So someone takes software to brute force crack a password. Throw in a GPU, and wham! A new patent. How is this anything but evolutionary? It certainly is not revolutionary or "innovative".
This is the same damn thing that has been done before, except now a GPU is used to help. That is it. Software patents suck. Real bad.
What version do you have? The first core duo based mini was slow, most of that due to the hard drive. The core 2 duo based ones are nice, though they still have a dog slow hard drive. Replace the hard drive with a 7200 rpm drive and it will be almost as fast as an iMac. The only slow part of the mini that you cannot replace is the crappy graphics. If Apple made a mini with a 7200 rpm drive and ATI graphics, it would be a very good system for all kinds of tasks.
Wow, good thing you speak for "windows users", huh? I am a "windows" programmer, have been for more than a decade now (C, C++, C#). I switched to Mac just over a year ago when Apple went with Intel. While PPC has some nice features (from a low level perspective), overall it just didn't give the performance I got with Intel x86 processors. That is why I stayed with x86 MS Windows and Linux.
When Apple came out with an Intel-based Mac, I jumped on it. I have an older core duo Macbook and a core 2 duo iMac. Hardware-wise, they are very good systems for the money. Damn good to be frank. The only hardware I have ever bought, or been given by a company I worked for, that was x86 MS Windows-based that comes close to the two systems I bought from Apple in features/stability would be an IBM Thinkpad I have. The Thinkpad is very good hardware-wise, though I get crashes from the TabletPC version of MS Windows I use.
I still use Linux (Ubuntu) and I always will. I love the openness of the system.
With that said, I think you are way off on your "prediction" that "windows users will stick to XP". Sorry but XP is old and showing its age. If you just want an MS Windows based OS to run software, yes, XP is your best bet. However, if you are a user of an OS and you want more features than what basic XP gives you, you don't have many options from MS. You could go to Vista, if you have the money. I have a PIII 667 MHz system with 512 MB of memory. XP Runs fine on it, Vista won't even run. I just switched it to Ubuntu 7.10 and it runs great. I now just run Visual Studio from Parallels on my iMac.
Firstly they would need to buy new hardware, the obvious choice is to go to Linux since you can keep your hardware.
Obvious choice to whom? To you? To "power users"? All of my family members don't give a damn if it is "windows" or not. They just want a system that works for them. My parents just dumped their broken XP system when they retired. I got them to buy a Macbook Pro and they love it. It works and does what it needs to do. No slow down from anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware, etc. And the system will last them a long time, much longer than a laptop with XP/Vista on it.
It is easy to say crap about a Mac when you have never OWNED one. Try to buy one before you spew crap about it.
I agree with you. Though, to me, it seems that there is a vast difference in the percentage of MS Windows admins that can do com/adsi/wmi/etc scripting vs. the percentage of *nix admins that can do effective scripting.
I have had to a bunch of com/wmi type stuff as a progrmmer for admins at the 2 fortune 500 companies I have worked at. In contrast, I offered to do scripting for the Linux/Solaris platforms for two *nix admins and they looked at me like I was silly. I love to do *nix scripting, the 2 admins wouldn't let me. They could handle it themselves. Now on the other hand, I have written a bunch of little apps or scripts to do things with AD for our MS Windows admins or they would just copy-n-paste some AD script not really knowing how it works.
This is why I said I am not dissing MS Windows admins. There are some really good ones out there. It is just that from my experience over the last 10 years I have seen about 10% of the windows admins who know their sh!t, 50% who are average and the other 40% or so seem to just have been able to pass a test and get a cert. I had an MS Windows admin ask me how to deploy a C# ASP.Net app. I almost fell out of my chair. I gave instructions. copy the damn folder from the staging server to the production server. That is it. The app was already registered with IIS so it really was just a copy the folder thing.
Oh, well, sorry to paint with such a broad brush, sometimes I just get frustrated by how flooded the MS Windows market is with "Admins", "DBA's" and "Programmers". I just get freaked out when, as a programmer, I have to show a certified MS DBA stuff on SQL Server.
