Yes, seconded. Especially in the comp.sys groups, there's still enough folks participating to make Usenet my first resort for tech support. There are a few exceptions, but generally Usenet is faster and exhibits more expertise than the typical vendor tech support - some schmoe with a headset telephone and a three-hole punched FAQ. But you do have to have enough skill yourself to sort out the bullshitters from the real gurus.
And wow - you should have seen the discussion on rec.sports.auto.nascar this week!
Yeah, I think they blew that one... I mean, sheesh, batteries? When we have these big, overactive brains? I was thinking more along the lines of a parallel processing matrix.
In other words... "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of those things?"
So in one breath, he's saying Linux stifles innovation, and in the next he's claiming he can build a better OS? What a bleeding idiot. He's blowing hot air out both of his digestive orifices.
Granting rights and privileges to someone does not take them away from anyone else.
Mmm hmm... I see.
And you believe the people selected our current president, too?
Take a look at this information and then tell me you still believe your rights to self governance haven't been diluted into nothingness by corporate money.
The idiocy of the concept of Corporation As Person needs to be exposed more to the average citizen. Few people today realize that it's the root of all our political and social problems. Rights and privileges no longer belong to the individual citizen, because these corporate "persons" have usurped the roles reserved for individual persons by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And corporations are motivated by one thing, and one thing only: Maximum Profits.
It used to be, in the 17th and 18th century, that in order to acheive corporate status, an organization had to demonstrate that it operated in the public good. And there was no rights to the corporation itself, just a limitation of liability to the officers and exectuives in exchange for their service in the public interest. But somehow this got twisted and tortured into an entity with rights and privileges surpassing that of any entity mentioned in the Consitution. It's wrong and that needs to be exposed.
It's here: Doublespeak. It's finally arrived, courtesy of Redmond's marketing and advertising. MS has mastered the tactic of speaking the opposite of the truth, and using that to sell...
Just last night I saw a commercial for MS Server software, bragging about how it was so stable, no humans needed to maintain the servers. Hah! In my experience, it's the most fragile and least secure server out there.
And now this. Microsoft has redefined the word "innovation" to mean "mimicing our competition and driving them out of business" -- by "stifling competition," they mean OSS is unstoppable because it's not a business, there's no profit or shareholders to threaten, it's an ideal, a practice. A practice that they can't embrace because it's too foreign to their proprietary mindset.
What's next? Cages with rats attached to our faces?
Writing a decent interface shouldn't be a big deal, even for one single programmer.
No, since it's been done a dozen times before. There's gotta be at least a dozen newsreaders out there for every platform, and they have evolved a "standard" set of functions and interfaces. This is a Good Thing(tm).
Yet everytime someone writes a web portal to usenet, they completely ignore the work that's been done before. AOL, Deja, Remarq, WebTV... no one pays any attention to the UI and functionalities that veteran usenet rats expect. They don't bother to go look into the protocols and etiquette of the community they're writing a gateway for. And all too often, this translates into their users being pariahs... to this day, many people on Usenet don't take AOL and WebTV users seriously.
And to make it worse, Netscape and MS write their browsers to post in HTML for chrissake... Oh... I shouldn't have even gone there... now I feel a Kinnison attack coming on... Not just in HTML, but one poorly-labeled option in Netscape makes it expectorate bothHTMLand plaintext... Ohh, Ohhhhh!
It just drives me nuts. Google programmers - if you're lurking out there, please - pay attention to the classic newsreaders. They know what they're doing. Don't try to reinvent the wheel or add any doodads.
We don't want fancy buttons and tricked out features
We want to sort messages in a newsgroup by threads, see who posted the last message in a thread, and at what time.
We want to be able to use the numeric keypad to browse through a newsgroup or thread. (For example, in Newswatcher, '5' takes you to the next screenful (or next message, if at end of message), '8' scrolls up, '2' scrolls down, '+' marks a message read, '-' marks it unread.)
We want a key or a button that marks all messages read ("catch up").
We want to be able to filter out (or highlight) messages based on header content and references.
And whatever you do, WE DO NOT WANT ADVERTISEMENTS INSERTED INTO OUR POSTS.
Sorry for yelling. But it is very important that Google gets this right; it may be Usenet's last chance on the web.
