> Re:Useful for some > by Christopher Bibbs (14) on Wed Mar 01, '06 01:46 PM (#14829540) > Listen to the little kid calling someone a n00b.
I declare you the winner!
Okay, this is totally offtopic, but I can't resist whenever a game of "who has the lowest slashdot id" game starts. I remember the poll from a couple of years ago that brought out tons of people from the woodwork.
One of these days, those of us with high user IDs will hunt the low uid people for food, and we'll use posts like mine as a trap to ensnare you!
I used my 17" PowerBook G4 during the two and a half years of getting my MBA*, and I found it invaluable. I used it in three ways:
First, I converted the professor's inevitable PowerPoint presentations into PDFs and used Acrobat to take notes. (Admittedly I prefer when professors don't use PowerPoint. Do it on a marker board if you must write something. PPT is too lazy.)
Second, I used an application called InkBook along with a cheapo Wacom tablet which allowed me to do sketches and take notes which were parsed into English, a la the Newton of yore.
Third, I would often receive case studies as a PDF, so I could quickly take notes and refer back to them during class.
The benefit was I didn't have to carry around a folder with a bunch of paper notes, and I can refer to my notes even to this day. I'm very comfortable with using a computer as my primary tool during class, as I suspect many on Slashdot may agree.
However, I noticed that while everyone in class had a computer, few used it the way I did.
There was a lot of reading emails, playing games, or browsing the web during class (admittedly, when I got bored, I did that, too). Although some people took notes in PowerPoint, many people just printed stuff out and hand wrote their notes, so their laptop was just for messing around. If that's the case, then I don't see a benefit with requiring students to have a computer. If the person isn't comfortable with it, and the class isn't significantly enhanced by using it, then there's no point.
Plus, I'd be pissed if my school forced me to use a laptop of their choosing, rather than what I believe works best for me.
__ *hey! before you harass me, consider my relatively low Slashdot user ID. I will accept the taunting and mockings from only 87991 other users.
> the person who submitted the video file to Google specified that the video not be viewable in the > United States
Okay, good. Thanks for the clarification. If that's true, the Register really should have followed up on that before publishing. They should have contacted Google for comments or searched Google Video to see if other videos from the war are available.
Slashdot should have probably still published the story, but with the story description indicating that the original Register article could be misleading.
> Er, position that is. One week, they say "Oh, don't worry about us being in China; NO filter can > eliminate every thing a government doesn't want people to see!" and the next week they find > themselves having to admit that what's true "over there" is true "over here":
What's true over there is apparently true over here. Not just next week; how about three articles away on Slashdot? Except, now it's not available.
I'm confused because there was a Slashdot story from "the mysterious future" about a Register article stating that Google was censoring videos about the Iraq war, but only for people in the U.S. When I clicked on the Slashdot article to comment, I just got the error "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
> While I'd consider a subscription for something like the Daily Show
Agreed. I'd be willing to pay a reasonable subscription for the Daily Show and the Colbert Réport. Unlike regular TV shows, they don't have as much replay value (A year from now, how many people will say, "Ooh! Let me re-watch that send up he did of Cheney shooting a 78 year old man in the face!"), but it would be nice to be able to catch episodes instead of staying up late. I can see paying $7/mo for a monthly subscription (20 episodes) for that.
Or they can do on-demand episodes, but I think it may be harder to get enough purchasers of each show to make it worth doing more than a "greatest hits" thing (like what SNL does). But the market is there. Consider how many Daily Show sequences end up on Crooks and Liars or Video Dog each week.
> 7 bucks a month a bit high for 2 hours of combined entertainment?
Yes. It was vaguely funny, but really no funnier than listening to any other DJs frankly. It seemed too off-the-cuff for me to believe there was a lot of prep time to justify me paying for episodes.
The irony is I'm happily paying for episodes of The Office (US version, but Ricky Gervais is an executive producer there). At $2 an episode, it's a great deal. However, the show has replay value and nuance, where surprisingly, I catch other things when I re-watch an episode.
The podcast is another issue. At $7/month, there's just not enough content for me to want to pay for the show. If it were daily, then maybe -- basically, I pay $7/mo to listen to them every day. Then again, maybe it would get repetitive and boring if they had to do it every day. Ricky Gervais would be better off selling the BBC version of The Office through ITMS for U.S. viewers rather than chase down a paying podcast to pay the bills.
So, good luck Mr. Gervais. It was fun while it lasted.
You know that old expression: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"? Just a reminder that there are 23 other hours in a day.
This type of article is typical for Dvorak. Throw out a crazy statement with no justification, add some flame-bait ("fanatical users", "crazy"), and sit back smirking. In fact, I feel like we just went through this sort of thing.
