The kind of paranioa and disconnectedness is only possible if and when you can keep information away from people.
If you're a Muslim, or a Jew or a Catholic or an Arian nationer you only listen to one immam or rabbi or pope or nut-case and he only tells you what he needs to make you stay a Muslim, or a Jew or a Catholic or an Arian nationer (or to get you to 'push the plunger.') Religion is the antimedia.
Steve Jobs is definitely *not* running around with "the ONE book" claiming that you need no other source.
And without the unique and experience of running Mac hardware for the sheer pleasure of it, Microsoft would squash Apple under the existential weight of its history of monopolistic practices, past and present.
Ten years ago, even five years ago, a PC was the biggest discretionary expense for a purchaser. And it wasn't bought willingly except by the earliest adopters. (I paid $11k and then $16k for Macs and BIG screens, but I'm just crazy. I had other machines as well and earned my living on the client's Windows boxes.:-)
I loved the Macs because I earned enough to try 'em out. But most people don't have that kind of income to screw around and try things.
Now that the internet (and that has made an ENORMOUS difference) and the Dells of the world have brought the price down, most people are beginning to have the choice but they don't have the information. Its all just too complicated.
While the games and the gamers are heading off into console land and business is heading off into mergers and consolidations, out-sourcing and off-shoring, (Microsoft doesn't have to worry as long as people use ActiveX,) and they're all pursuing the thrill of the chase, I think that Apple's going to make inroads in the home business (that darn internet thing again) while protection their business, (that darn internet thing again.)
But Apple is a "The Gap" type brand. Its a "BMW" type brand. Its made to give a great "new car smell."
The internet works both ways guys. It works BOTH ways. Its NOT a broadcast medium.
While you may think that its only good for you to access information, its also a way for the information (provider) to access you.
Apple makes hardware boxes, they make their money off their boxes. They don't support every other box out there. They don't have to either.
OS X has "Software Update" (second item on the Apple menu at the top left of the screen or in the system section of the "System Preferences") which calls home once a month (or weekly or daily) at least.
They can get the geshtalt of the box (including the CPU ID) to verify that's its a legitimate request from a box that they have sold (25M to 100M box IDs is almost nothing to store as a DB key) instead of some clone.
If its a clone they can just pop-up the system browser to an Apple page explaining this and inviting them to buy Mac hardware.
This would be a great thing for Apple because it would allow them to preserve the integrity of their company (See we don't encourage ripping us off!) their market share, (clones don't run software update so they need constant re-cloning,) and mindset (buy Apple from the start.)
The idea is not to snuff out the clones (there'll always be some way to clone a computer) but to discourage the practice by encouraging the purchase from Apple option.
was bitching and bitch-in' and making fun of a prof we had who was teaching us formal research technique.
She would 'sachay' her fat, jeans-clad butt in and out of class whenever she felt like it and was dissin' the prof until I got pissed off and told her that we weren't paying to watch her parade and to listen to her lip, and could she just get the hell out or shut the fuck up, I wanted to hear what the prof was saying, not her, and to keep he fat butt out of the way of the blackboard.
She was incredulous that anyone wouldn't fawn all over her and tried to make fun of me, for a week but she shut up and then I didn't see her again (she might even have been there but I had a 'her shaped' cut-out of my vision.)
and they had a huge client list that they were 'servicing' (listening to and marketing at,) and yet they were utterly unable to stop Caterpilar from eating their lunch (until Erie-Bucyrus exists only in the history books and in some antique shows.)
All monopolies get caught up in 'servicing the client,' hire people who are focused in and on 'servicing the client,' and so don't see what is really happening. Because to them its NOT happening.
They are blind to 'the solution looking for a problem.' That is where "The Next Big Thing (TM)" is coming from.
That's what founds great companies.
Its not the IBMs of this world that 'do great things,' that got caught with its pants down with minis (DEC, [DataGeneral, et alia]) micros (Apple [Microsoft et alia]), laptops (Compaq et alia,) and managing the entire supply chain (Dell, et alia.)
Though IBM is to be lauded for its continued survival and ability to reinvent itself, (the Linux side of the software business (at least its NOT Microsoft,:-]) while hanging on to its market share in the mainframe and super computer market.
