I used to be a huge firewire fan but when it comes down to it, USB just flat out beats the 1394 standards.
How so? I back up my system and synchronize my laptop to my desktop using both firewire 800 and USB 2.0 and the firewire is faster. One great thing about firewire is that I use it as an internet connection with my desktop as the server. Just enable internet sharing under preferences (Mac OS X) and the desktop acts as a DHCP server for anything plugged into the firewire. Then I just plug my laptop into my desktop and then run rsync. No foolin' around required. My opinion about the mac book air was that it looked cute, but no firewire 800 means I won't ever get it because I've grown so used to the ease of using it.
Hahahahahahaha.... they might be if you could actually trust them to run reliably. A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer. One of the reasons that's so is because riding a motorcyle long distance is very tiring, the other is the rate of failure of Harley's is atrocious.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but if Harley Davidson is ranked number 4, then this study has little or no bearing on the reliability of products the company makes. At best, it's showing what the public perceives the reliability of the products the company makes.
I've gotten both the 169 and 100 drivers to work with no problems on my debian machine. In the past there were one or two driver installs that didn't work correctly, but I've never been in a hurry to get the latest and greatest drivers for my older graphics card (a 6800 GeForce) so when that would happen I'd just revert. However, one problem I did run into is that the 169 driver uses an updated OpenGL, so if you're running a game that runs the older version you might have trouble. My trouble was that when playing NWN I would get some models show up with a striped texture overlaying their usual one. Weird. Probably had something to do with environmental effects but I didn't bother to figure out, I just reverted to 100.
P.S. Yes that's right, I am talking about playing games on linux -- unfortunately your choices are limited.:)
There are decent enough reasons to hate Apple. The arbitrary lock-in of the OS is a good place to start.
This doesn't bother me so much because I can remember the days when the OS and the hardware were tied together. E.g., if you bought an Atari 800 XL (what I had), I suppose you could replace the native OS on it, but for the life of me I can't think of anyone who did so. For the big machines like SGI's and Suns etc., you usually ran the native OS on those too since it was presumably optimized for the chip and hardware it was running on.
The hypocrisy of wanting to strip DRM from the media they sell while keeping DRM on their own OS is another. iPod lock-in is yet another.
DRM on the OS? If you mean the fact that you can't install the OS on any computer you want, see my comment above.
What I found more annoying was the DRM on the songs. My solution was to not buy anything from the itunes store and use a variety of other methods including ripping my own CDs, sneakernet and other activities you can probably guess at. I did win a couple of songs on the pepsi song giveaway, but fortunately for me JHymn was working then. To this day though I still haven't actually purchased anything from the itunes store because of that DRM.
And if you hold a grudge, the lawsuits they filed in the 80s over their look-and-feel is another (I only mention this because I hold a grudge against Microsoft for all of their anticompetitive practices of the past 20 years.)
I can remember that, those kind of lawsuits are always dumb and that might be a good reason to hate apple. But on the other hand, the fact that they released an X11 window manager application with OS X for free when they released OS X (even before releasing, it was in the beta IIRC) means that they aren't always as controlling as that. Think about that, with a few exceptions (e.g., wine) I can run just about any program on my linux machine as my os x one. That's pretty open. Sure, there are other aspects that are closed but it's a mixed bag, they do some good stuff and some bad stuff.
As is blind hatred. Specifically, the level of irrational virtiol targeted against apple on this site in particular is kind of amazing. I don't really understand it, I guess it's a backlash against the advertising campaign that apple runs with the hip guys and girls wearing black turtlenecks? Or does Jobs rub some people the wrong way? I mean, he is a salesman after all and that kind of behavior is annoying.
I myself think that apple could do some things better (being less of a control freak on the gui for one). I buy apple products sometimes because the hardware works with an acceptable rate of failure and their software is usually easier to get running than linux but less irritating to use than windows. These are my opinions, I recognize that not everyone feels the same way. Anyhow, the point is that I'm no apple fanboi even though I buy their products sometimes (e.g., my home PC is a linux box I built from parts) but then I'm not an irrational hater either.
That said, I do tend to hate Microsoft sometimes. Mostly when Ballmer was going on about the "patent infringments" in linux. That pissed me off. Or when I go to an internet site that has some Microsoft only file or plugin on it, although that's getting less and less as the linux codecs catch up.