(Hey, even that old post mentioned a broken clock. I guess if you cross a broken clock with a broken record, you get Dvorak!)
I think this is a bit overblown. It sounds like a Trojan Horse, not a virus. But the originally posted messages are kind of funny. Has anyone else noticed that if you look throughout the Mac OS Rumors threads, you can find examples that follow the five stages of grief?
1. Denial and isolation
Is this another non story just so we can toss a non story at people who argue that a Mac will be just as crap as windows given time and enough crazy automation in our email clients?
2. Anger
Oh God, shut up. The fact that you worked at an Apple Store means nothing, get over yourself. "At least a dozen people" HAHA yeah OK, you want to tell me you didn't pull that completely out of your butt?
3. Bargaining
if anyone thinks that they can isolate it and reverse engineer it or anything like that i will be happy to give you the mirrored link
4. Depression
that is seriously depressing. i am officially shaken from my nice little warm fuzzy macintosh lull.
5. Acceptance
We all knew this day would come. It's ok, although some of you are a bit shocked, this thing was eventually going to happen. I just hope that Apple will help stop these kinds of things from happening. Safari already tells us when we download a program, and even an.exe, maybe Apple just has to add what Safari looks for when we download it. That would hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.
I think with the appropriate counseling, the MacOSRumors.com community will be just fine.
> Apple is writing an OS that runs on it's hardware set. If it were to sell a box with software to install > on generic PCs, it would open up a huge support load due to the enormous number of > combinations of possible components.
Good point. For the people who want Apple to sell Mac OS X for a white box, how would they feel if Apple passed the increased support costs onto them? That is, Mac OS X that will be installed on a Apple branded Macintosh cost $130, while for a non Apple-branded computer it cost $200 (although even the extra $70 probably wouldn't cover the incremental costs of interop testing and technical support for all those PC configurations).
Moreover, what if Apple subsidized Apple-box buyers by charging only $50 for those users, but then charged $250 for people who wanted to install on a non-Apple box.
As a Mac user, I know that Apple has a finite amount of R&D dollars. I'd rather Apple spend its resources making Mac OS X have more features rather than spending those resources on just expanding support for hardware I wouldn't buy anyway. So I don't think it makes sense for Apple to do this. If you want to run Mac OS X, buy a Mac. Buy a little Mac mini for $500 if desk space is a problem.
Considering the previous technology leading position of the Newton MessagePad back in the late 1990s, and the fact that Steve Jobs killed it (calling it a "damn scribble pad"), coupled with changing demographics due dramatic shifts in the paradigm of handheld computing, if this actually happens I believe I speak for all former Newton owners, when I say WTF??
> Didn't you post something almost word-for-word identical in the last NASA story?
Don't bother. The guy's script is a word-for-word Fark.com cliche. Someone posts that to every story over there. It's not funny there, and it's certainly not funny here.
Instead of responding, people should click the "metamoderate" link and mod down the moderator who marked the post "Interesting".
I guess we'd get the same response if someone posted a Slashdot cliche (e.g., Natalie Portman and hot grits or something about Soviet Russia) on Fark.com.
MIchael Brown, the guy Bush picked to head FEMA, had no experience doing disaster recovery, having been fired from his previous job as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Assocation. However, Bush appointed him because he was the roommate of the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and Brown's predecessor at FEMA.
Next, he nominated to the Supreme Court his personal lawyer Harriet Miers who had absolutely no judicial experience. Luckily she didn't get her "up or down" vote due to a Republican backlash (but probably for the wrong reasons).
And now we find that Bush appointed to NASA a 24-year old journalism major who dropped out of college but had all the qualifications of someone who worked on his campaign. And the guy was censoring real scientists!
This problem of Bush cronyism goes much further than just giving plum jobs to to one's friends. These types of appointments are dangerous to our democracy because they can do real damage (as we saw in Brown's case). The fundamental problem is Bush and his ilk value loyalty more than experience or expertise; they value faith more than facts.
> It strikes me that the telcos keep having this fantasy about owning the pipes AND the content on the pipes > so that they can control the whole enchilada
That's part of it, but there's another part: they want to provide the services so you can't easily switch to another service provider. In business-speak, this is called increasing the switching costs and it's a form of increasing barriers to entry.
They want to set it up so that if you switch to another provider, you have to change your email (can be a pain if you don't use an ISP-independent email account), you don't get access to your IM buddy list, and you lose value-added services (like streaming music or video). And if the switching costs are higher, the value is higher for the customer, and thus capitalism says you can raise your price. If you can raise your price proportionately higher than the increased costs due to delivering the services, you've improved your margins.
