Management certainly appreciates your efforts to satisfy our recording industry friends, but care must be taken to ensure that the frog does not notice the boiling water. Apparently some frogs have read the EULA and noticed our intention to add digital rights management code to the next version of Toast (Version 6.0, TOAST eXtreme Pro!(TM); $99 for new users or $99 for upgrading users). We are concerned letting the frogs know too early will drive users to purchase CD burning software from other vendors. It is imperative to take away the rights of our users *slowly* so they don't notice.
Please send some misinformation to the frogs to get them off track. Use your best judgment, but I recommend that you say something like, "Toast doesn't have DRM in it" or "It's a boilerplate EULA; pay no attention to it" -- well, those aren't very believeable; try to come up with something more realistic. And when you write your message, try not to use the word "suckas".
I love this case! It doesn't look like something Apple would build, because IT LOOKS BETTER! You just don't like it because it's too cutting edge for you and Apple wouldn't have the courage to release something like this.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I happen to love this product too.
Re:another good example of lying through statistic
on
Mac Users May Be Smarter
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
> If you want to debate whether or not CNet is > justified with its wording on the headline ("Are > Mac Users Smarter?"), but honestly, magazines > and newspapers use such sensational headlines > all the time. For that matter, Slashdot has made > it worse, already jumping to a conclusion with > "Mac Users May Be Smarter", a statement that is > no way supported by the article.
Wow, someone actually read the article. You don't see that very often on Slashdot!
The title is a troll, but the article makes sense. They say that Mac users tend to be more affluent, have higher levels of education, and in general be more attractive marketing targets for premium products/services. This isn't to say Mac users are smarter; as a demographic, they're more attractive if you're trying to sell a premium product.
What this means is, in general, if you're planning on developing a web marketing plan for a product like Mercedes, Krupps, Williams Sonoma, or any other "premium-like product", you are likely to have better success if you target your ads to a web site that has a lot of Mac users. Or, if you work at Nordstrom, it would be a good idea to make sure your web site is friendly to Mac users (take the time to make sure it works for Macintosh browsers). If you're running a web site for Walmart, this might not be as important.
That's all it's saying. It's a sleazy marketing thing, not a Mensa-entry requirement.
I don't know specifically about MacWorld (and I don't work for Apple), but at trade shows I'm involved in, it might be similar. With a regular pass, you can walk around the exhibition during normal hours and talk to vendors and the like. If you have a press pass, you can expect the following:
1. Free admission. Regular attendee badges can be hundreds of dollars (or more)
2. You get set up with a specific media-trained person who for a private booking (30-60 minutes usually, but these can last as long as the press person has questions) to talk about what the company is doing, where they see the industry going, etc. Many times, the press get access to even the executives of the company . Although the meeting are arranged beforehand, accomodations can be made for ad hoc visits if a media person is available.
3. You get a press-kit, which has presentation materials and related items talking about products the company is featuring at the trade show.
4. Invitation to a party, special event, or future meetings
5. You don't get to talk to regular booth people. In fact, at our company, regular booth workers are specifically instructed to not talk to people with a press badge.
Keep in mind the reason why companies talk to the press at all is because they want to receive good press. If they don't think your audience is big enough, they don't want to spend time with you. As you can imagine, doing personal interviews with the press is pretty expensive, and ROI is important these days.
I suspect with the web sites in question, they're most concerned with Point #1. That is, they're looking for a free way to get into the Expo.
> This settled a long running dispute of MS > supposedly stealing apple's look and feel
Actually, it was for a $1.25 billion lawsuit where Apple had found that Microsoft had stolen code directly from QuickTime for Windows to put into Video for Windows. Apparently Microsoft hired a consulting company that had done some code work for QuickTime, and some lines of code for QuickTime ended up in Video for Windows.
With Microsoft's $150M, the lawsuit was settled. Plus, Apple agreed to prefer Internet Explorer and Microsoft agreed to keep developing Microsoft Office for the Mac. The latter was something Apple had to have because Microsoft had earlier threatened to kill Office for the Mac if Apple didn't choose Internet Explorer over Netscape.
Using a monopoly in one area (office software) to build dominance in another (web browsers)... hmmm... is that legal?
> I don't even think the issuance or non-issuance > of media passes is really at issue here. As > Matthew Rothenberg suggests in his eWeek > article, folks can get the same amount of > information (perhaps more even) with an > exhibitor's pass as with a media pass.
You're right; you can see a lot more at an exhibition with a regular pass than you can with a press pass. With any major company, any person with a press pass walking up to the booth is immediately shuttled to the one of a few people who has been specially trained and cleared to deal with the media. The media trained individual talks about very specific things. The reason why is that every person who deals with the media understands the number 1 rule:
There is no such thing as off-the-record.