Yawn... I heard this before. $1,000 for one server (which could be more depending on the version of MS Windows) and $65-$75k for an admin? Yeah, if you have one freaking server. However, Linux/Unix is so much easier for on admin to automate than MS windows. I work at a fortune 500 where there are 2 Linux/Solaris admins that handle a bunch of Solaris and Linux servers. The average number of servers per admin is very different for our Linux/Solaris admins vs our MS Windows admins.
We get more bang for our buck with a *nix admin than we do with an MS Windows admin. From what I have seen in the past 10 years, a very good *nix admin can handle almost twice as many servers as a good MS Windows admin. I am not dissing MS Windows admins, it is just that MS Windows really lacks the tools of automation that have been a part of *nix for decades.
The same goes for DBA's. In the past 10 years, the typical Oracle DBA's that I have worked with have had a lot more knowledge than the typical MS SQL Server DBA's.
The sad thing is that the MS Windows market is flooded with poor admins, DBA's and programmers due to the extreme ease of getting certified. I wish MS would change that.
But that is not often the case when a few large companies control everything. I recently got a mobile phone for my wife and I. After much searching, there was not much that differentiates the different companies. You will get basically the same features (depending on what you spend) and you will pay similar prices. All the big carriers I went to wanted to lock me in to a 2 year contract. All of them had annoying sales people that tried to sell me the latest whizz-bang phone. And all of them are way over priced IMO. The only thing I found my money could give me a choice over was if I wanted to pay a lot of cash for a phone to take crappy pictures or to listen to some songs, or maybe look at a web page in a crappy browser.
In looking at options to get the lowest monthly cost, well there just weren't many options to be truthful. One option was 700 shared family minutes for $79 USD/month or 1,400 shared family minutes for $89 USD/month. WTF? If I can get 1,400 minutes for $90/month, why can't I get 700 minutes for $45/month?
When it comes to the mobile market, my money doesn't seem to control much of anything.
I see you posted as an AC. A POS is anything _but_ mundane.
I worked on a new POS for a fortune 500. There were a ton of requirements both from our side (programmers) and the hardware side (admins). It was actually one of the coolest projects I worked on in the last 10 years.
I got to really understand the needs of the admins as a programmer, and they got to see the reality of software systems. We (programmers) made compromises and they (admins) made compromises in the system.
The "simple" POS had to be fault tolerant. If if could not send back a transaction to a master server, it had to store it. One it could talk to the master again, it could send the transaction. This had to be done across a few thousand locations. The systems needed to be self "healing" (manager speak), we made them self updating by asking a master update server over frame relay for a version, get back an XML file and self-update from there.
There were a sh!t load of other requirements we had to handle on the software side like SOX, etc. The final POS was anything but simple. Oh, and the admins has a crap load of work to do as well. Those guys worked their @sses off to get each location secure and plugged in to our AD server, our Netegrity server, etc. Our software or POS system handled the AD and Netegrity communications, but there was a lot more for the admins to do then it seemed at first.
So, yeah, I think most programmers and admins would find implementing a real POS systems a good challenge. I know I did.
Huh? Are you on crack? If you want to spend your money on the crappiest most unemployed programmers, sure. However, if you want some good code written, do not use one of these services. Simple. In my opinion, they suck. If someone is a good enough programmer, they wouldn't need to sell their services to you on some stupid web site. What you will mostly find on these "programmers for hire" sites is a bunch of VB6-only "programmers" that are SOL because they cannot or will not learn how to program in a real language. So if you want your system done in a BASIC language by "programmers" with the least amount of knowledge about how computer systems work, than sure, hire some of those "rent-a-coder" VB-Only hobbist.
I have been programming professionally(meaning I get paid) for the last 10 years. In my opinion, do not follow this dork "advice". Either pay a real programmer to build your system(s), buy a pre-built POS and adapt your business to it, or pick one of the top Open Source solutions and inject some cash. Go on the mailing lists and let them know your situation. You will have a bunch of geeks that will be ready to work for you.
Seriously, spend a tiny bit of money on a Google Appliance and get excellent search. I tried to use MS stuff, like the built-in index server and it just wasn't good enough.
