Posts by Richard 102

Ugly bugger

It looks like a Nike sneaker with encephalitis.

@So it's

"slower, with a much shorter range, and costs a lot more"

Sound about right for our post-post-modern world.

@AC @14:29GMT

I think 300 Comp Lit majors in Bloomington, IN, made de Klerk suddenly pause and say "Hang on, might this need rethinking?" Oh, call me cynical, ...

It's like lefties talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall or the religious right talking about how advanced Western civilization.

It's Boulder, CO, folks

I went to grad school there. Bunch of idiots there who think industrialization is terrible and capitalism a scourge, before they go skiing or fly to Cancun for spring break.

@Sarah Bee

"it was an official gesture"

Uh, yeah. I myself have several official gestures for the government bottom-feeders. None of them SFW.

@David Laurence

Hey, you didn't play Officer Crabtree on Allo Allo, did you?

(Goot Moaning.)

Isn't it possible

... that Ms. Love signed but doesn't recall signing? Hm, now how could that happen ...

@Swarthy

iTunes started as SoundJam (who else here used that?) in the OS9, maybe OS8 days. It was MP3-oriented from the word go.

My own feeling is that Palm is being, at best, slippery. If they want to use the iTunes set-up, fine. It's a directory structure of MP3/AAC files, organized with an XML file. Sending the wrong USB ID to claim you are an iPod? Mm, sorry. That opens up a can of security worms, to be honest.

Um ...

"we're excited about it."

Jeebus, and I thought *my* life was boring.

You know, I'm feeling better about me. Thanks, google!

@Goat Jam

"I always understood that Vista was really a rushed touch up to XP done at the last minute after they totally gave up on Longhorn."

You are absolutely correct. I'm an OS X user and a longtime programmer in Unix environments. However, Longhorn intrigued me when I first heard about it and what they were working on: a new kernel written from the ground up, a new and improved security/permission paradigm, an OO file system, a new shell that used the best-of-breed features of shell/scripting/interpreted languages, etc etc etc.

However, a couple things happened along the way. Win2K was pretty successful, but when Apple released OS X (and, gasp, seemed to be recovering and attracting people) in late 2001, it took MicroSoft by surprise. (Not that they were alone.) In the meantime, Apple was releasing software like iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, etc, not to mention the iPod, that were turning heads and attracting buyers on the consumer side. On the corporate side, most Unix vendors were happily falling on their swords, but Linux was becoming a serious player. MicroSoft have always touted how cheap Windows was compared to Unix, but how do you compete with free?

So Apple was impressing people and winning users who were sick of the Windows security problems. And a lot of these people were tech-savvy. I recall that in the company I worked for at the time, the Windows administrators bought iBooks for their personal use. That says a lot.

So there was Microsoft, with Longhorn already looking shaky, and wondering what to do. They released XP, a name which drew laughs because of its similarity to the name of Apple's OS, and which is basically a Win2K service pack with a new skin slapped on it. I recall that most people at the time were saying "Why do I need to pay that much for a new interface? Win2K runs fine on my machine, I don't want to buy a new one, not all my drivers will work with XP, ..." Sound familiar?

So yes, Vista was more or less a last-minute XP, but XP itself was more or less a last-minute 2K.

The more things change, ...

@OrsonX

Apple will sometimes do this, giving a new feature to a lower-tier part of the lineup. Generally this means that: A) the lower-tier part of the lineup is facing direct competition from a competitor and needs the differentiator; B) they've got something bigger in mind for the higher-end item; C) they still haven't worked all the kinks out, just 99.99%; D) they hate you; E) some of the above.

Wah

If AT&T/SBC is losing money, maybe they need to look at themselves for a change.

Wankers. Remember, SBC was the company that told the FCC that the problems with their missing scheduled land-line installed dates was that the people in the Midwest expected them to show up and do the installations on the date that SBC had chosen.

(Where's a Darth Vader/Deathstar icon when you need one?)

@Hud Dunlap

And where is AT&T based? Right, San Antonio. I mean, you'd think that if there were ANY place they'd want to do well, it would be in their home town ...

@Do Not Fold Spindle Mutilate

[Standing ovation]

Replies

I wonder if Nigel Tuffnel is the lead research scientist.

