Apple justifies all their performance shortcomings with "it's the THINNEST/SMALLEST Mac yet!" Yeah, I love having to sacrifice performance and speed so my 1" thick laptop can be 1/4" thinner.
"I guess you americans have something similar (can someone say for sure?)"
It's definitely not illegal to bind the sale of an OS to hardware, but Microsoft did get in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Although, every other OS does the same thing. Most Linux distributions come with Firefox, and OS X comes with Safari.
Forcing consumers to buy additional things with an item that is typically sold by itself I think is illegal as well. A store can't sell a printer and force the customer to buy a USB cable, for instance. Nor can they force you to buy a Monitor or Printer with a new computer. IANAL and could be wrong, though.
Typically with Apple the more high-end you go, the more competitive the price is. Expensive computers can have a more comfortable margin built into them. That's why the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro are so competitively-priced, but in the Mac Mini realm you can get way more power for the same price.
The reason Microsoft was able to be so successful is because IBM allowed their technology to be copied. Before then, each computer manufacturer had it's own architecture and OS specifically written for it. They were essentially more like game consoles than what we view today as PCs. IBM Compatibles allowed Microsoft to license the same OS to several different manufacturers, since they were all following a basic standard.
Apple might have been just as successful if they had beaten Microsoft to the punch, but that would have meant Apple having to reinvent itself into a software company. Once your software is on more than one machine and price competition can occur, you might as well forget trying to make hardware, too. Producing both is actually a hinderance to your software propagation.
I don't think Apple could whether a storm like this like IBM could. Keep in mind that IBM is an extremely diversified company. They existed before the personal computer. Their core business is and always was machines for the enterprise market, not PCs. When the clones outshined the real thing, IBM had many other markets to fall back on.
Apple on the other hand was built on solely the personal computer market. That's where their foundation is. Though the iPod and iPhone are popular, there is no way Apple could survive on those products alone. Mac is their core business. If they lose their supremacy to cloners, they're sunk.
It allows surveillance without a warrant. Even if a warrant is obtained eventually, the 4th amendment does not allow for this. In no other kind of crime is obtaining a warrant after a search allowed.
Where I work we designed a new electrical controls system for our hot water heaters and had a touch-screen operator interface. All of the indicators I made are images of analog dials.
Ahh, thanks for the revelation. I had an '88 Chrysler New Yorker with a digidash and one night my instrument panel blew a fuse, leaving me with absolutely no speedometer, gas gauge, or anything else. Turns out I used one of those compressed air pumps that plug into your cigarette lighter which was on the same fuse as the instrument panel, and it draws more than 2 amps.
At any rate, the basic reason these "improvements" failed was that they were overly-complicated and thus more prone to failure. I've seen drive-by-wire concept cars and can't help but think what will happen when someone is driving along and all of the sudden their steering and brakes are completely gone. If something is electronic, it WILL fail, period.
Tactile response is a huge reason we have keyboards. The technology that can replace them is here now, and has been for quite a while. But nothing can beat the practicality of a keyboard. Replacing it with a touchscreen is just impractical. There's no tactile response, and banging your fingers on a hard, unyielding surface is going to cause typing fatigue much quicker. Then, there's the fingerprints and smudging you have to deal with, along with scratches.
There are plenty of technologies that came along that were poised to replace something but never quite made it. Remember the "push button transmission" in the mid-50's Dodge models? Of course you don't. It was supposed to do away with that antiquated lever system used to switch gears. But people LIKED the lever, and with the push button controller you could do something that the lever didn't allow you to: place your car into reverse directly from drive, which is obviously extremely dangerous.
Then in the 1980's we saw another phenomenon: the digital dashboard. Instead of using those antiquated analog dials, automakers started using digital readouts instead. It was all computerized and cool and futuristic...and was gone by the early 1990's. People wanted the old-fashioned dials.
To predict that the keyboard will be gone in less than 10 years is like predicting the steering wheel will be gone by then, too.
I seriously cannot stand this attitude. Science will not naturally prevail if the scientific community doesn't fight for it. We can't just sit back and let science defend itself. Science couldn't defend itself when the early Christian church burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground and killed the last living people who could read Egyptian heiroglyphics. Science couldn't defend itself when Al-Ghazzali started a fundamentalist movement in arabia that attacked the basic premise of cause and effect. The Christians were allowed to run amok and brought down the advanced Greco-Roman culture into the Dark Ages. The fanatical muslims were allowed to run amok in 1100 and brought the Islamic world into a dark age that is still persisting today.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."
The type of people who download Firefox and the type of people who stick with IE are completely different. Firefox is a separate browser that users have to consciously seek out and download. Thus, people who will seek out an alternative browser are more likely to keep up with the latest version.