We got a Google "appliance" and the damn thing just works, and works well. I don't work for Google, nor do I get paid if they make a sale. Just saying what worked great for us.
There are more advantages to Google's offerings too. Such as being cross-browser, and for me, cross-platform. Oh, and their free too, unless you buy the corporate version.
90% of the MS Word docs I have seen at two fortune 500 companies are very simple documents that can be handled very easily in Google's web-based Google Docs. The vast majority of the spread sheets I see are simple enough to be handled by Google's spread sheet app as well. The only exceptions I see for spread sheets are ones coming from financial analysts.
A lot of companies would love to save all that cash by getting rid of MS office. Most workers just need a basic Document editor and spread sheet. However, most companies just get the whole office suite because they use MS Outlook with MS Exchange and are forced into purchasing the whole suite.
Geez dude, did you ever hear of the StringBuilder Class? Every time you concatenate two strings a new string object is created. The code above is just terrible performance-wise. Oh, and your getURI() method has too many parameters. Make all those parameters private members of your class and assign to them through properties.
It is not too good with Firefox under OS X or Linux. The 3D view doesn't work. You cannot reroute your directions like you can with Google. Under Safari it takes you to this basic page. I couldn't get any search results in MS Live Search in Safari.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Live Maps also support features that are MS only like the 3D view which sucks IMO to limit it to MS Only. Google Maps and Sat images work fine under OS X and Linux along with Google Earth. Google makes all of their browser-based apps cross-browser cross-platform from the start. It seems MS always brings in features for other browsers later. And some features will be MS Windows only.:-(
I find Google maps to be more compatible as well. However, for me the major feature of Google Maps is that it is always more current. I live in a recently built home. Google Maps has had my address listed for 3-4 months now. Yahoo and Microsoft maps still do not have my address and just report back that the address was not found. It makes it hard to get directions from MS Maps if they don't have my starting address listed.
I guess that depends on whose numbers you look at. At MacNN it says that Apple had 5.6% of shipments for Q2 2007. Then at this site it shows Mac had 3.33% of the market share. So who knows the real numbers. I would bet it is between 3% - 5%.
But they did write software for Mac. Mac has only about 4% or so of the desktop market, that is certainly not a huge target group. At least if they made a Linux GUI/control software they could say they used the money they saved by using Linux/OSS.
Bad analogy. A more correct "cookie analogy" would be:
I work in IT and bring in cookies every Friday. I give my cookies to Accounting, IT and HR. Someone from Accounting, who eats my cookies, brings in cookies every Wednesday. However he/she only shares his/her cookies with Accounting and HR. Is the person from Accounting required to share cookies with IT? No, but it is a pretty crappy thing to not share their cookies.
Yeah, cookie analogies are pretty dumb;-)
The way I see it is that TomTom is saving a nice chunk of change by using OSS/GNU/Linux to build the base of their systems. It would be nice if they took a small part of those savings and just... maybe... wrote some software for OSS/GNU/Linux users. Hell, I am sure they saved enough by using Linux in their devices to hire just one Linux GUI developer to build an equivalent GUI software that is available for MS Windows and Mac. It is not like they are making tons of money from Mac users. The majority of their users will being using the devices under MS Windows. At least WRT a Linux GUI, they can say the cost was offset by the savings generated by using Linux.
Just use Usenet. Free or you can pay for great retention and top speeds. It kills any commercial music download service out there. Oh, and about the same amount of money goes to the actual musicians, zero, with either service. So use Usenet and go to concerts if you really want to support artists and not middle-man copyright mafia companies.;-)
Why "the sky is falling" reaction? IE 7 has a similar feature. Where do you think IE 7 sends the data? To Red Hat? Hmmm, I would think IE 7 goes to some MS controlled server to check if it is a phishing site. I personally trust Google much more than MS.
Anyway, in Firefox, as well as in IE, this is an optional feature. If "the sky will fall" from sending your URL's to Google or MS, just turn it off.
Uh, that still doesn't let me copy songs from the Shuffle from two different computers. I still get locked out because of some stupid Apple restrictions. It is not like I am some Apple hater. I gave Apple thousands. The different versions of the iPod are just too locked down for me.