Google and Apple offer services that, to some extent, are antithetical to that. If you switch ISPs, you can still access Gmail,.Mac, or iTunes Music Store, or whatever. Gmail and ITMS are really popular today, thus adding to the ISPs' fears of becoming a "dumb pipe."
In the end, telcos are like big animals who are threatened by the changing environment. They may have a lot of power, but in the end, guess what? Evolution is inescapable. Verizon (and other big telcos) may even win this battle, and a few other ones. But in the long term, they can't win the war. Bandwidth is doomed to become cheaper and cheaper. People just want to communicate with each other, and Verizon can't control what people do. It's market at work.
I agree (but I don't speak for the company I work for)
The article sheds some light on Verizon's thinking:
Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services.
The big RBOCs are trying to evolve. They're spending billions of dollars to deliver a concept called IPTV, which is broadband, on demand, HD-TV delivered over a managed IP network. They're deploying fiber, large core routers, complex head office devices, and server farms in anticipation of the consumers going crazy over IPTV. The idea is to deliver voice, data, and now IPTV to deliver a better experience than you can get with cable MSOs (in the U.S.) today. This is what they want to be when the evolution is over.
The problem is that they're hoping this is going to work, but it's quite possible that the market doesn't want this. Broadband is a hit, and voice is a hit (and has been for decades), but voice is going the way of mobile as more people use their cell phones instead of a landline. What about their video venture? Obviously cable TV is fine, but will views flock to their IPTV services? The problem is there are alternatives. DVDs are cheap and have a tiny entry cost (the cost of a DVD player). You can still rent DVDs. Then there's video games. And now the new competition with Apple and Google.
Their paranoia is driven by the idea that they're upgrading their networks for broadband in anticipation of delivering IPTV (and getting the revenues to recoup it). But if IPTV doesn't take off, then they won't have the revenue to cover their huge capital expenditures and others will reap the benefits of these upgraded networks. That leaves them as "dumb pipes" delivering bandwidth and not much else. They really want the revenue associated with delivering services, not just being an ISP.
These types of statements may be a way of trying to get Apple and Google to open up to them to partner. As far as I can tell, Apple and Google haven't had a need to partner with the big ISPs (unlike Yahoo and SBC for DSL). So it's possible Verizon isn't talking about the user experience today. They're thinking about what happens with ITMS had HDTV video and full fledged movies for sale. If people ignore IPTV because of the alternatives, then they may be driving themselves out of business. That fear doesn't justify their actions. They should have found a way to scale their network infrastructure upgrades in an incremental fashion. Get the users to pay so each incremental change profitable in the short term, rather than doing a giant upgrade where you're risking your business.
> IBM made promises to Apple but were unable to deliver on those promises. > Remember the statements about 3 GHz within a year? [pcworld.com] Apple couldn't > sit by while IBM broke promise after promise on upcoming product lines.
Just as important, if Intel makes a promise and they break it, Apple doesn't have to worry about being lapped by their competition since they're in the same boat. With IBM/Freescale, Apple would be in a weaker position because their fortunes would be tied to not only IBM/Freescale keeping their promises, but Intel/AMD not getting ahead. In other words, if Intel can't deliver, then at least the whole PC industry (including Apple) suffers. Apple can continue to differentiate with Mac OS X and its industrial design. And the iPod/ITMS/iTunes.
IBM had their chance and with the G5 they lost it. Suggesting that Apple should forgo the present advantages of the Core Duo processor for the potential benefits of IBM's press release isn't realistic.
> What is more important, be a showmen technologist like Jobs or an humanitarian missionaire like Gates?
The question seems too simplistic. If you want to ask the question -- who has done more for humanity: Gates or Jobs? Then you can look at acts of charity or whatever. If you want to ask who is the "most capitalist", then look at net worth. If you want to know whose actions illustrate the values one wants to live up to, look at their respective actions. If you want to ask who is the most selfless humanitarian, the answer is probably neither, as the parent indicates:
> It was not the amount that mattered, but the attitude and the self-sacrifice
The poster's submission makes it sound like all four of those are the same type of thing (hero).
It's really easy for a billionaire to donate a million dollars to charity. It's a lot harder for someone making $20k a year to donate a dime to charity. But the latter qualifies more as a humanitarian because of the self sacrifice, at least from a Christian perspective. When the billionaire does it, it's often for tax purposes or for PR. If they do it anonymously, at least they're not trying to secure favorable impressions in the history books.
I read the Wired article, and it was basically an author baiting Jobs to try to one-up Gates and his highly-publicized public giving. The author at least admitted that Jobs might be giving money anonymously, which is probably more in Jobs' character -- I'm thinking about Jobs meeting with a young man through the Make a Wish foundation. As far as I know, the meeting didn't appear on Apple Hot News for publicity.