You're right; by 1999 Deja's service had deteriorated to the point where I abandoned it for Remarq. Remarq had its flaws, but its interface was much easier to browse newsgroups with. But then they flaked on us, too... so it was back to Deja.
But the "Damaged Links" you refer to are not damaged, they're stale. Deja generates URLs for their database dynamically, and after a while, they grow old and drift. I know, it's stupid. But once you realize that, you know that you can reload the forum page and then reload the thread, and all the links should work...
Of course, all that may be moot by now.
I can't think of a better adoptive parent for Deja's news service than Google; I think this is good news. But I'm really pissed they took down the news service - earthlink news servers went belly up (again!) last nite about 7pm, and so now I have NO USENET ACCESS. This bites. Earthlink's news service has really sucked the past few months... and now this.
How more obvious can they get? I just read the USA Today article and by the time I got to the second paragraph it was clear that the article had one purpose: scare the average crypto-ignorant citizen into seeing jihad messages everywhere, and begging the government to protect them from this bogeyman.
It's the Red Scare all over again.
I mean, come ON. These people are going to use cyphers or one-time pads if they can't get their hands on modern crypto. They'll assign meanings to quotes from the Koran, and print those. And heck, they don't need to use pr0n sites and sports chat... What's wrong with email, AIM, and IRC?
If the entire NSA and Pentagon can't outsmart a bunch of religious zealots with automatic weapons and explosives, crypto or no crypto, then we're all in trouble.
This story is a shamefully obvious attempt to manipulate the public into accepting continued restrictions on their use of strong crypto. It's clearly intended to support someone's agenda... whose? The USA Today's or someone else's?
Well, I too gave up on networked games of PI:ED. In my case it's because the game won't pause in multiplayer mode. At the endgame there are just too many colonies to manage realtime.
But please pass along my compliments for one of the best top level AIs I've played against. My only complaint is that it always went aggressive by the endgame - it gets brutal. I'd love to play against an AI one day that relies on the philosophy of "talk softly but carry a big stick."
And they did a pretty damn good job on the game overall, especially considering how the original Pax set a high bar for them to hurdle, if you ignore its instability. IMHO it still sets the standard for galactic-scale empire games. MOO2 came close; Spaceward Ho! was too easy to master.
You're asking for two types of game in one, here. Do you really want to be in the middle of empire management, and then spend two hours in a Starcraft-esque tactical battle? Not only will it totally bloat the game, but they'd have to reinvent a wheel that's already got tough competition, and it would ruin the continuity of the overall game.
If they could just smooth the edges off of the MOO2 fleet combat mechanics, I'd be happy. I had a lot of fun going to war in MOO2.
One of the few problems I had in this area was that a lot of the combats were totally unbalanced. Tech levels could vary so much that often, one or the other combatant was totally outmatched. This can be fun when you're the one on top, but it's still nowhere near as fun as a good contest between equally matched opponents.
More Ship types/mods
I would add that they need custom starship design. If you haven't seen Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain yet (was it released for Windows?) take a look at it, especially the research and custom ship designs. The original Pax had even MORE detail in its system and ship design screens, but that was abandoned due to the dubious excuse of it was too complex. Some people loved it.
3-dimetional glaxy map and space combat
Oh yeah. If they could pull that off, it would be a hit even if other parts of it sucked.
That things stay turn based.
I'd generally agree, but when things were slow, I'd want the option to let the clock run while I manage the economy, production, etc... Games like this can sometimes be long periods of tedium interrupted by crises.
It sounds like they have chosen niches where high standards already exist. The empire management genre still hasn't beat the CivII/Gold/CTE line. SimCity is the gold standard for micromanagement. StarCraft and C&C are the ones to beat when it comes to realtime theatre combat.
Can Quicksilver find a combination of these three that produces some synergy, without having to improve on all of the above games? A lot of it can be done with the application of aesthetic sense, common sense and attention to detail, but it sounds like they have a real challenge in the AI area.
I had one of the first copies of MOO2 out of the carton at my local game store, and I loved it. But I quickly mastered it. Pax Imperia II for the Mac became my new galactic empire game, and I've yet to master the most difficult settings. So there's yet another comparison MOO3 must win...
Best of luck for them - I admit I'm anxious to see what they turn out...
Re:WebObjects, FileMaker, and the NeXTies
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
The point is, these puppies last!
