JAYSUS GIRL!

Do you know how turned on geek columns make me? I still reeling from the last one you wrote with Ubuntu and all that.

(Homina homina homina…shake it off shake off!)

Lazy Ichi,

lmao! Got your hard drive spinning did I? :lol:

Thanks hon… ;)

nina

“The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef dont like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah”

OOOOH I love that song! Thanks a lot Nina!!! Now I’ll be rockin the freakin casbah all night…It’s stuck in my head! LOL
Rock the casbah…….
Rock the casbah….
smooches,
Neaya

<rant>

Apple doesn’t really charge a fair price for a competing product. If you were to compare two computers with equal specifications in terms of CPU speed, memory, hard drive (speed, size, etc) and all the other gewgaws, Apple would charge about $500 more. In addition, significant areas of utility software is not available for the Mac (For example AutoCAD - Yes, I’m sure there’s an alternative, but if your entire company uses AutoCAD and you have to use some knockoff, that’s a problem). What do you get for that $500? Well, an operating system that is much more stable and sturdy than Vista. Well, shit, I could program something more stable and sturdy than Vista, and I’m no programming genius. Better than XP? Debatable. Especially since Microsoft has had so many attacks on XP that they’ve closed most of the security holes, and the ones that are left are usually st00p1d uzers. Well, then, you get an interface that doesn’t suck like Windows. Again, debatable, as XP is more like OS X than PC users would like to admint, and Vista is even closer. Hardware? Strike three, as your post states. We’re left with style, which is a purely subjective thing, and I can’t really argue with it.

</rant>

All that said, Apple does a lot of things really well. Their interface IS actually superior to Vista and XP, and they have a lot of tools that are pretty fucking nifty (GarageBand is infinitely superior to any tool I’ve seen on the PC). They have had a lock on graphics processing for ages, and I believe still do.

In the end, it boils down to this: What are you going to use the system for? For business? Probably best to go with Windows XP. For graphics? Mac. Server stuff? Some flavour of linux/unix. Audio? Up in the air, probably Mac.

Oh, and MOST importantly:

The king called out his jet fighters..
said they better earn their pay
drop their bombs between the minarets
down the casbah WAAAAAAAAAAAY

The Perfect Chocolate

There is a small town that stands astride a decent-sized stream behind a thick forest of evergreens, deep at the
bottom of jagged peaks covered with snow. And in that town, at the end of a long, narrow, cobblestone street is a
small shop that sells chocolate. Not just any chocolate, but the chocolate; the one chocolatiers the world over try
to achieve, but never seem to come close. The shop makes and sells this one chocolate, not a variety of sweets,
just perfect bars of chocolate, sold by the pound. All of the townsfolk know of the tiny shop, so that’s where they
buy their chocolate. This is the town to live in if you’re a chocoholic.

The tiny shop’s proprietor, a middle aged man, is a master chocolatier who seemed to have been born knowing
how to mix cocoa and sugar and cream in the correct amounts to produce perfection. He had long ago hung a
small sign outside his shop that states simply, “chocolate shop.” The townspeople know they have a genius in their midst and they gladly pay a small premium for his wonderfully smooth and rich confection.

Years before, as a younger man, the chocolatier had taken an apprentice who was eager to learn how to make the chocolate, but on a much grander scale, with modern factory equipment.

The apprentice knew this was the
chocolate, the kind the world only dreamed about, and he wanted to make it by the ton, not the pound, and he
wanted to sell it everywhere, not just in the small town surrounded by mountains and forest. The master
chocolatier explained that his chocolate could not be made and sold this way. The magic was in the recipe and
the care with which the ingredients were folded together. A large factory wouldn’t be able to produce his chocolate in the perfect way and it wouldn’t taste or feel the same.
The apprentice tried to explain to the master that it didn’t matter, that it would still be better than almost any
chocolate anywhere and the world would beat down their door to buy it. It just had to be good enough. They could
advertise it on signs everywhere and give out samples in stores in every city and town. They would make
millions, the apprentice pleaded over and over, but the master simply wouldn’t hear of it. “It won’t be perfect and I don’t really believe in advertising anyway,” he finally said. And with that, just six months into a five-year
apprenticeship, they parted ways.

