I just bought a 17" PowerBook, something I would have been loathe to do if Apple had nickle-and-dimed me on the iPod.
So if the new iPods do have this problem, I suspect the answer is a quick firmware update. Or they'll replace the unit. Of course, I'd just go down the Apple Store, and listen to a real unit. Maybe the problem is with bad encoding or a corrupted track.
P.S.: I have a 1st generation AirPort, too, and I have yet to have a problem with it.
> So you could technically burn it on a CD and then rip it
> immediately and have it as mp3s... Sounds reasonable,
> so long as the loss of quality isn't noticeable.
Correct. From what I've heard you can rip from AAC protected to AIFF back to AAC unprotected and not have a noticable decrease in sound quality. AAC Protected -> AIFF -> MP3 might have some artifacts since they use two different encoding mechanisms. I haven't done it, but I think Mossberg or someone like him did it, and there wasn't a problem.
What's cool is that this is similar to the copy protection on the iPod; it's difficult to use an iPod to copy songs (through iTunes), but not impossible. The idea is to discourage casual pirating, without keeping people from doing what they want with their music.
I stayed away from online music (for pay) before because I didn't want to deal with the DRM or poor quality music files. But Apple's system seems generally transparent, so I'm interested. I've bought about 15 songs so far, and I'm going back through my collection to purchase any "questionable" MP3s I've got.
What we need now is a software "CD-burning/ripping" application to unprotect the AACs for backup purposes. And I do mean backup purposes; these tracks are reasonably priced and easy to get -- there's no need to resort to file sharing as far as I'm concerned.
> Yeah but that means we have to find an equivalent to the
> "having SUVs supports terrorism" ads to fight back with.
Here you go!
> And after hearing the friends with TiBooks complain
> about the finish coming off, heat, the case cracking, etc
I've had plenty of PowerBooks over the years. I started with a Duo 230, then a G3 (Wallstreet model), then a G3 (PDQ model), then a G3 (Pismo), then a Titanium G4 (Rev B, I think). I've got a 17" PowerBook now. Crap, I've owned a lot of PowerBooks. Anyway on the whole they've been pretty sturdy.
With my 15" TiBook before this, and I had absolutely no problems with the paint flaking off, case cracking, or anything like that.
> If you didn't like the movies don't take this post as an
> invitation for you to bash it
Well, there's a lot of people who want their disappointment in Star Wars to be legitimized by seeing Star Wars-bashing on every Star Wars story. They don't like the idea that some people may have liked Episodes 1 and 2. So they want to drown those people out by describing in hyperbolic terms how much they utterly loathed Episode 1 and 2.
They ignore that Jar-Jar is no more annoying than C3PO and that the acting and dialog is no better than in Episodes 4-6.
I guess they hope that Lucas will suddenly become a Slashdot reader and miraculously turn Episode 3 into The Matrix, complete with bullet-time Jedi, electronica music, sunglasses, and plenty of machine gun fire.
I for one liked the Episodes 1 and 2, and after repeated viewings, I like Jar-Jar. He makes me laugh, so sue me.
For full disclosure, I didn't like The Matrix, I liked Lord of the Rings, I liked Minority Report, and I didn't see Spiderman.
I guess some people just don't like diversity of opinions.
> Two guys, neighbors, both running Jaguar, both on the
> same cable modem subnet.
> I mean, what are the odds?
I was thinking the same thing. I think the odds are better that one has two convicted sex offenders on the same subnet than two Jaguar users.
However, I think this is starting to change. At work, in my immediate area, the number of people buying new Macintoshes is starting to increase. The top cited reasons? In no particular order:
1. The new iMac
2. The fact that it "just works." It's funny to see a new Mac user who's been using Windows for years get kind of a confused look on their face, and say, "I can't explain it, but it just works."
3. Mac OS X and its Unix underpinnings -- this seems to influence the more technical people
4. Microsoft's copy restrictions in Windows XP. It surprises me how many people are turned off by this. Not that they're out pirating software or music or anything, but they mention that they just don't like it.
Rendezvous is designed to work on a subnet, and likely your dad and his neighbor are on the same subnet, thus the inintended sharing.
Since he has a broadband connection, I'd recommend that you buy him a router, so that all of his Rendezvous packets stay in his house. No muss, no fuss. And routers can be as cheap as $30 -- I just bought a cool NetGear router to replace my LinkSys and it cost about $50. With the router, he can have multiple computers on his network, keep his LAN separate from the WAN, and have some basic security protection above and beyond the built-in firewall in Mac OS X.
