For hardware issues (few though they are), I always phone. Especially since I now own a notebook model Apple no longer carries. On the phone, I don't beat the queue, and when there's a serious problem I'll have to perform the boxing up and mailing out myself, but I do get to wait from the comfort of home.
For really simple things (I need a new keyboard, new buds for my iPod), I file a request online. Honestly, your iPod ear buds are covered by warranty. Out of disbelief (I have to try these things out for myself), I actually requested new buds when mine died - on an iPod that had only a couple of months left on its one year warranty! My new buds arrived two business days later. At the time, I was running a race against Best Buy's Geek Squad, who I'd called requesting a replacement for my wife's broken keyboard. Several months later, I called them to find out they had lost the service request.
By the way, iPod users: next time you're accosted by iriver fans who tell you how a friend of a friend heard how bad Apple's service is, compare the warranties. iriver's buds, built in battery, charger, and other "accessories" are covered for only 90 days after purchase. In or outside warranty, iriver has no battery replacement service (which with Apple, if you read carefully, is actually a full iPod replacement service).
On the subject of geek squads and bars, I was mulling over iPods at our local Best Buy when a geek squad member claimed they send iPods off to Apple for repair. I asked a couple of Apple service reps and they both denied this. Since then, another friend has been told the same thing. I've heard of other Best Buys telling people the same thing, that they send Apple equipment to Apple. Well, they don't, as one obsessed customer demonstrated by checking postmarks.
Nice to see a fellow Brit on here (don't let the current location fool you.)
Wikipedia articles can be created, edited, and maintained by anyone, including yourself. Thus the paranoia implied by the term "they". (See usage note: X-Files, Nirvana ["Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you."])
I'm going to have to see some direct references - everyone and their dog have yet to throw Wikipedia URLs at me.
No such thing as objectivity? The philosophical weasel's slipped out the bag now! There's no such thing as objectivity, therefore lazy namecalling, poor source-checking and intentional vulgarity is more honest than actual journalism. I agree that bad journalism exists (and is prevalent), but that doesn't make The Inquirer good journalism. It's not even par. The Inquirer is good as a cheap joke, but serves no real purpose. Its articles are either irrelevant or slurs. Admitting an editorial approach is not honesty, it is an open admission to dishonesty.
To me, objectivity in journalism means no more than professional detachment, delivering facts with precise references wherever possible and distrusting "values". Wherever possible, it is application of scientific method. It should not be confused with absolute objectivity, which beyond omnipresence is meaningless even in philosophy. Objectivity is what keeps WSJ's news coverage so distant from WSJ's editorials.
Here's an example of the kind of slur I would never want to see labelled "journalism":
Contradictory to your weaseling, you just said quite a bit against Wikipedia. Why do you distrust Wikipedia if there's "nothing wrong" with it? Why do you bother using it if you don't trust it? Why does quoting Wikipedia imply it to be the "be all and end all of objectivity"? How does quoting anything imply it to be the "be all and end all" of anything? Did you honestly not consider that maybe people quote Wikipedia because it's a free source of information? Whose entries do you take with a grain of salt? ("Who are THEY?") Where have you seen Wikipedia quoted by everyone? What is your basis for blanket distrust in every one of Wikipedia's articles? What about the external references used to back up those articles? Do you wear your tinfoil hat when you sleep, or do you hang it on your bedpost? In the shower? In the car? Doesn't the metal roof provide enough protection?
Only calls that reach telco lines are affected by the tax, Internet only calls are not taxed. It's the privilege of being connected to copper telephone wires we're being taxed for, therefore this is not a net neutrality issue. Good thinking, though.
As opposed to "because the inquirer says it then it must be true"?
Frankly, I linked to the Wikipedia article out of laziness, never even considering that some tinfoil-hat might suggest Wikipedians wanting to undermine an honest web magazine's wonderful image. Excuse any typos, I was rolling my eyes.
That being the case it's reasonably protected. I think the parent poster was talking about people who, for example, leave their car at the gas station with the door unlocked and/or the key in the ignition while they run inside to pay. Keeping the vehicle in a locked garage would mean breaking and entering into private property before even reaching it. Legally, that would be no different from breaking into your house to get the keys anyway!
As long as you don't leave the engine running, too. Where I come from, that's called a suicide attempt.
Although newer Apple laptops including MacsBooks don't have Firewire '800' ports they still have FireWire 400 ports. FireWire devices (most camcorders since 1995) are supported very well. I doubt Apple will drop Firewire 800 in the Mac Pro (note: I'm talking about Apple's confusingly named the Power Mac replacement, not the current PowerBook replacement!)