There should be no reason I cannot add a song ripped from CD (meaning I paid for the damn music) on my iMac to my wife's Shuffle. But iTunes doesn't allow it, regardless of settings. There are no settings that let this happen. Period. When I plug in the Shuffle to my iMac it is seen as a "foreign" system. WTF?
So go ahead and keep making up excuses for Apple, it just make you sound less intelligent. I use to have an Archos MP3 player/recorder. It was big and bulky, but it did the job I needed. All I want from an iPod that I purchase is to not have restrictions put on what I can do with the device. That is not asking too much from Apple since other companies can already do it.
Seriously, why can't I put an MP3 file on my iPod from another system? Oh, wait, I am a "pirate" or something? Even though I paid for the audio by buying a CD?
...it seems strange that they suddenly go all clampdown as soon as an iPod enters the picture. Is there an official reason for this?
I don't know why. It is strange and stupid to me. I just recently purchased an iPod Shuffle for my wife for when she goes walking. I never had a need for a portable music player so I never purchased one personally.
I hooked up the shuffle to my wife's Macbook and showed her how to put some songs on it. It was very easy. Then my wife wanted me to put one song on it from my music collection on my iMac. I plug in the shuffle and get a message to "Erase and Sync". WTF? So I had to copy the song from my shared drive to her Macbook, import the song to her iTunes and then add it to her shuffle.
I guess Apple does this crap to _try_ to stop people from sharing their music. The weird thing is that non of the songs were DRMed, they were plain mp3 files ripped from CD.
Oh, well, I won't be buying any iPods from Apple again.
If you read TFA, Monsoon didn't do Sh!t until lawyers got involved. The developers of BusyBox tried to settle things "under the radar". If Monsoon was a company with any morals, they would have corrected their mistake(s) then. However, they did not. It wasn't until a lawsuit came and bad press came that they did what they should have done from the get-go.
So no, it is not "nice to see that Monsoon is able to admit" anything. They basically said F-U until legal measures were taken. If BusyBox didn't have the ability to get support in fighting this, Monsoon would still be violating the GPL and saying F-U to the developers.
There is nothing "insightful" about the GP (I don't mean that to offend you GP). This sounds like typical corporate crap. Monsoon continued in their infringement after being notified. Monsoon did nothing until legal matters were taken. Now Monsoon is all like "we 'intended' to comply and we will comply". BS.
So you have talked to "everyone" to confirm this? I have all new Intel Macs in my house, about $4,500 worth to be frank. I have bought about 50 songs on iTMS and converted them from their DRM-encrusted crap. iTunes and iTMS is not _too_ bad for just music. At least you can convert your music, at a lose of quality, to a non-DRM encrusted format.
However, all things are not so perfect with iTMS WRT non-music. I purchased 3 seasons of "The Office" from the iTMS. Playing the episodes in iTunes across my network was just crap, slow and choppy. I couldn't burn the episodes to DVD so I went to Blockbuster and rented the 3 seasons and burned them to non-DRM encrusted mp4 files. Now they play great across the same network using VLC.
I am just wondering why playing a DRM-encrusted TV episode from an Intel iMac to an Intel Macbook over a wireless G network was so crappy. As soon as I deleted all the DRM-encrusted TV episodes and replaced them with mp4 rips, I could watch them across the same network with VLC or Quicktime/iTunes.
As a heavy Mac users, iTunes was once a great music/media manger/player. Now it is just a bloated portal to iTMS. I have gotten a bunch of iTunes updates on my Macs over the last 2 months. Each one has come with a NEW EULA. Uh, this sounds like MS to me. I am sure the Mac "fanboies" will say "it is because of the new iPhone and new iPods". Great. But why do I have to agree to a new EULA to use the new iTunes?
Oh, and don't get me started on the retarded crap that the iPod I have can only be "synced" to one specific computer. If I plug it in to my iMac, I get a message that it was from another computer and iTunes wants to ERASE all the songs! So I cant' put songs on from my Mac and then put a few songs on from my wife's Macbook. WTF? I have found ways around this, but it is anything but "user friendly" or the "it just works" mantra.
