The open-source drivers are more reliable, easier to use, and more compatible with other software, but their performance is significantly lower than the proprietary drivers.
They've been releasing documentation on most of their chips lately, and the open source drivers have been making good use of it. The open-source 3d drivers aren't as good as the proprietary drivers, but if open-source drivers are a must for you, AMD is clearly the way to go, and has been for quite some time.
Right of Publicity is a common law doctrine, and has not been (and cannot be) codified at the federal level, and has only been legislated in some states. In all cases, however, it applies only to commercial use. Thus, it is neither applicable to the case at hand, nor is it part of the intellectual property rights discussed above as having been "completely distorted" by legislators.
Are you saying that intellectual property protection should apply to pictures of celebrities, but not their works?
The US constitution states that the purpose of intellectual property protection is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and that it should apply to inventions and writings (and by extension, their modern analogues). A person's likeness, being a natural trait and not the design of any human, doesn't meet the requirement.
The military would never amount to more than a fraction of a percent of the iPod touch sales, so anybody attempting espionage or sabotage would have to subvert a huge number of iPods in order to have an effect on the military that is distinguishable from the regular failure rate, and the problem would probably be noticed by the general public long before the military was significantly affected.
How exactly would a non-iPod device have lower training costs? Part of the allure of the iPod Touch is that so many soldiers already own them, and plenty more are familiar enough to use them with minimal training, and that's without even directly addressing the fact that the iPod has the simplest and most intuitive interface of the options.
If the military decides that the iPod touch is an important platform to keep around, they can force Apple into enough of a licensing agreement that the government can hire Apple's OEM to keep making the model they want indefinitely.
What kind of design deficiencies would you expect to find in an iPod touch that make it less suitable than a device designed from the start to have battlefield durability? I'd bet the only thing between the iPod touch and mil spec certification is a testing regimen. I'd also bet that the iPod touch would be at least as durable as any device of comparable utility with a cost within an order of magnitude of the iPod.
This kind of case is what the iPods get put in. I'd say they're probably close enough to mil spec that it makes the iPods clearly more cost effective. It's not like iPods are particularly fragile to begin with - once you protect them from moisture and sand, the only significant vulnerability that remains is the touch screen itself, which is easily protected with a flip cover. I doubt that temperature is much of an issue, given that they are all solid-state devices.
Another example of an enclosure is this one, for the first-gen touch, shown at the bottom of the page with an attached sniper rifle. This is clearly one of the best-protected iPods in the world. If you read more on that site, you'll see that they have done plenty of testing to ensure that the iPod can survive the shock of the attached rifle being fired numerous times.
The FAA probably already knows about this rocket. I've been to a few launches with a local rocketry club, and they always get FAA clearance. My understanding is that they have a permanent clearance for their launch site for the first few thousand feet, but when they're launching the high-power rockets, they get unlimited clearance, making the area essentially a no-fly zone for planes. (Although that clearly didn't stop the Predator drone that was hanging out above us one day.)
SPARC would just die. In fact, I'm not sure what kind of acquisition SPARC could survive. Perhaps Cisco would keep it. IBM, Apple, and Microsoft and RedHat would certainly kill it.
IBM and Sun don't compete in any markets where either one or the combination would be close to a monopoly. Yes, they are both big into Java, but Java itself has competition, so consolidation of Java solution providers wouldn't necessarily be bad for consumers, particularly given that so much of the platform is open. As for the servers, both IBM's sub-mainframe POWER based machines and Sun's SPARC are constantly under heavy competition from x86 based systems, and if SPARC disappeared from the market, it wouldn't be missed by very many people.
Combining the Apple's Cocoa and Sun's Java would be pretty awkward, considering that Java is so closely modeled after Objective-C. That's what really killed the Java interfaces to Cocoa: if you to learn the Cocoa class hierarchy, it wasn't much more work to pick up Obj-C if you already know Java. With Java running on the JVM and Cocoa moving to LLVM, the two languages would just get in each other's way, but each has such an established market that reconciling the differences would be nearly impossible.
Solaris isn't the important part of Sun. Java and the server business are. But if it bothers you, you can take solace in the fact that Apple's desktop environment used to run on Solaris, before Java was developed (incidentally, Java was heavily based off Objective-C and OpenStep). OS X and Solaris could be merged pretty easily, as far as OS mergers go.
Apple isn't a serious competitor in the enterprise server market, and that limits how well they can do in the corporate desktop and workstation markets. Those three markets are the only high-margin parts of the computer market at large that Apple isn't doing well in. While Sun isn't exactly doing well (or else they wouldn't be ripe for acquisition) they do have a lot more credibility than Apple in the business space. Java has a lot to do with that, too. Imagine what it would do for Apple if they were the de facto provider for systems designed to run Java server apps. Apple would be able to compete much more effectively against.Net, which is currently the biggest factor other than inertia that is ensuring Microsoft's continued dominance.