And even when they do win (as they did in 1992, 1996, and 2006) they immediately fracture, cave-in, sell-out, and generally squander any potential for any real improvement thanks to their laughably weak party discipline.
So tell me, what did the strong party discipline of the Republicans get us? Let me list you a couple: tax cuts at the same time at the same time as deficit spending, the Iraq War, & nominations for high office (including the supreme court) whose only qualification is loyalty to the Republican party or Bush. What you're calling weak party discipline is actually a rational debate about what the best policy is, in this case, who the best candidate would be. This is governing in the interest in the public because policy decisions are discussed in the open rather than ruling by fiat which is what the Republicans do, where the real decisions are made behind closed doors without public input and the result is presented fait accompli. Open and transparent government is not a bad thing!!
Oh just stop it already with crying about the loss of privacy. You're pining away for a golden memory of something that never existed. There were always people who would catch you doing something you were ashamed of. For one thing, nowadays there are a lot more people so you can hide in the masses. You want to try to be private? Move to a town with less than 1000 people and see how long you manage to keep your secrets. Google streeview or not, people see you do things and people gossip about that to other people. For another thing, the effusion of cameras may not be a net bad thing. Think about all those cameras that the soldiers had on their cell phones in Abu Graib. They probably saved quite a few prisoners from being tortured because the news got out that these soldiers had lost their ability to privately treat their prisoners in any inhumane manner they wished. If there had been cell phone cameras, think there would have been a holocaust?
Yeah I agree. You know what? Somebody could be watching you RIGHT NOW. In fact, I can just look out my window and see some people in the offices across the way that could be looking at me. They could take pictures and post them on the internet! Oh noes! Welcome to the real world, where at some point, a lot of your actions are in the public view. Just ask all those congresspeople that get caught cheating or picking up hookers, ask 'em where their privacy is. The big difference between the government watching you and google watching you is the consequences. What's google going to do with the information, sell you targeted ads? Ohh I'm scared, somebody is watching me and then is going to sell me something. I'm more worried about my ISP cooperating with the NSA without the needs for warrants.
Lately I've been seeing a lot of criticism point at Apple when they do the same thing Microsoft does. Let's turn it around, eh? When Apple cut the cost of the iPhone, quite a few people were screaming bloody murder about Steve Jobs and his evilness. So where is the outrage over the Vista price cut? Where is Bill Gates promising to send a rebate to all the people who "overpaid" for their copy of Vista? I'm not trolling here, I suspect the reason is that MS waited just long enough for the sensationalism to fade before they dropped the Vista price whereas Apple didn't wait long enough. Since I haven't bought either of these products, I'm going to have to rely on others who have...
Unless you intend to run Windows on the Mac laptop then why compare?
Those of us who consider windows to be non-professional grade software find that to be a major bonus. There are a limited number of operating systems that also run a large number of commonly used apps (i.e. MS Office, Photoshop) without the aid of a reverse-engineered API (wine). The only one I can think of is Mac OS X, thus the ability to run Mac OS X is a definite plus for the macbook air in my book.
Yeah I'm having the same reaction. I'm glad I don't own very much MS stock because I'm questioning their sanity. This isn't even like, hah hah, isn't that silly, it's another half-assed corporate attempt at viral marketing or to rebrand their image as hip or cool, it's wow those guys are complete morons if they think this will work. It's just bizarre... who wants an SQL doll?
I hate to tell you this, but you're totally wrong. Space isn't cold. Temperature itself is derived from molecular vibrations and if you have no atoms, no temperature. Also, the lack of atoms completely removes conduction and convection. This is why a vacuum glass thermos works. Or, here is the answer from the U.S. Department of Energy ask a scientist.
It's not stupid AC. I've been using the Finder that particular way since I started using Mac OS X 10.0 beta and now they change the behavior on me just because somebody at Apple got a bug up their butt? Yes I know you can click on the damn sidebar or any number of other inefficient ways to do the same thing. Firstly, I think the sidebar is a waste of screen real estate except when you want to look at mounted volumes. Secondly, that new behavior sucks ass when you've got several layers of nested directories. That is, If I'm way up in A->B->C->D->E, and I realized I need something from B, or C, it's much more inefficient to first remember which level I need and then remember which level above that is in the sidebar than to just grab the scroll bar and move it until I see what I want.
It's not that I consider the OS bad, but I see no reason to upgrade. IMO there are preexisting and usually better way to do everything in Leopard.
What I mean is that when you click on a special folder (e.g., home, applications, documents, etc.) in the Finder in column view, it "roots" you to that spot and removes the horizontal scroll bar. In reality, it's just a silly thing that would require some retraining on my part (more likely, stop using column view) but I really dislike it. The reason for that because I feel like the Finder is trying to hide the upper level directories from me. I know perfectly damn well I'm at/Users/username rather than at "home" wherever that is and I take offense that Apple thinks I'm too stupid to be able to use a horizontal scroll bar. On 10.3 and 10.4 you can fix this by the hint shown here (macosxhints is a really great site, btw). I tried this trick on Leopard on a demo machine in an apple store and it didn't work.:(
Sounds like this is a step in the right direction. As soon as they remove the silly rooting behavior in column view in the finder, I'll buy leopard. Funny how one of these "features" they decided to include is keeping me from buying the OS. I run a mac shop, but I just bought an additional license for 10.4 instead of 10.5 because frankly, I don't see much worth shelling out the extra dough for in leopard. (In 10.4 you can bypass the rooting behavior by making an alias for the folder.) I know how to use rsync and cron, so I don't really need time machine.... and I'm not all that interested in the new preview view for the files. It's not like I'd delete it off a computer that I just bought, but I don't see much reason to upgrade since some of the things they did are not the behavior I want.
Don't be too quick to blame the U.S. or Israel -- there's more than enough governments in the middle east that could possibly view the internet as "the bringer of the corrupting influence of the west." They might have cut the cables to limit access by their populations. Of course, in the past when these governments have performed acts of sabotage, they shout that they have done it so I don't know. I'm just glad my internets are still making it through the tubes okay, might actually get some work done otherwise.
You just linked to a review of a knock-off of the ipod shuffle. I guess you are in Apple's target market, or more specically, the "I want something that's exactly like apple's products but cheaper" market. When it craps out on you, let us know how the service is on honoring the warranty okay?
I care, so just relax already. I think a 32 GB ipod without a price increase also is worth at least looking at. Sure, it's only a normal bump in a product, but so what? I'm interested, I'm sure lots of others are interested too: The New York Times has this up today as well. You Apple haters sure are tedious, not every article needs to be about the end of the world you know.
Krugman is using typical old-school liberal thinking...
"Old-school liberal thinking", formerly known as common sense.:) (I'm sorry, don't flame me, I just couldn't resist! It was my gut reaction.)
I must be getting old, the more I see, the less interested I am in the new ways of thinking because they look too much like old broken ones but with a younger person saying it. Idealists like Obama look to me hopelessly naive and are underestimating the viciousness and power of those who will be arrayed against him. My guess is that he'll have a rude awakening when and if he gets to the white house. But for all our sakes, let's hope I'm wrong.
Yes... I'm going to repost my comment from above, since you missed it:
The policy differences between Obama and Clinton are minor relative to the republicans, but chew on this: The medical insurance plan that Barack Obama is proposing is estimated to cost 80% of the plan of Clinton's, but only cover about half the people. This was in today's Krugman column at the NYTimes:
Mr. Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured -- essentially everyone -- at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.
That doesn't look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.
All of you people who keep talking about how great Obama's rhetoric is need to examine his policy decisions a little more closely before backing him. (But either Clinton or Obama will be a damn sight better than the present occupants of the White House, hell even McCain would be better.)
The policy differences between Obama and Clinton are minor relative to the republicans, but chew on this: The medical insurance plan that Barack Obama is proposing is estimated to cost 80% of the plan of Clinton's, but only cover about half the people. This was in today's Krugman column at the NYTimes:
Mr. Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured -- essentially everyone -- at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.
That doesn't look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.
All of you people who keep talking about how great Obama's rhetoric is need to examine his policy decisions a little more closely before backing him. (But either Clinton or Obama will be a damn sight better than the present occupants of the White House, hell even McCain would be better.)
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Hahahahahahaha.... they might be if you could actually trust them to run reliably. A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer. One of the reasons that's so is because riding a motorcyle long distance is very tiring, the other is the rate of failure of Harley's is atrocious.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but if Harley Davidson is ranked number 4, then this study has little or no bearing on the reliability of products the company makes. At best, it's showing what the public perceives the reliability of the products the company makes.
I've gotten both the 169 and 100 drivers to work with no problems on my debian machine. In the past there were one or two driver installs that didn't work correctly, but I've never been in a hurry to get the latest and greatest drivers for my older graphics card (a 6800 GeForce) so when that would happen I'd just revert. However, one problem I did run into is that the 169 driver uses an updated OpenGL, so if you're running a game that runs the older version you might have trouble. My trouble was that when playing NWN I would get some models show up with a striped texture overlaying their usual one. Weird. Probably had something to do with environmental effects but I didn't bother to figure out, I just reverted to 100.
:)
P.S. Yes that's right, I am talking about playing games on linux -- unfortunately your choices are limited.
I myself think that apple could do some things better (being less of a control freak on the gui for one). I buy apple products sometimes because the hardware works with an acceptable rate of failure and their software is usually easier to get running than linux but less irritating to use than windows. These are my opinions, I recognize that not everyone feels the same way. Anyhow, the point is that I'm no apple fanboi even though I buy their products sometimes (e.g., my home PC is a linux box I built from parts) but then I'm not an irrational hater either.
That said, I do tend to hate Microsoft sometimes. Mostly when Ballmer was going on about the "patent infringments" in linux. That pissed me off. Or when I go to an internet site that has some Microsoft only file or plugin on it, although that's getting less and less as the linux codecs catch up.
So tell me, what did the strong party discipline of the Republicans get us? Let me list you a couple: tax cuts at the same time at the same time as deficit spending, the Iraq War, & nominations for high office (including the supreme court) whose only qualification is loyalty to the Republican party or Bush. What you're calling weak party discipline is actually a rational debate about what the best policy is, in this case, who the best candidate would be. This is governing in the interest in the public because policy decisions are discussed in the open rather than ruling by fiat which is what the Republicans do, where the real decisions are made behind closed doors without public input and the result is presented fait accompli. Open and transparent government is not a bad thing!!
Oh just stop it already with crying about the loss of privacy. You're pining away for a golden memory of something that never existed. There were always people who would catch you doing something you were ashamed of. For one thing, nowadays there are a lot more people so you can hide in the masses. You want to try to be private? Move to a town with less than 1000 people and see how long you manage to keep your secrets. Google streeview or not, people see you do things and people gossip about that to other people. For another thing, the effusion of cameras may not be a net bad thing. Think about all those cameras that the soldiers had on their cell phones in Abu Graib. They probably saved quite a few prisoners from being tortured because the news got out that these soldiers had lost their ability to privately treat their prisoners in any inhumane manner they wished. If there had been cell phone cameras, think there would have been a holocaust?
Yeah I agree. You know what? Somebody could be watching you RIGHT NOW. In fact, I can just look out my window and see some people in the offices across the way that could be looking at me. They could take pictures and post them on the internet! Oh noes! Welcome to the real world, where at some point, a lot of your actions are in the public view. Just ask all those congresspeople that get caught cheating or picking up hookers, ask 'em where their privacy is. The big difference between the government watching you and google watching you is the consequences. What's google going to do with the information, sell you targeted ads? Ohh I'm scared, somebody is watching me and then is going to sell me something. I'm more worried about my ISP cooperating with the NSA without the needs for warrants.
Lately I've been seeing a lot of criticism point at Apple when they do the same thing Microsoft does. Let's turn it around, eh? When Apple cut the cost of the iPhone, quite a few people were screaming bloody murder about Steve Jobs and his evilness. So where is the outrage over the Vista price cut? Where is Bill Gates promising to send a rebate to all the people who "overpaid" for their copy of Vista? I'm not trolling here, I suspect the reason is that MS waited just long enough for the sensationalism to fade before they dropped the Vista price whereas Apple didn't wait long enough. Since I haven't bought either of these products, I'm going to have to rely on others who have...