I love Mac OS X, the OS, but Apple is doing some stupid stuff with their other products and the lock-in/DRM IMO.
Que the Mac fanboi who will say, "You are not Steve, I am sure Steve knows how to run Apple better than you".
Yawn. I have spent thousands on Apple products. I think that should have a little influence on Apple.... I hope...
Oh, and I am not trolling. I agree with most of what you say, except for the people being "happy" with iTMS. I am sure for every person some troll say is happy, I can show someone who is not.
Your point about DRM is "on the money" IMO. I just felt like typing a lot of crap.:-)
I'm one of the (~20 million) people who pays for the CSIRO, so don't be calling me greedy for wanting some payback.
But you are getting payback by getting affordable technology that came from the money you paid to the CSIRO. If the CSIRO started charging big royalties, then the prices of the technology that you paid for would go up, so it would be defeating the tax money you already spent.
A lot of similar things happen here in the USA. A good portion of the research that pharmaceutical companies use comes from tax payer funded research. Then the pharmaceutical companies turn around and charge the people of the USA the highest prices for drugs in the world.
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So someone takes software to brute force crack a password. Throw in a GPU, and wham! A new patent. How is this anything but evolutionary? It certainly is not revolutionary or "innovative".
This is the same damn thing that has been done before, except now a GPU is used to help. That is it. Software patents suck. Real bad.
What version do you have? The first core duo based mini was slow, most of that due to the hard drive. The core 2 duo based ones are nice, though they still have a dog slow hard drive. Replace the hard drive with a 7200 rpm drive and it will be almost as fast as an iMac. The only slow part of the mini that you cannot replace is the crappy graphics. If Apple made a mini with a 7200 rpm drive and ATI graphics, it would be a very good system for all kinds of tasks.
When Apple came out with an Intel-based Mac, I jumped on it. I have an older core duo Macbook and a core 2 duo iMac. Hardware-wise, they are very good systems for the money. Damn good to be frank. The only hardware I have ever bought, or been given by a company I worked for, that was x86 MS Windows-based that comes close to the two systems I bought from Apple in features/stability would be an IBM Thinkpad I have. The Thinkpad is very good hardware-wise, though I get crashes from the TabletPC version of MS Windows I use.
I still use Linux (Ubuntu) and I always will. I love the openness of the system.
With that said, I think you are way off on your "prediction" that "windows users will stick to XP". Sorry but XP is old and showing its age. If you just want an MS Windows based OS to run software, yes, XP is your best bet. However, if you are a user of an OS and you want more features than what basic XP gives you, you don't have many options from MS. You could go to Vista, if you have the money. I have a PIII 667 MHz system with 512 MB of memory. XP Runs fine on it, Vista won't even run. I just switched it to Ubuntu 7.10 and it runs great. I now just run Visual Studio from Parallels on my iMac.
Obvious choice to whom? To you? To "power users"? All of my family members don't give a damn if it is "windows" or not. They just want a system that works for them. My parents just dumped their broken XP system when they retired. I got them to buy a Macbook Pro and they love it. It works and does what it needs to do. No slow down from anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spyware, etc. And the system will last them a long time, much longer than a laptop with XP/Vista on it.
It is easy to say crap about a Mac when you have never OWNED one. Try to buy one before you spew crap about it.
I agree with you. Though, to me, it seems that there is a vast difference in the percentage of MS Windows admins that can do com/adsi/wmi/etc scripting vs. the percentage of *nix admins that can do effective scripting.
I have had to a bunch of com/wmi type stuff as a progrmmer for admins at the 2 fortune 500 companies I have worked at. In contrast, I offered to do scripting for the Linux/Solaris platforms for two *nix admins and they looked at me like I was silly. I love to do *nix scripting, the 2 admins wouldn't let me. They could handle it themselves. Now on the other hand, I have written a bunch of little apps or scripts to do things with AD for our MS Windows admins or they would just copy-n-paste some AD script not really knowing how it works.