Yep. Gotta second that remark.
I bought a Mac 9600 clone (604e/200) in 1996, and five years later, I am still operating it as my primary home machine, with only video, hard drive and RAM upgrades.
It runs every new OS perfectly and without significant lag. In fact the latest OS, 9.1, runs faster than the last one, 9.04. Office 2001 runs perfectly. Only hi-end games like Diablo II are beginning to make it show its age, and I can get a G3/400 drop-in processor upgrade for about $200 which will keep me gaming for another three years at least.
Of course, this hasn't always been true. I ran a Mac SE until 1993 - that was a great little machine. But the IIsi I replaced it with was as out of date as the SE in only 2 years. Apple definitely had a slump in the early 90s.
Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
There are three kinds of people buying Apple computers.
There's only one kind of person that pigeonholes everyone into a few narrow categories...
Some people buy Macs because they work, and don't require constant tweaking. They don't want to have to constantly fart around with the OS and hardware to keep their machines working
Some people buy Macs because of brand loyalty, a few of whom are your classic "Mac religious zealot." Some might otherwise be fully satisfied with a PC, but they bought a Mac first, way back when, and stuck with it. Others are convinced of the utter superiority of Macintosh, and resent any implication otherwise.
Some people buy Macs because they bit on the advertising, from Steve Jobs' rebel attitude to iMac glibness, or they bought into its "easy to use" line. Very few people buy machines on appearance alone, and those who do probably can't use them.
I know some people who buy Macs because they're software engineers/EEs, loyal to the Motorola processor. Most of those, though, would rather use an Amiga or NeXT box, and complain that the more superior the hardware, the less successful it is.
Since the advent of Win32 operating systems, which effectively duplicate the Apple UI for most consumers, very few people are picky about the "look and feel" - only the old school Mac zealots for whom a start menu will never replace an Apple menu: and they've already been counted.
But in reality, most people choose Mac for a combination of all the above, appearance, legacy, loyalty, marketing, and technical reasons.
being realistic, price is king.
If that were true, NeXT and Amiga would still be around. They both had vastly superior cost/performance ratios for their day.
Nope, marketing is king. Microsoft has proven that. And beside him sits the queen: application development.
You're certainly right about Jobs' emphasis on appearance, though!
Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
Umm, why would publishers want to move their MacOS versions of apps to x86, when they already have x86 versions of those programs?
Re:Affect hardware sales?
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 2
You make it sound like an architecture "compatible" with any old peice of crap add-in is a good thing. And it would be, too, if you didn't have to jump through hoops and continually fiddle under the hood to get it working and keep it working.
The reason you can't use any old piece of crap with an Apple is because the hardware specs and the software specs are engineered as a unit. The benefit is that when you do go under the hood, you pop in the new component and close the hood. And it works.
This particular WashPost article does a disservice by not fully explaining the science behind the discovery and is going to get creationists in an uproar, because the tone of the article and the presentation of facts vaguely imply that there is some sort of "intent" or "will to live" in these chemicals. It's another case of the journalist not understanding the science, because the truth is more interesting.
The behaviour of lipid molecules is no more mysterious than the behaviour of a bimetal strip or the self-organization of crystals. The molecules that this article describes are elongated, and have their charge distributed such that there is a positive, hydrophilic (water-attracting) end and a negative, hydrophobic (water-repelling) end. Common soap has the same property.
When you get a lot of these molecules together, and place them in water, think about what's going to happen. The molecules are going to point their hydrophobic sides are towards each other, and their hydrophilic sides away from each other, organizing into two-dimensional sheets. Lateral attraction becomes surface tension, and voila, it wants to be a sphere instead of a sheet.
So these molecules are still very simple, and nothing anywhere near as complex as an amino acid or DNA. And no, it is not surprising. You make lipids, you put them in water, you get tiny bubbles. The author seems to imply we expected something else.
They seem blissfully and willfully ignorant of such matters...
I see this alarming trend, also. I wear my Free Speech Online EFF t-shirt to work, and the few people who ask me about it just say "oh," and walk on when I explain that it's about freedom of expression, the right to anonymity, and combatting corporate heavy-handed litigation of free software. I try to inform people of the threat. I try to scare them with tales of the MPAA and the RIAA, but their eyes glaze over as soon as I mention MP3 or DVD.