Apple isn't playing "head games" with Mac news sources. The legitimate press is probably being treated as usual. But the blogs with their Jimmy Olson(TM) Real Reporter Play Kits aren't getting in.
Apple is acting like a real corporation (or any entity who deals with the legitimate press) and they're doing their best to manage fanboy sites. For an analogy, why don't you come up with a "I Love Dubya" web site and try to get an interview with the president. Or get a media pass for a junket. Give a try and then decide if Apple is acting reasonably.
No, the real issue is that these web sites (blogs, more specifically) don't want to pay for a general admission pass (or more than likely can't afford the price) and thus want free press passes. They claim that they have right because they're part of the "Mac Press", but when they don't get their way, they publish angry reports like this.
Sheesh! This is almost like extortion; give me a free press pass or I'll tell all 200 of my readers how mean you are!
> Perhaps I am in the minority here, but we are > only talking a press passes. Apple would be > within rights to deny press passes to any > particular person or group. They are not > restricting overall access, just special press > privileges.
You're in the minority because: 1. Many people don't understand that the press do get special privileges at trade shows, and you don't just give passes to anyone who claims to be a journalist. 2. Many people don't realize how every major company is extremely careful about what the press says about their company 3. Many people want to bash Apple whenever they get a chance.
I think some PR people at Apple are a little wary about the fanboys' sites about Apple because of reasons like this. It's like a self-proclaimed "number 1 fan" of a famous actor or TV show where the fan can be a flattering evangelist sometimes. But if the fan doesn't get the special treatment for which they think they're entitled, they can be the loudest critic and a bane to the target of their affections.
Consider that many people in the press ridicule the overzealous Mac fans that send angry flames every time they read less than favorable article of Apple. Luckily I don't know of many reporters who consider Apple guilty by association, but if Apple starting giving the fanboys special treatment, that could change.
So I don't think Apple's doing anything wrong by limiting the access to the press passes to legitimate journalists. That just means that the fanboys will have to buy a ticket to the event, just like everyone else.
I don't work at Apple, but I do work with the press at my job a lot.
If this is like other trade shows, the media passes are free to the legitimate press (or are a lot cheaper than a regular attendance badge), and they offer special access to some events. Thus, one wants to limit access to the badges to legitimate reporters. Why would you want to do this? Oftentimes we'll talk to the press about stories "under embargo", meaning they can't publish information on something until a certain date. A legitimate reporter can be counted on to respect the embargo (though I can think of a case when they didn't, the bastard!), but some joker who pretends to be a reporter can't be counted on to do the same thing.
Apple is not blacklisting these rumor sites; someone involved in MacWorld Expo is just cracking down on giving away media passes to web sites that pretend to be real journalists. Oftentimes these web sites are basically being run by some guy who publishes unsubstantiated rumors onto the web. I don't read Graphic Power, but it's certainly not in the league as real media sites like Macworld, MacCentral, MacAddict, eWeek, CNET, etc.
Despite how these guys call themselves part of "the media", it takes a lot more than a domain name and a few articles to call yourself a journalist so you can get a media pass. Media passes are intended for journalists, and giving them away to every wank that can upload some screenshots and half-baked opinion pieces is unnecessary.
If someone were blacklisting the sites, they wouldn't be able to purchase a general admittance pass to the event at all. But in the Graphic Power story, they were encouraged to pay for the attendance fee to get in, like person who wanted to attend the show.
The web sites supposedly blacklisted are more like blogs than real news sites, and denying them a media pass makes sense to me. Next you'll have the geek that runs http://www.startrekfans.com or whatever demanding to be invited to press-only screenings of the new Star Trek movie.
To me this is a good illustration of why Apple is apparently not too happy with the fanboy sites. Even though these sites might sometimes might post something interesting (seemingly good for Apple), they can be a bad source of publicity if they aren't given the special treatment they think they deserve (like coveted media passes to a trade show). And as we all know, Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd. Nor Hell a fury, like a fanboy scorn'd.
> No longer do you have to deal with trying to navigate > a presentation while not being able to look at it.
But you can do that with any laptop that can mirror what's on the screen and what's on the external monitor or projector.
Generally, if you're doing a small enough presentation where you don't need a projector (1 or 2 people), having them sit on the other side of your screen is pretty weird. It generally works better to have them sit next to you as you run through the slides.
Being able to independently control an external screen from the LCD do it is nothing new as well. I'm on my fourth PowerBook (a tasty G4 model now), and you've always been able to navigate have two screen independently of each other. I think many of the Dells that share the same video card can do it, but it's a little iffy under Windows 2000 or later.
I can't really see a use for this, unless you wanted to flip the screens away from each other, hook up an external keyboard and play Battleship or something.