Or you can convince him to buy a new AirPort base station that has a built-in router so he can solve his problem as well as allow you to surf the 'Net on your PowerBook while you're over visiting.
To me, it's a short threshold to come up with an excuse to buy sexy new Apple hardware.
> It wasn't because he wanted to cover up the
> statues, it was to provide a better backdrop for
> the cameras.
What a great idea! I'm sure he wanted only to ensure that the press had better access to him. I can see future moves by Ashcroft:
1. Deletion of the Bill of Rights: it doesn't take away anyone's rights; it's to enable better clarification of the rights they have. "Too many people couldn't remember all the rights anyway. This will help people because all they have to know is that I'll remind them of the rights they have."
2. Allowing secret court proceedings to gain a search warrent to force a public library to divulge the reading list of its patrons and forbid the library from informing said patrons of any particular instance. The only reason for this is so the F.B.I. can let us know if our books are overdue. And if libraries told their patrons it may unnecessarily worry their "pretty little heads"
Wow, so he is from the government and he really is here to help!
> You saw the sanitized war which is exactly what
> the DOD wanted you to see.
This is a good point. Salon recently had an interesting article that featured an interesting observation from Dennis Dunleavy, a professor of photojournalism at San Jose State University in California on the media's coverage of the war.
He said that there are basically 3 "angles" for the news stories and photos:
1. Technology: "It's our power against the rest of the world and these images reflect that. Tanks, soldiers, shots from aircraft carriers, night-vision pictures. That's all about technology."
2. Victims: "But not casualties. It's images of refugees, displaced people squatting on the ground while soldiers stand above them. The dominant interest is the coalition troops against a background of helping the homeless or disenfranchised."
3. Soldiers: "Lots of clear pictures of soldiers giving directions, on the move. They're technically beautiful photographs and amazingly well shot for being in a war zone."
So from the American press's standpoint, this is a war about America's soldiers, not really the war itself. Contrast this with the view that other countries, particularly in the Arab world, which are seeing a more complete picture: dead and injured civilians, bombed cities, dead soldiers, as well as the other stuff we see.
America is seeing a sanitized view of the war, which is part of the reason it feels so remote from our daily lives.
> And, I won't even bring up how many people died
> under Saddam's regime...
Whew! Lucky for us, two wrongs do make a right!
> those curtains were bought to hide the breasts
> simply to stop the press from acting like 5th
> graders trying to get politicians into a shot
> with the breast. if you see the actual setting,
> the statue would hardly be seen from a normal
> point of view, but photographers would go out of
> their way to include them in a shot.
I've seen this written a couple of times on Slashdot. Do you have any proof of this?
It doesn't make sense to me, because I can't imagine an editor of a major newsagency allowing hundreds of photos to be shown with the same pair of statue's breasts in them. So why would professional photographers go out of their way to immaturely compose their pictures that won't get printed anyway. I mean, it's not like the breasts improve the photo's newsworthyness.
I guess you could use the same justification to censor the war photos: "We got rid of this whole free speech thing because people started acting like a bunch of fifth graders, you know showing pictures of injured civilians and stuff."
> I've also found that in really bad cases you can
:-)
> suck a bit of ink through the printhead, but it
> doesn't taste too good
You know that "Post Anonymously" feature? This is one of times when you should have used it. I'm not sure if fellating your printer is anything you want to admit with a traceable user name.
On the other hand, you might be able to take pictures of yourself in the said act, post them on the Internet, and use the membership revenue to offset some of the cost of buying new cartridges!
> Borrow books from the state, and then get
> suprised when they pay attention to what you are
> borrowing?
The government isn't like a private or corporation; its powers are clearly defined in our Constitution. Our system of government is based on the idea that the citizens have certain unalienable rights -- you know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government's powers on the other hand are derived from the consent of the governed -- us. Therefore, one can clearly be "cranky" if the government steps out of those bounds.
As for other administrations, well, it's silly to argue about the hypothetical. That's like saying that an embezzler shouldn't be arrested because well, who wouldn't steal millions of dollars if given the chance?
We can only argue about what has actually happened. The Bush Administration asked for the Patriot Act and they've demonstrated they're not afraid to use it. The Bush Administration has also been steadily undoing the Watergate-era reforms that were designed to reign in the Executive branch and now they're running amuck.
> As anyone who studies political science will tell
> you, a democracy only works well when you have an
> educated public.
That explains what Karl Rove (you know, Bush's brain) was thinking when he said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans--unless they have too much education and vote Democratic."