Now they're going to be making intelligent Cell toys. And what's wrong with that?
This time they're taking a paying way into a potentially really dispuptive technology in a market place that's too unsophisticated to appreciate just what's happening.
The kids (and adults,) just see cool interactive graphics and internet connectivity. And Sony and Microsoft are paying the way. Brilliant IBM!
You absolutely DON'T want a monopoly. The thinking in a monopoly is too calcified. The profits to be derived are incremental not exponential.
ADVANCING the subject matter. That's called research and, by definition, there's no degree in whatever happens to be new. (I not saying that academe plays no part but its basicalli cleaning up after the research, tidying up the loose ends and creating a curriculum.)
While having a steady job in academe or in industry helps with acces to the toys, its not very useful to the subject of the research, (anymore than being a patent cleck helped Einstein with his theories.)
Researchers are driven to it and pursue it to the bitter end and the outer limits because of, well just because, damn it!
Along the way, they start things some of which flourish, some of which are mis-understood, some of which are ripped off, some of which are of no consequence despite the driving passion that got the researcher his insight.
For Jobs, it was calligraphy in a course he audited. Great I say.
For me it was the recent realization that relational != relationship.
Now we'll see how far that gets me. (I'm now fifty one. I've been in computing since 1976 and doing Smaltalk and object-oriented software since 1987 and, so far, its been a multi-continent blast.:-)
The movie biz is bitching about movie downloads. They're citing stats gathered from people's hard drives.
Hmmm?
With what degree of knowledge or cooperation from the people who's hard drives were scanned?
Or were these people just hacked? (Linux and OS X probably not just cooperate quite so readily to an invasive procedure like this, so is it just Windows that tattle-tells?)
That it will get there is a given. Hackers are inventive and resourceful.
But Apple is once bitten and twice shy about the entire cloning thing. Been there, done the slow bleed, thank you.
With weekly software updates, your box 'phones home' to the mothership and can download stuff that can 'investigate' the downlolader's geshtalt and report any non-standard chipset usage.
Apple has realized what Microsoft never knew because of how Microsoft acquired their market, and why.
Microsoft was trying to 'commoditize' PC hardware so it wanted to cast its net wide. Apple is trying to prevent the commoditization. And can keep a database of every owner's configuration. You don't think the CPU ID is actually gone, do you?
You didn't pay, Apple doesn't play with you. (But as to letting OS X 'escape' in unsupported installs, I don't expect there'll be too much trouble about that. Its viral varketing. Apple is a hardware company.)
that how you end up with $400 screwdrivers and $3,000 airplane toilet seats.
Whoever assigned the line item names screwed up and the quantity/amounts for those line items didn't take into account that cost over runs would leave the line item exposed.
If YOU want to believe it was actually $3,000 for a toilet seat and that our government is run by idiots (well maybe:-) and would rather NOT believe that it was for something that the government doesn't want you to know about... Well believe what you want.
The explanation may be perfectly reasonable and a decision for strategic reasons (you don't want the world to know just how much money the gummint is spending on North Korean espionnage now do you? One person will bitch tha its too much while another will bitch that its too little, and who needs that?)
Apple hardware is always running on "the safe path" not being extreme but, oh so usable. And all the friggin' stuff just works together.
From day dot, the OS was designed to insure that the number of cycles needed to shove the bytes through to their audio chips would be there. They made sure to carry that through when they went to Unix.
The number of things 'just working' in OS X is no accident. The number of things 'just working' in Linux is no accident either.
Its just that the __purpose__ of an OS dictates that somethings run more optimallly (you don't have streaming of dirty great big blocks of bytes when you need instant interruptability.)
Okay Apple came up with a chipset that includes something like DMA for audio and they can handle variable delays of feeding audio while the output is smooth as silk. Its got a variable length buffer that doesn't depend on getting fed bytes whenever the CPU can get around to it.
That's what is needed. It CAN'T be done without it. Unless Linux can come up with the Audio hardware, it's never going to be anything more than a hack.
Windows can 'almost' do it because it places a runtime priority on UI processes (Audio is UI) and the lag in processing is usually less than the response time.
I listen to iTunes on my iMac G5, my TiTanium G4 laptop, my wife's purple iMac G3 and the performance is always flawless.