There's no way Microsoft could buy a big competitor in this political climate. In case you hadn't noticed, there's a Democrat in the White House. Sun is the corporation behind the only viable competitors to.NET and MS Office, in addition to being a competitor in the server OS space and a provider of a consumer-oriented virtualization product. The only way Microsoft could benefit from buying Sun is the reduced competition, and that fact is too obvious to slip past the regulators.
This guy doesn't want an enterprise IT system. His specs are well below the threshold for an embedded system, and in that market it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a turnkey system that will last for more than a decade. It's quite clear that he'll never be interested in any upgrade, just repairs. Since this system doesn't even connect to the internet, the only reason it would need software updates is if older hardware gets replaced with newer, incompatible hardware.
When you ask "why do you want a system to last 15 years?", the response will probably be "Why not?" If your only answer is that crappy hardware is cheaper, you probably will be fired. This guy is not looking to keep any tech support staff on retainer. He just wants an appliance that just works.
Clearly, this guy doesn't even need internet access, so there's no need to worry about operating system updates. All that's needed is reliable hardware and future-proof communication ports for backing up and migrating to the next system.
A low-power fanless ARM or x86 based system with a SLC flash drive and an ethernet port is all that's needed to meet those specs. The longevity of the flash drive isn't a problem, since even the smallest drives are many times larger than what he's already got, so the wear-leveling will keep the drive going for a very long time.
That whole explanation is bullshit. AutoRun was not reliable at first for CDs either, and most software included instructions for what to do if the AutoRun screen didn't show up or if AutoRun was disabled.
Every technology I've seen for really compact, high-power speakers can be turned around to make really compact, high-power microphones. Still not concerned?
A professor I know is doing research on various smart materials, and frequently demonstrates a hockey-puck sized device that can make any hard flat surface, such as a solid concrete wall, into a very good, very loud speaker. Though the control circuitry for the consumer version doesn't allow it, it is trivial for the manufacturer to change this device into one that allows you to listen through the wall as though it wasn't there at all.
Keep an eye on Phoronix to see what works (and performs) well with Linux. While they don't inspire any confidence in their abilities to do an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of several pieces of hardware, they are good at comparing one ATI card to the next and one version of the kernel or drivers to the next. They also do a great job of reporting on the status of new and upcoming features in the open-source drivers.
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The open-source drivers are more reliable, easier to use, and more compatible with other software, but their performance is significantly lower than the proprietary drivers.
Have you been ignoring AMD/ATI for the past year?
They've been releasing documentation on most of their chips lately, and the open source drivers have been making good use of it. The open-source 3d drivers aren't as good as the proprietary drivers, but if open-source drivers are a must for you, AMD is clearly the way to go, and has been for quite some time.
Right of Publicity is a common law doctrine, and has not been (and cannot be) codified at the federal level, and has only been legislated in some states. In all cases, however, it applies only to commercial use. Thus, it is neither applicable to the case at hand, nor is it part of the intellectual property rights discussed above as having been "completely distorted" by legislators.
Are you saying that intellectual property protection should apply to pictures of celebrities, but not their works?
The US constitution states that the purpose of intellectual property protection is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and that it should apply to inventions and writings (and by extension, their modern analogues). A person's likeness, being a natural trait and not the design of any human, doesn't meet the requirement.
The military would never amount to more than a fraction of a percent of the iPod touch sales, so anybody attempting espionage or sabotage would have to subvert a huge number of iPods in order to have an effect on the military that is distinguishable from the regular failure rate, and the problem would probably be noticed by the general public long before the military was significantly affected.
I was more reminded of this Doonesbury.
How exactly would a non-iPod device have lower training costs? Part of the allure of the iPod Touch is that so many soldiers already own them, and plenty more are familiar enough to use them with minimal training, and that's without even directly addressing the fact that the iPod has the simplest and most intuitive interface of the options.
If the military decides that the iPod touch is an important platform to keep around, they can force Apple into enough of a licensing agreement that the government can hire Apple's OEM to keep making the model they want indefinitely.
What kind of design deficiencies would you expect to find in an iPod touch that make it less suitable than a device designed from the start to have battlefield durability? I'd bet the only thing between the iPod touch and mil spec certification is a testing regimen. I'd also bet that the iPod touch would be at least as durable as any device of comparable utility with a cost within an order of magnitude of the iPod.
This kind of case is what the iPods get put in. I'd say they're probably close enough to mil spec that it makes the iPods clearly more cost effective. It's not like iPods are particularly fragile to begin with - once you protect them from moisture and sand, the only significant vulnerability that remains is the touch screen itself, which is easily protected with a flip cover. I doubt that temperature is much of an issue, given that they are all solid-state devices.
Another example of an enclosure is this one, for the first-gen touch, shown at the bottom of the page with an attached sniper rifle. This is clearly one of the best-protected iPods in the world. If you read more on that site, you'll see that they have done plenty of testing to ensure that the iPod can survive the shock of the attached rifle being fired numerous times.