FWIW, the US never did regard the IRA as freedom fighters; the Kennedy family did. (Old Joe, mob boss that he was, knew how to get them money and weapons.)

This weapon may seem impractical today, but in the sense that arquebusiers would have seemed to Napoleon. They're developing a new weapon system; you have to work your way up to the battlefield-ready ones.

And negotiating with/ignoring/appeasing terrorists worked so well during the previous two Democrat administrations that it surely is a wonderful idea now. (I had three friends die in the World Trade Center attack. I don't have a lot of inclination to be appeasing terrorists.)

Be careful

I just filed a patent on the letter 'e'. You all owe me big time.

@AC @9:56GMT

"photoshopping a goat into a 'nice' picture of the wife for a valentines message..."

Nurse, he's out of bed again!

Unfortunately ...

... the artificial trees can only be made in a process that extracts CFCs from clubbed baby harp seals.

With sand imported from Arabia.

@Jason Bloomberg

"but then who is the law meant to protect"

The lawyers and the government.

Odd how it seems like the US

I am an American and have lived in quite a few areas of the country. I'm from the Midwest and I always have heard how terrible it is here. Yeah, the winters are rough, but not as grim as they are in New England. Yes, we have tornados, but Californians deal with earthquakes, drought, fires, race riots, and near-Scandanavian taxation; I'll take the tornados. Yes, the South is warmer, but as soon as the temperature hits 78F they stay inside because it's too hot, and they don't get winter frosts to kill of bugs and diseases. Etc etc etc. Every place sucks in its own way. Eventually I moved back to the Midwest to stay.

But as I rove through this great land of ours, I meet quite a few transplanted Midwesterners. By and large, they would like to move back, but their job/family/etc prevent it. I guess you don't know what you miss until it's gone.

A question for our UK friends

Do Thatcher, Major, and Blair seem that bad now?

Just curious.

Can't see it.

In the last decade or so, Apple either does something new, or gets into markets that are stagnant and limited and have devices that are mediocre at best. They didn't invent the MP3 player, but the iPod swarmed over the others because of its simple interface, easy-to-use software, ... then came smart playlists, the iTunes Store, photo, video, ... you know how it went. Ditto with the iPhone. Like it or not, it changed the playing field. People who would never before have even considered a smart phone, like my 70 year old parents, are considering an iPhone. Marketing? Maybe, but they also see the maps, some (to them) killer app, an easy-to-use interface, a simple way to take and make calls, ...

Now, HD TV? Sorry, don't see it. Unless there is some integration with the AppleTV, or that device gets embedded, ... Nah.

@raving angry loony

"What the HELL is the USPTO using as filters for these applications, lobotomized baboons??"

Anybody with any knowledge or competence at all in IT is probably working somewhere other than the USPTO. Trust me, you can have more fun and more money working in grey corporate IT.

Meh

This is pretty standard. I worked for a company in a very specialized market (pharma/medical electronic publishing) with only about four or five companies in it. There was a 'gentleman's agreement' not to poach the other company's employees. Now, we were certainly free to apply for a job at the competitor's. We and the competitors were certainly free to advertise for people to fill a need. And given that two of the companies are based in the same town, there was some movement between people.

But actively poaching? That would have meant that the other companies would have started poaching your people.

So if Company X and Company Y, in the same industry, agree not to poach, this is not news. In fact, it makes complete sense. The employees aren't forbidding from moving, they aren't (or at least shouldn't be) bullied.

I think journalists, particularly those from a print background, don't get this, partly because most cities in the US have only one newspaper. Radio and TV people don't get as worked up about it, and unsurprisingly they have options within their own town. Go figure.

Stop press shocker!

Does anyone else get the impression that many of these researchers and analysts should have been eaten by wolves many years ago?

@AC@14:19

"Ugliest. Car. Ever."

Really? What about the Austin Allegro? AMC Pacer? Pontiac Aztek? Fiat Multipla? VW Thing? Gurgel Xef? Anything by Crosley? And this isn't even getting into the old Communist block, where design was done by someone with only an axe. Unless you count that leather-bodied car that stunned even Jeremy Clarkson.

Look, BMW's design has been going from bad to worse, but seriously, worst of all time?