One woman, a liberal, seeing the blue ribbon, got all pissed off when I explained what it was for. She was offended that the EFF "stole" the blue ribbon from some other medical cause, and proceeded to rant about how "every pissant cause" has a ribbon, and how this subtracts significance for the ribbons that her specific causes have chosen for symbols... it was pure, unadulterated my-cause-above-all-others single-issueitis. I was stunned speechless.
Someone needs to distill and translate Gilmore's rant into a simple, nontechnical message that EVERYONE can understand, without explanation, and that can be used as a battle cry for consumer rights. Sorta like the phrase "no taxation without representation" was used 200-and-some-odd years ago. Until then, we're going to face a sea of uninterested consumers.
I've had some success with drawing analogies, like "imagine being forced to pay for a book every time you opened it" or "what if you wanted to go to Cabo and lay on the beach and read your favorite book - but you had to buy a special copy of the book that was only good in mexico, because your first book is only readable in the US." But it's still tedious, and certainly can't be shouted in the streets...
As for the feelings you're experiencing, Blue, I feel them too. You're not alone. Worry, frustration, indignation, even a little impatience. And despair, knowing that the average consumer isn't even aware of the threat, and won't care unless his SUV and his TV are taken away altogether. I'm ready for action, as well.
My annual contribution to the EFF is usually made around this time of year. I'm going to double it this year because, despite some victories, there are more cases that need litigation than ever this year. However, I think that it means we are approaching an inflection point, where content providers are getting too greedy and the courts will begin defending the rights of the consumer. But the only way that will happen is if the EFF has the money to pay lawyers.
I know a lot of folks are tightening their belts but please, if you've never done so before, donate something to the EFF. Even if it's just $20, it will make a difference, because that's $20 they wouldn't have had otherwise.
You can say that, yes, if you are able to adjust the scale at which you look at that curve over multiple orders of magnitude.
But human perception, in general, with respect to the number of pieces of information it can juggle at once, or the "gain" of a sensory organ, is restricted to only a few orders of magnitude, and in some instances only one order, so we percieve apparent "knees" in exponential phenomena. Preception of acoustic intensity is a classic example.
Context can also impose a frame of reference on an exponential effect. I'd like to elaborate but the boss just walked in...
Well, aside from trying to poke holes in your math, there are (at least) two other reasons why these "plastic" computers are going to be a big hit, despite the fact that they're lower on the curve than ones made out of polluted sand:
- Cost. The organic materials are much less expensive than the ultrapure materials required to make semiconductors and hard drives. That's why CDs are so cheap. (At least as long as the oil holds out.)
- Ubiquity. When you can print a computer on any old visibly clean surface, not just plastic sheets, then you've turned an important corner. You can now put computers into eyeglasses, furniture, windows, coffemakers, even underwear (just imagine!)
It doesn't matter how fast the machine once you pass certain computational thresholds: the ability to support a graphic interface, the speed to reproduce audio,and another milestone for video. Each of these thresholds open up yet more applications for embedded computing.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, seconded. Especially in the comp.sys groups, there's still enough folks participating to make Usenet my first resort for tech support. There are a few exceptions, but generally Usenet is faster and exhibits more expertise than the typical vendor tech support - some schmoe with a headset telephone and a three-hole punched FAQ. But you do have to have enough skill yourself to sort out the bullshitters from the real gurus. And wow - you should have seen the discussion on rec.sports.auto.nascar this week!
In other words... "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of those things?"
So in one breath, he's saying Linux stifles innovation, and in the next he's claiming he can build a better OS? What a bleeding idiot. He's blowing hot air out both of his digestive orifices.
Mmm hmm... I see.
And you believe the people selected our current president, too?
Take a look at this information and then tell me you still believe your rights to self governance haven't been diluted into nothingness by corporate money.
Oops. Brain fart. "stifling competition" s/b "stifling innovation"
The idiocy of the concept of Corporation As Person needs to be exposed more to the average citizen. Few people today realize that it's the root of all our political and social problems. Rights and privileges no longer belong to the individual citizen, because these corporate "persons" have usurped the roles reserved for individual persons by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And corporations are motivated by one thing, and one thing only: Maximum Profits.
