FYI, the Mac "premium" is kinda illusory, although kinda not.
That is, if you compare a Mac and a PC with the same specs, you'll actually find they cost roughly the same (and sometimes the Mac will be cheaper.)
The catch is, there is a wider variety of specs available for the PC. Apple very carefully controls which options they give you in order to provide (what they consider to be) the optimal user experience. If cutting a particular corner would drop the price by $100, but would result in more crashes (or a clunkier user experience, or less whizzy-looking design) Apple won't do it. This is good (because it means Apple users tend to be more satisfied) but it is also bad (because you are a grownup capable of making your own decisions, and you might be willing to put up with a slight increase in crashes to save $100.)
The one case where there really is a Mac premium is with RAM. If you buy an Apple, I highly recommend getting the absolute minimum RAM they'll sell it with, and then buying more RAM from a reputable memory retailer (like Crucial).
On the balance, my advice is to figure out what your budget is for this computer. If there is a Mac that fits within this budget and seems to do what you want, I'd go for it, and figure you'll save yourself hassle in the long run.
However, if none of the Macs in your budget seem to do quite what you want them to, you may be able to find a PC that makes whatever tradeoffs would make more sense for you.
Not sure if squidranch or jacobw would like to chime in as well.
You rang?
The animation issue is really complicated and confusing. In a nutshell:
Some shows (like network sitcoms) can ONLY be written by WGA members, because the WGA was able to negotiate an all-or-nothing contract with the networks. Other shows (like reality shows) are never covered by the WGA, because the networks insist they don't actually have writers(*). Still other shows--like primetime animated shows, or talk shows on basic cable--are only covered by the WGA if the writers band together and vote to join the WGA.
So what determines whether an individual area is WGA-always, WGA-sometimes, or WGA-never? As far as I can tell, it's mostly a series of historical accidents, depending on who had the most bargaining strength at various times.
(*)Regarding writers on reality shows--the networks are basically lying about this. Any reality show that has a host or a narrator has somebody writing the lines. And many other "reality" shows have people feeding lines to the the contestants. Pretty much everybody would agree that this is writing.
Where it gets greyer is: every reality show also has people who go through hundreds of hours of footage, and choose which scenes to put together in which order in order to tell a half-hour or hour-long story. This is much like writing--and, indeed, the people who do it frequently are out-of-work writers. But whether or not it is [i]enough[/i] like writing to be covered by the WGA is the subject of some debate. In any case, it's a somewhat moot point for this strike--the issue here is really residuals.
Can I piggyback on to this question with the same request for a different reason? I live outside the country and want to vote absentee, but I've only found 2 of the debates on BitTorrent.
Other debates seem to be on YouTube and such, but the low quality makes it hard to watch them with any focus.
I was a little disappointed by their rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." They have a full-size acoustic guitar doing a lot of the heavy lifting. What's the good of being a Ukulele Orchestra if you're going to give a guitar all the good stuff?
Take a look at the seller's ebay feedback. I love the last comment on the page. Some poor sap must have bid 1.5 million dollars as a joke and been amazed to get negative feedback.
If you are, like me, an ultra-short-attention-span child of the late 20th century, you can skip the first minute or so; things start getting awesome about one minute in.
I love the fact that YouTube lists it as a "video response" to another video. I choose to imagine that a bunch of lions and buffalos saw the other video, decided it merited a response, and rounded up a tourist with a video camera to help them make one.
One of my proudest moments in college was being quoted in the Weekly World News. It saddens me that future generations will never know this simple joy.
606, your assumption that this man was some kind of drug dealer is entirely unfounded. It's possible that he ran a strictly legitimate pharmaceuticals company. A company whose strictly legitimate accounting practices required him to store $207 million in his home in Mexico, hidden behind strictly legitimate false walls. And then he just happened to have to go on a strictly legitimate business trip to another country at exactly the moment police were looking for him in Mexico.
Really, it's hard to imagine a more innocent set of circumstances.
A busload of bunglin' bangups on a crused monkey! I am an idiot!
Or, at least, a very mediocre HTML programmer.
It should be fixed now. Clicking on the button should get you a new curse in Firefox.
To help publicize the aforementioned Government Manual for New Pirates, I have created an automated pirate curse generator. Ten thousand bamboozled barnswallows on a monkey's moustache! Go bookmark it now!
Briank, I'm not surprised about the predatory practices of some (maybe even many) Jewish funeral homes. That seems to be par for the course for the funeral industry as a whole, alas.
