Slashback: OS Xi, Sarge, Statistics

Slashback is back from vacation with updates on the Apple switch to Intel,a now-fixed glitch in the recent release of Debian 3.1, a hyper-efficient Honda, and the real numbers on online music networks. Read on for the details.

It still feels like a strange dream that they're really switching. An anonymous reader writes "With our latest Unix (MacOS-X) vendor's switch to x86, I figured now would be a fine time to revisit an old MIT Graduate Student Beer announcement from 2001."

Also, samchung writes "CoolTechZone has its latest article up that discusses the possibilities of Apple's protection on x86 hardware to prevent users from running the Mac OS X on non-proprietary hardware."

More fuel: Reality Master 101 writes "Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire posted an editorial talking about his disappointment that Apple wasn't embracing generic hardware. But the really interesting part was that he states, "My sources say that Jobs is going to use Intel's cryptographic technology called LaGrande to make sure OS X will only boot on Apple-branded hardware. This is a similar technique to the one that Microsoft used to make sure Linux could not be loaded on Xbox..." I'm still not sure how they'll do this with an open source Kernel." They're clearly part of the Linspire marketing effort, but Robertson's messages, including this one, are usually pithy and worth reading.

Hey, you could always wait for a service pack. An anonymous reader submits "Because of an error in a configuration file, Debian Sarge, released June 6th, does not have security updating enabled by default. ZDNet Australia reports that after several years of testing, the release team's error caused a significant delay in deployment. Steve Langasek, of the release team, says, 'Whoops, don't go pressing those 10,000 copies of [3.1] just yet.' Fortunately, the error may be fixed quite easily, and an update is expected within several days. OSNews also covers the story.

Sticker shock alone could defeat the other drivers. josemunizn writes "Remember the Honda FCX, from a Slashdot article in '03? Well the New York Times has an automotive review of a week-long, unsupervised test drive of the Honda. Choice quote: 'In most important ways, the FCX feels ready for prime-time combat on the world's roads.'"

Carry the one, subtract 5, voila! An anonymous reader writes "WinMX and Limewire are the most popular P2P apps? That's what NPD group claims in its research on iTunes covered on Slashdot yesterday. But as Jon Newton points out on P2Pnet and MP3 Newswire, the entire premise that more people use iTunes over the file sharing networks is 'nonsense.' With sites like Slyck.com reporting eDonkey alone has over 4.5 million concurrent users and P2P research firm BigChampagne saying in the U.S. in May an average of 6,290,327 people were logged onto the p2p networks at any given moment, how can iTunes' 1.7 million downloads over an entire month put them anywhere near the top? Zeropaid has also chimed in on these claims and even CNET is now questioning the results it reported in its original article on the NPD research."

Catching up to the 3rd parties who have caught up with the competition. An anonymous reader writes "For the impatient or those few not ready to adopt Firefox, there is now another option to get tabs. BetaNews reports, 'Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser will not have to wait until IE7 to experience tabbed browsing. MSN has shipped a new build of its MSN Search Toolbar that adds basic tabbed browsing support to IE6. But the feature is not fully integrated into the browser, instead relying on the toolbar to create tabs.' Here's an article including a screenshot.

Comments

OSX on generic Intel HW

[jmorris42]

Apple with 'Intel Inside' is at best a wash. No more hype about being
faster than a Wintel box, but they get close to parity in the real world.
They might get a few more people buying Macs if they can dual boot them,
but will suffer a financial hit when someone gets it running on commodity hardware.

And make no mistake, it WILL happen as the linked article says. If
for no other reason than "because we can". Darwin already runs so if
nothing else someone will just extract the higher level functions from
the CD and drop them in, disabling the copy protection as required.
Removing copy protection is well understood and will pose no real
challenge. Macs aren't X-Boxes, developers who have not signed an NDA
must be able to use one, including the debugger, so hardware lockdown
isn't a real option.

And I'm not even sure this new practice of locking software to one's
own brand of PC is even going to be legal. The console world gets away
with it because a) the consoles sell at a loss so people cut em some
slack and b) nobody has waged a real legal war over it yet. But on the
PC, Compaq v IBM is settled law.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[torinth]

...but will suffer a financial hit when someone gets it running on commodity hardware.

