Posts by Russell Brown
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
But some of your examples were of real problems, where the extent of the problem was minimised or removed precisely through the publicity associated with it. Y2K "bug" specifically. Many computer systems WOULD have crashed or behaved in unpredictable ways, IF software fixes hadnt been developed, released, and implemented.
How did you know there was a bug-fix to download and install? Publicity.
IIRC, it was IBM that first acknowledged the problem and got the rest of the industry together on it. There was years of work before it made mainstream news.
On the day, of course, the job had been done well enough , but the fact was, no one really knew whether all critical systems had been fixed. Paul Brislen was Computerworld's man on deck that New Year's Eve, and the IDG news service was taking a keen interest in what happened in New Zealand, for obvious reasons
-
I have no problem witn this provided that at the time of purchase they get a contract signed and witnessed by their agent and the purchaser.
Good point. The status of shrink-wrap contracts is pretty much untested in NZ.
-
It'll probably take three months or so for exchange rates to start to impact upon prices of macs, and only if the dollar holds. They don't get a completely new stock every week after all.
Renaissance have moved into the retail market recently, I don't know if there's a store up there, but if there is they might have some good 'we just opened' specials.
Yep, they bought MagnumMac, and have plans to expand the chain.
But things have worked out okay. I was really reluctant to buy now when the new iMacs are coming, but Apple did me a media loan of a 20" Intel iMac to bridge the gap. Yes, we journalists are jammy buggers.
-
And with that, he was gone ...
-
Biggest downside: any applications that were not installed at the outset are probably not free (as in freedom or as in cost). There is a lot of free (libre) software ported to OSX but it's often not very well integrated into the platform, thus losing you the "it just works" user experience that you bought it for in the first place.
Actually, I think one of the biggest user benefits of the shift to MacOS X was, after a little while, the flow of good, stable Unix apps. Sure, some of them don't follow Apple UI guidelines, but then, Apple's apps don't either these days ...
-
Russell - I'd like to hear more about how you made your computer choice. Is there specific software that you prefer on the Mac? Do you like the Apple design aesthetics?
Actually, I was inducted in a bizarre cult ritual whose nature I cannot reveal to non-initiates, unless I kill them afterwards.
But not having to worry about viruses, adware, spyware or DLL conflicts helps.
I do like the industrial design, and the silence.
But mostly, it's the everything just works thing.
-
Oh. And now I see that the rumour sites are promising a complete refreshed iMac line (new enclosures, chipsets and possibly other features) on August 7, so it'd be kind of silly to buy one now.
Sigh ... let's see if SuperDuper can make the bootable backup to one of my Firewire drives that Disk Utility won't.
-
As Wellington morphs from head office city to start-up town, we pop in on Xero and ask brand manager Darryl Gray and product strategy manager Rowan Simpson about life at a new venture with big plans.
-
We talk to Speaker Margaret Wilson about the other side of the "satire and denigration" furore: the new $4m TV system to record the proceedings of Parliament and make them available to - well, anyone.
-
I'm not quite sure why you feel the need to malign Denis Dutton. He's pointed out, although I'm sure you're aware, that back in the mid '70s the world was apparently suffering a climatic cooling trend that was going to have devastating effects for the rest of the century. There was possibly going to be a new Ice Age. It's just as well a few skeptics didn't jump on the bandwagon.
I'm criticising him because he's become, quite frankly, so anti-science as to give being a "skeptic" a bad name.
He has repeatedly brandished the global cooling idea as if it was some broadly-held scientific consensus in the 1970s. It wasn't: it was an idea put forward by a few scientists - at the same time as others were focusing on a warming trend. We now know which theory has been supported by modelling and, increasingly, real-world data.
RealClimate has a good article on what the theory was and how it has been taken out of context by self-proclaimed skeptics.
And Grist has another one.
Wikipedia also has a detailed entry.
All of them militate strongly against the prominence some people choose to give the idea.
You can make an argument that other apocalyptic fears, such as the threat of over-population - have not been borne out. But global cooling's just a really bad one to pick.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 2114 2115 2116 2117 2118 … 2279 Older→ First