People who smear excrement on bathroom stalls use Mac's.
People who use PC's smear excrement on bathroom stalls and then blame it on people who use Macs...
<...Wait... smear excrement on bathroom stalls?... what are you - a chimp? or a jailed IRA member? Who actively picks up poo and wipes it about... except maybe Marxist performance artists... And NO... I don't want anyone to use the world MACACA>
I will spare you the evangalism, but suffice it to say that I'm an ubergeek, and an Ur-geek, starting to program in in 1970 in assembly language, then assembler, writing assemblers, parsers, scanners, compilers, studing artificial languages and grammars, and the complexity of computers. I taught myself digital and analog electronics and while at Rice, once I had the math, took the EE courses to learn the underpinnings of what I knew.
So. Geek cred established, I hope, if your eyes aren't glazed over.
I got in 1978 the instruction set for the 8088/8086 family and realized that it sucked canal water. Remember all the crashes over 64K code segments? I won't bore you with the details, but there was a reason. And I compared it to the 68000 instruction set, and knew that the second was meant for recursion. Which I knew was utterly necessary for reliable modern programming--and this before objects which made it imperative. Remember the Windows crashes? They were trying to strap a turbojet onto a skateboard, and one with dicky wheels to boot. It's amazing that it worked at all.
Now Intel has figured out the addressing modes--witness the Intel Core Duo I'm working on now. But the difference is the underlying code. Windows started with a patch. Remember the DOS 640K (K!) limit? Gates was a fool. Good salesman, but a fool. Didn't believe in the Net either.
When the Apple II reached the end of its road, the 64K address space and all, Apple wisely broke it and made something new, the Mac, inventing, by the way, graphics printing and Adobe gave us Postscript for it. When the 68K chips reached the end, Apple went to the PowerPC chips--seamlessly. When they died, in 2005 and 2006, Apple migrated, again seamlessly, to Intel.
When the Mac OS died with its antiquated architecture, they bought Jobs start-up company NeXT, which made a GUI based on the Unix BSD core. Which is why Macs don't crash. Period. Word misbehaves and dies, and a message tells you it died and that your other programs are fine. And they are.
When Vista comes out, it will have some of this stuff. But then we'll be on Leopard and Gates will be panting in the rear. Again.
Some nice things. Apple started operatability specification that all Mac programs ought to follow, and most did. Meaning virtually no manuals needed. The programs all work just the same. Orthogonality, we used to call it in USCD Pascal.
Another thing is that because of the small market share, there are not, in general, drivers. Plug it in, and it works. You have a camera with a USB cable? Launch iPhoto and it asks you if you want it to erase the pictures from the camera after downloading. Works with the Nikon Coolpix 990, 995, and Sony K790a. No software. No installation. Just works.
Stick a CD into the Mac and it launches iTunes. Rips the CD, finds the track names from Gracenotes, downloads album art, and you make a playlist. I just ordered at 750GB Mac which will store 2,250 ripped CDs in Apple Lossless Format, which I'll stream using Airport Express, then Apple TV, with 802.11n wifi to the living room and the bedroom.
You can connect an iLink camera, and make movies with a free editor. Burn DVDs. iMacs have Bluetooth built in. A camera built in. iChat with up to 4 people at once, if you have the broadband.
If you want to make a simple website, get a mac account. $99/year for a stable email service, five aliases, 1GB storage, and half of that an iDisk--storage to be used anywhere in the world, and it appears anywhere on your desktop. I put things on it at work, open my MacBook in, say, Wichita, make changes, and my secretaries open them and print. I could be in paris.
The mac account lets you make a simple website--photos, blog, whatever. Make a page, drag a photo from iPhoto to it. Drag a tune from iTune to it. Rearrange. Publish. I have a simple one made in 10 hours, including learning the program. No HTML.
Everything works with everything else. Systemwide spelling checker. (MS Word's is better, though.) Automator which lets you do ANYTHING automatically. Apple script which does even more.
Oh, and by the way, honorable Chairman. The Mac may be the computer of the fruit and the computer of this fruit, but fruitness isn't catching, despite the rantings of god-botherers like Falwell.
If you are convinced, and want a recommendation, I know a bit about it. Try punchenkoATtheocritus.us.
Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:I just don't know, Theocritus. I am so use to using a PC - yet the grass does seem greener on the other side.
um NOT...dont let the ADV get you Chairman...PC is way more prevelant...it DOES depend on what you want to do, graphics aps are the domain of the Mac Alliance traditionally...but for pure power on mainstream stuff? PC babay...all the way...stay away from Vista for the next 3-4 months...let them develop service pack one then should be ready for Prime Time...personally they're going to have a hard time convincing me of anything to get me into Vista until DX10 titles and hw proliferate in good quantity...
Actually since the Mac is using Intel Core 2 Duo, there is no difference in processing power, and various magazines compared Dell machines tricked out against Mac ones for power--and the Mac was cheaper. And that was before the Core 2 Duo.
And regarding Windows programs. You can, if you wish, install a version of Windows using Boot Camp, which is free, but you have to reboot into the other OS. You have a Windows machine. Or you can used Parallels Desktop, which lets you have one Mac window overlapping a Windows one.
But here's the magic trick: <a href="https://www.codeweavers.com">Code Weaver</a> lets you run Windows programs WITHOUT a Windows OS, and lets you run, for example, a MS Office suite licensed under Windows on the Mac. Utterly legal and transparent, so I'm told. Reviews are good. And if I understand the technology, well, it has to be thus, you would have the versatility of Windows without the vulnerability. As of midyear last year, there were over 114,000 viruses for Windows. Zero for the Mac. Which has, by the way, a built-in firewall, both hardware and software. The browsers check for apps, and if you have to okay their download. This does not protect you from viruses in Excel or Word macros, though: but set your Office products to ask before enabling macros, and that's solved.
Code Weavers uses box-in-a-box technology, mapping the primitive Windows DOS calls (for they are really that) to the more sophisicated Mac EFI calls, and since they're both Intel, you've got the best of both worlds.
And check on the prices, too. The Mac's base prices are more than the bare-bones Windows machines, but come with a hell of a lot more. The apple website has prices virtually as good as Macconnection or MacWarehouse or MacZone, and you can get special-builds too--like the 750GB 24" iMac I'm squirming in my seat for. Like Hillary sensing a pocket she hasn't picked or a volition she hasn't commandeered.
There. Couldn't resiste a jibe at our Many Titted Empress. I wonder if she pays her pedicurist--no manicurist for her--when she didn't pay her hairsylist.
Jerry Falwell doesn't like the Mac!?!? Oh no; I'm sorry, Therocritus, I cannot use a computer that is full of sin - that simply will not do! Kidding of course; I consider myself religious - but by no means a "holy-roller", so you don't have to worry about me throwing stones (or pushing over walls) because of your...hmm, how can I say this without sounding like a Lib..... "orientation"... is that right? At first I was shocked that you were both gay and a Republican... I thought such a thing was going out of style (especially with Andrew Sullivan preaching about how awful we all are and how disappointed and blah blah blah he is with us social-con Repubs.) Ugh... I'm having flashbacks of the mid-term... Jim Webb is my Senator... OH GOD! HELP US ALL! I CAN'T TAKE IT! But yeah; I will look into the Mac and see what else I'm missing... Windows is getting a little tiresome anyways... damn that Bill Gates!
Actually, honorable Chairman, I do not define myself as anything but Theocritus. I happen to be gay and loathe and despite my wannbe masters, which means that above all I hate the Demothieves. But the Repulsicans have, lately, done little to endear them to me.