As for a more riveting personal/business story, Jobs wins hands down. Gates used ruthless tactics to build his empire and then showed nothing but contempt for the justice system. Now that he's rich, he can through a few crumbs (albeit, crumbs to him are billions to the rest of us) to build his PR.
Jobs' story is more compelling to me: Apple's founding, buying Pixar from Lucas and turning it into a billion dollar business, failing at NeXT, but selling it back to Apple, and then rebuilding Apple with the iPod to chagrin of the loud protests from critics:
It may not be the last laugh, but on Friday afternoon, after the close of the stock market, Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, shared an e-mail chuckle with his employees at the expense of Dell, a big rival.
The message was prompted by the 12 percent surge in Apple's stock price last week, which pushed the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's value of $71.97 billion.
In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start in 1976, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.
"What would I do?" Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Mr. Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple employees, which read: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."
Founding a successful company is some skill and a lot of luck. Doing it three times (Apple, Pixar, Apple again) is more skill than luck.
I'm sorry if you think it's wrong to assume that the leaders of the Republican Party are in any way representative of the party itself.
As reported by the Associated Press (8/19/2005), the President and the Senate Majority leader have both been loud advocates that believe in ID and want it taught in schools:
Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.
They hardly count as obscure members of the Republican Party.
> When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political > philosophy, what should that tell you?
Well said.
It shouldn't be surprising when the Republican Party takes on attributes of being anti-science (e.g., creationism and "intelligent design") that few scientists would like to be associated with that party. The Republicans recent takes on economics and foreign relations isn't much better. Today's Republican Party is "faith-based" to the exclusion of "fact-based."
A rational, intelligent person would look at that and suggest that there's something about the Republican Party that repels people with education (both teachers and students). An unintelligent person assumes a conspiracy theory and cries "bias!" The rational, intelligent person reassesses their party's position to try to fix the problem. The unintelligent person calls them a "flip flopper" and digs their heals in a bit more.
> If you have a disagree with the professor, you have to keep your damn mouth shut, or you'll end up > paying for it.
Prove it.
I know that plenty of self-described political conservatives who love to play the victim and talk about how oppressed they are. But to me, this "academic bias" just goes along with the whole "the media is biased" mantra. They repeat it over and over, but that doesn't make it true.
Colleges and universities aren't biased against Republicans just because science classes won't teach "intelligent design" or creationism in school. Economics classes aren't biased because they have the nerve to point out that Bush's trickle down economics has turned our budget surpluses into deficits. The idea that a professor is a "extreme left wing radical" because they don't think that Bush should be put on Mount Rushmore is ridiculous.
I've had plenty of professors that disagreed with me, and I've never had a professor who was so unethical that they knocked my grade down because of it. If you've got a professor who does that, they're breaking the rules, and you can take it to the ombudsman and get it fixed. There's no need start a bounty to fuel a political witch hunt.
P.S., I could have done without the self-pitying, "woe is me" attitude in his second article:
> I hope I achieved that goal, even if I did upset a lot of people who seem to feel that anything but > fawning admiration for Apple is an act of betrayal by an apostate.
His first article was talking about how "smug" Mac users are about security. Then his second article admits "I don't believe that Mac viruses already exist, and I think it's very unlikely that they ever will." Maybe he could have said that Mac users were "confident" about security without resorting to the pejorative word in order to sensationalize.
His article was a troll. His first article used the word "virus" nearly a dozen times, but in the second article, he admits there have been no Mac OS X viruses and the security flaws he mentioned had been fixed long ago.
He claims he writes for people of all audiences and he must simplify. Maybe instead of doing the useless screen shot of a mail client, it would have been more educational to put a bar graph of the number of Windows viruses versus Mac OS X viruses to put a sense of scale on his claims. To put it in context, he could have done a number of viruses / number of users per platform chart.
Sheesh. The author wrote an unnecessarily sensationalist article, and he keeps accusing various targets of taking a rational issue and making it emotional ("smug", "fawning admiration"). He whines when he does sloppy reporting, gets caught, and then has to correct himself.
It sounds like from the review that Apple's pro apps aren't well suited for the Intel-based Macs until they have the Universal Binary versions (suggested to be in late March). Maybe that's why they left FireWire 800 off the initial MacBook Pro -- if you need FireWire 800, you're probably doing pro work. So Apple left it out to reduce costs until they have a complete system for pros.
Agreed! The Prisoner (minus the last two incomprehensible and silly episodes) was an incredible show. I remember it came on one night late on PBS (after Red Dwarf), and I recognized it from the description on The Straight Dope.