I usually encounter some stutter at some point on my wife's old Dell box.
My Linux box has the speakers turned off because it sounds like shit (the selection is reminiscent of fart noises) even when it's working.
My SysAdmin friend is having 'issues' with the sound drivers. I tell him not to bother but he wants to 'get it working' on the box.
I haven't got the heart to tell him that the speakers are turned off because the sound is so bad that I can't even bear logging onto Gnome with the audio turned on. The selection, the selections and the selection of the selection are so poor that I just prefer to shut the audio off.
Apple makes hardware, sells hardware and supports hardware.
The fact that the OS is on a much safer BSD base than Windows ever was, (in part because Apple understands that security can't be a retrofit,) and will ONLY BE SUPPORTED on Apple's own hardware may bring far more switchers from a far larger pool of switchers.
And this AFTER Apple has itself made the switch and dumped the IBM chip set.
When Longhorn finally comes out, some tech people will have had OS X running on their boxes already and won't bother to switch and that is worrying Microsoft.
Apple makes killer hardware, which they make their money on, and set bar for what people are willing to pay for an OS AND for the quality that they should expect.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, that bar and the fact that people will have an alternative, means that Microsoft has less than three years to transform itself to be internet capable (If they already were, there wouldn't be viri, Trojeans, mal-, spy- and ad-ware all over their OS. Microsoft made a mistake are relied on third parties to take care of their problems for them.)
Either Microsoft can make the cut or it never could. They won't be able to rely on pulling anti-trust moves again. That sort of stuff goes on in backrooms and needs darkness to exist. Now, there's a light on in the room.
in their contracts. Otherwise, it belongs to the recording studio (why do you think there's so many 'studio' musicians?)
The music industry's a rip-off industry. They can't make music but they earn everything they can from playing it.
They earn money from the playing, not from anybody's listening. That's why they buy song books and hire 'studio' musicians to play songs to captive audiences in elevator, malls and ubiquitous other venues.
Thats' why they churn the crap out. They could give a shit about you.
that the owner no longer own but rents instead, as well as its own model, and that's a loss for Microsoft (why pay twice for the same music?)
Atc some point, Microsoft will realize that their 'rental' model is undercutting their OS sales since nobody needs to buy new hardware anymore to access all their songs.
And besides, I don't see Microsoft's wired verification DRM approach being able to compete with iPod on a sunny beach.
What's cobbled together rarely does the job except it can usualy be faked into something that looks adequate, right until a changed requirement when the whole thing gets tossed into the trash (it was collapsing into it anyway.)
I find most (hell, almost all,) 'soit-disant' design is missing the basics of software construction principles.
That we seem unable to do any better, regardless of how often we get burnt, is just WRONG!
What ever happened to post-implementation reviews? No wonder we seem to be unable to learn anything.
The **AAs own Everything, Everywhere for all Eternity.(*) Regardless of the creation date! From this day forward, they own EVERYTHING.(**)
They should be happy with that.
*)But they can't act on any if it. **) Now you know who to call when something's broken. (They get Spammers through copyright violation. Its THEIR 'Niagra' name and THEY can't use it.)
Slashdot Mirror
an internet age. Steve Jobs is not Big Brother.
The kind of paranioa and disconnectedness is only possible if and when you can keep information away from people.
If you're a Muslim, or a Jew or a Catholic or an Arian nationer you only listen to one immam or rabbi or pope or nut-case and he only tells you what he needs to make you stay a Muslim, or a Jew or a Catholic or an Arian nationer (or to get you to 'push the plunger.') Religion is the antimedia.
Steve Jobs is definitely *not* running around with "the ONE book" claiming that you need no other source.
Yes. The fact of Microsoft would remain.
And without the unique and experience of running Mac hardware for the sheer pleasure of it, Microsoft would squash Apple under the existential weight of its history of monopolistic practices, past and present.
your Dell, Dude?
:-)
Ten years ago, even five years ago, a PC was the biggest discretionary expense for a purchaser. And it wasn't bought willingly except by the earliest adopters. (I paid $11k and then $16k for Macs and BIG screens, but I'm just crazy. I had other machines as well and earned my living on the client's Windows boxes.