Of course, you already know what happened: the apprentice knew enough of the recipe to go off on his own, gather financing, build factories, bring aboard partners, hire advertising agencies and marketers and ended up selling the world his chocolate. And the world is none the wiser, it tastes good enough to them, for they have never been to the small town deep in the woods behind the mountains and tasted the chocolate at the end of the cobblestone street.

To this day, the master continues to sell his chocolate, the chocolate, to the small town’s grateful townsfolk. He
was content to make the perfect chocolate until he received, by his count, the one-thousandth flyer for the
apprentice’s chocolate proclaiming it to be the “world’s perfect chocolate.” By then, those flyers’ claims had worn
the master’s patience thin. He said to himself, simply, “it’s time.”

And so, the master went to work, blending, and mixing, and testing, and retesting. After almost a week of
continuous work, he stopped and looked at the product of his labor: a machine that could produce millions of
identical small confections that weighed just a few ounces. The secret of his tiny new sweet was that, once eaten, it produced a hunger that only his chocolate, the perfect chocolate, could satisfy. You see, each of the new tiny
white treats, while not exactly chocolate themselves, held a bit of the master’s magic hidden inside.

The master took some of his chocolate savings and, despite his reservations, purchased advertising, brought
aboard a few select partners of his own, hired marketers and began to sell the world his new little sweet. Upon
hearing of it, the apprentice scoffed at the tiny new sweet, having convinced himself long ago that his chocolate
actually was the best in the world, and thought that the master had given up trying to compete with him in the
chocolate business and was desperately trying something new. Bored, and without bothering to even taste the
master’s treat, he half-heartedly instructed his workers and partners to come up with something similar - after all, he might as well profit from this new dessert fad, too.

That’s where the story stands today. The master does not advertise or promote his perfect chocolate, he sells the world his smaller confection, believing that it will soon begin to sell his chocolate for him. All the while, right now in fact, he is busy making extra chocolate and storing it away in preparation for the future. It’s an interesting way to go about it, and the rest of the story’s still to be told, but already some who have tasted his small-but-tasty treat have traveled from far and wide to the small town that stands astride a decent-sized stream behind a thick forest of evergreens, deep at the bottom of jagged peaks covered with snow just to satisfy their hunger for his perfect chocolate.
Now they know what the townsfolk have known for years. And they’re telling their friends.

Neaya,

:lol: Happy to help!

nina

hapes,

That’s some rant! :lol:

Well - a little background first.

When Apple brought Steve Jobs back in 1997 - they also bought his company NeXT Computer and with it Apple acquired NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP which were the operating systems developed by NeXT. This OS broke the ground for object oriented programming and eventually became the foundations of OSX. See — You have to realize exactly what OSX is:

A graphical user interface layered over a unix core. That’s all it is. It’s exceedingly stable and well written code.

MS Windows however is not — Windows is written in Assembler, C and C++ primarily and then compiled. More here.

Apple still supports an open source unix core known as Darwin, and many parts of the Darwin code are in OSX.

But - I do understand your issues with being in a situation of having to use AutoCAD which hasn’t been ported to the Mac. This actually came up in another thread here. You could use boot-camp or Parallels to run XP side by side with OSX on a Mac. I’m in the same position where I have to use an XP machine for work but use other computers (my Ubuntu or Mac) for personal stuff.

Apple has done well with the halo effect from the iPod but also in being able to sell that intangible aesthetic of cool which comes with their products — so on some levels you are paying a premium for that.

Garage Band is very cool I agree. And for music, Pro Tools has always been happier running on a Mac.

Happy you liked the video!

nina

Lazy Ichi, Storyteller,

Well then! :lol:

Thank you for sharing this story with me!

Mwah!

nina

lazy ichi,

On a more personal note…

I always preferred a bit of obscurity myself.

Thanks for this…

nina

To the Crazy Ones

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The trouble makers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.

* * * * *

And music…
from Hotel Costes, Vol. 3…check out Ambrosia - A Reminiscent Drive

as well as …
from Nils Petter Molvaer…check out Solid Ether (title track)

lazy ichi,

You know… I have that printed out and in my office. Thanks for reminding me to read it.

The commercial is here.

I have all the Hotel Costes releases. I’ll have to check that out again. Thanks!

nina