We were all set to make fun of it (hey, look! a campy 1960s era show!), but we quickly became engrossed in the plot (it was one of the better episodes -- The Schizoid Man). I was actually quite surprised how much I enjoyed it.
I ended up buying the A&E boxed set, and I was amazed at McGoohan's understanding of how society tries to mold its citizens. Plus the whole "spy versus spy" part was an intriguing bonus (particularly "Hammer and Anvil").
This is a show that doesn't need to be remade. Today, they'd have to cut it in half, make Number 6 run around shooting people with a machine gun, and have a hooter babe leading woman.
Slashdot Mirror
> Re:Useful for some
> by Christopher Bibbs (14) on Wed Mar 01, '06 01:46 PM (#14829540)
> Listen to the little kid calling someone a n00b.
I declare you the winner!
Okay, this is totally offtopic, but I can't resist whenever a game of "who has the lowest slashdot id" game starts. I remember the poll from a couple of years ago that brought out tons of people from the woodwork.
One of these days, those of us with high user IDs will hunt the low uid people for food, and we'll use posts like mine as a trap to ensnare you!
A laptop is useful for some but not for others
I used my 17" PowerBook G4 during the two and a half years of getting my MBA*, and I found it invaluable. I used it in three ways:
First, I converted the professor's inevitable PowerPoint presentations into PDFs and used Acrobat to take notes. (Admittedly I prefer when professors don't use PowerPoint. Do it on a marker board if you must write something. PPT is too lazy.)
Second, I used an application called InkBook along with a cheapo Wacom tablet which allowed me to do sketches and take notes which were parsed into English, a la the Newton of yore.
Third, I would often receive case studies as a PDF, so I could quickly take notes and refer back to them during class.
The benefit was I didn't have to carry around a folder with a bunch of paper notes, and I can refer to my notes even to this day. I'm very comfortable with using a computer as my primary tool during class, as I suspect many on Slashdot may agree.
However, I noticed that while everyone in class had a computer, few used it the way I did.
There was a lot of reading emails, playing games, or browsing the web during class (admittedly, when I got bored, I did that, too). Although some people took notes in PowerPoint, many people just printed stuff out and hand wrote their notes, so their laptop was just for messing around. If that's the case, then I don't see a benefit with requiring students to have a computer. If the person isn't comfortable with it, and the class isn't significantly enhanced by using it, then there's no point.
Plus, I'd be pissed if my school forced me to use a laptop of their choosing, rather than what I believe works best for me.
__
*hey! before you harass me, consider my relatively low Slashdot user ID. I will accept the taunting and mockings from only 87991 other users.
> the person who submitted the video file to Google specified that the video not be viewable in the
> United States
Okay, good. Thanks for the clarification. If that's true, the Register really should have followed up on that before publishing. They should have contacted Google for comments or searched Google Video to see if other videos from the war are available.
Slashdot should have probably still published the story, but with the story description indicating that the original Register article could be misleading.
> Er, position that is. One week, they say "Oh, don't worry about us being in China; NO filter can
> eliminate every thing a government doesn't want people to see!" and the next week they find
> themselves having to admit that what's true "over there" is true "over here":
What's true over there is apparently true over here. Not just next week; how about three articles away on Slashdot? Except, now it's not available.
I'm confused because there was a Slashdot story from "the mysterious future" about a Register article stating that Google was censoring videos about the Iraq war, but only for people in the U.S. When I clicked on the Slashdot article to comment, I just got the error "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Did anyone else notice this?
> While I'd consider a subscription for something like the Daily Show
Agreed. I'd be willing to pay a reasonable subscription for the Daily Show and the Colbert Réport. Unlike regular TV shows, they don't have as much replay value (A year from now, how many people will say, "Ooh! Let me re-watch that send up he did of Cheney shooting a 78 year old man in the face!"), but it would be nice to be able to catch episodes instead of staying up late. I can see paying $7/mo for a monthly subscription (20 episodes) for that.
Or they can do on-demand episodes, but I think it may be harder to get enough purchasers of each show to make it worth doing more than a "greatest hits" thing (like what SNL does). But the market is there. Consider how many Daily Show sequences end up on Crooks and Liars or Video Dog each week.
> 7 bucks a month a bit high for 2 hours of combined entertainment?
Yes. It was vaguely funny, but really no funnier than listening to any other DJs frankly. It seemed too off-the-cuff for me to believe there was a lot of prep time to justify me paying for episodes.
The irony is I'm happily paying for episodes of The Office (US version, but Ricky Gervais is an executive producer there). At $2 an episode, it's a great deal. However, the show has replay value and nuance, where surprisingly, I catch other things when I re-watch an episode.