Of course, no one buys Mac JUST because it's pretty! We need to "justify" the expense. You have to read between the lines:
Is OS X more stable? (Does it stay that pretty?) Is OS X better than Windows? (It's prettier!) Is it user friendly? (Ooh, eye candy!) Does it play my music? (I like the way iPod looks.) Does it play games? (It looks fun.) Can it connect to a Windows network? (I'm going to look so cool at the office...) Does it have a wireless card? (...ooh, ooh! Or at a coffee house!) Does it have a warranty? (I'd hate that pretty screen to get scratched.) Can it use Microsoft Office? (Office '97 looks nasty on Windows.) Does it have Intel? (It doesn't have a sticker!) I hear Macs are only good for design work. (Designers know what looks good.) I hear Macs are better for musicians. (I'm gunna look like a rock star.) I hear Macs break easily. (Justify my choice! It looks good!) Could I test out OS X? (I want to touch it.) Does it come in black? (Looks are everything.)
I am so suing IBM. After only 23 years of ownership, its classy beige casing has yellowed noticeably. I bought it to go with the paintwork in my apartment. Well, it still goes with the paintwork in my apartment. That's it, I'm suing Dulux, too.
Seriously, though, the best thing about Macs is that they're computers that actually look nice. The best thing about OS X is that it looks good (since I started using Open Source Stuff, it doesn't even run my apps faster than Linux, it just looks nicer). What's the point of Mac if it's ugly?
Lesson relearned: don't buy 1st gen Apple products.
Hmm, how much did it cost to make an N64? I remember back when I lived in the UK I scooped up a brand new N64 at a local Argos for 40 GBP (back when the pound was 1.5 dollars, not 1.8 dollars!)
There's something else we need to consider here. We're talking about a story that came from The Daily Mail, a news source as reliably inaccurate as any other supermarket tabloid.
I suspect The Daily Mail writers did their usual bang-up job in the storyroom: found a half-truth, made the rest up. They noticed iPods are manufactured in China and made the rest up.
Until this story is reported in a news source (the Daily Mail being that other thing, a FUD source), it's not worth debating.
But England is only one unit of the collective that is Great Britain. British English is the standard throughout Great Britain. Great Britain is not England. It's also Wales and Scotland. Complicating the matter is that there are still Gael folk in Wales and Scotland, but that doesn't change British English from being the standard English throughout Britain.
Look on Wikipedia and you will also find these variations of English within Britain:
English English Scottish English Welsh English (among others)
I think this is a nice, if expensive, toy for people in big cities. Even in small cities, light polution dims the view.
I've a friend back in London who had her ceiling painted with a mock-up of the night sky somewhere in Africa. She hired some company that specializes in glow-in-the-dark night sky displays working from real star maps.
Just tested your theory using "personalized search". If they are logging search results of logged-out users, they aren't displaying them in the "personalized search" database. It'd also give them pretty inaccurate data - people logging out of a public machine aren't necessarily going to wipe all cookies in the browser for the next user (unless a very sensitive sysadmin has set the machine up to do this every time the browser closes).
Lenovo-not-IBM aside, is any discount offered for taking the Linux option instead of Windows? Chopping $300 off the price of a Thinkpad would make it much more affordable, especially when I don't intend to run Windows anyway.
I trust God with my innermost secrets because, to date, He has not abused this trust. The same cannot be said of the State.
Obviously you haven't been reading the news lately. In the "Balmer vs. God" case, Balmer accuses God of misappropriating prayers and gathering prayerful data without permission. This from CNN:
"Mr. Balmer was clearly engaged in prayer on the time and date in question," says Gabriel, who will be representing God, "We were entirely within rights to monitor and respond to the information." Balmer, though, has his own opinion: "All I said," says Balmer, 32, "Is, 'Oh god, I wish I were dead.' Clearly, the recording devices misfired as soon as I started talking - and now look where I am!" He gestures to the gates of hell, to which he is still awaiting entrance due to misfiled paperwork. "All this, just because I didn't believe in God!" Mr. Balmer is seeking compensation, both for illegal thought monitoring and for what he calls 'unacceptably shabby treatment' he has received since his arrival in hell.
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For hardware issues (few though they are), I always phone. Especially since I now own a notebook model Apple no longer carries. On the phone, I don't beat the queue, and when there's a serious problem I'll have to perform the boxing up and mailing out myself, but I do get to wait from the comfort of home.