This is why I said I am not dissing MS Windows admins. There are some really good ones out there. It is just that from my experience over the last 10 years I have seen about 10% of the windows admins who know their sh!t, 50% who are average and the other 40% or so seem to just have been able to pass a test and get a cert. I had an MS Windows admin ask me how to deploy a C# ASP.Net app. I almost fell out of my chair. I gave instructions. copy the damn folder from the staging server to the production server. That is it. The app was already registered with IIS so it really was just a copy the folder thing.
Oh, well, sorry to paint with such a broad brush, sometimes I just get frustrated by how flooded the MS Windows market is with "Admins", "DBA's" and "Programmers". I just get freaked out when, as a programmer, I have to show a certified MS DBA stuff on SQL Server.
Yawn... I heard this before. $1,000 for one server (which could be more depending on the version of MS Windows) and $65-$75k for an admin? Yeah, if you have one freaking server. However, Linux/Unix is so much easier for on admin to automate than MS windows. I work at a fortune 500 where there are 2 Linux/Solaris admins that handle a bunch of Solaris and Linux servers. The average number of servers per admin is very different for our Linux/Solaris admins vs our MS Windows admins.
We get more bang for our buck with a *nix admin than we do with an MS Windows admin. From what I have seen in the past 10 years, a very good *nix admin can handle almost twice as many servers as a good MS Windows admin. I am not dissing MS Windows admins, it is just that MS Windows really lacks the tools of automation that have been a part of *nix for decades.
The same goes for DBA's. In the past 10 years, the typical Oracle DBA's that I have worked with have had a lot more knowledge than the typical MS SQL Server DBA's.
The sad thing is that the MS Windows market is flooded with poor admins, DBA's and programmers due to the extreme ease of getting certified. I wish MS would change that.
In looking at options to get the lowest monthly cost, well there just weren't many options to be truthful. One option was 700 shared family minutes for $79 USD/month or 1,400 shared family minutes for $89 USD/month. WTF? If I can get 1,400 minutes for $90/month, why can't I get 700 minutes for $45/month?
When it comes to the mobile market, my money doesn't seem to control much of anything.
I see you posted as an AC. A POS is anything _but_ mundane.
I worked on a new POS for a fortune 500. There were a ton of requirements both from our side (programmers) and the hardware side (admins). It was actually one of the coolest projects I worked on in the last 10 years.
I got to really understand the needs of the admins as a programmer, and they got to see the reality of software systems. We (programmers) made compromises and they (admins) made compromises in the system.
The "simple" POS had to be fault tolerant. If if could not send back a transaction to a master server, it had to store it. One it could talk to the master again, it could send the transaction. This had to be done across a few thousand locations. The systems needed to be self "healing" (manager speak), we made them self updating by asking a master update server over frame relay for a version, get back an XML file and self-update from there.
There were a sh!t load of other requirements we had to handle on the software side like SOX, etc. The final POS was anything but simple. Oh, and the admins has a crap load of work to do as well. Those guys worked their @sses off to get each location secure and plugged in to our AD server, our Netegrity server, etc. Our software or POS system handled the AD and Netegrity communications, but there was a lot more for the admins to do then it seemed at first.
So, yeah, I think most programmers and admins would find implementing a real POS systems a good challenge. I know I did.
I have been programming professionally(meaning I get paid) for the last 10 years. In my opinion, do not follow this dork "advice". Either pay a real programmer to build your system(s), buy a pre-built POS and adapt your business to it, or pick one of the top Open Source solutions and inject some cash. Go on the mailing lists and let them know your situation. You will have a bunch of geeks that will be ready to work for you.
Seriously, spend a tiny bit of money on a Google Appliance and get excellent search. I tried to use MS stuff, like the built-in index server and it just wasn't good enough.
We got a Google "appliance" and the damn thing just works, and works well. I don't work for Google, nor do I get paid if they make a sale. Just saying what worked great for us.
There are more advantages to Google's offerings too. Such as being cross-browser, and for me, cross-platform. Oh, and their free too, unless you buy the corporate version.