The podcast is another issue. At $7/month, there's just not enough content for me to want to pay for the show. If it were daily, then maybe -- basically, I pay $7/mo to listen to them every day. Then again, maybe it would get repetitive and boring if they had to do it every day. Ricky Gervais would be better off selling the BBC version of The Office through ITMS for U.S. viewers rather than chase down a paying podcast to pay the bills.
So, good luck Mr. Gervais. It was fun while it lasted.
> You know that old expression: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"? Just a reminder that there
> are 23 other hours in a day.
I just noticed this. I meant to type 22, not 23. I guess there goes my clever post.
I guess it's just another example of how "time makes fools of us all"!
You know that old expression: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"? Just a reminder that there are 23 other hours in a day.
This type of article is typical for Dvorak. Throw out a crazy statement with no justification, add some flame-bait ("fanatical users", "crazy"), and sit back smirking. In fact, I feel like we just went through this sort of thing.
(Hey, even that old post mentioned a broken clock. I guess if you cross a broken clock with a broken record, you get Dvorak!)
1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
I think with the appropriate counseling, the MacOSRumors.com community will be just fine.
> Apple is writing an OS that runs on it's hardware set. If it were to sell a box with software to install
> on generic PCs, it would open up a huge support load due to the enormous number of
> combinations of possible components.
Good point. For the people who want Apple to sell Mac OS X for a white box, how would they feel if Apple passed the increased support costs onto them? That is, Mac OS X that will be installed on a Apple branded Macintosh cost $130, while for a non Apple-branded computer it cost $200 (although even the extra $70 probably wouldn't cover the incremental costs of interop testing and technical support for all those PC configurations).
Moreover, what if Apple subsidized Apple-box buyers by charging only $50 for those users, but then charged $250 for people who wanted to install on a non-Apple box.
As a Mac user, I know that Apple has a finite amount of R&D dollars. I'd rather Apple spend its resources making Mac OS X have more features rather than spending those resources on just expanding support for hardware I wouldn't buy anyway. So I don't think it makes sense for Apple to do this. If you want to run Mac OS X, buy a Mac. Buy a little Mac mini for $500 if desk space is a problem.
Too bad the article isn't working for me.
Considering the previous technology leading position of the Newton MessagePad back in the late 1990s, and the fact that Steve Jobs killed it (calling it a "damn scribble pad"), coupled with changing demographics due dramatic shifts in the paradigm of handheld computing, if this actually happens I believe I speak for all former Newton owners, when I say WTF??
> Didn't you post something almost word-for-word identical in the last NASA story?
Don't bother. The guy's script is a word-for-word Fark.com cliche. Someone posts that to every story over there. It's not funny there, and it's certainly not funny here.
Instead of responding, people should click the "metamoderate" link and mod down the moderator who marked the post "Interesting".
I guess we'd get the same response if someone posted a Slashdot cliche (e.g., Natalie Portman and hot grits or something about Soviet Russia) on Fark.com.
Let's recap for those at home keeping score.
MIchael Brown, the guy Bush picked to head FEMA, had no experience doing disaster recovery, having been fired from his previous job as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Assocation. However, Bush appointed him because he was the roommate of the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and Brown's predecessor at FEMA.
Next, he nominated to the Supreme Court his personal lawyer Harriet Miers who had absolutely no judicial experience. Luckily she didn't get her "up or down" vote due to a Republican backlash (but probably for the wrong reasons).
And now we find that Bush appointed to NASA a 24-year old journalism major who dropped out of college but had all the qualifications of someone who worked on his campaign. And the guy was censoring real scientists!
This problem of Bush cronyism goes much further than just giving plum jobs to to one's friends. These types of appointments are dangerous to our democracy because they can do real damage (as we saw in Brown's case). The fundamental problem is Bush and his ilk value loyalty more than experience or expertise; they value faith more than facts.
> It strikes me that the telcos keep having this fantasy about owning the pipes AND the content on the pipes
.Mac, or iTunes Music Store, or whatever. Gmail and ITMS are really popular today, thus adding to the ISPs' fears of becoming a "dumb pipe."
> so that they can control the whole enchilada
That's part of it, but there's another part: they want to provide the services so you can't easily switch to another service provider. In business-speak, this is called increasing the switching costs and it's a form of increasing barriers to entry.
They want to set it up so that if you switch to another provider, you have to change your email (can be a pain if you don't use an ISP-independent email account), you don't get access to your IM buddy list, and you lose value-added services (like streaming music or video). And if the switching costs are higher, the value is higher for the customer, and thus capitalism says you can raise your price. If you can raise your price proportionately higher than the increased costs due to delivering the services, you've improved your margins.