Really? They're going to take a hit when some bored hobbyist cracks the protection scheme and puts the solution up on some P2P site? You really think that many people who are seriously interested in the simplicity, stability, interface, and power of Apple products are suddenly going to learn how to scrounge through P2P sites and use custom machines to save a couple hundred bucks? Of course some people will, but that'll probably be made up for just as well by people who do it to test OS X and then make their next purchase an Apple PC with it OS X pre-installed.

If Apple does much of anything to restrict OS X to run on specific hardware, that's enough to deter pretty much everyone who isn't some too-poor-anyway college student or a hobbyist who's going to recommend the retail system to all his or her friends. Too many people are way too lazy and honest for what you're predicting.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple won't care too much.

1. Apple should, and will, insure you just can't load OS X on a non Mac without going though some hoops. This will deter most casual use of OS X on non Macs. The limited driver set will easily deter many people from trying.

2. For the small percentage (less then 1% of PC users) that will load OS X on non Macs, don't bother with them too much. In fact once these people see how good the OS is, they may be buying Apple Hardware the next go around, so they get full hardware compatibility out of the box.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[xenocide2]

Well, a fuckload of people downloaded the Tiger beta when it found its way to bittorrent. I'd expect quite a few people to give it a try, especially since the hacks will be likely be well documented by the time Longhorn rolls around and everyone reformats for good measure anyways. Will these people try it for a week, love it and turn around and buy it outright? No. But I'm sure Apple will complain about a loss of money equal to shelf price times infringers.

People "seriously interested in the simplicity, stability, interface, and power of Apple products" already own Apples, and are far more likely to purchase a new one. I think you seriously overestimate the size of this group. Especially since the "too poor anyways" category makes up a good percentage of new computers sold to individuals.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[That's Unpossible!]

[Apple] will suffer a financial hit when someone gets it running on commodity hardware.

They will? Prove it. You are only considering one outcome, that Apple will lose hardware sales to people that buy PCs and load OS X on them.

You are ignoring many other possible outcomes:

- Millions of people with existing PC hardware may plunk down $129 to purchase OS X that would never have bought Apple hardware in the first place. Would this not be practically pure profit for Apple? How much other Apple software will these people then buy? How many more iTunes converts will there be?

- People will buy OS X, install it on their existing PC, and when it comes time to upgrade their hardware, may now consider buying Apple hardware where they would never have done so before.

It is all about mindshare. Before the move to Intel processors, Apple was not in a position to win mindshare from the Windows crowd, because it required an investment in hardware to switch.

Perhaps Steve Jobs is thinking further ahead than you give him credit for. After all, he had them make OS X work on Intel for the past 5 years. Do you really think he has not considered every path in the future?

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[ArcticCelt]

And I will also say that most normal people (we are not, sorry to break the news) are not able to install a simple driver and even less a complete operating system. If they also have to hack it and find instruction on H4x0r web sites, in don't think that the "impact" will be much bigger than the one I create on the ocean water level when I take a pee in it.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[daviddennis]

Of course a lot of people want to see Tiger and so they downloaded it illegally.

And a lot of people are going to want to see Leopard run on their PC.

But Leopard isn't going to include drivers for anything but Apple hardware, which makes it much less of a casual download for Intel fans.

I think Apple's wisest strategy is to allow people to do the reverse engineering and run it on foreign hardware, but offer no support for that. That way, the curious get to try the system, but the bulk of Apple users will still buy computers designed and tuned for Apple's software. Why? Because we like its style and design, and because we don't like hassle.

The days when I struggled with Linux distributions trying to get readable fonts are over. I have too much money and too little time to make that kind of effort. Now I want a total solution, and Apple's there to sell it to me.

I think the main reason Apple does not want to officially allow their software to run on non-Apple hardware is not vendor lock-in. It's the desire to give users a trouble-free experience. Liberating the MacOS so it would run on non-Apple hardware would create a support nightmare Apple's ill-equipped to handle.

RIght now, the Apple brand stands for a trouble-free computing experience, or as close to that as is possible in this world. Trying to support every generic PC on the planet would be impossible(*), and attempting to do so would cost the company it's hard-earned reputation.

D

(*) Microsoft does it primarily by delegating driver development to vendors. They have the clout to require this, but Apple does not.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[daviddennis]

Since 1998, when I bought a beige G3.

Perhaps I should not have said trouble-free, since computing always has its problems.

But it's a lot closer than Windows. No virii. No spyware. Beautifully designed hardware and software.