And I am not religious, in anything, theological or secular or therapeutic, for I believe that the Biblican definition of faith to be excellent: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." If analyzed, the first part of that comes up to what you want to believe in, which, if it is sustaining and not evil, seems worthy to me. And, since the Reformation, with the exception of Falwell and others who wrap themselves in a shroud (which is little different, in its way, from Algore wrapping himself in a green cloak), Christianity seems to be the best of the alternatives for people who find it in themselves the need, or, really, in my case, ability to base one's life on something which cannot be proven, and by definition. You cannot believe the intestinal distress that causes Catholic priests when I point that up, because they do not understand the meaning of faith, and I suspect half their homilies are on it. They really ought to analyze their beliefs more. I've been advised by a friend not to kick the crutch from under the faith of a very nice priest I know who is writing a book on pacifism in the early church. He really doesn't understand the underpinnings of his beliefs because he doesn't understand the difference between faith and knowledge, which he would if he actually bothered to analyze the Bible instead of his Talmudic explorations. I hate to go into something as tainted by snooty liberals as textual analysis, but there is something there, as long as it is not used only to destroy.
That leads me to the idea that reality is not boolean algebra--you're with me or against me. Either agreeing with me or not. People who polarize the world that way fall into identity politics, which is the surest way I know to loose yourself, and be perpetually pissed off at the same time.
My mother, who was neither gay, obviously, nor athiest, said, "Your rights end where my nose begins," and I've found that to be an excellent guide in life.
And no, orientation is a rather anodyne word, although I share your distress at tropes which smack of the bien-pensant.
Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:People who smear excrement on bathroom stalls use Mac's.
People who use PC's smear excrement on bathroom stalls and then blame it on people who use Macs...
<...Wait... smear excrement on bathroom stalls?... what are you - a chimp? or a jailed IRA member? Who actively picks up poo and wipes it about... except maybe Marxist performance artists... And NO... I don't want anyone to use the world MACACA!!>
Re: PC vs. Mac - I do understand the hesitation of someone who is not going to use their computer as anything but a tool on which to run Office and will never do art/web/graphics stuff on it, to switch to Mac. There is a learning curve with any new O/S and if there's no benefit to be gained why bother? Javier has a brand spanking new PC notebook and it does exactly what he needs it to do, including running iTunes to hook up the iPods to... difference being, he uses them (or the one I let him touch... heheheh) at the gym or as music in his car, and I use them for everything from portable music to portable file storage to portable video. He spends more time in Excel than anyone I know but he's a senior business analyst... it does what he needs it to do. The only thing I can say is that the learning curve on a Mac can actually be fun if you get the iLife suite on it, which are really easy programmes that let anyone, for example, us iPhoto to create slideshows and books of their favourite photos along with captions, and then send the book to Mac and have it published! It's very kewl... and it's fun... Or iMovie and iDVD and... Garageband, that lets anyone turn their computer into a synthesizer and then record and mix multitrack songs... so the learning curve can be fun and I have used PC's extensively and can honestly say that the learning curse on a PC has NEVER been fun for me, and most of these Mac programmes are more intuitive than many of the programmes on a PC platform (though I have to admit Front Page Express made THE MOST SIMPLE webpages really easy... unfortunately, as wthl all MS products it seems to have a will of its own that wouldn't let you override certain 'decisions' it makes for you... a common thing with many MS products which they seem to feel the need to imbue the the power to retain some amount of control over your machine)... But, if you are anything other than someone who wants the most simple webspace, you're going to know how to code at least a little HTML... I learned on a PC in Textbook but that means that I can look at raw code outside an editor and understand what I'm looking at - not a great feat but a disappearing skill. But I still run Office on my Macs... they're good for what I need them to do and then there is Virtual PC, which basically allows you to run PC programmes on your Mac... it is much more robust in O/S X than before and so if you want to run legacy PC software on a Mac, you can.... and now there's Codeweavers, which is more stable and flexible than VPC and...
More than anything, now that Vista is out, I would never allow it on my computer... not as it stands with its licensing agreement, and I've read the damn thing. I would never allow anyone access to my computer as part of an agreement to owning - well... licensing their O/S, never mind allowing them to alter or delete information on my computer, which they most certainly have the right to do according to the Vista agreement.
BTW - for those who weren't around for the evolution of the Mac/PC fracas, here is one of the best commercials ever made... it is considered a masterpiece not only by many Mac users, but my many in the adverstising world to this day...
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Interesting thing is that someone has posted a version on YouTube called New Version, in which the woman is wearning in iPod... but that's unacceptable historical revisionism... And below, just out of interest, is another commercial... nothing to do with computers but something I've been trying to find for over 20 years and finally did last night...
I have been looking for this in some form or another since it was aired in 1986... It's a Grace commercial and it was directed by Ridley Scott and was to air after a state of the union address by Reagan but then the three big networks pulled out because they said it was too political. In the end, it was run by a ton of cable and independants for one week only and then disappeared. I saw it three time and never managed to tape it and have been trying to find anything on it ever since... only in the last year has any literature shown up on it on the internet that I could find and I only just found it on YouTube... It's called The Deficit Trials, 2017, and it is political and has aged slightly, but in 1986, when very few people actually saw it and then only for a week, it became like the Giant Squid... The politics in it are clear but it's a beautiful little piece of filmmaking...
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Sorry to pee on your Mac parade that's happening under the lid... Well, I'll open the lid and I'll pee on it nonetheless. I have the right as a recovered formerly Mac fan.
I started my relationship with computers around 1990 with a Mac Plus - and that was a great advancement in its day. A whole 0.5 MB of RAM - unbelievable! I got it due to my work with American cultural exchange people in Ukraine and thus became one of the very few Mac owners in the USSR. When I moved to the States in 1994 I got a Mac and despite my meager salary and the need to support the family I managed to keep upgrading it and buying the expensive Mac programs... I was a big Mac propagandist and a big buffoon at that. Working with Windows at work was a torture... Then we upgraded to Windows 95... and things changed...
Around 1996 I dumped my Mac and bought a PC and never looked back. Yes, PCs did have freezes then - but so did Macs. At some point I worked at a publishing company doing desktop layout for trade magazines. They were proud of their Macs that were slower than my home PC - and they froze all the time. That's when I was able to see the former me in those guys who agitated for the Macs without really knowing what modern PCs could do. I realized what a buffoon I used to be myself, and how much hard-earned immigrant money I had wasted on maintaining the phony Mac-owner's status.
Today I tend to see all the Mac talk as conscious or unconscious propaganda. It's very similar to the liberal snobbish "pride and prejudice" - we are better than others because we belong to a select group of the initiated - and it makes us feel holier than thou. Combined with the leftist orientation of their leadership (Al Gore on board) and their snotty "Think Different" campaign, I have very little sympathy for their products.
Think of their latest string of TV commercials - a typical cool liberal guy representing the Mac, and a typical pathetic and uncool conservative representing the PC. Those commercial are so loaded with arrogance and snobbishness, I want to puke every time I see them as I recognize my own former arrogance and snobbishness in them. At least I relaized I had that crap in me and went through a painful process of squeezing it out of myself drop by drop (sorry for the recurring scatological references). And here I see the same people not only full of the snob crap, but also being paid ridiculous money to show it off. Those commercials precisely depict the condescending attitude the libs have towards us - me and you - (Alva, anyone?) without realizing how insulting it is. Those commercials can so easily be redubbed as
DNC political ads.
MAC: "Hi, I'm a cool Democrat."
PC: "And I'm a knuckle-dragging Republican."
MAC: "I enjoy international adoration."
PC: "I don't even know what international means. I'm stoopid."
I can almost hear Howard Dean and Al Gore laughing from behind the scenes.
The girl in red shorts in SMO's 1984 video commercial looks like a Soviet gymnast from a propagandistic poster. In a weird twist, the Western intellectuals have toitally forgotten that 1984 was originally modeled on the Soviet Union.
This is not to say that Macs are also improving all the time and may be worth their salt although I think they're way overpriced. I'm writing this not to make you Mac users feel bad about your investment - but to encourage PC users not to feel like some flyover idiots. Apple is promoting its products using the same methods the liberals promote their ideology - by making all others feel inferior and stoopid. Don't fall for it!
Of course the difference is that Mac is usable while liberalism is not. Too bad they've gotten so intertwined.
LOL, Red! Uggh... I almost was brought over to the dark side of computing... SHAME SMO! SHAME THEOCRITUS! SHAME SHAME SHAME! How dare you prey on techotards such as myself! Filling my head with some sort of utopian computing vision! Ugh... I feel dirty now.
I don't disagree with anything you say... I have laughed for years at the back and forth between Mac snobs and PC people... and I think both machines have their uses... I used PC's for years out of sheer survivial - I could cobble together donated parts and make a decent machine... it got me through my MBA where PC was the standard and all my work had to be handed in online using Word, Excel (an MBA student's most useful tool)... which linked well with Access (also an incredibly useful programme) and Power Point... I couldn't have possibly afforded the machine I had if I'd been on Mac in school... That said, when I was doing my film degree in the 80's and for years after, the only software available to filmmakers, whether for scriptwriting or for script breakdowns, was put out by Mac. My father, a retired architect who has no need for programmes such as CAD stuff, but who is now a businessman, is a devoted Apple snob and always has been... and I've listened to him argue back and forth with my various Apple snob friends and my various business-type friends... and it seems a ridiculous argument to me, except insofar as to say that I have always felt that the GUI on Macs is more intuitive... that their programmes, no matter who they are for, are more intuitive to learn... and that's important for someone like me who is literally technically dyslexic... I have ADD (not ADHD) and synaesthesia, which means that if something isn't holding my attention, it drifts and that when I look at text, it takes on visual disturbances, and it means that when I look at a technical manual that isn't written diagramatically, I can't read it... it's gibberish. I made it through film because when I had to learn written instructions my friend showed me what to do... when I have to learn computer programmes, I sit and watch someone do something once or twice and I learn... I can do that very ably but I can't read written technical instructions and understand them to save my life. I learned to code HTML by looking at raw source code and comparing it to what was in the browser after I was left in tears by an O'Neill book, which at the time was the easiest HTML book around (this was way back in '94 and I had to build a website for an IT course as part of my MBA for a good chunk of my mark)... So, I know both sides... And as I said, Javier just bought a brand spanking new notebook that he badly needed cause his old computer was on its last legs and he got a PC because it was cheaper and more useful to him... But having turfed my last PC four years ago, I won't look back... I can go into any programme on Mac and learn it... it may take me longer than the average person but for whatever reason, I can make it through instructions. And it's fun... for whatever reason, the apps I have on my Mac that just come with it are fun...
So... personally... I do find the whole rivalry silly... I think both machines have their uses (though I do have some issues with Herr Gates regarding what I believe to be a lack of imagination in terms of some security issues with his software that MS isn't quick enough to address and I have BIG problems with their licencing... though I've never had a problem with the whole bundling/anti-trust thing... )...
If you've never read it, there's a fairly short and fast read by an incredible author... computer programmer, mathematician and writer named Neal Stephenson, called In the Beginning There Was the Command Line, that is his essay on his journey as a computer programmer from punch card to Macs to PC's to Mac to PC's and the entire Cult of the Mac vs. PC thing... it's pretty entertaining, as are his novels, which are generally incredibly long and complicated but wonderful...
As for the 1984 commercial... you gotta remember... it was 1984 and there was a certain holding of our breaths here in the west because it was this seminal date... some people felt it was the ideological equivalent of the Rapture or something, when, in fact, I remember it being a night of debauched partying in Kelowna on a UofA Downhill Riders ski trip, having consumed much Tequila and 'shrooms, and partying to The Dishrags and DOA... but then I was 18, and for another six months after that, that kind of described the previous five years of my life... I do remember a discussion, though, specifically about the image of the woman and the fact that some people realized how much that image reflected a specific Soviet aesthetic, and the only reason she's dressed the way she is, is that it is as far away from what the men are all wearing as possible, and the men's wardrobe is modelled specifically on Orwell's novel. There was a lot of debate and discussion about that commercial at the time... some people simply took it at face value (inasmuch as that's possible) and other's literally dissected it... and others just thought it was that much marketing, and marketing doesn't much care about ideology or morality... it cares about manipulating peoples' emotions in the shallowest way possible to get them to buy stuff... and if that means tapping into archetypes then that's what they do, and most consumers don't think about why their buttons are being pushed, or what it means... You think about it because of your experiences in life and because you have an impetus to... I think about it because I was raised by people who while they aren't anti-capitalist in the least, expect decisions to be made on rational bases rather than because some marketing guy got into their heads... We both think about what words and images mean and why they mean the things they do... But for most people, it was just a kewl commercial...
Each system has its advantages, all I object to is how the public image for each of them is being deliberately instilled in our minds, poisoning our experience with computers.
Bill Gates is the true Prophet! KALA SALA MALA! KALA SALA MALA! PC PC Akbar!
I know a similar chant... OHWHA TANAS SIAM... OHWHA TANAS SIAM... I am told that it is so old that it transcends all religions and reaches back to the very dawn of humanity...
SMO
And I'll add one or two things to the debate. Yes, Algore is on the Apple board which I find repugnant, but then since I found that he breathes air (I <i>think</i> that he breathes air and isn't some sort of pod person), I've tried to find a way not to. But bear in mind that a man so unimaginative that he had to steal his treatise, now Received Word for the new religion of environmentalism, from the Unabomber can't be expected to influence the company's decisions. I think, and perhaps this a wishful gloss, that this was an attempt to forestall the sort of problem that Gates had when he didn't sufficiently bribe the Demothieves under Clinton and Justice did a number on him. The geek was blindsided, occasioning such great great freshets Schadenfreude that I can still see the stains on the wall. Finally Gates met someone more rapacious than he.
And no, I don't much care for the cooler-than-thou air either, but there it is. It's hard I know to judge things objectively and apart from its accolytes but just if Hillary says that 2+2=4 that doesn't make it equal 5. Although I'd get out a calculator in her case. But I wouldn't use non-Euclidean geometry, spiting myself just to escape her.
Re the price/performace ratio. If you want an ultra bare-bones computer, you can still get a cheaper PC--if all you want is email and perhaps simple WP and spreadsheet. But, as SMO says, if you use it as more than a mental hammer or a smart legal-pad, then it's easier with a Mac and costs no more. It's integrated together, folks. The machine has integrity. If something works in one place, it will likely work in another. Note to all the men: you can tell your wives that you really don't have to read the goddamned manuals.
I tell Calvin and Hobbes, the cats, who nod sagely and head toward the food bowl. Such is their interest.
And let's never forget that peripherals such as USB drives and Flash-RAM USB drives and cameras do not need drivers or installations. Plug them in and they work. Take them to another machine, as long as it's a Mac, and they work. Once I needed USB 2.0 ports on an old Mac which didn't have them. I ordered a PCI card which came with a small CD-ROM. Which I didn't need. My camera phone (Sony K790a) has a CD for software. Which I don't need.
Which gives rise to an overlooked point. A friend, Katie, is an artist and I've been extolling iPhoto to her, and says, quite rightly, that the Kodak she has has a program that will do that. No doubt it does. But if she doesn't continue to buy Kodaks, will she have to export her photos and their organization? She claims that they're not organized but I don't know if that's her dislike of geek things or a program infirmity. I suspect the former.
I was once quite attuned to doing things like reseating 64K-bit chips by hand, and cleaning the contacts of an S-100 card with an ink eraser and am not afraid of such jiggery-pokery, but why do it?
And his wife created their daughter Karena--hope I got it right--out of the Russian novel without bothering to check the spelling. Like the people here who on their child's entering school want birth certificate. Asked for the name, they say, "FeeMAHay" and tell the clerk that they didn't name her, the hospital did. Female, Garcia.
Oh. And Algore also created telekinesis, too. Remember when he violated the act prohibiting shaking people down for campaign money from government property by saying that his voice came out of the telephone in, what, Tennessee? And he created, "No controlling legal authority."
"I did not have shakedown with--bang--that--bang--contributor." Oh. Wrong liar. It's so hard to tell them apart, you know. They all look alike to me.
And there was the creation of wealth by Buddhist nuns, wasn't there? Just the knowledge of His advent was enough to enrich some lucky woman by, what, $140K which she then proceeded to give to the Fons and Origo of Greenhouse gases, who, when he needs to address a meeting of the bien-pensant in Aspen, drives his Escalade SUV onto the rented jet of Laurie David.
The other day I found a piece of melba toast that had markings on it that looked like the virgin mary... it was really tasty with some chevre and sundried tomato...
You can't turn a PC into a Mac--Apple has patented ROM chips, which were a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Apple kept control over the interface and there was none of this compatibility problem. One switch from 24-bit to 32-bit memory addressing, but no Fat Binaries. A curse because there was no pressure in the Apple community owing to competition, and only when Apple started to compete head-to-head against PCs for price/performance (sorry, folks, they do), was Apple forced to, well, compete in price/performance.
But if you get any modern Apple, that is, one sold in 2007, you have a PC. Buy Code Weavers, for about $60 (link above), and not only do you have a PC, but you don't have to buy a copy of Windows either. But they have not tested every Windows program on it but have most of the big ones and it is unlikely, from the way that software is written, that a small program will have the resources to trick-fuque the BIOS the way that, say, Macroshaft does. As long as a program uses good programming standards, that is, uses only BIOS calls, the very definition of BIOS and its raison d'etre will insure compatibility.
(If you're interested, a program has no idea what sort of, say, drive you have, or monitor. It merely says, "Open a file named xxx" or "Display THIS THERE" and tells the BIOS to do it. So when the BIOS is upgraded and does something in a different way, the program doesn't care. Only if the program messes with the BIOS will a change in the BIOS screw up the program. Macroshaft does this regularly, and on the Mac, damn them. But a well-written program will use only BIOS calls, and therefore is agnostic about the engine under the hood. So it could be Apple hardware or PC hardware.)
In San Elizario, NM, the home of the Low Rider, there is an annual Low Riders' convention. I have seen, on television, which is good for I'd have been gutting for my explosions of laughter, the low-riders pulled into a circle, noses pointed in, displaying their fancy paint work with various iconography, in lurid colors, and the Bishop playing free with the Holy Water. The paint worth more than the car. In the trunk, Reunite and Cristal d'Arque under a spotlight on mauve shag carpet. I am not making this up.
This is about 30 miles from Los Alamos. Between Los Alamos and Taos, home to D. H. Lawrence and many truly irritating leftists, even loopier than the lefties in the mother lode in Santa Fe, who in their infinite compassion sniff about Republican meanness while stepping over Indians passed out drunk in the gutter. I could not make this up.
Red Square wrote:Each system has its advantages, all I object to is how the public image for each of them is being deliberately instilled in our minds, poisoning our experience with computers.
Red,
Had to think about this for a while... seems a simple statement, but it isn't. What it, in essence, says, is that you object to advertising... Not a bad statement, per se, but maybe a bit nebulous. I don't like advertising either... in most instances, it is senseless, and by that it lacks intrinsic meaning... it is usually gibberish if one actually thinks about the words that are being used. It is manipulation at its basest and most cynical... Can you tell I had/have a love/hate relationship with marketing... Well... mostly a hate/hate relationship with it... I had a marketing prof who is considered a genius in that area throughout North America and Europe... Alan Middleton... and he is a genius... When he had to teach students about market research and interview techniques he shows All the Presidents Men cause there's a scene in it that is one of the most brilliant interview scenes and examples of interviewing technique ever put to record... and even the most unconscious students walk out of his classes being able to manipulate consumers into buying things...
... But, that's what advertising is... whether it's classic advertising or buzz marketing or guerilla marketing... it's all about getting into people's heads, not intellectually, but on the most base emotional level and for that you don't want intelligent or reasoned debate... in fact, the last thing you want is anything that disturbs suspension of disbelief... you want the audience to operate on pure gut.
... Try something next time you're watching TV... pay attention to the ads without paying attention to what they're selling... just watch the images or listen to the music... the best ones will come back to you over and over again... you probably won't remember what they're selling, but you'll remember the images and the music... Marketing has gotten so good that it's gotten too good and one of the biggest problems advertisers have today is that people remember their ads, respond to them completley on a gut level, remember the images and music, but if you ask them what product is being advertised, even if they've just watched the ad, they often can't tell you... hmmm... If they can tell you it was a car ad, they can't tell you which kind and if they guess they often get it wrong...
Why are computers any different? It matters to you, again, because you think about this stuff... but for most people, they don't make buying decisions based on the same things... I'm sorry - I'm really not feeling great so this is not the most articulate way to say what I'm trying to say.. but you can't blame marketers for doing what gets people to buy their products... they're just competing for consumers. If consumers don't like being manipulated, they have to start paying attention to what their being fed and actually start exercising their brains. And if people want to argue about the relative merits of their computers based on propaganda, then they're no different than people who argue the relative merits of their politics based purely on propaganda and in the absence of actual rational exploration and decision making.
As long as people are willing to wear the make of their computer or their car or their clothes as a badge to indicate who they are, then they cannot but help operate on that shallow level that marketing is best aimed at... it's simply rare to find a person who isn't willing to be defined by their accoutrements.
You can't get mad at marketers for "how the public image for each of them is being deliberately instilled in our minds, poisoning our experience with computers"... or with the companies that make the computers... when ultimately, it has to be the people that this message is being directed at who decide not to respond to it and so make it obsolete... I'm sorry - I'm not trying to be mean or glib, but good luck with that. I'd love to see people start actually thinking about what is communicated to them in many arenas, and start to challenge it's meaninglessness, or its implicit message, or its inherent dangerous assumptions, but there is a reason it's called the lowest common denominator and as long as we continue to be bombarded by more and more and more images and words, we will have less raw human processing ability to apply to each instance we encounter... eventually we'll have to stop paying any attention at all and switch to a purely 'pull' paradigm of product information gathering if we want to be as free as possible from manipulation... and even then, what we pull will have gone through a filtering process... and for most people, who has the time to apply that to even a fraction of their existence... of course, we could always start censoring... and controlling information flow and then actual products themselves, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you want...
BTW... just saw a info-blurb on CNN about some story segment they're doing in the next while... it's called Hidden Secrets... a prime example of pointless language.... aren't secrets by nature, hidden? If a secret isn't hidden, doesn't it stop being a secret? But Hidden and Secret on their own, aren't very dramatic or attention-grabbing, and that's all they want to do... I don't think they really even care much about the story they're telling... just the story they're selling...
I know what you mean, but this is different. It's advertising merging with Marxist class struggle - or, rather, the Apple leaders promoting both class struggle and Mac computers in one package. Relying on viral marketing at that. Poisoning the minds...