You can easily steer the country on the road to fascism all the while calling it "democracy," if your citizens don't know any better. Republicans have made no secret of their anti-academic views (e.g. they want to teach Biblical Creation in science class, and the current president probably hasn't even read a book since The The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Utimately, they want to replace our democracy with a plutocratic theocracy under their brand of Christianity. Sounds a little extreme, right? Well, Bush already believes that he was elected by God to lead this country.
Wow, this post is probably one sentence away from violating Godwin's law. I should have read my sig before posting.
> So basically the Patriot Act says that library
> records can be used in terrorist investigations.
> Is that it, or is there something more sinister
> I'm missing?
Among other things, the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to not only get a list of all web sites or books you've seen from a library, but it forbids the library to tell you that the FBI came-a lookin'.
The ACLU has more information here and here.
Claiming that these brave new powers will only be used to combat terrorism is a bit misleading. "Terrorism" is whatever the government wants to call it. For example, the government at one time wanted to call computer cracking "computer terrorism". Or, consider the fact that Senate Bill 742 in Oregon, introduced by Republican John Minnis, would define as a terrorist, a person who "plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt" business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly." Keep in mind, that means if you start a food fight, you could be a terrorist under this law.
Brings to mind a line from Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, "Why don't you just put us all in solitary confinement and be done with it!"
> I'm told that somewhere between 95% and 93% of
> the fiber-optic 'net backbone is unused
According to a March 2002 article by Carol Wilson of The NetEconomy, usage is a lot higher than people think. During peak traffic periods, it's estimated that more than 60% of fiber optic channels are "lit" -- that is, in active capacity. She cited two examples. Qwest reported 80% utilization and Telechoice reported more than 60%.
However, since networks are generally engineered for peak capacity, and the usage during peak traffic times can be 10 times greater than the usage during off-peak times, it can mistakenly appear as if the fiber optics networks are essentially unused.
Unfortunately, I can't link to the article, because The NetEconomy ceased operations back when the 'net economy ceased to exist.
I don't think this is necessarily trying to attack TiVo. They're probably trying to find a happy medium between pure TiVo (where the user has complete control over what they watch) and broadcast TV where the user has no control at all. Today, the number of programs is limited becasue the networks have to stream out programs regardless of if people actually watch them. With AOL's idea, they can store programs and only deliver them to people who want to watch them. So instead of segmenting programming lineups to geographic locations (the way it's done today), they can set up programming lineups and deliver them to targeted audiences. So, if you want to watch The Simpsons and Futurama during primetime on Monday? Fine, here you go, but we're going to sandwich some crappy cartoon we're plugging right in the middle. In the meantime, we'll push Law and Order to your next door neighbor at the same time, along with commericals that feature products that they recently looked at on Amazon. All of this without expanding the effective number of channels in the area.
Although this idea is marginally better than broadcast television, it still pales in comparison to user-centric viewing like with TiVo.
> Mandatory addition of a correct label on a product
> is almost never a good idea.
I agree! I hate the idea of the government telling companies what to do. The industry can easily regulate itself, and if the market wants some sort of label on a CD that says, "this CD could damage your CD player because of copy-restrictions we put on it, bee-yatch!", then they'll do it. And if they're not doing it, it means consumers don't want some sort of stupid label that mucks up the jewel box or covers up part of the liner art. And I say, if you buy a disc that you find is copy protected or it damages your computer or whatever, then too bad. Life's full of risks, and buying a CD or some software is no different from running across a busy highway with your eyes closed. Remember, if you outlaw deliberate obfuscation of potentially damaging product attributes, then only outlaws will have deliberately obfuscated potentially damaging products.
And that's not the America I want to live in.
I kind of expected that someone at Apple posted the link to "Bush Demands Recount" on their Hot News site late at night and no one had noticed yet, but it's been there all day.
I think it shows that Apple has a pretty good sense of humor that they kept it up there, even though some conservative Mac users are probably pretty steamed.
Well, probably not as steamed as the thousands people in Florida who didn't get to vote in the 2000 election because the private auditing firm hired by Jeb Bush arranged for legitimate voters to have their votes tossed out if they had a similar name to that of a felon's.
> Jobs were pretty tight, while Michael Dell was a
> big supporter of Dubya. I think that says a lot
It sure does. Plus Microsoft was a big supporter of Dubya as well. Back during the election, Microsoft hired one of Bush's consultants to help them lobby the Bush administration about the anti trust case:
(from the NY Times article, Apr 11, 2000)
According to a Mercury News article from 1999, Microsoft also helped finance his inaugural celebration for his second term as Texas governor, and their COO was one of GWB's chief fundraisers for the Northeast.
One good thing you can say about Bush is that when he's bought, he stays bought!