> Is there something outside the marketability of > political orientation that is a factor in this difference in > success? Does political orientation give a business > an advantage in a Capitalistic society? Or is it that > Republicans are just looser with their wallets?
I'm not sure I agree that NPR has a liberal bias; they certainly do have the most in-depth coverage of any media. And government support consitutes only about 10% of their funding; the rest is from "listeners like you" and corporate sponsorships. Salon does seem to have a liberal slant in that they tend to cover stories that interest liberals, but unlike people like Limbaugh or the non-AP stories posted on the Washington Times, they don't twist the facts to get their slant.
Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth
Thank, you. Please, post a retraction.
Hardly a need for a retraction. Spelling out the meaning of anno Domini is hardly an endorsement of a state-sponsored religion, so the essence of Aexia's comment is correct. I guess our Founding Fathers could have changed our method of writing years in the Western World to remove mentioning Jesus, but they had a big enough task in creating a new government. A la The Simpsons: "Not only are the trains running on time. They're running on metric time!"
Getting the country to agree to a new government is hard, but it would be close to impossible if you had to convince everyone, "No, it's not 1787! It's Year 11."
> The effect is compounded by TV "journalists" who > know just as little, but are more than happy to trumpet > the term "dirty bomb" over the airwaves for at least a > week.
You know it's really bad when The Daily Show, John Stewart's political satire show on Comedy Central, was more reasonable than the real news shows. Stewart actually ranted a couple of times about how the real media was scaring people unnecessarily with overblown reports of dirty bombs.
For months, I've been trying to order the ROBOTIC AYN RAND (halfway down on the Misc Evil page):
Need advice about your latest megalomaniacal scheme? If only you could ask history's greatest megalomaniac, "novelist" and "philosopher" Ayn Rand. Too bad she's dead. But wait! In 1963, a secret cabal of Objectivists intent on taking over the Student Union at MIT built the first robotic Ayn Rand, and now you can own a Randroid® based on their original design. Comes with stock phrases such as "Morality ends where the gun begins," "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent," and "Nathaniel! Bring me another gin and tonic!"
Price: US$50,000 includes software* *software tends to be rather buggy. For instance, your Randroid may oppose immigration, yet be an immigrant herself. She may oppose infidelity, yet cheat on her husband. She may espouse individuality, yet believe that only those who follow her are individuals. She may oppose the control of individuals by organizations, yet laud corporate power. These bugs can not be repaired.
Every time I make an order, they say they're out of stock. Apparently some guy in Redmond, WA has cleared out their stock!
> perhaps they should consider reinventing the > Macintosh in another brand name that's more in line > with the product's diversity (it's a business computer, > it's a graphics box, it's a recreation box, it's a floor > wax, dessert topping and more, et al.)
There is no way in hell that Apple is going to kill off the "Macintosh" brand name until something bad happens (e.g., Some terrorist named Mac N. Tosh kills 50,000 school children in a horrific poisoning involving McIntosh apples).
Companies work for years and spend millions of dollars to build brand names, and they don't toss them aside without good reason. Very few computers (or regular products, for that matter) have the same type of recognition. For example, how likely are you to be able to figure out who builds the following: Accsys, Dimension, Inspira, Achieva, Presario, Millennia, Evo, OptiPlex, etc. You might be able to figure it out if you've got one on your desk, but if someone says Macintosh, chances are better they'll figure out it's an Apple, whether they like the product or not. That type of brand recognition in the industry is something other computer makers would kill for.
Dvorak's article isn't as much of a troll as he usually does (the title is an order of magnitude worse than the article itself), but that point still doesn't make any sense. One thing that has to be understood is that Apple did kill the Macintosh. If you think of the Macintosh as a 68xxx-based computer running the Mac OS -- keep in mind, Mac OS 9, although more advanced than the original OS, was still the original OS -- then Apple did kill it. The new Macintosh runs Unix, has the PowerPC, and is a very different machine.
was when he pointed out how Itchy played Scratchy's rib like a xylophone, but when he struck a particular rib, it made distinctly two notes! That was some really screwed up physics!
> The Matrix was probably the closest we'll ever > get to a thinking man's movie,
Now, we're playing a game called everyone's movie is unrealistic except my favorite!
I would hardly call The Matrix a "thinking man's" movie. The last act featured a gratuitous, violent machine gun orgy scene. Hardly a thinking man's flick. To me, it was no different than Aeon Flux, except with cool sunglasses, and certainly no better than a Rambo/Terminator type movie.