90% of the MS Word docs I have seen at two fortune 500 companies are very simple documents that can be handled very easily in Google's web-based Google Docs. The vast majority of the spread sheets I see are simple enough to be handled by Google's spread sheet app as well. The only exceptions I see for spread sheets are ones coming from financial analysts.
A lot of companies would love to save all that cash by getting rid of MS office. Most workers just need a basic Document editor and spread sheet. However, most companies just get the whole office suite because they use MS Outlook with MS Exchange and are forced into purchasing the whole suite.
Geez dude, did you ever hear of the StringBuilder Class? Every time you concatenate two strings a new string object is created. The code above is just terrible performance-wise. Oh, and your getURI() method has too many parameters. Make all those parameters private members of your class and assign to them through properties.
It is not too good with Firefox under OS X or Linux. The 3D view doesn't work. You cannot reroute your directions like you can with Google. Under Safari it takes you to this basic page. I couldn't get any search results in MS Live Search in Safari.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Live Maps also support features that are MS only like the 3D view which sucks IMO to limit it to MS Only. Google Maps and Sat images work fine under OS X and Linux along with Google Earth. Google makes all of their browser-based apps cross-browser cross-platform from the start. It seems MS always brings in features for other browsers later. And some features will be MS Windows only. :-(
I find Google maps to be more compatible as well. However, for me the major feature of Google Maps is that it is always more current. I live in a recently built home. Google Maps has had my address listed for 3-4 months now. Yahoo and Microsoft maps still do not have my address and just report back that the address was not found. It makes it hard to get directions from MS Maps if they don't have my starting address listed.
No where in my post did I say TomTom is required to give anything back. I think it would be seen as a fair exchange if the did though.
I guess that depends on whose numbers you look at. At MacNN it says that Apple had 5.6% of shipments for Q2 2007. Then at this site it shows Mac had 3.33% of the market share. So who knows the real numbers. I would bet it is between 3% - 5%.
But they did write software for Mac. Mac has only about 4% or so of the desktop market, that is certainly not a huge target group. At least if they made a Linux GUI/control software they could say they used the money they saved by using Linux/OSS.
Bad analogy. A more correct "cookie analogy" would be:
;-)
I work in IT and bring in cookies every Friday. I give my cookies to Accounting, IT and HR. Someone from Accounting, who eats my cookies, brings in cookies every Wednesday. However he/she only shares his/her cookies with Accounting and HR. Is the person from Accounting required to share cookies with IT? No, but it is a pretty crappy thing to not share their cookies.
Yeah, cookie analogies are pretty dumb
The way I see it is that TomTom is saving a nice chunk of change by using OSS/GNU/Linux to build the base of their systems. It would be nice if they took a small part of those savings and just... maybe... wrote some software for OSS/GNU/Linux users. Hell, I am sure they saved enough by using Linux in their devices to hire just one Linux GUI developer to build an equivalent GUI software that is available for MS Windows and Mac. It is not like they are making tons of money from Mac users. The majority of their users will being using the devices under MS Windows. At least WRT a Linux GUI, they can say the cost was offset by the savings generated by using Linux.
Just use Usenet. Free or you can pay for great retention and top speeds. It kills any commercial music download service out there. Oh, and about the same amount of money goes to the actual musicians, zero, with either service. So use Usenet and go to concerts if you really want to support artists and not middle-man copyright mafia companies. ;-)
Why "the sky is falling" reaction? IE 7 has a similar feature. Where do you think IE 7 sends the data? To Red Hat? Hmmm, I would think IE 7 goes to some MS controlled server to check if it is a phishing site. I personally trust Google much more than MS.
Anyway, in Firefox, as well as in IE, this is an optional feature. If "the sky will fall" from sending your URL's to Google or MS, just turn it off.
Uh, that still doesn't let me copy songs from the Shuffle from two different computers. I still get locked out because of some stupid Apple restrictions. It is not like I am some Apple hater. I gave Apple thousands. The different versions of the iPod are just too locked down for me.
There should be no reason I cannot add a song ripped from CD (meaning I paid for the damn music) on my iMac to my wife's Shuffle. But iTunes doesn't allow it, regardless of settings. There are no settings that let this happen. Period. When I plug in the Shuffle to my iMac it is seen as a "foreign" system. WTF?