It used to be, in the 17th and 18th century, that in order to acheive corporate status, an organization had to demonstrate that it operated in the public good. And there was no rights to the corporation itself, just a limitation of liability to the officers and exectuives in exchange for their service in the public interest. But somehow this got twisted and tortured into an entity with rights and privileges surpassing that of any entity mentioned in the Consitution. It's wrong and that needs to be exposed.
It's ruining our country. It's ruining the world.
Just last night I saw a commercial for MS Server software, bragging about how it was so stable, no humans needed to maintain the servers. Hah! In my experience, it's the most fragile and least secure server out there.
And now this. Microsoft has redefined the word "innovation" to mean "mimicing our competition and driving them out of business" -- by "stifling competition," they mean OSS is unstoppable because it's not a business, there's no profit or shareholders to threaten, it's an ideal, a practice. A practice that they can't embrace because it's too foreign to their proprietary mindset.
What's next? Cages with rats attached to our faces?
Har har - that's indeed funny.
But it's the portal that needs a suckectomy, not Usenet.
Yet everytime someone writes a web portal to usenet, they completely ignore the work that's been done before. AOL, Deja, Remarq, WebTV... no one pays any attention to the UI and functionalities that veteran usenet rats expect. They don't bother to go look into the protocols and etiquette of the community they're writing a gateway for. And all too often, this translates into their users being pariahs... to this day, many people on Usenet don't take AOL and WebTV users seriously.
And to make it worse, Netscape and MS write their browsers to post in HTML for chrissake... Oh... I shouldn't have even gone there... now I feel a Kinnison attack coming on... Not just in HTML, but one poorly-labeled option in Netscape makes it expectorate bothHTMLand plaintext... Ohh, Ohhhhh!
It just drives me nuts. Google programmers - if you're lurking out there, please - pay attention to the classic newsreaders. They know what they're doing. Don't try to reinvent the wheel or add any doodads.
We don't want fancy buttons and tricked out features
We want to sort messages in a newsgroup by threads, see who posted the last message in a thread, and at what time.
We want to be able to use the numeric keypad to browse through a newsgroup or thread. (For example, in Newswatcher, '5' takes you to the next screenful (or next message, if at end of message), '8' scrolls up, '2' scrolls down, '+' marks a message read, '-' marks it unread.)
We want a key or a button that marks all messages read ("catch up").
We want to be able to filter out (or highlight) messages based on header content and references.
And whatever you do, WE DO NOT WANT ADVERTISEMENTS INSERTED INTO OUR POSTS.
Sorry for yelling. But it is very important that Google gets this right; it may be Usenet's last chance on the web.
Thank you for your attention.
But the "Damaged Links" you refer to are not damaged, they're stale. Deja generates URLs for their database dynamically, and after a while, they grow old and drift. I know, it's stupid. But once you realize that, you know that you can reload the forum page and then reload the thread, and all the links should work...
Of course, all that may be moot by now.
I can't think of a better adoptive parent for Deja's news service than Google; I think this is good news. But I'm really pissed they took down the news service - earthlink news servers went belly up (again!) last nite about 7pm, and so now I have NO USENET ACCESS. This bites. Earthlink's news service has really sucked the past few months... and now this.
It's the Red Scare all over again.
I mean, come ON. These people are going to use cyphers or one-time pads if they can't get their hands on modern crypto. They'll assign meanings to quotes from the Koran, and print those. And heck, they don't need to use pr0n sites and sports chat... What's wrong with email, AIM, and IRC?
If the entire NSA and Pentagon can't outsmart a bunch of religious zealots with automatic weapons and explosives, crypto or no crypto, then we're all in trouble.
This story is a shamefully obvious attempt to manipulate the public into accepting continued restrictions on their use of strong crypto. It's clearly intended to support someone's agenda... whose? The USA Today's or someone else's?
But please pass along my compliments for one of the best top level AIs I've played against. My only complaint is that it always went aggressive by the endgame - it gets brutal. I'd love to play against an AI one day that relies on the philosophy of "talk softly but carry a big stick."
And they did a pretty damn good job on the game overall, especially considering how the original Pax set a high bar for them to hurdle, if you ignore its instability. IMHO it still sets the standard for galactic-scale empire games. MOO2 came close; Spaceward Ho! was too easy to master.
Sarcastic? Perhaps.
