
Leverage???
Rik Myslewski obviously missed the correspondence last week about words that should nver be used. Shame!
251 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2007
I've heard so much of this crap and it is about time that people were put down publically for doing it!
People who, sort of, talk in clichés - y'know. Does my 'ead in. You know what I mean? Is it to impress people with their eloquence? Does exactly the opposite. You know what I mean?
El Reg writers are not imune. My pet hate is the word 'leveraging' - crops up all the time! You know what I mean?
...and when you ask how to do something with Ubuntu on a forum, instead of helpful answers, you get a string of abuse. I spent most of a day trying to get a friend's Eee to connect to WiFi using WPA-PSK [TKIP], I searched the web and all I got was a load of incomprehensible gibberish. I asked on a couple of forums and got the response that I was too stupid to use Ubuntu. I'm not that stupid because I use computers that work!
What is wrong with paying for software? Software takes time and skill to write. Time costs money. People have to eat. If you work for nothing, give me your contact details - I have a lot of jobs that need to be done! Nah, forget that, I'd rather have them done properly than for free.
Linux is produced by a certain type of person for a certain type of person. It does its job - much the way a John Deere tractor or Mack truck does its job. That's fine.
The Apple experience is created by 'design' for people who don't care about computers and never open the bonnet of their car except to fill up the windscreen washer fluid. They expect it to 'just work'! They get no joy out of tinkering and value ease-of-use and reliability more than speed, horsepower, adaptability - and indeed price.
Horses for courses.
The key word here is 'design'. Design has two main aspects. 'Functionalty' and 'Styling'. Functionality is about doing what it is supposed to. Styling is the aesthetic presentation. You can have one without the other but it is less good than getting both right.
Linux scores pretty highly on functionality - provided you know what you are doing and are prepared to work at it. The very fact that 'open source' is being challenged to 'out-pretty' Apple completely misses the point. It's not about prettyness, its about design. Prettyness is superficial styling. It is eye candy. It does not improve the user experience and misused, as is often the case, can actually get in the way and reduce functionality.
I am more than happy to use Linux on my Web server. Ubuntu on the desktop I find butt ugly both asthetically and functionally. Why try to be a cheap imitation of Windows or a prettier version of Mac OS X?
Do what you do best better and the World will flock to your door.
1. People complain about the amout of methane produced by cows. Keep them in tents and collect the methane.
2. Joggers hould not be allowed to waste energy. Make the run in big hamster wheels.
3. Peope who are being 'made' to repay their debts to society are sitting on their arses in jails all over the country. Make them turn dynamos – might bring down crime rates as well!
5. Fit turbines to kettle spouts.
6. Fit helmets over politicians heads and harvest the hot air.
7. Fly kites in thunderstorms.
8. Fit big rubber discs to the front of tube trains and push all the hot air through turbines.
9. Put thermocouples into volcanoes.
10. Reduce the need for energy and improve the gene pool at the same time by culling idiots, spammers, scammers, hoodies, people who keep dogs and cats, people who wear blue shirts with fawn trousers, Robert Mugabe and his cronies, programmers who introduce more than 3.872 bugs per day into their software...etc
Before you can compare prices in the USA and the UK, you have to level the playing field. I'm am surprised that people here are only looking at the bottom line.
First of all, there is import duty. Okay, you can avoid paying import duty by sneaking things in. Blame UK for this, not the manufacturer.
VAT at 17.5%. This varies from one EU country to another - why, I can't explain, but it is not charged the USA. Not the fault of the manufacturer.
Warranty. In the USA, it is 90 days. In the UK, it is one year by law. Again not the fault of the manufacturer.
Advertising and marketing. It is more efficient to do this in a big country than a smaller one.
Sales volume. Higher volume (USA) means cheaper prices.
When you take all these things into consideration, the price difference is not so great. Expecting price parity in the UK and USA is unrealistic.
I took 10.5 off too as it just wasn't ready. Last week, I reinstalled Leopard 10.5.2 over the top of my 10.4.11 as I just have too much software to be bothered to reinstall it all. I did make a backup clone of my Tiger disk with SuperDuper first so I was quite prepared to switch back again if there were any serious problems.
The big surprise was there were no surprises. Everything worked - except my HP Laser printer but that was solved with a simple permissions repair.
I have Filemaker Pro 6 with heavy duty AppleScripts connecting it to Entourage X. I have Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS running without any problems whatsoever - and I use all of these a lot. Who says these are incompatible?
The one major change I made was to change over to Apple Mail from Entourage X as it eats up the Time Machine disc space with its huge database.
The 3D dock doesn't bother me, the tacky 'space art' does so it's gone. I've made the menu bar solid so I'm quite happy now!
Why should it be free? Do you really expect someone with talent to spend their time supplying you with free software or food, drink and place to crash for that matter. Why should they? Why should you expect them to?
Free, means "of little value" and that is generally what you get. All viruses are free. When did somebody last pay for one?
There are a number of utilities on the Mac that allow video screen capture including Snapz Pro X 2 which circumvent any iPlayer DRM - which makes it all rather pointless. All you have to do is press a few keys, drag a marquee around the area to be captured and start running iPlayer. The video is saved to the hard drive as it appears on the screen to be watched at any time.
Even better, with EyeTV, I can record any program at full video resolution to my hard drive just like a video recorder at any time of the day and keep it forever if I want.