Windows users, however, do not typically seek out new versions. By virtue of the fact that they're using IE, they're likely using it because that's what the computer came with. In order to get IE 7, they have to seek it out and download it. More often than not, they won't do it. Microsoft has geared their software so that even people who don't understand what a browser is can use one.
Microsoft has a much tougher job out of the gate when it comes to converting people to new versions of their software. In other words, IE users tend to be less computer literate and less concerned with updating in the first place.
In other news, automobiles were banned from expressways today in an effort to curb alcoholism once and for all. Items also banned today were kitchen knives amid concerns of forced penis removal, horseback riding in an effort to promote the chastity of young ladies, and bedsheets due to fears of beds not being made.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy other corporations. It wasn't like that in the beginning, but railroad tycoons wanted to consolidate and argued that corporations should have all the rights (but none of the responsibilities) of an individual person.
Allowing corporations to merge is against every principle the free market stands on.
Yet YouTube will remove any anti-scientology video posted on its site at the drop of a hat, or any others that are merely accused of having "copyright violations."
I think the message Google is sending is clear.
Freedom of expression = bad
Supporting terrorist groups and scientology = good
Jehovah's Witnesses went through a similar ordeal when their "elder manual" was leaked. What got people up in arms was their requirement that in order to pursue any judicial matters regards child molestation, there had to have been two witnesses to the act. Without two witnesses or a confession, the elders were told not to even report the accusation to the authorities. The backlash led to a change in policy.
Perhaps the mormon handbook has something similar, but I have nothing to base that on.
A religion doesn't have to physically prevent you from leaving in order to be a cult. I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 20-odd years of my life. They use the threat of cutting off your friends and family to keep you in line. Since the church requires all relationships to be within the organization, they force you to wrap your entire life into it. It becomes your life. If you leave, you have nothing. In many cases, the families of people who have left won't even speak a word to them.
Not being persons, they have no such inherent right, only the rights that we the people choose to bestow on them. Since you've voted "for some", I'll register my vote as "for considerably less than persons". Actually, a corporation IS a legal person according to the law.
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Apple justifies all their performance shortcomings with "it's the THINNEST/SMALLEST Mac yet!" Yeah, I love having to sacrifice performance and speed so my 1" thick laptop can be 1/4" thinner.
It's definitely not illegal to bind the sale of an OS to hardware, but Microsoft did get in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Although, every other OS does the same thing. Most Linux distributions come with Firefox, and OS X comes with Safari.
Forcing consumers to buy additional things with an item that is typically sold by itself I think is illegal as well. A store can't sell a printer and force the customer to buy a USB cable, for instance. Nor can they force you to buy a Monitor or Printer with a new computer. IANAL and could be wrong, though.
Typically with Apple the more high-end you go, the more competitive the price is. Expensive computers can have a more comfortable margin built into them. That's why the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro are so competitively-priced, but in the Mac Mini realm you can get way more power for the same price.
The reason Microsoft was able to be so successful is because IBM allowed their technology to be copied. Before then, each computer manufacturer had it's own architecture and OS specifically written for it. They were essentially more like game consoles than what we view today as PCs. IBM Compatibles allowed Microsoft to license the same OS to several different manufacturers, since they were all following a basic standard.
Apple might have been just as successful if they had beaten Microsoft to the punch, but that would have meant Apple having to reinvent itself into a software company. Once your software is on more than one machine and price competition can occur, you might as well forget trying to make hardware, too. Producing both is actually a hinderance to your software propagation.
I don't think Apple could whether a storm like this like IBM could. Keep in mind that IBM is an extremely diversified company. They existed before the personal computer. Their core business is and always was machines for the enterprise market, not PCs. When the clones outshined the real thing, IBM had many other markets to fall back on.
Apple on the other hand was built on solely the personal computer market. That's where their foundation is. Though the iPod and iPhone are popular, there is no way Apple could survive on those products alone. Mac is their core business. If they lose their supremacy to cloners, they're sunk.
This will be a minimum requirement to run Microsoft Word.
It allows surveillance without a warrant. Even if a warrant is obtained eventually, the 4th amendment does not allow for this. In no other kind of crime is obtaining a warrant after a search allowed.
The original FISA of 1978 is illegal. The fourth amendment makes no exceptions.
Where I work we designed a new electrical controls system for our hot water heaters and had a touch-screen operator interface. All of the indicators I made are images of analog dials.
Ahh, thanks for the revelation. I had an '88 Chrysler New Yorker with a digidash and one night my instrument panel blew a fuse, leaving me with absolutely no speedometer, gas gauge, or anything else. Turns out I used one of those compressed air pumps that plug into your cigarette lighter which was on the same fuse as the instrument panel, and it draws more than 2 amps.
