No, I've met many liberal environmentalists in my lifetime, and by and large they are stark raving idiots. I consider myself liberal, but I refuse to associate with the stereotypical environmentalists in them, because they are overly idealistic, completely devoid of common sense, and assume they know the energy field better than *highly educated engineers* who have *decades* of experience. They're no different than the armchair structural and avionics engineers who support the "9/11 Truth" conspiracy theory. As an engineer (albeit only at the undergrad level) it's really hilarious and sad the kind of crap environmentalists come up with.
I see a lot of support for solar, wind, and tidal power. This is ignorant. Environmentalists are always preaching about the delicate balance of nature, yet they're going to be perfectly willing to sap *trillions of watts* out of their natural environment on a daily basis to fuel their lives? Energy does not come out of nowhere. Every joule you sap out of the tide, or the ground, or the river, is one less joule that's going somewhere else. Without knowing the full ecological impact of these changes, it's incredibly foolish to even attempt this. It's surprising how readily tree-huggers have embraced these "clean" fuel sources. Just because it's not spewing smog doesn't mean it's environmentally friendly, you jackasses.
Oh, and hydrogen fuel too. Dear Lord, do you know where hydrogen comes from? There's no magical pool of hydrogen beneath the Earth that we can just dig up and shove into our cars. No, we have to create it, most usually out of water. This requires *energy input*. Where do we get this energy? Traditional power plants! Yay! Everybody talks about hydrogen like it's the messiah of the energy crisis, when in reality they're simply shifting pollution/sustainability from their gas tank to the power plant in the woods.
So you say renewable energy sources. Which renewable energy sources are you talking about?
Solar: not economically ready as of yet. Cost/benefit ratio simply doesn't work. Not to mention, do you REALIZE the amount of pollution solar panels incur during manufacturing? Disposal is an equal bitch if not done correctly (which, knowing the world, it probably won't). Until efficiency rises, and we can get rid of some of the really nasty stuff that goes into them, it's not a large-scale solution. Not to mention that most of the world doesn't get nearly enough sun to make this worthwhile. Not to mention the potential ecological impact you'll have when you deny the ground a great deal of heat.
Tidal, wind: Huge ecological impact. You really think nothing will result from weak waves, and drastically changing airflow? We're talking large-scale climate changes if we implement any of this in a large manner.
Biofuels: Great. More shit in the atmosphere. Just because it's not a fossil fuel doesn't mean it's squeaky clean. Not to mention that, while you're all feeling better about yourselves for driving a biofuel vehicle, hundreds of millions are starving and can no longer afford to eat because you're feeding corn into the engine and not hungry mouths.
The *best* energy solution we have right now is one that tree huggers HATE, and that's *nuclear*. The waste is manageable (as opposed to any OTHER form that would just spew it into the atmosphere), the fuel is plentiful, even with growing demand, and will tide us over until the "next big thing". It is the *only* real solution we have towards clean air, as of right now.
Actually, in this case I think the claim was that Scrabulous was infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. IMHO trademarks *should* last as long as the company is in operation. There's no reason why a company should have to lose its trade name over the course of time.
This particular quote does not fall under hate speech (the legality of which varies), but this is a clear threat to physically harm a person. In this case IMHO law enforcement have every right to ascertain the identity of the person so as to better protect his/her potential victims.
If you're not an assclown, your identity on a forum is safe. Nobody is going to pursue your identity in court for calling them "shitface".
If Joe Sixpack knew his computer could be fast, dead reliable and simple to use while still doing everything his Windows box can do
I just set up Ubuntu two nights ago, with the latest version and all. Joe Sixpack has no hope of getting Ubuntu running on his machine. Savvy power user *maybe*.
Installation was easy enough, and thankfully was something very well done. Not too much technical mumbo-jumbo, very straightforward. Nice.
Except wireless didn't work. The kind of hackery I had to do to make it work would be beyond even most power users. If I wasn't a dev I'd have no idea wtf I had to do to get wireless working. And honestly, wireless is an *indispensable* feature in any modern laptop.