One of the things I'm proud of is that my dad played a big role in setting up a funeral committee at my synagogue, designed to monitor funeral practices and prevent people from being exploited at their time of grief.
I AM surprised, though, about the concrete vaults. I had no idea, and I find that very disillusioning.
It's interesting that you mention that some states require them--but presumably not all states. This suggests that there's no real health necessity for concrete vaults, as long as you exercise certain commonsense precautions. If that's the case, there's a good freedom-of-religion lawsuit waiting to happen.
Nickdanger, thanks for your explanation. Sharing as I do your distaste for the excesses of the funeral industry, I understand where you're coming from.
Actually, "being buried in a cardboard box under a tree" isn't too far away from the traditional Jewish burial method. Before burial, the body is washed with water, and wrapped in a simple white cloth. Nothing else is done to it--no pumping the veins full of chemicals, no preservatives, nada. Then you put the body into a plain pine coffin, bury it, and let it return to the earth.
Nickdanger, why do you feel cremation the best option? Probably because of my own cultural biases, the traditional Jewish option has always made the most sense to me, and I'm interested in understanding why other options appeal to other people.
I have never understood the point of fake sweeteners. Just use less of the real stuff, or nothing at all. A little self control, poeple. Jeesh. I guess self control is too much to ask of people now-a-days
For what it's worth, I know somebody who recently developed insulin issues, and now must avoid processed sugar. It's easy to say "Just avoid it"--but when you've spent your whole life enjoying sweets, it's a bit of a psychological shock to have to cut them out entirely. Artificial sweeteners do not taste like real sugar, true, but if you have to have something sweet, and you've eaten all the apples you can eat, artificial sweeteners can be better than nothing.
FYI, the Mac "premium" is kinda illusory, although kinda not. That is, if you compare a Mac and a PC with the same specs, you'll actually find they cost roughly the same (and sometimes the Mac will be cheaper.) The catch is, there is a wider variety of specs available for the PC. Apple very carefully controls which options they give you in order to provide (what they consider to be) the optimal user experience. If cutting a particular corner would drop the price by $100, but would result in more crashes (or a clunkier user experience, or less whizzy-looking design) Apple won't do it. This is good (because it means Apple users tend to be more satisfied) but it is also bad (because you are a grownup capable of making your own decisions, and you might be willing to put up with a slight increase in crashes to save $100.) The one case where there really is a Mac premium is with RAM. If you buy an Apple, I highly recommend getting the absolute minimum RAM they'll sell it with, and then buying more RAM from a reputable memory retailer (like Crucial). On the balance, my advice is to figure out what your budget is for this computer. If there is a Mac that fits within this budget and seems to do what you want, I'd go for it, and figure you'll save yourself hassle in the long run. However, if none of the Macs in your budget seem to do quite what you want them to, you may be able to find a PC that makes whatever tradeoffs would make more sense for you.
posted by jacobw 15 years ago
In "Five-Minute Films."
Nice site. I loved the Apocolypes Now remake.
posted by jacobw 16 years ago
In "The W.G.A.: "Why We Fight.""
You rang? The animation issue is really complicated and confusing. In a nutshell: Some shows (like network sitcoms) can ONLY be written by WGA members, because the WGA was able to negotiate an all-or-nothing contract with the networks. Other shows (like reality shows) are never covered by the WGA, because the networks insist they don't actually have writers(*). Still other shows--like primetime animated shows, or talk shows on basic cable--are only covered by the WGA if the writers band together and vote to join the WGA. So what determines whether an individual area is WGA-always, WGA-sometimes, or WGA-never? As far as I can tell, it's mostly a series of historical accidents, depending on who had the most bargaining strength at various times. (*)Regarding writers on reality shows--the networks are basically lying about this. Any reality show that has a host or a narrator has somebody writing the lines. And many other "reality" shows have people feeding lines to the the contestants. Pretty much everybody would agree that this is writing. Where it gets greyer is: every reality show also has people who go through hundreds of hours of footage, and choose which scenes to put together in which order in order to tell a half-hour or hour-long story. This is much like writing--and, indeed, the people who do it frequently are out-of-work writers. But whether or not it is [i]enough[/i] like writing to be covered by the WGA is the subject of some debate. In any case, it's a somewhat moot point for this strike--the issue here is really residuals.posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Curious George - Any Angelenos have the democratic debates?"