For really simple things (I need a new keyboard, new buds for my iPod), I file a request online. Honestly, your iPod ear buds are covered by warranty. Out of disbelief (I have to try these things out for myself), I actually requested new buds when mine died - on an iPod that had only a couple of months left on its one year warranty! My new buds arrived two business days later. At the time, I was running a race against Best Buy's Geek Squad, who I'd called requesting a replacement for my wife's broken keyboard. Several months later, I called them to find out they had lost the service request.
By the way, iPod users: next time you're accosted by iriver fans who tell you how a friend of a friend heard how bad Apple's service is, compare the warranties. iriver's buds, built in battery, charger, and other "accessories" are covered for only 90 days after purchase. In or outside warranty, iriver has no battery replacement service (which with Apple, if you read carefully, is actually a full iPod replacement service).
On the subject of geek squads and bars, I was mulling over iPods at our local Best Buy when a geek squad member claimed they send iPods off to Apple for repair. I asked a couple of Apple service reps and they both denied this. Since then, another friend has been told the same thing. I've heard of other Best Buys telling people the same thing, that they send Apple equipment to Apple. Well, they don't, as one obsessed customer demonstrated by checking postmarks.
Nice to see a fellow Brit on here (don't let the current location fool you.)
Wikipedia articles can be created, edited, and maintained by anyone, including yourself. Thus the paranoia implied by the term "they". (See usage note: X-Files, Nirvana ["Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you."])
I'm going to have to see some direct references - everyone and their dog have yet to throw Wikipedia URLs at me.
No such thing as objectivity? The philosophical weasel's slipped out the bag now! There's no such thing as objectivity, therefore lazy namecalling, poor source-checking and intentional vulgarity is more honest than actual journalism. I agree that bad journalism exists (and is prevalent), but that doesn't make The Inquirer good journalism. It's not even par. The Inquirer is good as a cheap joke, but serves no real purpose. Its articles are either irrelevant or slurs. Admitting an editorial approach is not honesty, it is an open admission to dishonesty.
To me, objectivity in journalism means no more than professional detachment, delivering facts with precise references wherever possible and distrusting "values". Wherever possible, it is application of scientific method. It should not be confused with absolute objectivity, which beyond omnipresence is meaningless even in philosophy. Objectivity is what keeps WSJ's news coverage so distant from WSJ's editorials.
Here's an example of the kind of slur I would never want to see labelled "journalism":
Contradictory to your weaseling, you just said quite a bit against Wikipedia. Why do you distrust Wikipedia if there's "nothing wrong" with it? Why do you bother using it if you don't trust it? Why does quoting Wikipedia imply it to be the "be all and end all of objectivity"? How does quoting anything imply it to be the "be all and end all" of anything? Did you honestly not consider that maybe people quote Wikipedia because it's a free source of information? Whose entries do you take with a grain of salt? ("Who are THEY?") Where have you seen Wikipedia quoted by everyone? What is your basis for blanket distrust in every one of Wikipedia's articles? What about the external references used to back up those articles? Do you wear your tinfoil hat when you sleep, or do you hang it on your bedpost? In the shower? In the car? Doesn't the metal roof provide enough protection?
Only calls that reach telco lines are affected by the tax, Internet only calls are not taxed. It's the privilege of being connected to copper telephone wires we're being taxed for, therefore this is not a net neutrality issue. Good thinking, though.
As opposed to "because the inquirer says it then it must be true"?
Frankly, I linked to the Wikipedia article out of laziness, never even considering that some tinfoil-hat might suggest Wikipedians wanting to undermine an honest web magazine's wonderful image. Excuse any typos, I was rolling my eyes.
The Inquirer admits to its editorial (opinionated and subjective) stance.
In case you didn't notice, The Inquirer really does use useless jargon, just like many British tabloids. Here's the paper's own guide to it.
"Don't confuse The Inquirer with the trashy supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer."
_ style
According to Wikipedia, it's not far off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inquirer#Writing
That being the case it's reasonably protected. I think the parent poster was talking about people who, for example, leave their car at the gas station with the door unlocked and/or the key in the ignition while they run inside to pay. Keeping the vehicle in a locked garage would mean breaking and entering into private property before even reaching it. Legally, that would be no different from breaking into your house to get the keys anyway!
As long as you don't leave the engine running, too. Where I come from, that's called a suicide attempt.
I thought that's what monster.com was for?
Although newer Apple laptops including MacsBooks don't have Firewire '800' ports they still have FireWire 400 ports. FireWire devices (most camcorders since 1995) are supported very well. I doubt Apple will drop Firewire 800 in the Mac Pro (note: I'm talking about Apple's confusingly named the Power Mac replacement, not the current PowerBook replacement!)