Until the wireless problem is fixed, Ubuntu will be DOA for the vast majority of users. I understand that this isn't necessarily Ubuntu's fault (more likely Intel), but nonetheless, don't preach the awesomeness of something when it doesn't even work out of the box.
Oh, and while the flaming fox and the purple bird work well enough, the road cone is the worst media player software ever conceived by mankind. Well, the backend is pretty solid, but that's true for most open source software. Trying to use the UI, though, is like staring into the maw of hell. User pops in a DVD... File->Open Disc seems like the logical thing to do right? Do that, and then look at the dialog that pops up. You think Joe Sixpack won't be intimidated? Compare with Windows Media Player, where popping in a DVD will just... *gasp* play the DVD!
So we shouldn't call out abuses of human rights because the people we are calling out are "especially sensitive to criticism"?
No, it means you'll have to rely on different tactics, since the one you're currently using is more likely to piss off the target audience and inspire little to no change.
Here's the thing. Most Chinese are perfectly aware that their government is a corrupt cesspool of filth - they are certainly less loyal to their government than the average American anyhow. But they have also intrinsically linked the government's presence to the Chinese people. An attack on the government is an attack on the people, and vice versa. In this environment you can see how criticism of the government will be taken to be an attack on the Chinese race in general.
They also see things with differently-tinted glasses. For the majority of the nouveau-riche, urban working class, they see massive economic growth, unprecedented creation of wealth, and the emergence of a middle class. They see this as a good thing (and it's hard to argue with that) - more people have more money, and the lives of hundreds of millions are improved. They see many of the human rights limitations as necessarily evils for the greater good. Americans in this case look like whiners who would rather hold back the economic development of billions in order to satisfy a few outliers.
Not to mention that America is known to go about, meddle in other countries, and generally make life miserable in their wake (see Chile & Pinochet for the textbook example). You should also realize that China is *not* the only country that looks down upon American meddling. That list would include just about everyone except America.
You forgot to mention that Objective-C is a strict superset of C, which means *any* C code will compile on it (assuming you don't have any odd dependencies). Build a UI layer in Obj-C (which you'd have to do anyways) and you're set. I'd hardly even call it "porting".
Don't worry, my vaunted MacBook Pro's manufacturer battery spontaneously shuts off with "30 minutes" left. I'm a little poor to buy a new one right now, so I'll live with it.
Only if you're lazy and uncreative would anti-piracy necessarily have to harm legitimate customers. I thought the "night vision goggles" thing they did was pretty cool. It's unobtrusive, does not violate customer privacy or put them through undue hassle. There are people who would disagree, but honestly, there's no expectation of privacy in a public movie theater of all places...
There is no 1:1 ration of piracy versus lost sales.
Of course there isn't, but if you read Slashdot you'd think it was a 1:0 ratio.
Clearly *some* portion of downloading is contributing to a loss on the studios' part. And IMHO they have every right to prevent cams from hitting the intertubes. I know many people who don't even bother with movies anymore. I don't know how they do it... I go to a movie to enjoy it, not watch people thousands of miles away get up and block the view, nor shakiness and horrid sound.
I think that when most people say "make a good movie" they really mean "don't deliberately make a crappy one."
How do you define "bad movie"? Is it "artistically not worthwhile" or "nobody wants to see"? 'Cos honestly, movies like "Date Movie" or "Meet the Spartans" may totally, absolutely blow, but they clearly had enough audience that they made a fair amount of cash.
So blame movie goers without taste, because studios will (rightfully) keep cranking out tasteless trash until people stop watching it.
Not the same. The problem with America is that it is obsessive about its suburbs. Cars can deliver you right to your doorstep. To even be considered as a valid transportation provider, buses need to get you within a very short distance of your door. In a suburban environment this means a LOT of buses, most of which will be empty all the time.
And then most of them go back to driving a truck, or waiting on tables, or shuffling paper, or laying bricks or
... business majors with fast-track MBAs who end up managing coders? Marketing folk who make more in a year that I can hope for in 5? Financial analysts who shnoz with the best and charge romantic dinners to their company?
The same way you'd buy an HP and throw Ubuntu on it. You like the hardware, but despise the software (or part of it), so you do what you can to change that.
I don't think anyone is going to get through to you though, you've apparently already convinced yourself that the only reason to own an iPhone is for superficial trendy reasons. Personally, I feel that the UI is far superior to any other phone on the market, particularly when compared to similar smartphones that run Windows Mobile. Let's not talk Blackberry, their UI is so woefully behind both WM and iPhone that it's really a bit pathetic.
I jailbreak mine because I like the responsiveness of the OS, I like the UI, I like how many things are taken for granted (the media capabilities out of the box are excellent, as opposed to other smartphones, where they feel grafted on, and do not integrate well with other apps). I also want to run 3rd party software on it, because there's some really good stuff out there.
How can you have a good 'teenage kid discovers he's the chosen one and saves the universe' story, when there are thousands of protagonists?
There are potential solutions to this problem. America's Army solved it in a minor way - how do you have a "good guys vs. bad guys" game when everyone has to be the good guys? Solution? All scenarios are crafted so that each side considers themselves the good guys, and see the other side as the durned terrorists. In the same way, I can imagine a PVP MMO where you and your party are the heroes out to stop evil, while all the other players are set up to appear to be Imperial stormtroopers/elite guards/whatever that stand in your way.
It's somewhat conceivable, if you buy the notion that certain laws of physics are absolutely unbreakable. Which is to say... space flight can't get any faster, energy generation doesn't get any more efficient... etc etc. So it's conceivable that an entire galaxy will get "capped out" because of basic logistics limitations and the fact that energy ain't free... and isn't getting any cheaper.
Probably not fake, but also probably not realistic, nor will it ever see widespread use. Knowing the PSP's specs, and knowing the Wii's specs, there is simply no way you can make an emulator run at a reasonable pace. The performance of the emulating machine must be *many times* faster than that of the emulated machine, to account for the massive amount of overhead. The performance gap between the two machines simply is not enough to make this happen.
Well, the problem is that Windows encourages developers to stuff random crap into the registry, whereas Linux and OS X encourage devs to stuff the same data into self-contained preference files.
This means less bloating of a massive pseudo-DB, as well as API support for preference-loading and saving (read: dumb developers will fall in line with the "correct" method simply because it causes them less work).
It really comes down to what the de facto way of doings things is on each platform. On OS X it's blasphemy to distribute your apps in anything but a.app package. This standard keeps things sane, since nuking the.app package will destroy everything, as opposed to many Windows apps that like to litter files in weird, obscure locations on your HDD. On Windows the standard is to use an uninstall app - which is inherently error-prone, as you're leaving the responsibility for complete removal up to devs, as opposed to being a simple nature of the system.
Apple's stock price has been buoyed not by it's PC offerings, but by iPods, and that only happened after they decoupled them from their PCs and let non-fanboys buy them.
For a while, sure. But keep in mind that just *Mac market share* alone is also keep pace at double-digit levels. This isn't a company that's doing gangbusters with the iPod while the Mac fades into obscurity. Both brands are kicking ass.
Apple's hardware selection is certainly anaemic. They have, what, half a dozen models? For the vast majority of the market, their offerings just aren't suitable.
Vast majority of the market like whom? They have a workstation tower, a home all-in-one, a mobile workstation, and a mobile personal. They also have an ultraportable and a headless personal machine.
What you're saying is that Apple refuses to build a laptop without a webcam, bluetooth, and WiFi. They also refuse to cost-reduce by going with tray drives instead of slot-loaders. They also "waste" money by having backlit keyboards - what if I never type in the dark?!
So in the end I think Apple in fact has the *most* consumer-relevant products, if only by mere fact that they cram a load of features into a single box (and charge you for it). Apple has no interest in the $500 laptop market, and for the $1000+ market of computers, they have a product to cover every single niche, except "hardcore power user who likes to swap graphics cards". IMHO I think they're happy that way.
Yes, but it's stored in many text files, each of which keeps to itself, and doesn't slow down access to the others.
OS X keeps configs in XML files, but these are stored in very strictly named folders - which is to say that, even if the app doesn't play nice and remove these files on uninstall, you can easily go in and clean these suckers out yourself without fear of nuking something important.
As a long-time Windows user who has since switched to both OS X and Linux...
1 - Registry bloat. No other OS keeps app settings and preferences in what really amounts of a gigantic text file. Many apps do NOT remove registry entries correctly (or fully) when uninstalled. Inevitably this file will bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat until it takes forever just to get anything out of it.
2 - System folder bloat. No package manager in Windows, yet things insist on storing dependencies in a shared manner. This is pain, since *nobody* dares remove any library from your system upon uninstall because nobody is sure if anyone else needs it. As you install/uninstall things from your system, this folder will bloat, bloat, bloat. It's incredible how much larger a Windows install can get just 1 year after a fresh reformat.
These things are unavoidable. Your users may well have avoided these issues if their machines were locked like Fort Knox and they were unable to install and tweak to their liking. As a heavy dev who's always trying new tools, the constant install/uninstall cycle takes its toll VERY VERY quickly in Windows, whereas in OS X and Linux the system remains squeaky clean.
Oh, and did I mention that I need admin privileges to do ANYTHING? I can't even install a flash plugin for *myself* without needing full admin privileges to the system. This is lazy programming, and Windows is full of it. If I were a sysadmin I'd be tearing my hair out. It's either: "screw you guys, use the pre-installed software and nothing else", or "have fun with full admin, I'll be here waiting for your f'ed up computer". There's no happy medium.
Sci-fi is very in your face about social commentary. Like you said, other genres will try to hide their message behind layers of symbolism and metaphors, while sci-fi tends to be very explicit: "this is wht will happen!" kind of thing. I like it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's penny wise and pound foolish.
No, I've met many liberal environmentalists in my lifetime, and by and large they are stark raving idiots. I consider myself liberal, but I refuse to associate with the stereotypical environmentalists in them, because they are overly idealistic, completely devoid of common sense, and assume they know the energy field better than *highly educated engineers* who have *decades* of experience. They're no different than the armchair structural and avionics engineers who support the "9/11 Truth" conspiracy theory. As an engineer (albeit only at the undergrad level) it's really hilarious and sad the kind of crap environmentalists come up with.
I see a lot of support for solar, wind, and tidal power. This is ignorant. Environmentalists are always preaching about the delicate balance of nature, yet they're going to be perfectly willing to sap *trillions of watts* out of their natural environment on a daily basis to fuel their lives? Energy does not come out of nowhere. Every joule you sap out of the tide, or the ground, or the river, is one less joule that's going somewhere else. Without knowing the full ecological impact of these changes, it's incredibly foolish to even attempt this. It's surprising how readily tree-huggers have embraced these "clean" fuel sources. Just because it's not spewing smog doesn't mean it's environmentally friendly, you jackasses.
Oh, and hydrogen fuel too. Dear Lord, do you know where hydrogen comes from? There's no magical pool of hydrogen beneath the Earth that we can just dig up and shove into our cars. No, we have to create it, most usually out of water. This requires *energy input*. Where do we get this energy? Traditional power plants! Yay! Everybody talks about hydrogen like it's the messiah of the energy crisis, when in reality they're simply shifting pollution/sustainability from their gas tank to the power plant in the woods.
So you say renewable energy sources. Which renewable energy sources are you talking about?
Solar: not economically ready as of yet. Cost/benefit ratio simply doesn't work. Not to mention, do you REALIZE the amount of pollution solar panels incur during manufacturing? Disposal is an equal bitch if not done correctly (which, knowing the world, it probably won't). Until efficiency rises, and we can get rid of some of the really nasty stuff that goes into them, it's not a large-scale solution. Not to mention that most of the world doesn't get nearly enough sun to make this worthwhile. Not to mention the potential ecological impact you'll have when you deny the ground a great deal of heat.
Tidal, wind: Huge ecological impact. You really think nothing will result from weak waves, and drastically changing airflow? We're talking large-scale climate changes if we implement any of this in a large manner.
Biofuels: Great. More shit in the atmosphere. Just because it's not a fossil fuel doesn't mean it's squeaky clean. Not to mention that, while you're all feeling better about yourselves for driving a biofuel vehicle, hundreds of millions are starving and can no longer afford to eat because you're feeding corn into the engine and not hungry mouths.
The *best* energy solution we have right now is one that tree huggers HATE, and that's *nuclear*. The waste is manageable (as opposed to any OTHER form that would just spew it into the atmosphere), the fuel is plentiful, even with growing demand, and will tide us over until the "next big thing". It is the *only* real solution we have towards clean air, as of right now.
Actually, in this case I think the claim was that Scrabulous was infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. IMHO trademarks *should* last as long as the company is in operation. There's no reason why a company should have to lose its trade name over the course of time.
From TFA:
"I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly"
This particular quote does not fall under hate speech (the legality of which varies), but this is a clear threat to physically harm a person. In this case IMHO law enforcement have every right to ascertain the identity of the person so as to better protect his/her potential victims.
If you're not an assclown, your identity on a forum is safe. Nobody is going to pursue your identity in court for calling them "shitface".
If Joe Sixpack knew his computer could be fast, dead reliable and simple to use while still doing everything his Windows box can do
I just set up Ubuntu two nights ago, with the latest version and all. Joe Sixpack has no hope of getting Ubuntu running on his machine. Savvy power user *maybe*.
Installation was easy enough, and thankfully was something very well done. Not too much technical mumbo-jumbo, very straightforward. Nice.
Except wireless didn't work. The kind of hackery I had to do to make it work would be beyond even most power users. If I wasn't a dev I'd have no idea wtf I had to do to get wireless working. And honestly, wireless is an *indispensable* feature in any modern laptop.
Until the wireless problem is fixed, Ubuntu will be DOA for the vast majority of users. I understand that this isn't necessarily Ubuntu's fault (more likely Intel), but nonetheless, don't preach the awesomeness of something when it doesn't even work out of the box.
Oh, and while the flaming fox and the purple bird work well enough, the road cone is the worst media player software ever conceived by mankind. Well, the backend is pretty solid, but that's true for most open source software. Trying to use the UI, though, is like staring into the maw of hell. User pops in a DVD... File->Open Disc seems like the logical thing to do right? Do that, and then look at the dialog that pops up. You think Joe Sixpack won't be intimidated? Compare with Windows Media Player, where popping in a DVD will just... *gasp* play the DVD!
So we shouldn't call out abuses of human rights because the people we are calling out are "especially sensitive to criticism"?
No, it means you'll have to rely on different tactics, since the one you're currently using is more likely to piss off the target audience and inspire little to no change.
Here's the thing. Most Chinese are perfectly aware that their government is a corrupt cesspool of filth - they are certainly less loyal to their government than the average American anyhow. But they have also intrinsically linked the government's presence to the Chinese people. An attack on the government is an attack on the people, and vice versa. In this environment you can see how criticism of the government will be taken to be an attack on the Chinese race in general.
They also see things with differently-tinted glasses. For the majority of the nouveau-riche, urban working class, they see massive economic growth, unprecedented creation of wealth, and the emergence of a middle class. They see this as a good thing (and it's hard to argue with that) - more people have more money, and the lives of hundreds of millions are improved. They see many of the human rights limitations as necessarily evils for the greater good. Americans in this case look like whiners who would rather hold back the economic development of billions in order to satisfy a few outliers.
Not to mention that America is known to go about, meddle in other countries, and generally make life miserable in their wake (see Chile & Pinochet for the textbook example). You should also realize that China is *not* the only country that looks down upon American meddling. That list would include just about everyone except America.
You forgot to mention that Objective-C is a strict superset of C, which means *any* C code will compile on it (assuming you don't have any odd dependencies). Build a UI layer in Obj-C (which you'd have to do anyways) and you're set. I'd hardly even call it "porting".
Don't worry, my vaunted MacBook Pro's manufacturer battery spontaneously shuts off with "30 minutes" left. I'm a little poor to buy a new one right now, so I'll live with it.