Yeah I'm having the same reaction. I'm glad I don't own very much MS stock because I'm questioning their sanity. This isn't even like, hah hah, isn't that silly, it's another half-assed corporate attempt at viral marketing or to rebrand their image as hip or cool, it's wow those guys are complete morons if they think this will work. It's just bizarre... who wants an SQL doll?
I hate to tell you this, but you're totally wrong. Space isn't cold. Temperature itself is derived from molecular vibrations and if you have no atoms, no temperature. Also, the lack of atoms completely removes conduction and convection. This is why a vacuum glass thermos works. Or, here is the answer from the U.S. Department of Energy ask a scientist.
It's not stupid AC. I've been using the Finder that particular way since I started using Mac OS X 10.0 beta and now they change the behavior on me just because somebody at Apple got a bug up their butt? Yes I know you can click on the damn sidebar or any number of other inefficient ways to do the same thing. Firstly, I think the sidebar is a waste of screen real estate except when you want to look at mounted volumes. Secondly, that new behavior sucks ass when you've got several layers of nested directories. That is, If I'm way up in A->B->C->D->E, and I realized I need something from B, or C, it's much more inefficient to first remember which level I need and then remember which level above that is in the sidebar than to just grab the scroll bar and move it until I see what I want.
It's not that I consider the OS bad, but I see no reason to upgrade. IMO there are preexisting and usually better way to do everything in Leopard.
What I mean is that when you click on a special folder (e.g., home, applications, documents, etc.) in the Finder in column view, it "roots" you to that spot and removes the horizontal scroll bar. In reality, it's just a silly thing that would require some retraining on my part (more likely, stop using column view) but I really dislike it. The reason for that because I feel like the Finder is trying to hide the upper level directories from me. I know perfectly damn well I'm at /Users/username rather than at "home" wherever that is and I take offense that Apple thinks I'm too stupid to be able to use a horizontal scroll bar. On 10.3 and 10.4 you can fix this by the hint shown here (macosxhints is a really great site, btw). I tried this trick on Leopard on a demo machine in an apple store and it didn't work. :(
My big complaint about spaces is that the pager doesn't show what's in the desktop. I greatly prefer Desktop Manger as it gives you a real pager.
Sounds like this is a step in the right direction. As soon as they remove the silly rooting behavior in column view in the finder, I'll buy leopard. Funny how one of these "features" they decided to include is keeping me from buying the OS. I run a mac shop, but I just bought an additional license for 10.4 instead of 10.5 because frankly, I don't see much worth shelling out the extra dough for in leopard. (In 10.4 you can bypass the rooting behavior by making an alias for the folder.) I know how to use rsync and cron, so I don't really need time machine.... and I'm not all that interested in the new preview view for the files. It's not like I'd delete it off a computer that I just bought, but I don't see much reason to upgrade since some of the things they did are not the behavior I want.
Don't be too quick to blame the U.S. or Israel -- there's more than enough governments in the middle east that could possibly view the internet as "the bringer of the corrupting influence of the west." They might have cut the cables to limit access by their populations. Of course, in the past when these governments have performed acts of sabotage, they shout that they have done it so I don't know. I'm just glad my internets are still making it through the tubes okay, might actually get some work done otherwise.
You just linked to a review of a knock-off of the ipod shuffle. I guess you are in Apple's target market, or more specically, the "I want something that's exactly like apple's products but cheaper" market. When it craps out on you, let us know how the service is on honoring the warranty okay?
I care, so just relax already. I think a 32 GB ipod without a price increase also is worth at least looking at. Sure, it's only a normal bump in a product, but so what? I'm interested, I'm sure lots of others are interested too: The New York Times has this up today as well. You Apple haters sure are tedious, not every article needs to be about the end of the world you know.
The Captain James T. Kucinich campaign had a one word rebuttal to this:
Khaaann!!!
I must be getting old, the more I see, the less interested I am in the new ways of thinking because they look too much like old broken ones but with a younger person saying it. Idealists like Obama look to me hopelessly naive and are underestimating the viciousness and power of those who will be arrayed against him. My guess is that he'll have a rude awakening when and if he gets to the white house. But for all our sakes, let's hope I'm wrong.