So go ahead and keep making up excuses for Apple, it just make you sound less intelligent. I use to have an Archos MP3 player/recorder. It was big and bulky, but it did the job I needed. All I want from an iPod that I purchase is to not have restrictions put on what I can do with the device. That is not asking too much from Apple since other companies can already do it.
Seriously, why can't I put an MP3 file on my iPod from another system? Oh, wait, I am a "pirate" or something? Even though I paid for the audio by buying a CD?
I hooked up the shuffle to my wife's Macbook and showed her how to put some songs on it. It was very easy. Then my wife wanted me to put one song on it from my music collection on my iMac. I plug in the shuffle and get a message to "Erase and Sync". WTF? So I had to copy the song from my shared drive to her Macbook, import the song to her iTunes and then add it to her shuffle.
I guess Apple does this crap to _try_ to stop people from sharing their music. The weird thing is that non of the songs were DRMed, they were plain mp3 files ripped from CD.
Oh, well, I won't be buying any iPods from Apple again.
Do you work for this company?
If you read TFA, Monsoon didn't do Sh!t until lawyers got involved. The developers of BusyBox tried to settle things "under the radar". If Monsoon was a company with any morals, they would have corrected their mistake(s) then. However, they did not. It wasn't until a lawsuit came and bad press came that they did what they should have done from the get-go.
So no, it is not "nice to see that Monsoon is able to admit" anything. They basically said F-U until legal measures were taken. If BusyBox didn't have the ability to get support in fighting this, Monsoon would still be violating the GPL and saying F-U to the developers.
There is nothing "insightful" about the GP (I don't mean that to offend you GP). This sounds like typical corporate crap. Monsoon continued in their infringement after being notified. Monsoon did nothing until legal matters were taken. Now Monsoon is all like "we 'intended' to comply and we will comply". BS.
However, all things are not so perfect with iTMS WRT non-music. I purchased 3 seasons of "The Office" from the iTMS. Playing the episodes in iTunes across my network was just crap, slow and choppy. I couldn't burn the episodes to DVD so I went to Blockbuster and rented the 3 seasons and burned them to non-DRM encrusted mp4 files. Now they play great across the same network using VLC.
I am just wondering why playing a DRM-encrusted TV episode from an Intel iMac to an Intel Macbook over a wireless G network was so crappy. As soon as I deleted all the DRM-encrusted TV episodes and replaced them with mp4 rips, I could watch them across the same network with VLC or Quicktime/iTunes.
As a heavy Mac users, iTunes was once a great music/media manger/player. Now it is just a bloated portal to iTMS. I have gotten a bunch of iTunes updates on my Macs over the last 2 months. Each one has come with a NEW EULA. Uh, this sounds like MS to me. I am sure the Mac "fanboies" will say "it is because of the new iPhone and new iPods". Great. But why do I have to agree to a new EULA to use the new iTunes?
Oh, and don't get me started on the retarded crap that the iPod I have can only be "synced" to one specific computer. If I plug it in to my iMac, I get a message that it was from another computer and iTunes wants to ERASE all the songs! So I cant' put songs on from my Mac and then put a few songs on from my wife's Macbook. WTF? I have found ways around this, but it is anything but "user friendly" or the "it just works" mantra.
I love Mac OS X, the OS, but Apple is doing some stupid stuff with their other products and the lock-in/DRM IMO.
Que the Mac fanboi who will say, "You are not Steve, I am sure Steve knows how to run Apple better than you".
Yawn. I have spent thousands on Apple products. I think that should have a little influence on Apple.... I hope...
Oh, and I am not trolling. I agree with most of what you say, except for the people being "happy" with iTMS. I am sure for every person some troll say is happy, I can show someone who is not.
Your point about DRM is "on the money" IMO. I just felt like typing a lot of crap.
A lot of similar things happen here in the USA. A good portion of the research that pharmaceutical companies use comes from tax payer funded research. Then the pharmaceutical companies turn around and charge the people of the USA the highest prices for drugs in the world.