If you liked the movie, good for you. (Obviously, I didn't care for it). But excusing The Matrix's hyped up physics ("But it's a computer simulation; they're supposed to be able to change reality!"), while simultaneously derided the physics of other fictional works is hypocritical. Whether a movie takes place in "virtual reality" or "in a galaxy far, far away" they're all using plot devices to get you suspend your disbelief.
> Jesus, does everyone have to take every > little comment by the authors so damn > seriously?
Only if you want your legitimate complaints to be taken seriously. Microsoft does a lot of sleazy things, but needlessly trolling them only increases the chances that one's complaints will be dismissed out of hand.
> Sci-fi Wire is reporting a couple rumors > about the changes being made to the > original Star Wars trilogy for its next release. > That being that Natalie Portman may be > being inserted into Episode VI: Return of the > Jedi and that universally reviled Jar Jar Binks
This sounds a lot like the complaining people made when they heard N' Sync (or whoever the hell they were) was supposed to be in Episode II. I don't remember seeing them there, and if they were, it certainly didn't affect how I enjoyed the flick.
Look, it's a movie, not the New Testament. If Lucas wants to change his movie -- it's his own decision.
I for one would like to see IV-VI touched up a bit when it hits DVD. First, replace the actor playing the Emperor in V with the guy who plays him in I, II, and VI. Second, digitally remove the puppets from the cantina scene in IV and the puppets in VI. Third, get rid of the ewoks.
I showed the footage to my wife, and her response was, "No, he's just scratching his eye -- oh, wait...", so I think he probably did mean it.
I have to so speak to press and analysts a lot because of my job, and before one does anything like that, there's an incredible amount of preparation where you practice questions for any contingency.
Apple (and specifically, whoever the Xserve product manager is) is understandably very concerned about Xserve failing because of bad connotations with Apple's earlier server efforts, as sort of guilty by association. There's another example of this: if you watch the beginning, Jobs is talking about Jaguar, and when he mentions the handwriting recognition part called InkWell, he said it was from a well-known product, but he wouldn't mention the Newton by name. They don't want any "Eat up, Martha" jokes before the product is out.
So I think Jobs had been anticipating the question, but he wasn't happy it came up, particularly from that annoying guy who took 10 minutes to spit out his question. He could have asked his question without specifically mentioning Apple's failed earlier server effort.
Even if Jobs didn't mean it, I'm pretty sure the person who edited together the QuickTime footage did mean it. Something like that usually doesn't happen by accident. We're just lucky they didn't superimpose a "Moron" label above geekboy's head as he asked the question!
> Isn't anyone afraid the game will be filled > with advertisements for the military, such as > tons of "Join NOW!" buttons, and pop-ups > displaying the US Army website?
So imagine you're playing the game on Windows XP with all your Passport stuff filled in, like a good End User. You finish a really hard level, and suddenly a dialog box pops up and asks, "Do you wish to continue?". When you click yes, you get signed up for the army!
This idea to use games to convince impressionable kids to join the army is a good one.
Looking around, all the people of my generation have one of a few careers:
* Alien-attacker, particularly where you have three bases to hide behind * Ever-hungry giant mouth eating never-ending supply of pellets * Race car driver on tracks with a lot of popup * Professional princess rescuer, particularly when you can jump on a lot of mushrooms * Cubical worker
That last one is the least suprising. I remember as a kid, me and my friends would never stop playing "Cubical Worker!" It was the most popular game in America at the time, which is why everyone seems to have grown up to do it for a living.
> The Army expects by September to spent about $7.5 million on the program
Whew! I'm glad we're spending $7.5 million on this project. With this new Republican leadership manning the purse strings, we've got so much money, I was worried there was no way we'd be able to spend it all. This is a great example of how to get rid of it.
> All this complaining about the wooden acting and > cheesy dialogue...has anybody ever considered > that maybe Lucas is writing the dialogue > intentionally to keep the series feeling like > the old-time Saturday Morning serials
I agree. I loved the movie, for all its cheesy dialog and wooden acting. In my opinion, Lucas even excused Jar Jar and the young Anakin's childish antics. For Jar Jar, clearly he wanted a plausible gullible senator stand-in. For Anakin, he wanted an innocent, but engineering-inclined boy who would later be twisted to the dark side by Palpatine.
We re-watched ROTJ this morning, and it's funny how the events from Episodes IV-VI can be reinterpreted when you watch Episodes I and II.
There were four or five guys dressed up like Jedi apprentices (they all seemed to have the little braided pony tail), but it seemed kind of geeky.
Before movie started, they all ran down to the front of the theater to smack their plastic light sabres together in a mock battle. They did that for a few minutes, and then slunk back to their seats to the sardonic applause of the audience.