I doubt that US law prohibits the military from developing missiles.
The FAA probably already knows about this rocket. I've been to a few launches with a local rocketry club, and they always get FAA clearance. My understanding is that they have a permanent clearance for their launch site for the first few thousand feet, but when they're launching the high-power rockets, they get unlimited clearance, making the area essentially a no-fly zone for planes. (Although that clearly didn't stop the Predator drone that was hanging out above us one day.)
I'm pretty sure that not having a single point of failure was considered part of "reliability" even back then.
He spends the first 29 minutes on ./
What else would survivability have meant to the DoD in 1982?
Hardware.
SPARC would just die. In fact, I'm not sure what kind of acquisition SPARC could survive. Perhaps Cisco would keep it. IBM, Apple, and Microsoft and RedHat would certainly kill it.
IBM and Sun don't compete in any markets where either one or the combination would be close to a monopoly. Yes, they are both big into Java, but Java itself has competition, so consolidation of Java solution providers wouldn't necessarily be bad for consumers, particularly given that so much of the platform is open. As for the servers, both IBM's sub-mainframe POWER based machines and Sun's SPARC are constantly under heavy competition from x86 based systems, and if SPARC disappeared from the market, it wouldn't be missed by very many people.
Combining the Apple's Cocoa and Sun's Java would be pretty awkward, considering that Java is so closely modeled after Objective-C. That's what really killed the Java interfaces to Cocoa: if you to learn the Cocoa class hierarchy, it wasn't much more work to pick up Obj-C if you already know Java. With Java running on the JVM and Cocoa moving to LLVM, the two languages would just get in each other's way, but each has such an established market that reconciling the differences would be nearly impossible.
Solaris isn't the important part of Sun. Java and the server business are. But if it bothers you, you can take solace in the fact that Apple's desktop environment used to run on Solaris, before Java was developed (incidentally, Java was heavily based off Objective-C and OpenStep). OS X and Solaris could be merged pretty easily, as far as OS mergers go.
Apple isn't a serious competitor in the enterprise server market, and that limits how well they can do in the corporate desktop and workstation markets. Those three markets are the only high-margin parts of the computer market at large that Apple isn't doing well in. While Sun isn't exactly doing well (or else they wouldn't be ripe for acquisition) they do have a lot more credibility than Apple in the business space. Java has a lot to do with that, too. Imagine what it would do for Apple if they were the de facto provider for systems designed to run Java server apps. Apple would be able to compete much more effectively against .Net, which is currently the biggest factor other than inertia that is ensuring Microsoft's continued dominance.
There's no way Microsoft could buy a big competitor in this political climate. In case you hadn't noticed, there's a Democrat in the White House. Sun is the corporation behind the only viable competitors to .NET and MS Office, in addition to being a competitor in the server OS space and a provider of a consumer-oriented virtualization product. The only way Microsoft could benefit from buying Sun is the reduced competition, and that fact is too obvious to slip past the regulators.
This guy doesn't want an enterprise IT system. His specs are well below the threshold for an embedded system, and in that market it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a turnkey system that will last for more than a decade. It's quite clear that he'll never be interested in any upgrade, just repairs. Since this system doesn't even connect to the internet, the only reason it would need software updates is if older hardware gets replaced with newer, incompatible hardware.
When you ask "why do you want a system to last 15 years?", the response will probably be "Why not?" If your only answer is that crappy hardware is cheaper, you probably will be fired. This guy is not looking to keep any tech support staff on retainer. He just wants an appliance that just works.
Clearly, this guy doesn't even need internet access, so there's no need to worry about operating system updates. All that's needed is reliable hardware and future-proof communication ports for backing up and migrating to the next system.
A low-power fanless ARM or x86 based system with a SLC flash drive and an ethernet port is all that's needed to meet those specs. The longevity of the flash drive isn't a problem, since even the smallest drives are many times larger than what he's already got, so the wear-leveling will keep the drive going for a very long time.
That whole explanation is bullshit. AutoRun was not reliable at first for CDs either, and most software included instructions for what to do if the AutoRun screen didn't show up or if AutoRun was disabled.
Every technology I've seen for really compact, high-power speakers can be turned around to make really compact, high-power microphones. Still not concerned?
A professor I know is doing research on various smart materials, and frequently demonstrates a hockey-puck sized device that can make any hard flat surface, such as a solid concrete wall, into a very good, very loud speaker. Though the control circuitry for the consumer version doesn't allow it, it is trivial for the manufacturer to change this device into one that allows you to listen through the wall as though it wasn't there at all.
No. Just the ones who have tried Macs and decided to stay with Windows.
Keep an eye on Phoronix to see what works (and performs) well with Linux. While they don't inspire any confidence in their abilities to do an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of several pieces of hardware, they are good at comparing one ATI card to the next and one version of the kernel or drivers to the next. They also do a great job of reporting on the status of new and upcoming features in the open-source drivers.