I loved the Macs because I earned enough to try 'em out. But most people don't have that kind of income to screw around and try things.
Now that the internet (and that has made an ENORMOUS difference) and the Dells of the world have brought the price down, most people are beginning to have the choice but they don't have the information. Its all just too complicated.
While the games and the gamers are heading off into console land and business is heading off into mergers and consolidations, out-sourcing and off-shoring, (Microsoft doesn't have to worry as long as people use ActiveX,) and they're all pursuing the thrill of the chase, I think that Apple's going to make inroads in the home business (that darn internet thing again) while protection their business, (that darn internet thing again.)
But Apple is a "The Gap" type brand. Its a "BMW" type brand. Its made to give a great "new car smell."
The internet works both ways guys. It works BOTH ways. Its NOT a broadcast medium.
While you may think that its only good for you to access information, its also a way for the information (provider) to access you.
viral marketing for Apple.
Apple makes hardware boxes, they make their money off their boxes. They don't support every other box out there. They don't have to either.
OS X has "Software Update" (second item on the Apple menu at the top left of the screen or in the system section of the "System Preferences") which calls home once a month (or weekly or daily) at least.
They can get the geshtalt of the box (including the CPU ID) to verify that's its a legitimate request from a box that they have sold (25M to 100M box IDs is almost nothing to store as a DB key) instead of some clone.
If its a clone they can just pop-up the system browser to an Apple page explaining this and inviting them to buy Mac hardware.
This would be a great thing for Apple because it would allow them to preserve the integrity of their company (See we don't encourage ripping us off!) their market share, (clones don't run software update so they need constant re-cloning,) and mindset (buy Apple from the start.)
The idea is not to snuff out the clones (there'll always be some way to clone a computer) but to discourage the practice by encouraging the purchase from Apple option.
Apple has NOTHING to lose this time 'round.
was bitching and bitch-in' and making fun of a prof we had who was teaching us formal research technique.
She would 'sachay' her fat, jeans-clad butt in and out of class whenever she felt like it and was dissin' the prof until I got pissed off and told her that we weren't paying to watch her parade and to listen to her lip, and could she just get the hell out or shut the fuck up, I wanted to hear what the prof was saying, not her, and to keep he fat butt out of the way of the blackboard.
She was incredulous that anyone wouldn't fawn all over her and tried to make fun of me, for a week but she shut up and then I didn't see her again (she might even have been there but I had a 'her shaped' cut-out of my vision.)
and they had a huge client list that they were 'servicing' (listening to and marketing at,) and yet they were utterly unable to stop Caterpilar from eating their lunch (until Erie-Bucyrus exists only in the history books and in some antique shows.)
All monopolies get caught up in 'servicing the client,' hire people who are focused in and on 'servicing the client,' and so don't see what is really happening. Because to them its NOT happening.
They are blind to 'the solution looking for a problem.' That is where "The Next Big Thing (TM)" is coming from.
That's what founds great companies.
Its not the IBMs of this world that 'do great things,' that got caught with its pants down with minis (DEC, [DataGeneral, et alia]) micros (Apple [Microsoft et alia]), laptops (Compaq et alia,) and managing the entire supply chain (Dell, et alia.)
Though IBM is to be lauded for its continued survival and ability to reinvent itself, (the Linux side of the software business (at least its NOT Microsoft,:-]) while hanging on to its market share in the mainframe and super computer market.
Now they're going to be making intelligent Cell toys. And what's wrong with that?
This time they're taking a paying way into a potentially really dispuptive technology in a market place that's too unsophisticated to appreciate just what's happening.
The kids (and adults,) just see cool interactive graphics and internet connectivity. And Sony and Microsoft are paying the way. Brilliant IBM!
You absolutely DON'T want a monopoly. The thinking in a monopoly is too calcified. The profits to be derived are incremental not exponential.
ADVANCING the subject matter. That's called research and, by definition, there's no degree in whatever happens to be new. (I not saying that academe plays no part but its basicalli cleaning up after the research, tidying up the loose ends and creating a curriculum.)
:-)
While having a steady job in academe or in industry helps with acces to the toys, its not very useful to the subject of the research, (anymore than being a patent cleck helped Einstein with his theories.)