It's not a perfect world, no, but it's a better world.

D

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[jmorris42]

> If it's done outside Apple's licence, Dell would be easy prey for
> Apple's lawyers.

Not really. Once you have the lawyers to make the law work you can enforce the software is SOLD, not LICENSED reality. The only protection OSX has is it's copyright. If a boxed copy of OSX goes into the carton box Apple has zero leg to stand on except to try bankrupting the offending vendor. If Dell were willing to piss Bill off that bad Steve would just have to hold his ankles and take it like a man. But of course Dell, HP, etc. won't do any such thing for fear of Bill. Whether a smaller outfit will try is the more interesting question.

> Apple will be *very* keen to protect their IP. Expect all sorts of
> things to lock it down, not least of which will be custom ASICs with no
> documentation.

See other posts in this thread as to why the full monty XBox style DRM isn't likely. It eliminates Mac as a development platform and it is all about developer buyin. As for custom ASICs, no way. It would be a ball and chain around their neck as they try to rev new versions and frankly Apple no longer has the resources for that sort of thing, they outsource everything except software development these days.

> All they need is to ensure that the OS requires the hardware at key
> points in undocumented ways.

Can't even do that. Darwin is Open Source. Quartz is the only place they could play games of that sort and it would get patched fairly quick.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[fsterman]

I mean, come on-- what company doesn't want to sell their software?

One who makes most of their money on hardware.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[QuantumG]

Sigh. Clone makers then undercut Apple and people who previously would buy a Mac to feel special will no longer do so because they're cheap as chips and Apple's hardware business is in the toilet. When it becomes common to buy a clone instead of a Mac, people start looking at clones of Apple's other hardware (iPods) and thinking that, gee, maybe it is dumb of me to pay twice as much just so I feel special. Maybe Apple doesn't care and they think they can migrate from a hardware company to a software company this way, but I think more likely they think they can just attack clone makers and crush them legally.

Re:OSX on generic Intel HW

[Rasta Prefect]

Next, the virus doesn't exactley need to run inside the system. It just needs to exploit somethign in the system. Nothign in this needs a mac to acomplish either. The virus could just feed the processor jumbo and cause the MAC to crash after a couple seconds or something. Exploits that could allow this can be found easily with security advisories.

In order "feed the processor jumbo" whatever thats supposed to mean, it would first have to be _running on the system_. Requires either 1. An exploit, or 2. The user to bring the program in and run it. Either of these two things is OS specific. Changing the processor doesn't change anything. You might see a few more exploits from othe UNIX-on-Intel systems that run without modification for OS X, but the Unix world is not exactly rife with viral infections.

Intel assembly code isn't the issue here. It is the little endian big endian processor extentions as well as some basics. Code writen for an intel X86 machine will not runn on a mac g4 processor because of this. Now with wintel it is portable. Virus can be basicaly recycled from one operating system to another.

What is the hell is a "big endian/little endian processor extension". Big Endian/Little Endian refers to the byte order used to store integers in memory - Nothing about it could be considered an "extension". Code written for a Windows machine _still_ won't run on a Mac unless it doesn't use any system calls at all - In which case, it can't do anything useful because in these modern, enlightened post-DOS days we don't let every peice of code on the system do whatever it wants to the hardware. I mention X86 Assembly code because if you're writing to that level of bare metal, you'll probably have to use some.

Could a boot sector virus still infect a Intel based Mac? Maybe. But boot sector viruses went out with warez trading on floppy disks. You have to boot the machine off removable, writable storage (no CD's, unless the virus was placed in the image pre-burn) to get a boot sector virus, and how often do you actually do that? Any installation of a boot sector virus post-boot would require compromise of OS security, and the use of OS specific system calls.

If just being on Intel exposed an OS to crossovers from Windows viruses, Linux, FreeBSD, etc would be having virus problems. Nothing going on there.

By far the most annoying thing about the Mac/Intel switch IMO is the amount of bullshit being spewed by people who obviously know squat about computer architecture. Just putting an Intel processor in it doesn't make it a Windows PC with all the failings thereof anymore than the XBox is going to be a Mac or the Nintendo 64 was an SGI workstation.

Tabbing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be a function of the window manager, not the application. freedesktop.org should standardise a tabbing protocol for X11 apps.

Re:Tabbing...