Slashdot Mirror
TO: ROXIO TOAST PRODUCT MANAGER
Management certainly appreciates your efforts to satisfy our recording industry friends, but care must be taken to ensure that the frog does not notice the boiling water. Apparently some frogs have read the EULA and noticed our intention to add digital rights management code to the next version of Toast (Version 6.0, TOAST eXtreme Pro!(TM); $99 for new users or $99 for upgrading users). We are concerned letting the frogs know too early will drive users to purchase CD burning software from other vendors. It is imperative to take away the rights of our users *slowly* so they don't notice.
Please send some misinformation to the frogs to get them off track. Use your best judgment, but I recommend that you say something like, "Toast doesn't have DRM in it" or "It's a boilerplate EULA; pay no attention to it" -- well, those aren't very believeable; try to come up with something more realistic. And when you write your message, try not to use the word "suckas".
Regards,
ROXIO MANAGEMENT
Before I get any more irony-impaired moderators too quick on the "Troll -1" draw, here is an explanation.
:: a real Apple Power Mac :: a real Porsche 935
this PC clone case
as
this 911 dressed up like a Porsche 935
That is to say, they both vaguely look alike, but in both cases, the clone is a pale comparison of the original.
I love this case! It doesn't look like something Apple would build, because IT LOOKS BETTER! You just don't like it because it's too cutting edge for you and Apple wouldn't have the courage to release something like this.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I happen to love this product too.
> If you want to debate whether or not CNet is
> justified with its wording on the headline ("Are
> Mac Users Smarter?"), but honestly, magazines
> and newspapers use such sensational headlines
> all the time. For that matter, Slashdot has made
> it worse, already jumping to a conclusion with
> "Mac Users May Be Smarter", a statement that is
> no way supported by the article.
Wow, someone actually read the article. You don't see that very often on Slashdot!
The title is a troll, but the article makes sense. They say that Mac users tend to be more affluent, have higher levels of education, and in general be more attractive marketing targets for premium products/services. This isn't to say Mac users are smarter; as a demographic, they're more attractive if you're trying to sell a premium product.
What this means is, in general, if you're planning on developing a web marketing plan for a product like Mercedes, Krupps, Williams Sonoma, or any other "premium-like product", you are likely to have better success if you target your ads to a web site that has a lot of Mac users. Or, if you work at Nordstrom, it would be a good idea to make sure your web site is friendly to Mac users (take the time to make sure it works for Macintosh browsers). If you're running a web site for Walmart, this might not be as important.
That's all it's saying. It's a sleazy marketing thing, not a Mensa-entry requirement.
> What does a press pass get you at MacWorld?
I don't know specifically about MacWorld (and I don't work for Apple), but at trade shows I'm involved in, it might be similar. With a regular pass, you can walk around the exhibition during normal hours and talk to vendors and the like. If you have a press pass, you can expect the following:
1. Free admission. Regular attendee badges can be hundreds of dollars (or more)
2. You get set up with a specific media-trained person who for a private booking (30-60 minutes usually, but these can last as long as the press person has questions) to talk about what the company is doing, where they see the industry going, etc. Many times, the press get access to even the executives of the company . Although the meeting are arranged beforehand, accomodations can be made for ad hoc visits if a media person is available.
3. You get a press-kit, which has presentation materials and related items talking about products the company is featuring at the trade show.
4. Invitation to a party, special event, or future meetings
5. You don't get to talk to regular booth people. In fact, at our company, regular booth workers are specifically instructed to not talk to people with a press badge.
Keep in mind the reason why companies talk to the press at all is because they want to receive good press. If they don't think your audience is big enough, they don't want to spend time with you. As you can imagine, doing personal interviews with the press is pretty expensive, and ROI is important these days.
I suspect with the web sites in question, they're most concerned with Point #1. That is, they're looking for a free way to get into the Expo.
> This settled a long running dispute of MS
... hmmm... is that legal?
> supposedly stealing apple's look and feel
Actually, it was for a $1.25 billion lawsuit where Apple had found that Microsoft had stolen code directly from QuickTime for Windows to put into Video for Windows. Apparently Microsoft hired a consulting company that had done some code work for QuickTime, and some lines of code for QuickTime ended up in Video for Windows.
With Microsoft's $150M, the lawsuit was settled. Plus, Apple agreed to prefer Internet Explorer and Microsoft agreed to keep developing Microsoft Office for the Mac. The latter was something Apple had to have because Microsoft had earlier threatened to kill Office for the Mac if Apple didn't choose Internet Explorer over Netscape.
Using a monopoly in one area (office software) to build dominance in another (web browsers)
> I don't even think the issuance or non-issuance
> of media passes is really at issue here. As
> Matthew Rothenberg suggests in his eWeek
> article, folks can get the same amount of
> information (perhaps more even) with an
> exhibitor's pass as with a media pass.
You're right; you can see a lot more at an exhibition with a regular pass than you can with a press pass. With any major company, any person with a press pass walking up to the booth is immediately shuttled to the one of a few people who has been specially trained and cleared to deal with the media. The media trained individual talks about very specific things. The reason why is that every person who deals with the media understands the number 1 rule:
There is no such thing as off-the-record.
Apple isn't playing "head games" with Mac news sources. The legitimate press is probably being treated as usual. But the blogs with their Jimmy Olson(TM) Real Reporter Play Kits aren't getting in.
Apple is acting like a real corporation (or any entity who deals with the legitimate press) and they're doing their best to manage fanboy sites. For an analogy, why don't you come up with a "I Love Dubya" web site and try to get an interview with the president. Or get a media pass for a junket. Give a try and then decide if Apple is acting reasonably.
No, the real issue is that these web sites (blogs, more specifically) don't want to pay for a general admission pass (or more than likely can't afford the price) and thus want free press passes. They claim that they have right because they're part of the "Mac Press", but when they don't get their way, they publish angry reports like this.
Sheesh! This is almost like extortion; give me a free press pass or I'll tell all 200 of my readers how mean you are!
> Perhaps I am in the minority here, but we are
> only talking a press passes. Apple would be
> within rights to deny press passes to any
> particular person or group. They are not
> restricting overall access, just special press
> privileges.
You're in the minority because:
1. Many people don't understand that the press do get special privileges at trade shows, and you don't just give passes to anyone who claims to be a journalist.
2. Many people don't realize how every major company is extremely careful about what the press says about their company
3. Many people want to bash Apple whenever they get a chance.
I think some PR people at Apple are a little wary about the fanboys' sites about Apple because of reasons like this. It's like a self-proclaimed "number 1 fan" of a famous actor or TV show where the fan can be a flattering evangelist sometimes. But if the fan doesn't get the special treatment for which they think they're entitled, they can be the loudest critic and a bane to the target of their affections.
Consider that many people in the press ridicule the overzealous Mac fans that send angry flames every time they read less than favorable article of Apple. Luckily I don't know of many reporters who consider Apple guilty by association, but if Apple starting giving the fanboys special treatment, that could change.
So I don't think Apple's doing anything wrong by limiting the access to the press passes to legitimate journalists. That just means that the fanboys will have to buy a ticket to the event, just like everyone else.
I don't work at Apple, but I do work with the press at my job a lot.
If this is like other trade shows, the media passes are free to the legitimate press (or are a lot cheaper than a regular attendance badge), and they offer special access to some events. Thus, one wants to limit access to the badges to legitimate reporters. Why would you want to do this? Oftentimes we'll talk to the press about stories "under embargo", meaning they can't publish information on something until a certain date. A legitimate reporter can be counted on to respect the embargo (though I can think of a case when they didn't, the bastard!), but some joker who pretends to be a reporter can't be counted on to do the same thing.
Apple is not blacklisting these rumor sites; someone involved in MacWorld Expo is just cracking down on giving away media passes to web sites that pretend to be real journalists. Oftentimes these web sites are basically being run by some guy who publishes unsubstantiated rumors onto the web. I don't read Graphic Power, but it's certainly not in the league as real media sites like Macworld, MacCentral, MacAddict, eWeek, CNET, etc.
Despite how these guys call themselves part of "the media", it takes a lot more than a domain name and a few articles to call yourself a journalist so you can get a media pass. Media passes are intended for journalists, and giving them away to every wank that can upload some screenshots and half-baked opinion pieces is unnecessary.
If someone were blacklisting the sites, they wouldn't be able to purchase a general admittance pass to the event at all. But in the Graphic Power story, they were encouraged to pay for the attendance fee to get in, like person who wanted to attend the show.
The web sites supposedly blacklisted are more like blogs than real news sites, and denying them a media pass makes sense to me. Next you'll have the geek that runs http://www.startrekfans.com or whatever demanding to be invited to press-only screenings of the new Star Trek movie.
To me this is a good illustration of why Apple is apparently not too happy with the fanboy sites. Even though these sites might sometimes might post something interesting (seemingly good for Apple), they can be a bad source of publicity if they aren't given the special treatment they think they deserve (like coveted media passes to a trade show). And as we all know, Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd. Nor Hell a fury, like a fanboy scorn'd.
> No longer do you have to deal with trying to navigate
> a presentation while not being able to look at it.
But you can do that with any laptop that can mirror what's on the screen and what's on the external monitor or projector.
Generally, if you're doing a small enough presentation where you don't need a projector (1 or 2 people), having them sit on the other side of your screen is pretty weird. It generally works better to have them sit next to you as you run through the slides.
Being able to independently control an external screen from the LCD do it is nothing new as well. I'm on my fourth PowerBook (a tasty G4 model now), and you've always been able to navigate have two screen independently of each other. I think many of the Dells that share the same video card can do it, but it's a little iffy under Windows 2000 or later.
I can't really see a use for this, unless you wanted to flip the screens away from each other, hook up an external keyboard and play Battleship or something.
> Is there something outside the marketability of
> political orientation that is a factor in this difference in
> success? Does political orientation give a business
> an advantage in a Capitalistic society? Or is it that
> Republicans are just looser with their wallets?
I'm not sure I agree that NPR has a liberal bias; they certainly do have the most in-depth coverage of any media. And government support consitutes only about 10% of their funding; the rest is from "listeners like you" and corporate sponsorships. Salon does seem to have a liberal slant in that they tend to cover stories that interest liberals, but unlike people like Limbaugh or the non-AP stories posted on the Washington Times, they don't twist the facts to get their slant.
However, for the answer to your question, you should read the Salon article "Todd Gitlin talks about media overload, the cluelessness of the TV networks, the Washington Post's love for Ken Starr and why conservative viewpoints thrive on TV and radio."
Hardly a need for a retraction. Spelling out the meaning of anno Domini is hardly an endorsement of a state-sponsored religion, so the essence of Aexia's comment is correct. I guess our Founding Fathers could have changed our method of writing years in the Western World to remove mentioning Jesus, but they had a big enough task in creating a new government. A la The Simpsons: "Not only are the trains running on time. They're running on metric time!"
Getting the country to agree to a new government is hard, but it would be close to impossible if you had to convince everyone, "No, it's not 1787! It's Year 11."
> The effect is compounded by TV "journalists" who
> know just as little, but are more than happy to trumpet
> the term "dirty bomb" over the airwaves for at least a
> week.
You know it's really bad when The Daily Show, John Stewart's political satire show on Comedy Central, was more reasonable than the real news shows. Stewart actually ranted a couple of times about how the real media was scaring people unnecessarily with overblown reports of dirty bombs.
Every time I make an order, they say they're out of stock. Apparently some guy in Redmond, WA has cleared out their stock!
> perhaps they should consider reinventing the
> Macintosh in another brand name that's more in line
> with the product's diversity (it's a business computer,
> it's a graphics box, it's a recreation box, it's a floor
> wax, dessert topping and more, et al.)
There is no way in hell that Apple is going to kill off the "Macintosh" brand name until something bad happens (e.g., Some terrorist named Mac N. Tosh kills 50,000 school children in a horrific poisoning involving McIntosh apples).
Companies work for years and spend millions of dollars to build brand names, and they don't toss them aside without good reason. Very few computers (or regular products, for that matter) have the same type of recognition. For example, how likely are you to be able to figure out who builds the following: Accsys, Dimension, Inspira, Achieva, Presario, Millennia, Evo, OptiPlex, etc. You might be able to figure it out if you've got one on your desk, but if someone says Macintosh, chances are better they'll figure out it's an Apple, whether they like the product or not. That type of brand recognition in the industry is something other computer makers would kill for.
Dvorak's article isn't as much of a troll as he usually does (the title is an order of magnitude worse than the article itself), but that point still doesn't make any sense. One thing that has to be understood is that Apple did kill the Macintosh. If you think of the Macintosh as a 68xxx-based computer running the Mac OS -- keep in mind, Mac OS 9, although more advanced than the original OS, was still the original OS -- then Apple did kill it. The new Macintosh runs Unix, has the PowerPC, and is a very different machine.
was when he pointed out how Itchy played Scratchy's rib like a xylophone, but when he struck a particular rib, it made distinctly two notes! That was some really screwed up physics!
I heard someone got fired for that one.
> The Matrix was probably the closest we'll ever
> get to a thinking man's movie,
Now, we're playing a game called everyone's movie is unrealistic except my favorite!
I would hardly call The Matrix a "thinking man's" movie. The last act featured a gratuitous, violent machine gun orgy scene. Hardly a thinking man's flick. To me, it was no different than Aeon Flux, except with cool sunglasses, and certainly no better than a Rambo/Terminator type movie.
If you liked the movie, good for you. (Obviously, I didn't care for it). But excusing The Matrix's hyped up physics ("But it's a computer simulation; they're supposed to be able to change reality!"), while simultaneously derided the physics of other fictional works is hypocritical. Whether a movie takes place in "virtual reality" or "in a galaxy far, far away" they're all using plot devices to get you suspend your disbelief.
> Jesus, does everyone have to take every
> little comment by the authors so damn
> seriously?