Of course, no one buys Mac JUST because it's pretty! We need to "justify" the expense. You have to read between the lines:
Is OS X more stable? (Does it stay that pretty?)
Is OS X better than Windows? (It's prettier!)
Is it user friendly? (Ooh, eye candy!)
Does it play my music? (I like the way iPod looks.)
Does it play games? (It looks fun.)
Can it connect to a Windows network? (I'm going to look so cool at the office...)
Does it have a wireless card? (...ooh, ooh! Or at a coffee house!)
Does it have a warranty? (I'd hate that pretty screen to get scratched.)
Can it use Microsoft Office? (Office '97 looks nasty on Windows.)
Does it have Intel? (It doesn't have a sticker!)
I hear Macs are only good for design work. (Designers know what looks good.)
I hear Macs are better for musicians. (I'm gunna look like a rock star.)
I hear Macs break easily. (Justify my choice! It looks good!)
Could I test out OS X? (I want to touch it.)
Does it come in black? (Looks are everything.)
That's "You made them worse, ZIM!"
Get it right! Honestly!
Also mod+1 grandparent who stole a comment/quote I was going to make/reference as soon as I saw the headline! Great minds, etc.
I am so suing IBM. After only 23 years of ownership, its classy beige casing has yellowed noticeably. I bought it to go with the paintwork in my apartment. Well, it still goes with the paintwork in my apartment. That's it, I'm suing Dulux, too.
Seriously, though, the best thing about Macs is that they're computers that actually look nice. The best thing about OS X is that it looks good (since I started using Open Source Stuff, it doesn't even run my apps faster than Linux, it just looks nicer). What's the point of Mac if it's ugly?
Lesson relearned: don't buy 1st gen Apple products.
Hmm, how much did it cost to make an N64? I remember back when I lived in the UK I scooped up a brand new N64 at a local Argos for 40 GBP (back when the pound was 1.5 dollars, not 1.8 dollars!)
"...without a word of notice or explanation."
Try: too many people hacking OS X to run on PCs.
There's something else we need to consider here. We're talking about a story that came from The Daily Mail, a news source as reliably inaccurate as any other supermarket tabloid.
I suspect The Daily Mail writers did their usual bang-up job in the storyroom: found a half-truth, made the rest up. They noticed iPods are manufactured in China and made the rest up.
Until this story is reported in a news source (the Daily Mail being that other thing, a FUD source), it's not worth debating.
But England is only one unit of the collective that is Great Britain. British English is the standard throughout Great Britain. Great Britain is not England. It's also Wales and Scotland. Complicating the matter is that there are still Gael folk in Wales and Scotland, but that doesn't change British English from being the standard English throughout Britain.
t he_English_language
Look on Wikipedia and you will also find these variations of English within Britain:
English English
Scottish English
Welsh English
(among others)
Here is a complete list of dialects of English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_
Note how many dialects there are within Britain!
What about the English spoken in Wales?
It's British English; it's a standard throughout Great Britain, not just in England.
I think this is a nice, if expensive, toy for people in big cities. Even in small cities, light polution dims the view.
I've a friend back in London who had her ceiling painted with a mock-up of the night sky somewhere in Africa. She hired some company that specializes in glow-in-the-dark night sky displays working from real star maps.
I doubt this box is much more expensive.
Just tested your theory using "personalized search". If they are logging search results of logged-out users, they aren't displaying them in the "personalized search" database. It'd also give them pretty inaccurate data - people logging out of a public machine aren't necessarily going to wipe all cookies in the browser for the next user (unless a very sensitive sysadmin has set the machine up to do this every time the browser closes).
I call tinfoil hat.
I use the white buds indoors. Because, you know, they were free.
Outdoors, I don't want everyone to know I use iPod. That would totally ruin my street cred. I stop short of encasing the iPod in my old 1990s Walkman.
Thanks for the valuable information - a mere $100 actually makes it more worthwhile to buy the extra XP Pro product key.
McAfee somewhat blurs the distinction.
Lenovo-not-IBM aside, is any discount offered for taking the Linux option instead of Windows? Chopping $300 off the price of a Thinkpad would make it much more affordable, especially when I don't intend to run Windows anyway.
Unfortunately, most PCs come with OEM installations of Windows.
/before/ I start poking around with the settings.
Mine was a 2003 purchase.
Ouch. No SP2.
It takes me 4 hours (no joke) just to get Windows installed and up to date. That's
Even then, I don't disagree. Reinstallation of Windows is often faster than tracking and solving the actual problem.
Obviously you haven't been reading the news lately. In the "Balmer vs. God" case, Balmer accuses God of misappropriating prayers and gathering prayerful data without permission. This from CNN: