Yeah, yeah. I love flame wars. But seriously, why do people even bother with Vista? What's more important: the glossy surface or your apps? What the 'puter looks like or what it does? My buddy Kristofer is a fanatical Windows user who recently bought a big ass HP laptop, a Pavillion dv9000 17" I believe, sort of like the B-52 of laptops, while I'm a happy owner of a Mac OS X 10.4 and MacBook Pro 15.4". Kris is already having problems and glitches with his very expensive and super-heavy laptop, and wants to go back to XP, but OS X or Linux isn't even on the radar screen for him, no matter what happens and no matter how much trouble Windows causes. I have given up trying to show the trouble-free existence on the other side of the operating system fence, because Kris simply does not have the brain cells or the DNA set-up to support Mac OS X or Ubuntu, Debian etc. Please explain to me what's going on, and how did so many people end in this Dark Age of computing, and why do they stay there out of their own free will?
What a pointless invention. My car already has rear view mirrors, and my head, in fact the whole skull, rather amazingly, can actually be swivelled backwards, which is a nice feature as it makes it a lot easier to aim a set of optical sensors for visual inspection - the technical term is "eyes" - and detect and identify, and thereby avoid, obstacles that may appear behind the car as it is put into reverse. This, combined with a so-called brain, makes it possible to steer and park the car.
IBM used to be the Great Stan of Hardware and MS the Little Stan of Software, at least in many Mac users' eyes, but for many years now, IBM seems to have shifted over and joined the good guys (Apple is officially a GOOD company, right...?) Mainly, most likely, because it is good business practice, and IBM is the number one money machine, so good publicity = more respect = more money in the bank. Well in this case, you've earned it. Hats off to you, old IBM. I have always had the greatest respect for Big Blue, even during the Dark Ages in the 1990. It IS a rather austere but serious company.
Put together, or rather - configured - in Ireland from Chinese-made parts, that is. Whether you buy a laptop from Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo or Toshiba, they are ALL built in China or made from Chinese-made components, usually by the very same companies. Made in the USA or Europe? Forget about it.
The MacBook Pros are very solidly built and offer all the whizz bang you could ever want. They run Windows XP or Vista natively too if you absolutely and foolishly insist... Linux too, but probably not as easily, since Apple uses EFI and not BIOS.
...that Apple should lock out Linux users, It is also understandable. Apple's selling point has always been "the whole package". When you buy an Apple product you get a lot more than the product itself. This is Apple's market, and this is how they keep growing; they create a market and sell stuff that this market demands. You get products and services that actually work as advertised.
That is not for everyone, apparently. Some people want to dismantle what works and maybe change it around so that it works in some other way. I have no idea why, but there it is.
So in a way I think the iPod might not be the right product for someone who believes using a computer should involve hours of tinkering and hacking, and who doesn't want to spend a dime on music, software, services etc. If this image fits you, at least partially, then there is a whole world market with hundreds of other personal music players out there.
(I have a lot of sumpathy for Linux users, and I love the idea of free software. But I am a Mac OS X user myself since I feel life is much too short, we will all be old or dead soon, I have a million things I want to do during my very short lifetime, and I think tinkering with an operating system is the most time-consuming, boring, useless wank in history.)
Don't bemoan the iPod being a vendor lock-in, or that you can't run Rockbox on it, because there are other options. As dear old Mark Mothersbaugh would say: "Use your freedom of choice."
Just imagine what the Apple could do if it had Microsoft's resources at its disposal! The Mac OS X is being developed and maintained by a small number of people, and yet is way ahead of Windows in many ways. Usually, the size of the development team doesn't matter much. What matters is the focus and organisation of the group, and of course the technological fondation, in Apple's case FreeBSD, in Microsoft's case some screwed-up version of OS/2 and DEC code.