On the one hand, no one has the right to tell businesses how to work. On the other hand, business themselves don't have the right to do implicit political campaigning through product advertising. Every single one of Mac ads is carrying an implicitly political message. And those politics are of a subversive and insidious type, potentially destroying other businesses in bulk, not just their competitors.
The Apple leadership chose this campaign of associating subversive and sociopathic elements with coolness, and bundling their products with it. Political campaign finance laws (however imperfect) put strict limits on how businesses can spend money in supporting candidates or political parties. Apple has been acting outside of those laws for years doing just that - promoting left-wing liberal ideology at the expense of all others.
Think about all the attacks that Halliburton and Big Oil™ have suffered for their perceived support of war-mongering politics in order to profit on war and death. Apple is doing just what the left-wing loonies suggest Halliburton and Big Oil™ are doing - only on the other end of it. One might say that it's different because liberal politics don't result in wars and death. But that is not true. Left-wing politics have caused, directly or indirectly, more death, suffering, and destruction than all "military-industrial complexes" combined. From the USSR, Eastern Europe, to China to Cambodia to Latin America to Africa. I also tend to lump fascism with other socialist movements - and nobody will deny the killer nature of that animal. But even without the fascist cousins, the death toll of socialism is overwhelming.
The problems that Africa faces today are the direct result of left-wing meddling by Western politicians and advocacy groups that would support any dictator as long as he declares himself a proponent of nationalized resources, planned economy, socialized public services, and compliance with environmental regulations that result in famines, malaria, and other diseases. "Conflict diamonds" are the result of warlords fighting for power over fiefdoms with guaranteed nationalized resources. I call it neo-feudalism, but that's a different story. They're all the people who "think different."
Imagine the USA taken over by the "thinking different" socialists who begin to regulate computer industry. Which computer do you think they will make the official prescribed government-sponsored computer? It would be Mac, of course, unless Bill Gates comes up with a way to bribe the new People's Masters in a more creative way than Jobs and Al Gore can. But government corruption follows a bit later. In their first months, revolutions usually run on purely idealistic fumes. So that would make Mac to be the official People's Computer, just like Volkswagen was made the official People's Car of the Nazi Germany. I haven't researched this fact myself, but I hear that Volkswagen actively supported the People's Fascists because with such friends in a totalitarian government they could easily destroy all competition and never worry about the volatile market anymore.
Apple supports the ideas of those politicians who want to regulate economy. When politicians begin to regulate economy businesses react by bribing politicians. The result is a system that allows corporations to have a political pull. They start pulling the blanket each towards itself - not by market means, but by political means. Some people define fascism as merging business and politics. I agree. Apple is ahead of everybody in this. And those liberals who made it their life's work to expose the evil nature of "corporate fascism" won't complain about Apple even if an Apple computer hits them on the head, robs their house, and kidnaps their children. They have their orders: THINK DIFFERENT. Which means LOOK THE OTHER WAY.
Perhaps some people who use Apples refuse to be part of a class of any sort. I see this as a David and Goliath tale, not a metaphor for class struggle, but then I've never been subjected to Marxism. (Thank God I went to a geek school in the 70s.) But Apple as Marxist subversion? Sorry. Can't buy it.
I will admit to the insufferable smugness of Apple users, myself included. It's hard, however, to avoid when people constantly complain in the Windows world about things being hard to get working. And I will admit that never having used Windows has simplified my life: in this small town it was known that knew about computers back in the late 70s, and I was perhaps the first person in town to have one--a Cromemco. Now a boat anchor. So I would have had no life for fixing Windows machines if I had one. And still wouldn't.
But I digress--no shock there. Many things are marketed as cool. Nike, Sandals, the resorts, Carnival Cruises, Disney World, and it's merely marketing. Everything that can be marketed as cool is marketed as cool. Even that dick pill, Enzyte, is marketed as cool. The Army is marketed as cool, and they're right about that.
If you, for example, quoted the Peat, Marwick study showing that both MS and Macs could do the same things but that the learning curve was much longer on the PC, people's eyes would glaze over. But show a skinny, ugly kid needing a shave smirking at a fat dork and people think it's cool. It's stupid, but cool.
I do not care for the fact that <i>most</i> political contributions from Silicon Valley go to the left, but it is an unfortunate fact of personality that people with lots of ability often think that they're qualified to prescribe for others. Having effortlessly done what they wanted to do, they feel that the simple application of brain power gives them the wisdom to tell others what to do.
I do not. That's why I'm a conservative. I am, frankly, good meat for a liberal--a man who has done one or two things without trouble, of means, and who lives in a town of people with very little education and resources, and so it would be natural to want to prescribe for, that is, to rule people. But that's evil and foolish and just plain wrong.
If we boycott companies that enable the left, we'd have to resort to artisanal wares, and they're usually made by hippie types. Mobil Corporation, now Exxon, sponsored <i>Masterpiece Theatre</i> [sick] in hopes that PBS would let them alone. The sniveling government-paid pinks at PBS did not.
ADM, that industrial-strength welfare queen, gives equally to both sides of the aisle. Bill Gates gives more now, having been told in no uncertain terms that he'll pay, either paying lawyers to fight off Justice or in direct contributions.
Apple is smug. But really no more so than the people I deal with daily in the legal business, who ask, "You have a MAC?" Meaning that no one does and therefore I'm nuts.
It's just a goddamned computer and a clever marketing exercise.
Well, I'm sticking with my CommuProl 3 TableTop computer.
Ask Al Gore post Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:13 am wrote:Any computer that is made by degenerate capitalist warmongers like Apple or Dell or any of the other expropriators of workers labor should never have been in the possession of a Party member in the first place. Throw these computers out with rest of garbage at once.
I advise you to put in your requisition forms for latest CommuProl 3 TableTop computer.
This is the communal home computer of the future:
Proud Party member Comrade Otis with his new tabletop CommuProl 3.
The CommuProl 3 is only computer with Party Compliant fire-wall. This fire-wall will keep out all capitalist exploitation thus allowing you to remain free. Plus it comes fully equipped with new updated version of ICU2 spyware created by comrade scientist Gore and already indelibly burned into the ROM for your added protection.
Comrade Otis, I bow to you. I think that I'll chuck my Apple even though is the computer of the fruit, by the fruits, and for this fruit, and get out the old 12AX7 twin triodes and set up a computing room in my dacha. The CompuProl 3 will take a lot of power, though; do you suppose we can enlist Sister Massively Opiated's endless power source that she found for the Hildo 7.0?
And while we're at it, I don't think that the Hildo 7.0 really can be started by a touch on a screen. I think it would take a kick-starter to start off a Briggs-and-Stratton engine to start a Cummins diesel to turn over a steam turbine to turn on a diesel dyke.
But, Comrade Otis, have you found that when you use Excel on the CompuProl 3 that all amortization schedules are limited to a five-year plan?
Commissar Theocritus wrote:But, Comrade Otis, have you found that when you use Excel on the CompuProl 3 that all amortization schedules are limited to a five-year plan?
Dearest comrade Theocritus, the five-year plan is not a "limit," it is a liberating tool. Amortization schedules are not and never will be something the Party need concern itself with. There is no cost that needs to be written off over time. This is a very bizarre way of looking at the world, comrade.
Yes, Sister Massively Opiated's endless power source can handle it. She is tapped in to the Dinah-Moe Humm.
Commissar Theocritus wrote:But, Comrade Otis, have you found that when you use Excel on the CompuProl 3 that all amortization schedules are limited to a five-year plan?