[John Whitley]

WTF? Tabs in browsers and other apps are often are heavily dependent on the semantics of that particular application. Tabs can and have been made part of UI/Application frameworks, as the app can interact with those frameworks in a manner that makes the tabs sensible. The X11 window manager protocols are worlds removed from being UI/App frameworks. The protocols deliberately set up some uniform and non-intrusive ground rules to keep WMs from interfering with apps.

Moreover, look at the differences in use and presentation between "tabs" in most browsers today and apps such as spreadsheets, e.g. the multiple "sheets" model in Excel or Gnumeric. Likewise consdier tabs from the SWT toolkit used in Eclipse, Azureus (Java Bitorrent client), etc. These all have quite different uses and interaction models. Your proposal essentially amounts to "all tabs in all apps in all contexts should work just alike, and their visual display should no longer be controlled by the app." Doesn't seem like a very good idea to me...

MSN Toolbar & Tabs

[Sv-Manowar]

The MSN search bar tabs seem interesting, but I wonder if it will establish precedents that might carry into final builds of IE7. The possibility of bugs or issues with this implementation may also help the adoption of firefox, as people who like the concept of tabbed browsing but find this implementation lacking may seek out other browsers, or ask those 'in the know' around them for recommendations.

Trusted Computing. Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing the world needs is another locked-up platform But there's no other way I can think of for Apple to resist cloned/virtualized Macs running in other OSs. It has to be signed apps, right? And that takes us down the road to the end of free computing as we know it.

This may be a reason to stop buying Macs. What this could represent may change the entire spirit of computing from "buy/own" to "borrow/rent". And forget privacy and being able to do whatever you want on your own machine.

Re:Trusted Computing. Great.

[socialhack]

Perhaps owning computers is a privilege and not a right! Why else would they call it a software licenses.

Until OS X, Apple has always been a locked-up platform. One reason they chose BSD over Linux is because BSD allowed them to release altered versions of the kernel without being required to publicly release the source code. I'm not saying it's right, just that it is. If you want free computing use FreeBSD, Linux, etc. We'll have to wait to see what they do regarding privacy. I doubt it will be any different than it is now.

Re:Which of these will happen first?

[aCapitalist]

I guess you haven't been following the news in the past few days.

Apple PCs will run Windows. This has already been confirmed by one of Apple's VPs. They will not be using OpenFirmware. You'll be able to triple boot windows, OSX and Linux.

If I was Kreskin I would say that this is part of the master plan. Let people dual-triple boot and compare the desktops. They're guessing that they'll always go back to the OSX partition and they get to sell premium-priced hardware

You are SO right. Mac is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

It is total utter complete FANTASY that Apple's locked out platform strategy for OS X is going to work.

And you know what ? I agree it may well be illegal and anti-competitive as well and really there is going to be no way on Earth for Apple to cling on to brand prices on the hope that a few Mactel sheep will buy enough of their boxes. It is just a nonsense.

Mac OS X WILL be on generic PC boxes. Apple have done an amazingly stupid move of killing of their brand when they announced they are going with Intel.

This may sound rough to some but Macintosh as we effectively know it is dead now. It is finished. The dream is over.

I urge everyone to brace themselves for the next few years when Mac OS X will be become unrecognizable to what it is today and bloated up with more and more tacky useless halfbaked features like Dashboard and so on. Innovation and excellence is dead. Mac OS is ALL about converting people from Windows. To do that it will BECOME another Windows.

Re:You are SO right. Mac is dead

[BitGeek]

Where's the insight? Come on.... you guys have been saying that Apple is dead every other year like clockwork-- every time they make a change we see dozens of posts like this one claiming that Apple is dead.

Its been 20 years that you've been predicting their demise.

Furthermore, your entire premise if flawed. Apple didn't say they were going to take people to court to stop them from running OS X on other hardware-- they just said that they would only support it on their own hardware.

Apple is not a premium seller of PCS. Apple sells inexpensive powerful computers with a better UI. There's no margin that needs to be protected! They make as much on each iPod sold as on the mac, and they make more selling an OS X upgrade than selling a Mac

This business model has worked fine for Microsoft-- why does it spell doom for Apple? They clearly have a superior product and their sales are growing, while other manufacturers sales are shrinking.

Re:openfirmware...