The current leadership at Microsoft seems stuck in the 1980s, and are unable to understand the emerging reality and the technological possibilities for the future. Steve Ballmer is more of an annoyance than an effective executive. When he opens his big mouth, strange sounds and expressions emerge, or to quote the man himself: "squirt"! That's why I believe it wuld be a very sensible move for Microsoft to get rid of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, if it is at all possible. Such a move could breathe new life into the aging monstrosity of a drone we call Microsoft.
I was thinking maybe they could redesign the moon into a Death Star, in case Iran, or some other country with bad guys who speak a foreign language, becomes a real pain in the behind. It'd be so easy to just press the big red Nukem button.
Or maybe build something along the lines of the moon base in the old British sci-fi flick Space 1999, only they'd better hurry up and go back in time, since 1999 is now in a time warp seven years away in the past... Oh wait a minute. I must've forgotten to take my time travel sickness pills.
The Lycos rep behaved in a very user-antagonistic way. The guy and is clearly not trained or suited for the job. It's a case of somebody having risen above his ability.
(Actually, it hurts me personally, because I've had that response from many companies in the past. Oftentimes, the staff is underpaid, underqualified and under a lot of stress.)
On the other hand, if the email was so very important to the customer, why didn't she pay for the recovery of it, or, better still, select a more reliable commercial email provider that supports regular POP, so that her email conversations would be stored on her computer?
All in all, the issue has been managed very poorly by Lycos. Whuldn't it have been easier to just let the nagging woman keep her measly 100 MB of email, or what ever the megabyte count was? Stupid Lycos. Stupid, rigid, user-unfriendly company policy.
On the Mac, I just use Carbon Copy Cloner (the excellent SuperDuper works too). I make a fully bootable copy of my hard drive every few weeks. (If you can of course clone this identical copy back to any number of Macs.) Why is this still so complicated on the Windows side? I don't understand why people even bother.
Zune, Urge... Some nameless marketing droid at Microsoft thinks up these dorky, uninspiring, lame-ass names. He or she needs to be fired right away!
Sony, Apple or Google have many successful, very slick products, and so Microsoft comes up with a bunch of badly executed, shamless rip-offs that usually tank embarrassingly. But Microsoft never ever learn from its mistake. They churn on, pumping out their products...
This has become even more clear since Steve Ballmer took over as CEO. This is what happens whan a very large company becomes more and more marketing-driven and loses its focus on end-users.
Happily, most people don't have to be bothered: there are plenty of excellent alternatives.
I mean, what should you call the space not yet occupied by star material, the void to which our universe has not expanded? Isn't it possible some of that space is already occupied by an even older universe... or something else?
It's a beautiful world we live in A sweet romantic place Beautiful people everywhere The way they show they care Makes me want to say It's a beautiful world For you It's a wonderful time to be here It's nice to be alive Wonderful people everywhere The way they comb their hair Makes me want to say It's a wonderful place For you Hey Tell me what I say Boy 'n' girl with the new clothes on You can shake it to me all night long Hey hey It's not for me
On a rather more serious note, it's already happening. In the Baltic sea, for example, one third of the organisms and plants living down at the bottom have already died. The cod is more or less extinct there. The rest of it will probably die soon too. The world is dying, and it may be too late to do anything about it.
Apple's venerable QuickTime VR Authoring Studio was once the virtual reality application of choice. It would have been nice to have something like the photo editing machine thingy Rick Deckard (Harrison Volvo) used in Blade Runner built right into it. But sadly, Apple let QTVR Authoring Studio lose itself in time, like tears in rain...
The finally got rid of the stages landing Stanley Kubrick shot in some desert somewhere. It conveniently "disappeared"! I was right all along! Ha-HAAAA ha ha haaa!
To get back to the main topic: "How can the human race survive the next hundred years?":
The next 100 years probably won't be a problem, as long as there are no more world wars. The problem is how to survive for the next 2,000 och 10,000 years, or more.
The human race is a very primitive tribe, emotionally and mentally. We are still animal-like and aggressive. To survive, we will have to change. To do this religion needs to be eradicated through education and enlightenment, and replaced with something more rational and useful. But what? I have no idea.
Life on earth will go on with or without us. If we are unable to adapt to our natural environment, maybe we deserve to become extinct.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, yeah. I love flame wars. But seriously, why do people even bother with Vista? What's more important: the glossy surface or your apps? What the 'puter looks like or what it does? My buddy Kristofer is a fanatical Windows user who recently bought a big ass HP laptop, a Pavillion dv9000 17" I believe, sort of like the B-52 of laptops, while I'm a happy owner of a Mac OS X 10.4 and MacBook Pro 15.4". Kris is already having problems and glitches with his very expensive and super-heavy laptop, and wants to go back to XP, but OS X or Linux isn't even on the radar screen for him, no matter what happens and no matter how much trouble Windows causes. I have given up trying to show the trouble-free existence on the other side of the operating system fence, because Kris simply does not have the brain cells or the DNA set-up to support Mac OS X or Ubuntu, Debian etc. Please explain to me what's going on, and how did so many people end in this Dark Age of computing, and why do they stay there out of their own free will?
What a pointless invention. My car already has rear view mirrors, and my head, in fact the whole skull, rather amazingly, can actually be swivelled backwards, which is a nice feature as it makes it a lot easier to aim a set of optical sensors for visual inspection - the technical term is "eyes" - and detect and identify, and thereby avoid, obstacles that may appear behind the car as it is put into reverse. This, combined with a so-called brain, makes it possible to steer and park the car.
IBM used to be the Great Stan of Hardware and MS the Little Stan of Software, at least in many Mac users' eyes, but for many years now, IBM seems to have shifted over and joined the good guys (Apple is officially a GOOD company, right...?) Mainly, most likely, because it is good business practice, and IBM is the number one money machine, so good publicity = more respect = more money in the bank. Well in this case, you've earned it. Hats off to you, old IBM. I have always had the greatest respect for Big Blue, even during the Dark Ages in the 1990. It IS a rather austere but serious company.
Put together, or rather - configured - in Ireland from Chinese-made parts, that is. Whether you buy a laptop from Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo or Toshiba, they are ALL built in China or made from Chinese-made components, usually by the very same companies. Made in the USA or Europe? Forget about it.
The MacBook Pros are very solidly built and offer all the whizz bang you could ever want. They run Windows XP or Vista natively too if you absolutely and foolishly insist... Linux too, but probably not as easily, since Apple uses EFI and not BIOS.
That is not for everyone, apparently. Some people want to dismantle what works and maybe change it around so that it works in some other way. I have no idea why, but there it is.
So in a way I think the iPod might not be the right product for someone who believes using a computer should involve hours of tinkering and hacking, and who doesn't want to spend a dime on music, software, services etc. If this image fits you, at least partially, then there is a whole world market with hundreds of other personal music players out there.
(I have a lot of sumpathy for Linux users, and I love the idea of free software. But I am a Mac OS X user myself since I feel life is much too short, we will all be old or dead soon, I have a million things I want to do during my very short lifetime, and I think tinkering with an operating system is the most time-consuming, boring, useless wank in history.)
Don't bemoan the iPod being a vendor lock-in, or that you can't run Rockbox on it, because there are other options. As dear old Mark Mothersbaugh would say: "Use your freedom of choice."
Cheers, Cannelloni
In case there is a crash every other day, I'd just call the Interwebs and ask the guys to reboot or reinstall it from the original floppy disks.
Besides, I don't want to live for ever. 90 years or so is enough. After that things will probably get boring and repetitive anyway.
The current leadership at Microsoft seems stuck in the 1980s, and are unable to understand the emerging reality and the technological possibilities for the future. Steve Ballmer is more of an annoyance than an effective executive. When he opens his big mouth, strange sounds and expressions emerge, or to quote the man himself: "squirt"! That's why I believe it wuld be a very sensible move for Microsoft to get rid of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, if it is at all possible. Such a move could breathe new life into the aging monstrosity of a drone we call Microsoft.