Google and Apple offer services that, to some extent, are antithetical to that. If you switch ISPs, you can still access Gmail,
I agree (but I don't speak for the company I work for)
The article sheds some light on Verizon's thinking:
The big RBOCs are trying to evolve. They're spending billions of dollars to deliver a concept called IPTV, which is broadband, on demand, HD-TV delivered over a managed IP network. They're deploying fiber, large core routers, complex head office devices, and server farms in anticipation of the consumers going crazy over IPTV. The idea is to deliver voice, data, and now IPTV to deliver a better experience than you can get with cable MSOs (in the U.S.) today. This is what they want to be when the evolution is over.
The problem is that they're hoping this is going to work, but it's quite possible that the market doesn't want this. Broadband is a hit, and voice is a hit (and has been for decades), but voice is going the way of mobile as more people use their cell phones instead of a landline. What about their video venture? Obviously cable TV is fine, but will views flock to their IPTV services? The problem is there are alternatives. DVDs are cheap and have a tiny entry cost (the cost of a DVD player). You can still rent DVDs. Then there's video games. And now the new competition with Apple and Google.
Their paranoia is driven by the idea that they're upgrading their networks for broadband in anticipation of delivering IPTV (and getting the revenues to recoup it). But if IPTV doesn't take off, then they won't have the revenue to cover their huge capital expenditures and others will reap the benefits of these upgraded networks. That leaves them as "dumb pipes" delivering bandwidth and not much else. They really want the revenue associated with delivering services, not just being an ISP.
These types of statements may be a way of trying to get Apple and Google to open up to them to partner. As far as I can tell, Apple and Google haven't had a need to partner with the big ISPs (unlike Yahoo and SBC for DSL). So it's possible Verizon isn't talking about the user experience today. They're thinking about what happens with ITMS had HDTV video and full fledged movies for sale. If people ignore IPTV because of the alternatives, then they may be driving themselves out of business. That fear doesn't justify their actions. They should have found a way to scale their network infrastructure upgrades in an incremental fashion. Get the users to pay so each incremental change profitable in the short term, rather than doing a giant upgrade where you're risking your business.
> IBM made promises to Apple but were unable to deliver on those promises.
> Remember the statements about 3 GHz within a year? [pcworld.com] Apple couldn't
> sit by while IBM broke promise after promise on upcoming product lines.
Just as important, if Intel makes a promise and they break it, Apple doesn't have to worry about being lapped by their competition since they're in the same boat. With IBM/Freescale, Apple would be in a weaker position because their fortunes would be tied to not only IBM/Freescale keeping their promises, but Intel/AMD not getting ahead. In other words, if Intel can't deliver, then at least the whole PC industry (including Apple) suffers. Apple can continue to differentiate with Mac OS X and its industrial design. And the iPod/ITMS/iTunes.
IBM had their chance and with the G5 they lost it. Suggesting that Apple should forgo the present advantages of the Core Duo processor for the potential benefits of IBM's press release isn't realistic.
> The Woz is rich in family and hacking ability, and as far as role models go, I'd much rather be the later.
Napoleon Dynamite agrees!
> Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer
> hacking skills...
The question seems too simplistic. If you want to ask the question -- who has done more for humanity: Gates or Jobs? Then you can look at acts of charity or whatever. If you want to ask who is the "most capitalist", then look at net worth. If you want to know whose actions illustrate the values one wants to live up to, look at their respective actions. If you want to ask who is the most selfless humanitarian, the answer is probably neither, as the parent indicates:
> It was not the amount that mattered, but the attitude and the self-sacrifice
The poster's submission makes it sound like all four of those are the same type of thing (hero).
It's really easy for a billionaire to donate a million dollars to charity. It's a lot harder for someone making $20k a year to donate a dime to charity. But the latter qualifies more as a humanitarian because of the self sacrifice, at least from a Christian perspective. When the billionaire does it, it's often for tax purposes or for PR. If they do it anonymously, at least they're not trying to secure favorable impressions in the history books.
I read the Wired article, and it was basically an author baiting Jobs to try to one-up Gates and his highly-publicized public giving. The author at least admitted that Jobs might be giving money anonymously, which is probably more in Jobs' character -- I'm thinking about Jobs meeting with a young man through the Make a Wish foundation. As far as I know, the meeting didn't appear on Apple Hot News for publicity.
As for a more riveting personal/business story, Jobs wins hands down. Gates used ruthless tactics to build his empire and then showed nothing but contempt for the justice system. Now that he's rich, he can through a few crumbs (albeit, crumbs to him are billions to the rest of us) to build his PR.
Jobs' story is more compelling to me: Apple's founding, buying Pixar from Lucas and turning it into a billion dollar business, failing at NeXT, but selling it back to Apple, and then rebuilding Apple with the iPod to chagrin of the loud protests from critics:
Founding a successful company is some skill and a lot of luck. Doing it three times (Apple, Pixar, Apple again) is more skill than luck.