What's all the fuss?
...Credit card companies. These people hold the key to the success of spam. If they block the accounts of people who are shown to be involved in spam, they could be starved of their income. It would also be fairly simple to find spammers and their agents by simply following the credit card trail - but the credit card companies are greedy. When someone makes a fraudulent purchase on my site, not only do I not get the money but I get a $25 'chargeback' fee. I am not suggesting that we all make fraudulent purchases of viagra!!!
I have no beef with Linux, it has its place in the great scheme of things but I liken it to farm tractors - useful, but not something to pull birds with. For that you need something a bit flashier.
As for iTunes on Linux, that's a bit like expecting your Massey Ferguson or John Deere to come with an iPod docking radio.
"Mac is NOT a good option, unless you're a chav fanboy, in which case, it still isn't!"
These sort of comments are boring. How do you know what the 'right' computer for any particular person or purpose is without knowing all the facts?
Is a Ford Transit Bus better than a Ferrari Dino? Depends on how many passenger you want to carry from A to B in any given time frame.
Is a Gibson better than a Fender? No, it's depends on the sound you want and how well you play it that counts!
Is a Canon better than a Nikon? No, cameras don't make photographs, they are tools and only as good as the person using them.
Same with computers. If you are only making snide remarks, any one will do!
alphaxion says "Personally, apple are getting greedier and greedier in my eyes.
The Air is $1,799 in the US, the UK market will be paying a stonking $2300/2400 for the same thing!"
When you make comparisons, get your facts right...
The MacBook Air is £1,199 in the UK including 17.5% VAT and 12 months warranty. USA prices do not have VAT (which doesn't go to Apple) and only have 90 days warranty AFAIK.
Peter Johnston writes - "I have a better idea - don't buy a Mac at all. I speak from experience - I bought two and both broke after 12 months just outside warranty and I couldn't buy replacement parts but had to take them to Apple who wanted to charge more than they were worth."
I have a friend who also had two Macs break on him within a very short space of time - but then so did his Nikon camera, Sony Mobile Phone, Sony Television and Range Rover Freelander. Some people are just jinxed!
Since 1984, we have had over thirty Macs through our company. In all that time, we have had one power supply replaced (£80) and a graphics card that was faulty out of the box (free).
In that time, we've also had one benign virus (off a floppy disk that came back from a printer).
Total support cost in twenty three years - £80. Every machine paid for itself many times over and had a residual value of about 50% after three years.
I bought a Dell PC in 1995 and had ten call outs in the first year - I've built my own PCs ever since but now run Windows and Ubuntu on a Mac.
Swiss Army Knives are handy to keep in your pocket when camping and might get you out of a hole but none of the tools in it are any good - including the knife.
Phones are the same. Crappy text entry, lousy cameras, dreadful video, bad MP3 players etc. etc.
The multi tap text entry on most phones is a PITA. I don't use it. If I want to take a photo, I'll use a decent camera - read digital SLR! I have an iPod touch, but I find I don't use it much - why - I hate earphones. It is however great in the car with a FM transmitter into the car's sound system.
I bought my current Nokia phone sim-free for £250. It has all the problems listed above PLUS it is totally unreliable and often won't even boot.
If there was an iPhone that WAS a phone, (with syncable address book) and I could stick my 5 quid a month OneTel sim in it, I would pay £250, no problem.
It is a high resolution image NOT a high dynamic range image. The stars are there, they are just too dim to render in such a bright scene.
The audio has been removed because of the copyright issues involved in playing "Also sprach Zarathustra"!
PS: I could swear I saw a Godzilla footprint there!
I think you'll find that a box of surgical rubber gloves from SuperDrug works out considerably less than these and, as an an extra benefit, improves general grip. If, however, you are a heavy user, half a pair of Marigold brand kitchen gloves would do the trick - and last longer too.
Steve promised Leopard in October and delivered - ready or not! Unfortunately, the GM build was released to developers AFTER it was released to the public. There will be incompatibilities.
Leopard installed just fine on my Mac Mini which is pretty clean as I only use it for compatibility testing and running Windows. I was able to do a clean install on a G5 Dual 2Ghz but I can't get it to install over 10.4.10 even though I have none of the said haxies.
On the whole, when installed, it runs as it says on the box and I haven't found any major problems with any software I use. I haven't had the BSOD on any of my four Macs - although the G5 upgrade situation gives me the grey screen of not booting - which needs to be sorted.
I avoid Java like the plague.
@ thomas, There are people who like to flash Rolex watches and be seen to step out of Porsches. There are better and cheaper watches and cars! You seem to miss the point completely. It is cool to be seen with such things. It works wonders for your ego and street cred. It helps pull chicks. Maybe you are not interested in such things but surely you can't have missed the fact that it happens. Call them idiots if you like but I'm sure they won't change places with you.
Even when the iPhone reaches the UK, the selling price is no big deal. It's the cost of the contract with the phone company (O2?) that is the killer and will quickly make the hardware price look like peanuts.
EDGE/G3, who cares. EDGE is fast enough for casual Web use without draining the battery.
People are saying there is no mail on the iPod touch. There is a Safari browser and a touch keypad so there's nothing to stop you using GMail, Yahoo, FastMail etc.
Does anyone really need 40,000 songs in their pocket?