Dearest comrade Theocritus, the five-year plan is not a "limit," it is a liberating tool. Amortization schedules are not and never will be something the Party need concern itself with. There is no cost that needs to be written off over time. This is a very bizarre way of looking at the world, comrade.
Yes, Sister Massively Opiated's endless power source can handle it. She is tapped in to the Dinah-Moe Humm.
In The Progressive World of Next Tuesday™, double-entry accounting - one of many thought-crime artifacts of the the Florentine City-State, and perpetrated by Cosimo de Medici (himself a thought-criminal in retrospect, along with so many other Florentines... Savonarola "de Barbequezza"... Leonardo da Vinci... Machiavelli... Boticelli... I know for a fact that it wasn't rattus norvegicus or rattus rattus that was responsible for bringing the black death to Florence in the 14th century, but rather, a direct result of double-entry accounting!) - will be banned, along with the "Financial Institutions" it perpetrates (The Securities and Exchange Commission... the World Bank... ZOG... The Bilderberg). Concepts such as amortization and depreciation will be relegated to the dung-heap of "a cruel accounting", as will such notions of profit and loss (which of course denote not only ownership but winning and losing... Peh!)... Utility will be the order of the day and the only metric with which we will concern ourselves!
Similarly, as we will have brought back to the people the work of the genius Nikolai Tesla, our current power problems will be disappeared... The pixie juice will run freely, and every home will have a Tesla coil... as will the notion of a shortage of processing power (when we free ourselves from the constraints of such bourgeoise concepts as E = mc2, quantum processing will free us from all limitations, just as we will be freed from the constraints of gravity so that each of us may float to our respective new homes on Potyomkingrad)... That's right! The Cube gives all In The Progressive World of Next Tuesday™...
But I mustn't forget... the Dinah-Moe Humm. In the interim, until we achieve The Progressive World of Next Tuesday™, we will be relying on the Dinah-Moe Humm for our Zappa... it is a powerful generator of many different forces, each of which can be controlled by channelling their output through a gauntlet of Moonbats, all aligned to face toward Gitmo who, when chanting in unison, can turn the mysterious output of the Dinah-Moe Humm into useful energy. All that is required in terms of input is lots and lots of granola... and the occasional tuning with a set of zircon encrusted tweezers...
So... Have no fear, brave Theocritus. The future is bright!
<man... I think my fever's gone up again... where's that jug of DM cough syrup? hack hack...
... ... zzzz... zzzz... zzzz>
I remember a certain passage in the Plugran that speaks of such a power source... It has been a while since I attended mass at the Church of Appliantology
errhhhmmm....
Sony 11:4
Let the toasters rejoice for thine hour of hope is nigh, for all broken parts shall be mended by the State upon the arrival of the Dinah-Moe Humm, and the Maytag Repairman said it was good.
Why does the Commuprol 3 have a steering wheel? Is the steering wheel just for amusement or does it actually have a function (everybody and everything must have a function, the Party wills it!).
Sister Massively Opiated wrote:In The Progressive World of Next Tuesday™, double-entry accounting - one of many thought-crime artifacts of the the Florentine City-State, and perpetrated by Cosimo de Medici (himself a thought-criminal in retrospect, along with so many other Florentines... Savonarola "de Barbequezza"... Leonardo da Vinci... Machiavelli... Boticelli... I know for a fact that it wasn't rattus norvegicus or rattus rattus that was responsible for bringing the black death to Florence in the 14th century, but rather, a direct result of double-entry accounting!
I thought that the perpetrator of double-entry accounting was Leonardo da Vinci's catamite Count Francesco Melzi. And seeing that Leonardo also had Salai, the older catamite, with pride of place, surely that chez Leonardo (for he did die in France) was the home of double-entry accounting. But Leonardo did work for Cosimo, didn't he? So it must have been a ring of double-entry accountants. You know how those buggers are. I've heard something about that.
But, honorable Chairman Punchenko, I see a schismatic streak in you which must be purged. It was only yesterday it seems that you were advocating applianology and all things appliance, and were even proudly being toaster-sexual, before that tart-popping tart Helen popped out of your life. Since we have entered the world of Double Entry Accounting, the Maytag repairman must become an un-person because his is a lonely life, and that is no-entry accounting.
Definitely heretical. I sentence you to three double-declining balances, which will take you forever, for I trust implicitly Comrade Otis' claims that amortization never comes to the end and is never amortized. So you have ahead of you three eternities, deprived of appliances.
But there is cognitive dissonance! The immersion blender, the boat motor, is an appliance but in its three-phrase incarnation can be harnessed as a Dina-Moe Humm. Everything is nothing, all freedom is slavery and up is down and Algore is smart.
Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:Why does the Commuprol 3 have a steering wheel? Is the steering wheel just for amusement or does it actually have a function (everybody and everything must have a function, the Party wills it!).
No, Glorious Chairmen. University presidents are given balls which are utterly without function.
Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:Why does the Commuprol 3 have a steering wheel? Is the steering wheel just for amusement or does it actually have a function (everybody and everything must have a function, the Party wills it!).
It has a steering wheel because it is a portable version of the Commuprol 3 tabletop computer.
Anyone who is wondering if Mac's are better than PC's should just hear this: Mac sells more iPod's than computers. There are more PC's sold than iPods. Plus, PC's can be upgraded and changed. Although that's what makes Mac's so simple. As soon as it needs to be upgraded, instead of having to buy a new part for it, spend an entire several minutes putting it inside the computer, you just throw it away, and buy a new one. That simple.
Er, Premier Betty, the iPod is not actually meant to be a computer any more than a television is. If you want a new one, bigger drive or video, buy it and plug it in. But your point about replacing things in the computer in an iMac is true--you'd better buy it built the way you want for it's difficult to crack the case. Still, there are very few options, and they're all upgrades. For example, the 24" iMac which ought to arrive tomorrow is a special build--with 256MB video to drive that plus a second monitor, an extra GB of RAM, and, here's the real reason--a 750GB hard drive to hold 2,250 CDs ripped in Apple Lossless format.
You can do this on a PC if you want, for iTunes is available, but for most people, not uberGeeks like me, why? The standard iMac comes with a 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, Intel Core 2 Duo, 802.11(n) (!) WiFi; Bluetooth; Infrared remote control; gigabit Ethernet; 3 USB 2.0 ports, 2 1.1 ports; 1 Firewire 400 port; Mini-DVI port; Optical and analog In/Out, and a camera. Other things, like externals drives, are dependended from it by FireWire or USB, and by the way, no driver software needed.
And perhaps the ComprProl 3 has a steering wheel because it has a steering committee.
uh-huh... I upgraded lots of stuff in my Mac... and I really just use my iPods as portable storage... for music, video... all kinds of files... though it can sorta be used as a mini-computer... there's even a fold out keyboard for it... still... not more than a glorified PDA...
I just got an 80GB iPod, mostly used for storage, too. And, damnit, the 2005 Acura TL doesn't have an iPod connection and the FM transmitters are too weak to reach to the back. A snake in my Garden of Eden.
I used to upgrade Macs myself, and have the tower at work, up to 3.5GB, which I don't need, but there is something about memory and men--the more you have the more you think you have.
But for work stations for data entry, the iMac as it stands is really overkill. Who really needs Bluetooth, or iLife, to enter instruments into a land-title database, called, of course Minerva, after the goddess of wisdom? On the computer Jupiter, and the hard disk Ulula--owl. And that utterly exhausts my knowledge of Hegel.
