nvidia

[Les Mikesell]

Craig White wrote:
> 
> I don't watch dvd's on my computer and used my Windows iTunes to rip my
> CD's into iTunes (legally). I used Linux to rip my DVD's into m4v/mp4
> format...does that make me a lawbreaker?

Yes, at least if you are in the US.  There's probably a case to be made 
for personal use of the DVD content, but not for using unlicensed 
software that uses techniques covered by patents to do it.

> I used to be vp of Apple user group...I am so disenchanted with Apple.

I don't get it.  The original Macs were useless too-small closed boxes 
with a single tasking OS.  Now they are some of the fastest things 
around, only slightly overpriced, run a full unix, and can run windows, 
linux or solaris in virtual machines under parallels or vmware. I don't 
see a down side there.

> The way I figure things, there is little difference between Apple and
> Microsoft with the sole exception being that Microsoft has enjoyed
> tremendous success selling desktop and server OS's.

And Apple has a real unix underneath.

> - They couldn't care less about businesses.

But you can compile and run all of your unix code.

> - Have to pay $100 annual extortion fee to get systems serviced in under
> 2 weeks.

Keeping spares works for PC's, it would probably work for Macs too.

> - Their hardware is terrific but excessively priced (all Apple mice
> excepted).

But since all prices have come down, it doesn't matter so much now.

> In fact, all of the Apple users tossed out their Apple
> 'mighty mouse' in favor of cheap, Kensington optical mouse.

I've sort-of gotten used to the mighty mouse.

> - Their user interface is entirely confused, ever changing,
> inconsistent, disadvantaged.

You can always run X base software if you prefer.  I usually run firefox 
and thunderbird so the location of the  close/minimize buttons is the 
biggest change when OS hopping.

> - Single button mouse, finder that continually morphs. 

The mighty mouse can do left/right clicks if you change the setting.

> - Sherlock has continually sucked.

What's a Sherlock?

> Dock sucks. Top Menu bar sucks.

So so... It's all pretty arbitrary.

> Worst
> thing about Macintosh...users have to be told where their files are
> saved - incredible.

You have it backwards.  Having to ever know where the files are is the 
problem - if that's the case for any of the included software.  For 
example, if you want to copy some files from itunes or iphoto you 
wouldn't go find the files themselves, you'd use the application 
features to get the songs or photos listed where you could select them 
and drag the titles or pictures to a folder/flash drive, etc.  If you 
are going to use a GUI at all you should go all the way and not care 
about locations or filenames.

> - They've done nothing to further development of OpenOffice.org
> software.

Why should they, any more than Dell would?  In fact they have their own 
'pages' which would be a competitor.

> - LDAP automount of home directories requires - of all things...an
> unauthenticated initial connection to the Linux server via AppleTalk
> (yeah, I compiled AppleTalk kernel module), and installing updates
> (10.4.x) shuts AppleTalk off and users can't mount their home
> directories until I log in as Administrator, turn AppleTalk back on and
> then log off again...perpetual beta. Probably not much hope that they've
> changed this on Leopard but I am not encouraging them to update at this
> point either.

Is this a Posix requirement or something in the UNIX spec?  If so it 
should be in Leopard.  If its not in a standards spec, I don't 
understand the complaint.

> Hardly surprising that a whole bunch of updates have already come out
> for Leopard...perpetual beta

What?

> The last 4 new Mac's that my office brought in took 3.5 hours to
> download and install updates onto shipped OS (time included 2 restarts).

In the time span from that OS release you would have had to download and 
install at least 2 versions of fedora, each of which would have had 
about 10x the updates to download.  The difference is that some of the 
fedora updates wouldn't have booted on some hardware.


-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com