[xenocide2]

My understanding is that they've hired a guy who wrote some of the ACPI BIOS internals within Linux. Apple's openly admitted that they've been running OSX on x86 for some time just in case. I believe that Darwin on x86 is available right now, if you're interested. Unless you're claiming they built a PC with openfirmware, I dont see how the presence of a BIOS throws a wrench into anything.

Coupled with their own admission that users could theoretically dual boot Windows and OSX, the evidence clearly indicates that OSX does not need openFirmware to operate. I really don't see what they plan to do to enforce this; perhaps the secret plan is that they aren't and you're just supposed to buy one of their expensive toys to play with, but they'll take your money anyways if you're on to them.

Unanswered question about AMD mobile chips

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of posts answer that AMD does not have a viable competitor to the Pentium M (which is possibly the best mobile chip out there) for being one of the reasons whgy Apple went with Intel.

But my question and which has not been answered anywhere is, "Why can't AMD come out with a competitor to the Pentium M?"

AMD had dual-core before Intel, AMD is likely to have very capable people as well as Intel, AMD has most likely studied Pentium M. So, what is taking AMD so long to come out with a viable competitor? Sure, AMD is smaller than Intel but it is by no means a small company.

Therefore, I can only think of several reasons, of course there could many other plausible reasons too.

(1) AMD does not want to challenge Intel in the mobile, at least not yet. (2) AMD is already working on a mobile chip and will only release it when they are confident that it will blow Pentium out of the water.

To not want to compete in the mobile market is commerical folly because the mobile is growing more than the desktop market. So, the most plausible reason is most likely (2). Remember when AMD first came onto the scene and challenged Intel. Their chips weren't very fantastic and therefore they were only thought of "the other player" and religated to playing second fiddle. They competed mainly on price and with a poorer branding too. But when their dual-core and 64bit processors came out way before Intel's, their status changed rapidly. Suddenly, they were a serious competitor with better technology.

I think that's their strategy for the mobile market. When they release their mobile chip, it's going to make people sit up and listen.

pfft...

[Cryptnotic]

it's only a matter of time before my own Mac is useless because the newer applications will no longer be compiled for G4. Fsck.

You're worried that your new Mac will one day be obsolete? Bzzt. That's going to happen anyway. There's nothing you can do about it. Anyway, you're going to be buying a new machine in a couple of years anyway.

Running old programs on new machines is what having source code is for.

OS X on a standard PC: a matter of time. So?

[garote]

The army of cr4ck3rs and h4x()rs out there will surely find some way to circumvent whatever protection Apple devises to keep OS X off a standard PC. In fact, they've already succeeded . It's just a matter of speeding things up.

Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel is only feasible because of the work that Transitive Technologies has done in creating a dynamic recompiler. But that technology, too, is actually old news. Check out this PC Nintendo 64 emulator, from 2001, for example.

It's pretty clear that, even if Apple didn't make it easier for h4x0rs by moving to Intel chips, we would all eventually be able to emulate OS X in software no matter what. It would be a bit slower, perhaps, but it would be possible.

So what?

Apple is still a hardware company. If they can produce a great looking low-end box, a great looking mid-range box, and a great looking high-end box, where will the attack on their revenue stream come from? The only market segment they would lose by rampant piracy of their OS is the segment of "switchers", and though I don't have hard data, I suspect that group is tiny compared to the group of people who buy new computers year by year.

We all wail menacingly about a future where John Q. Public buys a Dell machine, downloads a cracked copy of OS X with a bunch of open-source driver patches and a dongle emulator, burns it, and wipes his machine with it, thereby completely divesting himself of all warranty service and tech support from either Dell or Apple. How likely is this, really? (If you DON'T factor yourself, as the helpful nerd-on-hand, into the picture?) Is the couple of hundred dollars saved worth the extra trouble, present and future? Just how many end-users, as a percentage, are willing to deal with that?

Does Apple really produce superior hardware, and do people really care enough about superior hardware? In two years we'll find out once and for all.

Re:What's this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except not, and you're an idiot.

Re:I really wonder why Apple didn't go with AMD

[Moridineas]

g5 isn't 64 bit the way AMD64 / Intel EMT64 is. OSX isn't a 64 bit operating system--parts of it are, but if you want a 64-bit os, run linux, freebsd, windows xp64, etc.

secondly, it's been said that shipping systems will not use p4's. Pentium D is the rumor.

Honestly, why do you care about the hardware? Why aren't you caring about the performance, etc? Can you tell a difference between a PC using an intel chip or an amd? no.