Only if you're lazy and uncreative would anti-piracy necessarily have to harm legitimate customers. I thought the "night vision goggles" thing they did was pretty cool. It's unobtrusive, does not violate customer privacy or put them through undue hassle. There are people who would disagree, but honestly, there's no expectation of privacy in a public movie theater of all places...
There is no 1:1 ration of piracy versus lost sales.
Of course there isn't, but if you read Slashdot you'd think it was a 1:0 ratio.
Clearly *some* portion of downloading is contributing to a loss on the studios' part. And IMHO they have every right to prevent cams from hitting the intertubes. I know many people who don't even bother with movies anymore. I don't know how they do it... I go to a movie to enjoy it, not watch people thousands of miles away get up and block the view, nor shakiness and horrid sound.
I think that when most people say "make a good movie" they really mean "don't deliberately make a crappy one."
How do you define "bad movie"? Is it "artistically not worthwhile" or "nobody wants to see"? 'Cos honestly, movies like "Date Movie" or "Meet the Spartans" may totally, absolutely blow, but they clearly had enough audience that they made a fair amount of cash.
So blame movie goers without taste, because studios will (rightfully) keep cranking out tasteless trash until people stop watching it.
Because taking control away from the operator while the car is in motion is very dangerous, especially when the system's intelligence is dubious?
Not the same. The problem with America is that it is obsessive about its suburbs. Cars can deliver you right to your doorstep. To even be considered as a valid transportation provider, buses need to get you within a very short distance of your door. In a suburban environment this means a LOT of buses, most of which will be empty all the time.
Sounds != EM radiation. Sound is the vibration of air, and is certainly not dangerous at all, at the levels you're speaking of.
And then most of them go back to driving a truck, or waiting on tables, or shuffling paper, or laying bricks or
... business majors with fast-track MBAs who end up managing coders? Marketing folk who make more in a year that I can hope for in 5? Financial analysts who shnoz with the best and charge romantic dinners to their company?
None of those seem really THAT bad...
The same way you'd buy an HP and throw Ubuntu on it. You like the hardware, but despise the software (or part of it), so you do what you can to change that.
I don't think anyone is going to get through to you though, you've apparently already convinced yourself that the only reason to own an iPhone is for superficial trendy reasons. Personally, I feel that the UI is far superior to any other phone on the market, particularly when compared to similar smartphones that run Windows Mobile. Let's not talk Blackberry, their UI is so woefully behind both WM and iPhone that it's really a bit pathetic.
I jailbreak mine because I like the responsiveness of the OS, I like the UI, I like how many things are taken for granted (the media capabilities out of the box are excellent, as opposed to other smartphones, where they feel grafted on, and do not integrate well with other apps). I also want to run 3rd party software on it, because there's some really good stuff out there.
How can you have a good 'teenage kid discovers he's the chosen one and saves the universe' story, when there are thousands of protagonists?
There are potential solutions to this problem. America's Army solved it in a minor way - how do you have a "good guys vs. bad guys" game when everyone has to be the good guys? Solution? All scenarios are crafted so that each side considers themselves the good guys, and see the other side as the durned terrorists. In the same way, I can imagine a PVP MMO where you and your party are the heroes out to stop evil, while all the other players are set up to appear to be Imperial stormtroopers/elite guards/whatever that stand in your way.
It's somewhat conceivable, if you buy the notion that certain laws of physics are absolutely unbreakable. Which is to say... space flight can't get any faster, energy generation doesn't get any more efficient... etc etc. So it's conceivable that an entire galaxy will get "capped out" because of basic logistics limitations and the fact that energy ain't free... and isn't getting any cheaper.
Probably not fake, but also probably not realistic, nor will it ever see widespread use. Knowing the PSP's specs, and knowing the Wii's specs, there is simply no way you can make an emulator run at a reasonable pace. The performance of the emulating machine must be *many times* faster than that of the emulated machine, to account for the massive amount of overhead. The performance gap between the two machines simply is not enough to make this happen.