True, nonetheless. I still play Nethack to this day - it's the ultimate surviving example of game design over graphics.
You're asking for two types of game in one, here. Do you really want to be in the middle of empire management, and then spend two hours in a Starcraft-esque tactical battle? Not only will it totally bloat the game, but they'd have to reinvent a wheel that's already got tough competition, and it would ruin the continuity of the overall game.
If they could just smooth the edges off of the MOO2 fleet combat mechanics, I'd be happy. I had a lot of fun going to war in MOO2.
One of the few problems I had in this area was that a lot of the combats were totally unbalanced. Tech levels could vary so much that often, one or the other combatant was totally outmatched. This can be fun when you're the one on top, but it's still nowhere near as fun as a good contest between equally matched opponents.
More Ship types/mods
I would add that they need custom starship design. If you haven't seen Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain yet (was it released for Windows?) take a look at it, especially the research and custom ship designs. The original Pax had even MORE detail in its system and ship design screens, but that was abandoned due to the dubious excuse of it was too complex. Some people loved it.
3-dimetional glaxy map and space combat
Oh yeah. If they could pull that off, it would be a hit even if other parts of it sucked.
That things stay turn based.
I'd generally agree, but when things were slow, I'd want the option to let the clock run while I manage the economy, production, etc... Games like this can sometimes be long periods of tedium interrupted by crises.
Can Quicksilver find a combination of these three that produces some synergy, without having to improve on all of the above games? A lot of it can be done with the application of aesthetic sense, common sense and attention to detail, but it sounds like they have a real challenge in the AI area.
I had one of the first copies of MOO2 out of the carton at my local game store, and I loved it. But I quickly mastered it. Pax Imperia II for the Mac became my new galactic empire game, and I've yet to master the most difficult settings. So there's yet another comparison MOO3 must win...
Best of luck for them - I admit I'm anxious to see what they turn out...
Yep. Gotta second that remark.
I bought a Mac 9600 clone (604e/200) in 1996, and five years later, I am still operating it as my primary home machine, with only video, hard drive and RAM upgrades.
It runs every new OS perfectly and without significant lag. In fact the latest OS, 9.1, runs faster than the last one, 9.04. Office 2001 runs perfectly. Only hi-end games like Diablo II are beginning to make it show its age, and I can get a G3/400 drop-in processor upgrade for about $200 which will keep me gaming for another three years at least.
Of course, this hasn't always been true. I ran a Mac SE until 1993 - that was a great little machine. But the IIsi I replaced it with was as out of date as the SE in only 2 years. Apple definitely had a slump in the early 90s.
There's only one kind of person that pigeonholes everyone into a few narrow categories...
Some people buy Macs because they work, and don't require constant tweaking. They don't want to have to constantly fart around with the OS and hardware to keep their machines working
Some people buy Macs because of brand loyalty, a few of whom are your classic "Mac religious zealot." Some might otherwise be fully satisfied with a PC, but they bought a Mac first, way back when, and stuck with it. Others are convinced of the utter superiority of Macintosh, and resent any implication otherwise.
Some people buy Macs because they bit on the advertising, from Steve Jobs' rebel attitude to iMac glibness, or they bought into its "easy to use" line. Very few people buy machines on appearance alone, and those who do probably can't use them.
I know some people who buy Macs because they're software engineers/EEs, loyal to the Motorola processor. Most of those, though, would rather use an Amiga or NeXT box, and complain that the more superior the hardware, the less successful it is.
Since the advent of Win32 operating systems, which effectively duplicate the Apple UI for most consumers, very few people are picky about the "look and feel" - only the old school Mac zealots for whom a start menu will never replace an Apple menu: and they've already been counted.
But in reality, most people choose Mac for a combination of all the above, appearance, legacy, loyalty, marketing, and technical reasons.
being realistic, price is king.
If that were true, NeXT and Amiga would still be around. They both had vastly superior cost/performance ratios for their day.
Nope, marketing is king. Microsoft has proven that. And beside him sits the queen: application development.
You're certainly right about Jobs' emphasis on appearance, though!
Umm, why would publishers want to move their MacOS versions of apps to x86, when they already have x86 versions of those programs?
The reason you can't use any old piece of crap with an Apple is because the hardware specs and the software specs are engineered as a unit. The benefit is that when you do go under the hood, you pop in the new component and close the hood. And it works.