At any rate, the basic reason these "improvements" failed was that they were overly-complicated and thus more prone to failure. I've seen drive-by-wire concept cars and can't help but think what will happen when someone is driving along and all of the sudden their steering and brakes are completely gone. If something is electronic, it WILL fail, period.
Tactile response is a huge reason we have keyboards. The technology that can replace them is here now, and has been for quite a while. But nothing can beat the practicality of a keyboard. Replacing it with a touchscreen is just impractical. There's no tactile response, and banging your fingers on a hard, unyielding surface is going to cause typing fatigue much quicker. Then, there's the fingerprints and smudging you have to deal with, along with scratches.
There are plenty of technologies that came along that were poised to replace something but never quite made it. Remember the "push button transmission" in the mid-50's Dodge models? Of course you don't. It was supposed to do away with that antiquated lever system used to switch gears. But people LIKED the lever, and with the push button controller you could do something that the lever didn't allow you to: place your car into reverse directly from drive, which is obviously extremely dangerous.
Then in the 1980's we saw another phenomenon: the digital dashboard. Instead of using those antiquated analog dials, automakers started using digital readouts instead. It was all computerized and cool and futuristic...and was gone by the early 1990's. People wanted the old-fashioned dials.
To predict that the keyboard will be gone in less than 10 years is like predicting the steering wheel will be gone by then, too.
"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." - Winston Churchill
Doesn't exactly apply here, but it's damn close enough.
I seriously cannot stand this attitude. Science will not naturally prevail if the scientific community doesn't fight for it. We can't just sit back and let science defend itself. Science couldn't defend itself when the early Christian church burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground and killed the last living people who could read Egyptian heiroglyphics. Science couldn't defend itself when Al-Ghazzali started a fundamentalist movement in arabia that attacked the basic premise of cause and effect. The Christians were allowed to run amok and brought down the advanced Greco-Roman culture into the Dark Ages. The fanatical muslims were allowed to run amok in 1100 and brought the Islamic world into a dark age that is still persisting today.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond." The type of people who download Firefox and the type of people who stick with IE are completely different. Firefox is a separate browser that users have to consciously seek out and download. Thus, people who will seek out an alternative browser are more likely to keep up with the latest version. Windows users, however, do not typically seek out new versions. By virtue of the fact that they're using IE, they're likely using it because that's what the computer came with. In order to get IE 7, they have to seek it out and download it. More often than not, they won't do it. Microsoft has geared their software so that even people who don't understand what a browser is can use one. Microsoft has a much tougher job out of the gate when it comes to converting people to new versions of their software. In other words, IE users tend to be less computer literate and less concerned with updating in the first place.
Too bad we need 10 times that many to eliminate our need for foreign oil to generate electricity.
In other news, automobiles were banned from expressways today in an effort to curb alcoholism once and for all. Items also banned today were kitchen knives amid concerns of forced penis removal, horseback riding in an effort to promote the chastity of young ladies, and bedsheets due to fears of beds not being made.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to buy other corporations. It wasn't like that in the beginning, but railroad tycoons wanted to consolidate and argued that corporations should have all the rights (but none of the responsibilities) of an individual person.
Allowing corporations to merge is against every principle the free market stands on.
Yet YouTube will remove any anti-scientology video posted on its site at the drop of a hat, or any others that are merely accused of having "copyright violations."
I think the message Google is sending is clear.
Freedom of expression = bad
Supporting terrorist groups and scientology = good
It is tasty. My point is it doesn't look as good as it does in the commercial.
Depends on the market. The pay is lower in poorer areas.
You're telling me The Search for Spock and The Final Frontier were better than Wrath of Khan?
And a Whopper looks like the tastiest burger known to man until you get the real life slapped-together-by-a-minimum-wage-slave version.
Jehovah's Witnesses went through a similar ordeal when their "elder manual" was leaked. What got people up in arms was their requirement that in order to pursue any judicial matters regards child molestation, there had to have been two witnesses to the act. Without two witnesses or a confession, the elders were told not to even report the accusation to the authorities. The backlash led to a change in policy.
Perhaps the mormon handbook has something similar, but I have nothing to base that on.
A religion doesn't have to physically prevent you from leaving in order to be a cult. I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 20-odd years of my life. They use the threat of cutting off your friends and family to keep you in line. Since the church requires all relationships to be within the organization, they force you to wrap your entire life into it. It becomes your life. If you leave, you have nothing. In many cases, the families of people who have left won't even speak a word to them.