Only if you want your legitimate complaints to be taken seriously. Microsoft does a lot of sleazy things, but needlessly trolling them only increases the chances that one's complaints will be dismissed out of hand.
> Sci-fi Wire is reporting a couple rumors
> about the changes being made to the
> original Star Wars trilogy for its next release.
> That being that Natalie Portman may be
> being inserted into Episode VI: Return of the
> Jedi and that universally reviled Jar Jar Binks
This sounds a lot like the complaining people made when they heard N' Sync (or whoever the hell they were) was supposed to be in Episode II. I don't remember seeing them there, and if they were, it certainly didn't affect how I enjoyed the flick.
Look, it's a movie, not the New Testament. If Lucas wants to change his movie -- it's his own decision.
I for one would like to see IV-VI touched up a bit when it hits DVD. First, replace the actor playing the Emperor in V with the guy who plays him in I, II, and VI. Second, digitally remove the puppets from the cantina scene in IV and the puppets in VI. Third, get rid of the ewoks.
I showed the footage to my wife, and her response was, "No, he's just scratching his eye -- oh, wait ...", so I think he probably did mean it.
I have to so speak to press and analysts a lot because of my job, and before one does anything like that, there's an incredible amount of preparation where you practice questions for any contingency.
Apple (and specifically, whoever the Xserve product manager is) is understandably very concerned about Xserve failing because of bad connotations with Apple's earlier server efforts, as sort of guilty by association. There's another example of this: if you watch the beginning, Jobs is talking about Jaguar, and when he mentions the handwriting recognition part called InkWell, he said it was from a well-known product, but he wouldn't mention the Newton by name. They don't want any "Eat up, Martha" jokes before the product is out.
So I think Jobs had been anticipating the question, but he wasn't happy it came up, particularly from that annoying guy who took 10 minutes to spit out his question. He could have asked his question without specifically mentioning Apple's failed earlier server effort.
Even if Jobs didn't mean it, I'm pretty sure the person who edited together the QuickTime footage did mean it. Something like that usually doesn't happen by accident. We're just lucky they didn't superimpose a "Moron" label above geekboy's head as he asked the question!
> Isn't anyone afraid the game will be filled
> with advertisements for the military, such as
> tons of "Join NOW!" buttons, and pop-ups
> displaying the US Army website?
You know what would be funny?
I'm assuming the game runs on Windows. With the Bush Administration working so much with Microsoft-- you know, getting rid of th pesky lawsuit and trying to get Passport made a type of nationwide ID .
So imagine you're playing the game on Windows XP with all your Passport stuff filled in, like a good End User. You finish a really hard level, and suddenly a dialog box pops up and asks, "Do you wish to continue?". When you click yes, you get signed up for the army!
This idea to use games to convince impressionable kids to join the army is a good one.
Looking around, all the people of my generation have one of a few careers:
* Alien-attacker, particularly where you have three bases to hide behind
* Ever-hungry giant mouth eating never-ending supply of pellets
* Race car driver on tracks with a lot of popup
* Professional princess rescuer, particularly when you can jump on a lot of mushrooms
* Cubical worker
That last one is the least suprising. I remember as a kid, me and my friends would never stop playing "Cubical Worker!" It was the most popular game in America at the time, which is why everyone seems to have grown up to do it for a living.
> The Army expects by September to spent about $7.5 million on the program
Whew! I'm glad we're spending $7.5 million on this project. With this new Republican leadership manning the purse strings, we've got so much money, I was worried there was no way we'd be able to spend it all. This is a great example of how to get rid of it.
What was that? A $100 billion dollar deficit ?
Wait... which party was for big government and likes to waste money?
> Are you in SoFla by any chance? (south florida for the unenlightened)
The theater was in Plano, TX. That really disturbs me that this happened in more than one city.
> All this complaining about the wooden acting and
> cheesy dialogue...has anybody ever considered
> that maybe Lucas is writing the dialogue
> intentionally to keep the series feeling like
> the old-time Saturday Morning serials
I agree. I loved the movie, for all its cheesy dialog and wooden acting. In my opinion, Lucas even excused Jar Jar and the young Anakin's childish antics. For Jar Jar, clearly he wanted a plausible gullible senator stand-in. For Anakin, he wanted an innocent, but engineering-inclined boy who would later be twisted to the dark side by Palpatine.
We re-watched ROTJ this morning, and it's funny how the events from Episodes IV-VI can be reinterpreted when you watch Episodes I and II.
There were four or five guys dressed up like Jedi apprentices (they all seemed to have the little braided pony tail), but it seemed kind of geeky.
Before movie started, they all ran down to the front of the theater to smack their plastic light sabres together in a mock battle. They did that for a few minutes, and then slunk back to their seats to the sardonic applause of the audience.
It was a good movie, though.