The behaviour of lipid molecules is no more mysterious than the behaviour of a bimetal strip or the self-organization of crystals. The molecules that this article describes are elongated, and have their charge distributed such that there is a positive, hydrophilic (water-attracting) end and a negative, hydrophobic (water-repelling) end. Common soap has the same property.
When you get a lot of these molecules together, and place them in water, think about what's going to happen. The molecules are going to point their hydrophobic sides are towards each other, and their hydrophilic sides away from each other, organizing into two-dimensional sheets. Lateral attraction becomes surface tension, and voila, it wants to be a sphere instead of a sheet.
So these molecules are still very simple, and nothing anywhere near as complex as an amino acid or DNA. And no, it is not surprising. You make lipids, you put them in water, you get tiny bubbles. The author seems to imply we expected something else.
I recommend interested persons read an introduction to cell membranes.
Is someone out there attacking DNS servers?
Just an irrational suspicion...
I see this alarming trend, also. I wear my Free Speech Online EFF t-shirt to work, and the few people who ask me about it just say "oh," and walk on when I explain that it's about freedom of expression, the right to anonymity, and combatting corporate heavy-handed litigation of free software. I try to inform people of the threat. I try to scare them with tales of the MPAA and the RIAA, but their eyes glaze over as soon as I mention MP3 or DVD.
One woman, a liberal, seeing the blue ribbon, got all pissed off when I explained what it was for. She was offended that the EFF "stole" the blue ribbon from some other medical cause, and proceeded to rant about how "every pissant cause" has a ribbon, and how this subtracts significance for the ribbons that her specific causes have chosen for symbols... it was pure, unadulterated my-cause-above-all-others single-issueitis. I was stunned speechless.
Someone needs to distill and translate Gilmore's rant into a simple, nontechnical message that EVERYONE can understand, without explanation, and that can be used as a battle cry for consumer rights. Sorta like the phrase "no taxation without representation" was used 200-and-some-odd years ago. Until then, we're going to face a sea of uninterested consumers.
I've had some success with drawing analogies, like "imagine being forced to pay for a book every time you opened it" or "what if you wanted to go to Cabo and lay on the beach and read your favorite book - but you had to buy a special copy of the book that was only good in mexico, because your first book is only readable in the US." But it's still tedious, and certainly can't be shouted in the streets...
As for the feelings you're experiencing, Blue, I feel them too. You're not alone. Worry, frustration, indignation, even a little impatience. And despair, knowing that the average consumer isn't even aware of the threat, and won't care unless his SUV and his TV are taken away altogether. I'm ready for action, as well.
My annual contribution to the EFF is usually made around this time of year. I'm going to double it this year because, despite some victories, there are more cases that need litigation than ever this year. However, I think that it means we are approaching an inflection point, where content providers are getting too greedy and the courts will begin defending the rights of the consumer. But the only way that will happen is if the EFF has the money to pay lawyers.
I know a lot of folks are tightening their belts but please, if you've never done so before, donate something to the EFF. Even if it's just $20, it will make a difference, because that's $20 they wouldn't have had otherwise.
But human perception, in general, with respect to the number of pieces of information it can juggle at once, or the "gain" of a sensory organ, is restricted to only a few orders of magnitude, and in some instances only one order, so we percieve apparent "knees" in exponential phenomena. Preception of acoustic intensity is a classic example.
Context can also impose a frame of reference on an exponential effect. I'd like to elaborate but the boss just walked in...
The humor of which, BTW, isn't diminished.
Well, aside from trying to poke holes in your math, there are (at least) two other reasons why these "plastic" computers are going to be a big hit, despite the fact that they're lower on the curve than ones made out of polluted sand: - Cost. The organic materials are much less expensive than the ultrapure materials required to make semiconductors and hard drives. That's why CDs are so cheap. (At least as long as the oil holds out.) - Ubiquity. When you can print a computer on any old visibly clean surface, not just plastic sheets, then you've turned an important corner. You can now put computers into eyeglasses, furniture, windows, coffemakers, even underwear (just imagine!) It doesn't matter how fast the machine once you pass certain computational thresholds: the ability to support a graphic interface, the speed to reproduce audio,and another milestone for video. Each of these thresholds open up yet more applications for embedded computing.