Re:Which of these will happen first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously because I already modded on this topic...

1. Apple has already said Windows will run on these computers.

2. Running Windows will require at least a reformat/repartition - last time I checked, Windows won't install on HFS+.

3. Has anyone considered that Apple will have Intel serialize made-for-Apple chips with a unique serial number range? Darwin could easily checksum the processor serial number and refuse to start Aqua if the SN is out of range. This would make it easy for Apple to check for the presence of a unique identifier without adding significant cost or complexity to the machines.

I'm no hardware guy but...

[soft_guy]

Isn't there more to a computer than simply a processor?
Wouldn't there be hardware componenets in a Macintosh that might be different from "standard" x86 hardware that keeps MacOS X from booting on it?

Besides, Apple already does a pretty good job of limiting what computers an OS can run on. For example, if you buy a computer and then try to use its disks to install an OS on a different model of Mac, you usually get an error message. Whereas with an OS disk that was bought separately, it will install on all supported machines.

Can't Apple just have its installer check to make sure you are on their hardware before installing?

I'm not saying it will be impossible to fool, but most people won't bother since it won't run on standard x86 hardware anyway. If there were someone out there creating specific "mac clones", I would think Apple would just sue them.

Will go back to having proprietary ROMs in the computer?

Re:Which of these will happen first?

[Anonymous Coward]

You either use an odd definition of "confirmed," or you have reading comprehension problems. All Phil Schiller said was that Apple would do nothing to stop people from trying to run Windows on Apple computers; he never said Windows would run on Macs. He may have made that statement because he knows full well that Windows won't run on Macs.

All it takes is one piece of essential hardware to not have driver support for that to happen. That's all it takes to stop Linux also. Why is there no Linux driver for Airport Extreme? Proprietary hardware. What if that was the memory controller? No Linux on Macs. You can't blindly assume that people are going to be able and willing to write all the drivers necessary to let Linux or Windows to run on Macs, and anyone who tells you otherwise is foolish. We'll start finding out a year from now, and until then everyone is just wildly speculating.

Re:Street-ready and $1mil? Uh huh

[hey!]

I dunno. Your model for pricing seems naive. Sure, vegetable oil costs on the same order of magnitude crude now. But we also use over twenty million barrels of oil a day. Some quick back of the envelope calculations show this is is probably an order of magnitue greater than the total vegetable oil production in the world. What would ramping up vegetable oil production to the scale needed look like?

You always have to factor in scale in enviornmental issues. Traditional Innuit made clothing out of natural materials -- animal skins. However to clothe hundreds of millions people this way would be an environmental disaster. Petroleum derived polypropylene fleece is much more benign -- and recyclable.

Meanwhile, there are no realistic ways of storing more than a dozen pounds of hydrogen in a vehicle..

Well, sure at present, but there are some short and long term solutions. Ammonia is promising. It's already one of the most highly produced chemicals in the world, many agricultural areas would have very little trouble converting to ammonia because the world uses over a hundred million metric tons of this stuff annually for fertilizer. It's also not hard to imagine worldwide production increasing by an order of magnitude. NH3 undergoes a phase transition to liquid at normal temperatures at 8 bar, so you can pack a lot of hydrogen into a tank this way if it's in the form of ammonia, which would mean it would have a volumetric energy density closer to gasoline.. The hydrogen can be released by a device like a catalytic converter, or in some designs the cracking takes place inside a specially deisgned fuel cell.

I'm not saying that it's going to work, certainly not precisely on anyone's timetable. But you are being unreasonably pessimistic.

OT: Personal questions

[Darby]

I have a couple of questions for you, mainly unrelated to this, instead based off of reading your website and some links off of it.

You say:

I believe Saddam Hussein is a very bad man indeed, and that he and his evil sons fully deserved what they got. And I'm proud of the fact that Iraq is now a much better place than it was before we invaded.

You don't provide any evidence for this so called fact and you state the one actual fact in that paragraph as a belief.
Why is that?

Also, you link to free republic who I'm not that familiar with.
When I clicked the link, the main topic was Deep Throat. All of the links there were violently against one of if not the greatest hero in American history who single-handedly saved Democracy (for a few years at least). One of the first links was from Ann Coulter saying, "Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion -- making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era."