Researchers are driven to it and pursue it to the bitter end and the outer limits because of, well just because, damn it!
Along the way, they start things some of which flourish, some of which are mis-understood, some of which are ripped off, some of which are of no consequence despite the driving passion that got the researcher his insight.
For Jobs, it was calligraphy in a course he audited. Great I say.
For me it was the recent realization that relational != relationship.
Now we'll see how far that gets me. (I'm now fifty one. I've been in computing since 1976 and doing Smaltalk and object-oriented software since 1987 and, so far, its been a multi-continent blast.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/technology/13dri ll.html
The movie biz is bitching about movie downloads. They're citing stats gathered from people's hard drives.
Hmmm?
With what degree of knowledge or cooperation from the people who's hard drives were scanned?
Or were these people just hacked? (Linux and OS X probably not just cooperate quite so readily to an invasive procedure like this, so is it just Windows that tattle-tells?)
An enquiring mind wants to know...
Their images don't load on my PC here at work. (But it works fine in IE and on in Firefox on my macs at home.)
Got any hints?
other hardware but what they produce.
That it will get there is a given. Hackers are inventive and resourceful.
But Apple is once bitten and twice shy about the entire cloning thing. Been there, done the slow bleed, thank you.
With weekly software updates, your box 'phones home' to the mothership and can download stuff that can 'investigate' the downlolader's geshtalt and report any non-standard chipset usage.
Apple has realized what Microsoft never knew because of how Microsoft acquired their market, and why.
Microsoft was trying to 'commoditize' PC hardware so it wanted to cast its net wide. Apple is trying to prevent the commoditization. And can keep a database of every owner's configuration. You don't think the CPU ID is actually gone, do you?
You didn't pay, Apple doesn't play with you. (But as to letting OS X 'escape' in unsupported installs, I don't expect there'll be too much trouble about that. Its viral varketing. Apple is a hardware company.)
The book was the sequel to "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
The original was made into a movie. The sequel wasn't.
that how you end up with $400 screwdrivers and $3,000 airplane toilet seats.
:-) and would rather NOT believe that it was for something that the government doesn't want you to know about... Well believe what you want.
Whoever assigned the line item names screwed up and the quantity/amounts for those line items didn't take into account that cost over runs would leave the line item exposed.
If YOU want to believe it was actually $3,000 for a toilet seat and that our government is run by idiots (well maybe
The explanation may be perfectly reasonable and a decision for strategic reasons (you don't want the world to know just how much money the gummint is spending on North Korean espionnage now do you? One person will bitch tha its too much while another will bitch that its too little, and who needs that?)
Think on it.
Apple hardware is always running on "the safe path" not being extreme but, oh so usable. And all the friggin' stuff just works together.
From day dot, the OS was designed to insure that the number of cycles needed to shove the bytes through to their audio chips would be there. They made sure to carry that through when they went to Unix.
The number of things 'just working' in OS X is no accident. The number of things 'just working' in Linux is no accident either.
Its just that the __purpose__ of an OS dictates that somethings run more optimallly (you don't have streaming of dirty great big blocks of bytes when you need instant interruptability.)
Okay Apple came up with a chipset that includes something like DMA for audio and they can handle variable delays of feeding audio while the output is smooth as silk. Its got a variable length buffer that doesn't depend on getting fed bytes whenever the CPU can get around to it.
That's what is needed. It CAN'T be done without it. Unless Linux can come up with the Audio hardware, it's never going to be anything more than a hack.
Windows can 'almost' do it because it places a runtime priority on UI processes (Audio is UI) and the lag in processing is usually less than the response time.
I listen to iTunes on my iMac G5, my TiTanium G4 laptop, my wife's purple iMac G3 and the performance is always flawless.
I usually encounter some stutter at some point on my wife's old Dell box.
My Linux box has the speakers turned off because it sounds like shit (the selection is reminiscent of fart noises) even when it's working.
My SysAdmin friend is having 'issues' with the sound drivers. I tell him not to bother but he wants to 'get it working' on the box.
I haven't got the heart to tell him that the speakers are turned off because the sound is so bad that I can't even bear logging onto Gnome with the audio turned on. The selection, the selections and the selection of the selection are so poor that I just prefer to shut the audio off.