I'm sorry if you think it's wrong to assume that the leaders of the Republican Party are in any way representative of the party itself.
As reported by the Associated Press (8/19/2005), the President and the Senate Majority leader have both been loud advocates that believe in ID and want it taught in schools:
They hardly count as obscure members of the Republican Party.
> When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political
> philosophy, what should that tell you?
Well said.
It shouldn't be surprising when the Republican Party takes on attributes of being anti-science (e.g., creationism and "intelligent design") that few scientists would like to be associated with that party. The Republicans recent takes on economics and foreign relations isn't much better. Today's Republican Party is "faith-based" to the exclusion of "fact-based."
A rational, intelligent person would look at that and suggest that there's something about the Republican Party that repels people with education (both teachers and students). An unintelligent person assumes a conspiracy theory and cries "bias!" The rational, intelligent person reassesses their party's position to try to fix the problem. The unintelligent person calls them a "flip flopper" and digs their heals in a bit more.
> If you have a disagree with the professor, you have to keep your damn mouth shut, or you'll end up
> paying for it.
Prove it.
I know that plenty of self-described political conservatives who love to play the victim and talk about how oppressed they are. But to me, this "academic bias" just goes along with the whole "the media is biased" mantra. They repeat it over and over, but that doesn't make it true.
Colleges and universities aren't biased against Republicans just because science classes won't teach "intelligent design" or creationism in school. Economics classes aren't biased because they have the nerve to point out that Bush's trickle down economics has turned our budget surpluses into deficits. The idea that a professor is a "extreme left wing radical" because they don't think that Bush should be put on Mount Rushmore is ridiculous.
I've had plenty of professors that disagreed with me, and I've never had a professor who was so unethical that they knocked my grade down because of it. If you've got a professor who does that, they're breaking the rules, and you can take it to the ombudsman and get it fixed. There's no need start a bounty to fuel a political witch hunt.
P.S., I could have done without the self-pitying, "woe is me" attitude in his second article:
> I hope I achieved that goal, even if I did upset a lot of people who seem to feel that anything but
> fawning admiration for Apple is an act of betrayal by an apostate.
His first article was talking about how "smug" Mac users are about security. Then his second article admits "I don't believe that Mac viruses already exist, and I think it's very unlikely that they ever will." Maybe he could have said that Mac users were "confident" about security without resorting to the pejorative word in order to sensationalize.
His article was a troll. His first article used the word "virus" nearly a dozen times, but in the second article, he admits there have been no Mac OS X viruses and the security flaws he mentioned had been fixed long ago.
He claims he writes for people of all audiences and he must simplify. Maybe instead of doing the useless screen shot of a mail client, it would have been more educational to put a bar graph of the number of Windows viruses versus Mac OS X viruses to put a sense of scale on his claims. To put it in context, he could have done a number of viruses / number of users per platform chart.
Sheesh. The author wrote an unnecessarily sensationalist article, and he keeps accusing various targets of taking a rational issue and making it emotional ("smug", "fawning admiration"). He whines when he does sloppy reporting, gets caught, and then has to correct himself.
The benchmarks from the article are useful.
It sounds like from the review that Apple's pro apps aren't well suited for the Intel-based Macs until they have the Universal Binary versions (suggested to be in late March). Maybe that's why they left FireWire 800 off the initial MacBook Pro -- if you need FireWire 800, you're probably doing pro work. So Apple left it out to reduce costs until they have a complete system for pros.
> This is apparently very common behavior for camera and electronics shops in Brooklyn.
I've been to New York, but I've never been to Brooklyn -- are these stores representative?
A lot of those photos are pretty scary. But I'm also listening to the Beastie Boys, who are waxing poetic about Brooklyn. I feel like a fraud...
> Seriously. The Prisoner is a classic.
Agreed! The Prisoner (minus the last two incomprehensible and silly episodes) was an incredible show. I remember it came on one night late on PBS (after Red Dwarf), and I recognized it from the description on The Straight Dope.
We were all set to make fun of it (hey, look! a campy 1960s era show!), but we quickly became engrossed in the plot (it was one of the better episodes -- The Schizoid Man). I was actually quite surprised how much I enjoyed it.
I ended up buying the A&E boxed set, and I was amazed at McGoohan's understanding of how society tries to mold its citizens. Plus the whole "spy versus spy" part was an intriguing bonus (particularly "Hammer and Anvil").
This is a show that doesn't need to be remade. Today, they'd have to cut it in half, make Number 6 run around shooting people with a machine gun, and have a hooter babe leading woman.