Whaddya mean it doesn't have an iPod connection... does't it have a cigarette lighter or plug... you get a stereo adaptor (yeah... the FM thingy that the iPod sits in where you find an empty station) but then you can get an FM modulator/booster put INTO your car stereo and it amplifies the signal - you just have to have somone pull the stereo out and attach it or do it yourself if you're comfortable... it boosts the signal - even an "empty" one that the iPod adaptor will ride... it's the same way old CD changers used to work because they needed a booster - it's not strictly speaking an amplifier... and they're cheap cheap now... it's a pretty good workaround and will let you use your iPod on the car stereo.
Premier Betty wrote:Anyone who is wondering if Mac's are better than PC's should just hear this: Mac sells more iPod's than computers. There are more PC's sold than iPods. Plus, PC's can be upgraded and changed. Although that's what makes Mac's so simple. As soon as it needs to be upgraded, instead of having to buy a new part for it, spend an entire several minutes putting it inside the computer, you just throw it away, and buy a new one. That simple.
Sister Massively Opiated wrote:Was Nixon always standing behind you in stormtrooper body armour, or were you up to something really creepy when you were gone all weekend?
Just rallying the Nixon clones of the New Peoples Red Army.
Oh... speaking of which... I've had this sitting in the Stock Photos/Cube file for a while now... I was gonna spring it on Meow, but it seems appropriate at the point...
Yes, I know about the workarounds for the FM transmitter, but that passes, barely, my geek threshold, the Rubicon I refused to cross when I tired of cleaning the contacts of S100 boards with an ink eraser or sanding the pins of KT88 power pentodes--what could I have been thinking, I wondered. I will have to have it pulled for a connection because even at best the FM isn't good--the frequency response is poor and the channel separation only, what, 25dB? Because of the 38KHz subcarrier that enables FM stereo. A lousy stereo system, just like NTSC's color model. (Even though at my age I'm not supposed to hear above 10KHz, I notice the absence of harmonics. Won't do for harpsichord.)
(By the way, if you want a real bowing to the proles, look at the color NTSC model and FM Stereo--and Windows, on DOS, for a matter of fact. In order not to break something old, they strapped on something grossly inferior and with NTSC and FM it wasn't until digital electronics, which de natura broke the mold, that we got rid of the grossly inferior standard. And I'm told that Vista may have a modern kernel. Hasn't NT had one for a while?)
And how did I of all people miss the homoerotic overtones of Betty's avatar? Perhaps the idea of having Nixon stand behind me is an instance of Douglas Adam's Someone Else's Problem field--it causes invisiblity because everyone who sees it doesn't, being convinced that it's Someone Else's Problem.
And, Bvt. Field Marshall Pravda, if you don't need software, why is it that every single thing that I get for dual use has a CD which I don't need? My Sony K790a cell phone? The 160GB USB 2.0 drive? The 5-USB 2.0 PCI card? The 17" LG monitor I just got? Want the CD? Unopened. All unopened, because I have sandstone Texas coasters. Which I keep in the closet--just about the only thing--because that looks, er, gay.
I'm told that you no longer have to flip switches on cards either, depending on what slot the card is in. If your computer has slots--a mixed blessing, of course. And do you still have to configure Ethernet connections? I just plug a cable between switch and peripheral, or if I don't need a network, between computer and peripheral, as the Ethernet port is auto-configuring.
SMO, your People's Penis Power jockstrap is wonderful, but not being a man you might not know that market appeal would be greatly inhanced if the logo were lower down, by about 3" and if it were <i>heavily</i> embroidered. Think East German Women's Shot-put Team.
The Lenin Code is best kept secret of Communism which will shake the foundations of what you were taught in Publik Educashion. It's a secret that only few know and one that could destroy our entire movement... from start to finish. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky... all of them... the motivation behind the revolution was.....................
Commissar Theocritus wrote:Yes, I know about the workarounds for the FM transmitter, but that passes, barely, my geek threshold, the Rubicon I refused to cross when I tired of cleaning the contacts of S100 boards with an ink eraser or sanding the pins of KT88 power pentodes--what could I have been thinking, I wondered.
For myself, convolution for convolution's sake extends only to language... but if you must, it isn't my car, and I don't have to live with the inevitable consequences... for that, I have Javier... who has once again misplaced the portable phone with the battery dead...
Commissar Theocritus wrote:And how did I of all people miss the homoerotic overtones of Betty's avatar? Perhaps the idea of having Nixon stand behind me is an instance of Douglas Adam's Someone Else's Problem field--it causes invisiblity because everyone who sees it doesn't, being convinced that it's Someone Else's Problem.
The first thing that popped into my mind too as soon as I read your posed question (strike that... are there any other kinds?... ow!... that hurt even me...)... though it also immediately reminded me of the couch stuck in the staircase in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul... or was it Holistic Detective Agency... it's been a while, though DA has been on my mind quite a bit lately as I will shortly achieve 42... that particular question still not formulated.
Commissar Theocritus wrote:I'm told that you no longer have to flip switches on cards either, depending on what slot the card is in.
I don't think it even matters what slot it's in anymore... I'm pretty sure they're self-assigning... no?
Commissar Theocritus wrote:SMO, your People's Penis Power jockstrap is wonderful, but not being a man you might not know that market appeal would be greatly inhanced if the logo were lower down, by about 3" and if it were <i>heavily</i> embroidered. Think East German Women's Shot-put Team.
Not actually mine... just a repatriated foto... as for placement of embroidery and East German Women's Shot-put Team, perhaps I am lacking in imagination but I'm having trouble figu... OH! Glory Be!... Nevermind... I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes...
Sister Massively Opiated wrote:as for placement of embroidery and East German Women's Shot-put Team, perhaps I am lacking in imagination but I'm having trouble figu... OH! Glory Be!... Nevermind... I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes...
Someone will have to explain that to me. Privately, if necessary.
Back when <i>National Lampoon</i> was still funny, or I was young (?), it ran the cover story about the doping of the East German women's Olympians. And that was just before, I think, that they started instigating DNA tests (did they have them then? Don't know) to see if the women were born that way. Because, evidently, even a man who's had some extreme circumcision, shall we say, still is stronger than a woman born to the sex.
On the cover of NL was an East German woman athelete in shorts and shirt, and with tennis balls as balls.
This was topped by <i>Spy</i> magazine which ran perhaps a decade ago a picture of Our Many Titted Empress dressed in the classic Marilyn Monroe shot, the one with her standing over an air vent blowing her skirt up, and that ecstatic look on her face. I bet that was worth at least a gross' ruined underwear to the Kennedy clan alone.
This one had Hillary with the skirt up, and the underwear were a man's shorts, and very plainly outlined was a man's full set of equipment, and my guess is that the art director was one of the committee because that Hillary was very well equipped, even not standing at attention.
On the cover of NL was an East German woman athelete in shorts and shirt, and with tennis balls as balls.
Close... April '76... I think maybe the memory got filtered through a later event, because I remember there was a tennis (?) player from East Germany (or not... ) who had been reassigned as female... and some controversy when they discovered that chromasomally, she was male... it was before DNA testing.
However, as CO knows, my favourite all-time issue is October '82 - The advent of OC and Stiggs... or their very own issue, anyway... and not necessarily the best issue ever... it's just got a great deal of sentimental value attached to it for me as part of a family legacy.
And, Bvt. Field Marshall Pravda, if you don't need software, why is it that every single thing that I get for dual use has a CD which I don't need? My Sony K790a cell phone? The 160GB USB 2.0 drive? The 5-USB 2.0 PCI card? The 17" LG monitor I just got?
I have no idea why they include that stuff (and I have seen it) unless some llama is still running 95 or 98...XP doesn't need drivers for peripherals like these (what's up with drivers for a monitor??)...I have all that stuff connected to my 5 pc's and never have to install drivers for external drives, card readers etc...I'm sure there are proprietary-type peripherals out there that need soft install to work (mp3 players? I dunno; I'm no genius), but those are exceptions in my (limited) experience.