So, while you do say that you agree "There are many people there who are mean-spirited, prejudiced, intolerent, and - worst of all! - illiterate", it seems that at least in this limited view of the site that they are promoting the foremost examples of hatred of freedom and a totally Orwellian view of reality.

I guess my point is I'd like to hear some sort of rational defense of these views as they seem diametrically opposed to your stated beliefs of
"people should be allowed as much freedom as possible. The freedom to win, and the freedom to lose. The freedom to try, the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail."

The people that you seem to support want to remove the freedom to fail from those in power by removing truth and all accountability for their actions. I mean, Ann Coulter?!? Sure, she has the right to spew hate based vitriolic lies and even make money off of the books filled entirely with them, but lending any legitimacy to that anti-freedom rhetoric is contrary to your stated beliefs, and my deeply held ones as far as I can see.

Am I mistaken in this somehow?

Would if they could but they cant so they wont

[SuperKendall]

Anyway, doubling the number of CPU's to test on just made life 2x nastier for developers. Let me tell you, any developer with a brain will want to drop the "ancient" platforms ASAP.

Possibly, but the thing is that it will be many years before it's pratical to do so...

And there will be a lot more G4/G5 computers around to test on for a long time, so it will more more the issue of getting smaller apps to do that testing on the Intel boxes than the G4/G5!!

So for many years to come the G4/G5 computers will enjoy a nice spot as ALL apps work on them, while apps are being ported to universal Intel compatible binaries. That's why I don't think sales will suffer much, and people should not be afraid to buy now - because now is a great time to buy when the platform is at the peak of its stability curve. The G5 is still damn fast and will be good to go for many years to come while enjoying the 100% software support that will take some time to ramp up on the new Intel boxes.

I know what you'r saying about testing because I've done that kind of full-platform testing before, but I think people have it really backwards and the hard part will not be getting developers to avoid Intel-only binaries but instead to make the bulk of people offer Intel-aware universal binaries ASAP for the new boxes coming out next year! I ahve to say Apple has been very sporting with a year to prepare, I think it's as good as they could do.

Re:Apple switching to IA-32, not 64?

[Animats]

Only the ignorant are claiming that Apple isn't switching to IA-32. Read Apple's Introduction to Universal Binary Programming Guidelines for developers. It's good old IA-32.

If your Mac Tiger app is 64 bits, you're screwed. Won't even run in the emulator. Say goodbye to "Mac OS X Tiger delivers the power of 64-bit computing to your Mac. Build and run a new generation of 64-bit applications that address massive amounts of memory, without compromising the performance of your existing 32-bit applications."

64 bits just got "Steved".

Re:EROEI

[hey!]

It takes more energy to make the stuff than you can get out of it, in which case you might as well use the energy used to make Hydrogen directly in whatever appliance that you're making the hydrogen for.

You've given the waggish part of me a bit of irresistable bait here.

Every process takes energy -- energy that is turned into entropy and gone forever. So, if you look at the energy production as a black box into which you put your energy stock, some additional energy, and get energy in some more usable form, then you always put in more energy than you get out. You put more energy into electricity than you get out, but it's a lot more convenient to transport and power devices than petroleum or natural gas. For that matter if you count the energy content of crude oil, the same can be said of gasoline.

Hydrogen is more like electricity than it is like oil; it is not an energy stock, it is a way of carrying and storing energy, not an energy source. It's not an answer to everything, and of course processes to produce and use it at this stage are not commercially efficient. Technological improvements, market changes or both are needed to make it practical. But it has attractive properties as, for example, a gasoline replacement, provided the volumetric density problem is solved. Gasoline comes from a single energy source: crude oil. Biodiesel of course may address this limitation to some degree, if internal combusion has to be the only solution we consider. But Hydrogen could be produced by a number of sources, many of which are renewable but not easily storable (e.g. tidal power, solar, wind). In that case, conversion efficiency may not be as important as getting the energy into storable and transportable form before it disappears.

Naturally higher efficiency is better, and as these problems are solved, hydrogen could also be produced by non-renewable energy stocks if you think that's a good thing.

Hydrogen is a Bad Idea.

Looking for a single magic bullet is a Bad Idea. Researching better ways of doing things is a Good Idea. If you know how all the problems you're facing can be solved, it's not research.

I know Bush is talking up plans for Hydrogen. He's also talking up plans Mars exploration. I also happen to think he's a lousy president. But it doesn't mean that I have to automatically oppose the goals of every initiative he proposes.