Apple makes hardware, sells hardware and supports hardware.
The fact that the OS is on a much safer BSD base than Windows ever was, (in part because Apple understands that security can't be a retrofit,) and will ONLY BE SUPPORTED on Apple's own hardware may bring far more switchers from a far larger pool of switchers.
And this AFTER Apple has itself made the switch and dumped the IBM chip set.
When Longhorn finally comes out, some tech people will have had OS X running on their boxes already and won't bother to switch and that is worrying Microsoft.
Apple makes killer hardware, which they make their money on, and set bar for what people are willing to pay for an OS AND for the quality that they should expect.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, that bar and the fact that people will have an alternative, means that Microsoft has less than three years to transform itself to be internet capable (If they already were, there wouldn't be viri, Trojeans, mal-, spy- and ad-ware all over their OS. Microsoft made a mistake are relied on third parties to take care of their problems for them.)
Either Microsoft can make the cut or it never could. They won't be able to rely on pulling anti-trust moves again. That sort of stuff goes on in backrooms and needs darkness to exist. Now, there's a light on in the room.
into LongHorn...
Maybe they'll integrate into IE adn try to bamboozle every web graphic to be whatever extension they use.
"Display of non '.sht' graphic is not recommended (by us).
Convert?
[yes] [reboot]"
I mean, am I at risk everytime I fire back with a couple of rounds?
Actually, they're made with a core of depleted uranium so I suspect that I'm more at risk from that.
She just hit me in the 'nads with a frying pan. Oooo. (collapses to the kitchen floor.)
getting dumped on them. NTP is just a small patent-holding company in Arlington, Va.
RIM has the hardware and the network.
Let RIM put out an email and a static page on all their devices out there saying that they are being forced out by NTP.
We'll see how long NTP can stand being in the palmtop communication device marketplace with nothing to show for it but their dick in their hand.
in their contracts. Otherwise, it belongs to the recording studio (why do you think there's so many 'studio' musicians?)
The music industry's a rip-off industry. They can't make music but they earn everything they can from playing it.
They earn money from the playing, not from anybody's listening. That's why they buy song books and hire 'studio' musicians to play songs to captive audiences in elevator, malls and ubiquitous other venues.
Thats' why they churn the crap out. They could give a shit about you.
that the owner no longer own but rents instead, as well as its own model, and that's a loss for Microsoft (why pay twice for the same music?)
Atc some point, Microsoft will realize that their 'rental' model is undercutting their OS sales since nobody needs to buy new hardware anymore to access all their songs.
And besides, I don't see Microsoft's wired verification DRM approach being able to compete with iPod on a sunny beach.
that we rarely design anything.
What's cobbled together rarely does the job except it can usualy be faked into something that looks adequate, right until a changed requirement when the whole thing gets tossed into the trash (it was collapsing into it anyway.)
I find most (hell, almost all,) 'soit-disant' design is missing the basics of software construction principles.
That we seem unable to do any better, regardless of how often we get burnt, is just WRONG!
What ever happened to post-implementation reviews? No wonder we seem to be unable to learn anything.
The **AAs own Everything, Everywhere for all Eternity.(*) Regardless of the creation date! From this day forward, they own EVERYTHING.(**)
They should be happy with that.
*)But they can't act on any if it.
**) Now you know who to call when something's broken. (They get Spammers through copyright violation. Its THEIR 'Niagra' name and THEY can't use it.)
of tumorous growth. Its value for Darwinian survival has been vastly over rated.
We're really fucking with things up and down the scale, from Jihadists (now __there's__ a survival trait for you,) to the environment.
Most of the problem come from people denying what evidence there IS and believing in evidence there ISN'T.
Now tell me that's rational.
I hope ol' Stevie announces the new Mac's name soon.
It won't be a 'power' anything Mac since they're no longer using the PowerPC chip.
iMac's already on my desktop and that uses a G5.
IntelMac's just too long to type.
Hmm... X(86)Mac... YEAH.. XMac! XMac'd fit and it would fit in with all the XServe stuff.
Let's hope they go 64 bit wide real soon. I'd hate to be buying down in chip set.
Though a dual core dual chip desk top box would probabky be real sweet...