And how much would the VIA board cost? How many "on hours" will the poster have to log to recoup that cost?
And then you have to account for the heat from the AC adapter. Then the HDD. Then the disk drives. Then the video card too.
Well, the problem is that Windows encourages developers to stuff random crap into the registry, whereas Linux and OS X encourage devs to stuff the same data into self-contained preference files.
This means less bloating of a massive pseudo-DB, as well as API support for preference-loading and saving (read: dumb developers will fall in line with the "correct" method simply because it causes them less work).
It really comes down to what the de facto way of doings things is on each platform. On OS X it's blasphemy to distribute your apps in anything but a .app package. This standard keeps things sane, since nuking the .app package will destroy everything, as opposed to many Windows apps that like to litter files in weird, obscure locations on your HDD. On Windows the standard is to use an uninstall app - which is inherently error-prone, as you're leaving the responsibility for complete removal up to devs, as opposed to being a simple nature of the system.
Why are people hanging onto this myth? ISPs do not, and have never had, common carrier status.
Apple's stock price has been buoyed not by it's PC offerings, but by iPods, and that only happened after they decoupled them from their PCs and let non-fanboys buy them.
For a while, sure. But keep in mind that just *Mac market share* alone is also keep pace at double-digit levels. This isn't a company that's doing gangbusters with the iPod while the Mac fades into obscurity. Both brands are kicking ass.
Apple's hardware selection is certainly anaemic. They have, what, half a dozen models? For the vast majority of the market, their offerings just aren't suitable.
Vast majority of the market like whom? They have a workstation tower, a home all-in-one, a mobile workstation, and a mobile personal. They also have an ultraportable and a headless personal machine.
What you're saying is that Apple refuses to build a laptop without a webcam, bluetooth, and WiFi. They also refuse to cost-reduce by going with tray drives instead of slot-loaders. They also "waste" money by having backlit keyboards - what if I never type in the dark?!
So in the end I think Apple in fact has the *most* consumer-relevant products, if only by mere fact that they cram a load of features into a single box (and charge you for it). Apple has no interest in the $500 laptop market, and for the $1000+ market of computers, they have a product to cover every single niche, except "hardcore power user who likes to swap graphics cards". IMHO I think they're happy that way.
Yes, but it's stored in many text files, each of which keeps to itself, and doesn't slow down access to the others.
OS X keeps configs in XML files, but these are stored in very strictly named folders - which is to say that, even if the app doesn't play nice and remove these files on uninstall, you can easily go in and clean these suckers out yourself without fear of nuking something important.
As a long-time Windows user who has since switched to both OS X and Linux...
1 - Registry bloat. No other OS keeps app settings and preferences in what really amounts of a gigantic text file. Many apps do NOT remove registry entries correctly (or fully) when uninstalled. Inevitably this file will bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat until it takes forever just to get anything out of it.
2 - System folder bloat. No package manager in Windows, yet things insist on storing dependencies in a shared manner. This is pain, since *nobody* dares remove any library from your system upon uninstall because nobody is sure if anyone else needs it. As you install/uninstall things from your system, this folder will bloat, bloat, bloat. It's incredible how much larger a Windows install can get just 1 year after a fresh reformat.
These things are unavoidable. Your users may well have avoided these issues if their machines were locked like Fort Knox and they were unable to install and tweak to their liking. As a heavy dev who's always trying new tools, the constant install/uninstall cycle takes its toll VERY VERY quickly in Windows, whereas in OS X and Linux the system remains squeaky clean.
Oh, and did I mention that I need admin privileges to do ANYTHING? I can't even install a flash plugin for *myself* without needing full admin privileges to the system. This is lazy programming, and Windows is full of it. If I were a sysadmin I'd be tearing my hair out. It's either: "screw you guys, use the pre-installed software and nothing else", or "have fun with full admin, I'll be here waiting for your f'ed up computer". There's no happy medium.
Sci-fi is very in your face about social commentary. Like you said, other genres will try to hide their message behind layers of symbolism and metaphors, while sci-fi tends to be very explicit: "this is wht will happen!" kind of thing. I like it.