Can I piggyback on to this question with the same request for a different reason? I live outside the country and want to vote absentee, but I've only found 2 of the debates on BitTorrent. Other debates seem to be on YouTube and such, but the low quality makes it hard to watch them with any focus.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain"
I was a little disappointed by their rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." They have a full-size acoustic guitar doing a lot of the heavy lifting. What's the good of being a Ukulele Orchestra if you're going to give a guitar all the good stuff?
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "For Sale! Secret Underground Lair"
Take a look at the seller's ebay feedback. I love the last comment on the page. Some poor sap must have bid 1.5 million dollars as a joke and been amazed to get negative feedback.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Are you a travelling celebrity?"
For the non-Brits, "WAGs" are "Wives And Girlfriends," usually of football players. (And by "football" I mean "soccer.")
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Researchers design humorous "bot.""
That's really interesting, and certainly significant, but it's worth noting that the program only recognizes one kind of joke: the pun.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Battle at Kruger"
If you are, like me, an ultra-short-attention-span child of the late 20th century, you can skip the first minute or so; things start getting awesome about one minute in. I love the fact that YouTube lists it as a "video response" to another video. I choose to imagine that a bunch of lions and buffalos saw the other video, decided it merited a response, and rounded up a tourist with a video camera to help them make one.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Aliens not blamed!"
One of my proudest moments in college was being quoted in the Weekly World News. It saddens me that future generations will never know this simple joy.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "The Psychic Cat Of Death."
Best quote from the article:
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Just in case you wanted to see 207 million dollars in cash."
606, your assumption that this man was some kind of drug dealer is entirely unfounded. It's possible that he ran a strictly legitimate pharmaceuticals company. A company whose strictly legitimate accounting practices required him to store $207 million in his home in Mexico, hidden behind strictly legitimate false walls. And then he just happened to have to go on a strictly legitimate business trip to another country at exactly the moment police were looking for him in Mexico. Really, it's hard to imagine a more innocent set of circumstances.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Self-postFilter:"
Also, I apparently do not know how to spell "cursed." Bah.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
A busload of bunglin' bangups on a crused monkey! I am an idiot! Or, at least, a very mediocre HTML programmer. It should be fixed now. Clicking on the button should get you a new curse in Firefox.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
To help publicize the aforementioned Government Manual for New Pirates, I have created an automated pirate curse generator. Ten thousand bamboozled barnswallows on a monkey's moustache! Go bookmark it now!
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Scientist says cremation should meet a timely death."
Briank, I'm not surprised about the predatory practices of some (maybe even many) Jewish funeral homes. That seems to be par for the course for the funeral industry as a whole, alas. One of the things I'm proud of is that my dad played a big role in setting up a funeral committee at my synagogue, designed to monitor funeral practices and prevent people from being exploited at their time of grief. I AM surprised, though, about the concrete vaults. I had no idea, and I find that very disillusioning. It's interesting that you mention that some states require them--but presumably not all states. This suggests that there's no real health necessity for concrete vaults, as long as you exercise certain commonsense precautions. If that's the case, there's a good freedom-of-religion lawsuit waiting to happen. Nickdanger, thanks for your explanation. Sharing as I do your distaste for the excesses of the funeral industry, I understand where you're coming from.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
Actually, "being buried in a cardboard box under a tree" isn't too far away from the traditional Jewish burial method. Before burial, the body is washed with water, and wrapped in a simple white cloth. Nothing else is done to it--no pumping the veins full of chemicals, no preservatives, nada. Then you put the body into a plain pine coffin, bury it, and let it return to the earth. Nickdanger, why do you feel cremation the best option? Probably because of my own cultural biases, the traditional Jewish option has always made the most sense to me, and I'm interested in understanding why other options appeal to other people.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Papa Spank!"
I'm completely Jake.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
In "Protecting Splenda"
Kinnakeet, can you point me towards one of those studies? I'd be very interested in passing them along to my friend.
posted by jacobw 17 years ago
For what it's worth, I know somebody who recently developed insulin issues, and now must avoid processed sugar. It's easy to say "Just avoid it"--but when you've spent your whole life enjoying sweets, it's a bit of a psychological shock to have to cut them out entirely. Artificial sweeteners do not taste like real sugar, true, but if you have to have something sweet, and you've eaten all the apples you can eat, artificial sweeteners can be better than nothing.posted by jacobw 17 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)