Burn a copy of Ubuntu and ask them to just try it. I love it. Or, if they plan on buying a new computer, direct them to the nearest Apple Store.
Or maybe build something along the lines of the moon base in the old British sci-fi flick Space 1999, only they'd better hurry up and go back in time, since 1999 is now in a time warp seven years away in the past... Oh wait a minute. I must've forgotten to take my time travel sickness pills.
The Lycos rep behaved in a very user-antagonistic way. The guy and is clearly not trained or suited for the job. It's a case of somebody having risen above his ability. (Actually, it hurts me personally, because I've had that response from many companies in the past. Oftentimes, the staff is underpaid, underqualified and under a lot of stress.) On the other hand, if the email was so very important to the customer, why didn't she pay for the recovery of it, or, better still, select a more reliable commercial email provider that supports regular POP, so that her email conversations would be stored on her computer? All in all, the issue has been managed very poorly by Lycos. Whuldn't it have been easier to just let the nagging woman keep her measly 100 MB of email, or what ever the megabyte count was? Stupid Lycos. Stupid, rigid, user-unfriendly company policy.
This is an astronaut's joke, right?
It would be very useful if you could pre-punish criminals before a crime is committed! That would certainly be a deterrent.
On the Mac, I just use Carbon Copy Cloner (the excellent SuperDuper works too). I make a fully bootable copy of my hard drive every few weeks. (If you can of course clone this identical copy back to any number of Macs.) Why is this still so complicated on the Windows side? I don't understand why people even bother.
Sony, Apple or Google have many successful, very slick products, and so Microsoft comes up with a bunch of badly executed, shamless rip-offs that usually tank embarrassingly. But Microsoft never ever learn from its mistake. They churn on, pumping out their products...
This has become even more clear since Steve Ballmer took over as CEO. This is what happens whan a very large company becomes more and more marketing-driven and loses its focus on end-users.
Happily, most people don't have to be bothered: there are plenty of excellent alternatives.
it is absolutely insane that it has remained there so long. your computer is n-o-t a typewriter!
The Mac Pro case looks the same as the Power Mac G5, but it isn't. It's a complete redesign, and a very neat one at that: http://www.apple.com/macpro/
I mean, what should you call the space not yet occupied by star material, the void to which our universe has not expanded? Isn't it possible some of that space is already occupied by an even older universe... or something else?
Correction: one third of the sea floor in the Baltic is dead, not one third of the species. And this is probably even more serious.
It's a beautiful world we live in
A sweet romantic place
Beautiful people everywhere
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say
It's a beautiful world
For you
It's a wonderful time to be here
It's nice to be alive
Wonderful people everywhere
The way they comb their hair
Makes me want to say
It's a wonderful place
For you
Hey
Tell me what I say
Boy 'n' girl with the new clothes on
You can shake it to me all night long
Hey hey
It's not for me
On a rather more serious note, it's already happening. In the Baltic sea, for example, one third of the organisms and plants living down at the bottom have already died. The cod is more or less extinct there. The rest of it will probably die soon too. The world is dying, and it may be too late to do anything about it.
Apple's venerable QuickTime VR Authoring Studio was once the virtual reality application of choice. It would have been nice to have something like the photo editing machine thingy Rick Deckard (Harrison Volvo) used in Blade Runner built right into it. But sadly, Apple let QTVR Authoring Studio lose itself in time, like tears in rain...
See the old movie The Tenant by Roman Polanski, or Brazil by Terry Gilliam, and you'll see what I mean...
;)
The next 100 years probably won't be a problem, as long as there are no more world wars. The problem is how to survive for the next 2,000 och 10,000 years, or more.
The human race is a very primitive tribe, emotionally and mentally. We are still animal-like and aggressive. To survive, we will have to change. To do this religion needs to be eradicated through education and enlightenment, and replaced with something more rational and useful. But what? I have no idea.
Life on earth will go on with or without us. If we are unable to adapt to our natural environment, maybe we deserve to become extinct.