Close... April '76... I think maybe the memory got filtered through a later event, because I remember there was a tennis (?) player from East Germany (or not... ) who had been reassigned as female... and some controversy when they discovered that chromasomally, she was male... it was before DNA testing.
...and then there was the whole Renee Richards thing...big brewhaha about whether she should be allowed play women's or men's matches...mixed doubles etc...eewww haven't thought of Renee Richards in a LONG time lol....
There was some flap, I believe, about an ex-man golfer who was allowed to play as a woman. To me there seemed to be something terribly Freudian about hitting a ball.
Re the <i>Spy</i> magazine picture of Hillary cum package. I have it. On the wall of my office. I shall scan it in tomorrow and mail it to Our Glorious Leader.
See? I'm good for something except bitching and projecting what is left of my religious belief onto the Windows infidels from my madrassa in Pecos, Texas. Where, if I am good enough and die in service to Jobs, I shall awake in Paradise to 73 virgins.
Wait! Wait! Wait! Complete meltdown here coming up. Oh why didn't I see that?
I'd use the Packing Hillary one if we didn't already have a Hillary. I spend little time surfing places with pictures, and frankly have little visual sense, but I'll look. Also there is the problem of having no image-editing program. Sacrilege, I know, but my copy of Photoshop is antiquated and on the advice of SMO in a private love-feast we're having, she suggested that I wait until the new one gets out of buggy beta. Since we are brothers-in-arms against the Windows world (although she has walked the dark side more than I have) I'll take her advice.
...could always download a trial version of PS2 until CS3 gets outta beta... free for a month...
https://www.adobe.com/downloads/ Go down to Adobe Photoshop® CS2 and hit "Try"... what am I telling you this for.... you can navigate the website yourself... heheheheh... Again... just don't download the beta of CS3... it's a pain and the clean version(s) will be released soon (they're kinda de-bundling CS)...
<Actually... I think it is the duty of all good Cubists to download a trial version of PS if they don't have a graphics programme... PROMOTE THE PEOPLE'S ART!!! FOR THE CHILDREN!!!>
I just tried a work-around using Photobooth for the camera on the iMac--with round Lenin glasses and a neon haze for the fires of a hell I don't believe in but which I'd believe in as an exception for Vladimir. And then Preview, a general-purpose JPEG/PDF/PICT/PNG viewer, and can't get it down to a size small enough to be accepted. And the image-editing tweaks in Word are very good for a WP document. There must be another way.
I expect that I'll have to try the downloaded version, if nothing else to reduce the palette to get it down to 6KB.
Commissar Theocritus wrote:Actually since the Mac is using Intel Core 2 Duo, there is no difference in processing power, and various magazines compared Dell machines tricked out against Mac ones for power--and the Mac was cheaper. And that was before the Core 2 Duo.
And regarding Windows programs. You can, if you wish, install a version of Windows using Boot Camp, which is free, but you have to reboot into the other OS. You have a Windows machine. Or you can used Parallels Desktop, which lets you have one Mac window overlapping a Windows one.
But here's the magic trick: <a href="https://www.codeweavers.com">Code Weaver</a> lets you run Windows programs WITHOUT a Windows OS, and lets you run, for example, a MS Office suite licensed under Windows on the Mac. Utterly legal and transparent, so I'm told. Reviews are good. And if I understand the technology, well, it has to be thus, you would have the versatility of Windows without the vulnerability. As of midyear last year, there were over 114,000 viruses for Windows. Zero for the Mac. Which has, by the way, a built-in firewall, both hardware and software. The browsers check for apps, and if you have to okay their download. This does not protect you from viruses in Excel or Word macros, though: but set your Office products to ask before enabling macros, and that's solved.
Code Weavers uses box-in-a-box technology, mapping the primitive Windows DOS calls (for they are really that) to the more sophisicated Mac EFI calls, and since they're both Intel, you've got the best of both worlds.
And check on the prices, too. The Mac's base prices are more than the bare-bones Windows machines, but come with a hell of a lot more. The apple website has prices virtually as good as Macconnection or MacWarehouse or MacZone, and you can get special-builds too--like the 750GB 24" iMac I'm squirming in my seat for. Like Hillary sensing a pocket she hasn't picked or a volition she hasn't commandeered.
There. Couldn't resiste a jibe at our Many Titted Empress. I wonder if she pays her pedicurist--no manicurist for her--when she didn't pay her hairsylist.
And for the Mac user... If it has an Intel, you can make a Mac run Windows XP and Vista. You need a program called "Boot Camp" to do so.
I knew that boots would be involved sooner or later. And camps too. And yeah, everybody depends on a program, one way or another. Keep intel coming. We need intel to populate camps. Windows will be few, but the fewer the windows, the fewer the drafts, it's cold enough where they're at.
It never crashes, needs no IT support, no backup power system. More portable than a laptop, it doesn't need Wi-fi, and when Dear Leader sends sprouting mushroom clouds over the decadent West and all the micro-chips are fried like rice and kim-chee, the world will be clamoring for this great People's Technology!
Laika,
We used these almost exclusively in the Kanadistanjian bunkers until last year's cold snap, when we had to break them up for fire wood... However, we now have a nice mail-order moonbat beaded necklace business on the side, and some of the counters are made of dried beans which are high in protein!
I just unpacked a 24" iMac with a 750GB drive which will hold 2250 CDs ripped in Apple Lossless Format, and I have Airport Express, and have on order Apple TV to grapple it all from the ether. This 24" monitor redefines big--and bright.
I just realized that I've been sublimating sex by a fruit computer. The Brits call a slot machine a fruit machine. But I'm a fruit, but I don't have any slots. And I've been staring at this machine too long.
But perhaps it's culture shock. In El Paso last night I used the lobby Windows machine in the Residence Inn for webmail. And was astonished by the crudeness of it--the buttons in odd places, the ugly typefaces--a North Korean Disneyland. After that I went to Juarez and wound up by accident in Boys' town, where the people of the evening were advertising American Express, Mastercard, and Vista, and therefore I knew it really must suck.
But I have found the perfect People's Caranvanserai: The Generation Two Residence Inns by Marriott. Every amenity, and I use that word in the way of the most cynical and calculating property developer, was so precisely judged to be as cheap as possible but to be acceptable to the (vulgarian) price point that I felt like processed cheese. And of course at every juncture I was assaulted by a Red Book of mission statements, well wishes, flattery about how hard I worked, even calling me a road warrior--and I left my jackboots at home--and I was given all the attention as a human being that is given to a Lada being assembled by serfs so badly hung over by poisoned firewater that their life span might stretch to 55.
It never crashes, needs no IT support, no backup power system. More portable than a laptop, it doesn't need Wi-fi, and when Dear Leader sends sprouting mushroom clouds over the decadent West and all the micro-chips are fried like rice and kim-chee, the world will be clamoring for this great People's Technology!
hehe...we actually used those in grade school...1st or 2nd grade I think...the nuns...OMG THE NUNS!!!!
It's the priests that I worry about. I've only known one honest one and I know he's honest because I used to date him--before he took the cloth of course; if he didn't hold his vows seriously enough not to screw around he'd be of no interest. But I digress. Again.
Speaking of priest dating... there is this God awful show on Fox right now called "Red Eye"... oh, and it's red alright. There is this NYT thing on the panel... and, and... ugh, my ears are bleeding now and my head is hurting... I think Roger is going after the 18-30 (or 10-13) brain dead lib. demographic... uggh, where is my remote!! MY KINGDOM, MY KINGDOM FOR A REMOTE!
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. ~ Ayn Rand
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