While using electricity, as you say, "...shift[s] the pollution to the power generation stations," that at least centralizes your work in improving energy generation. Say in ten years we figure out how to power engines with angel sneezes. Would we rather retrofit millions of automobiles, or thousands of power stations?
But you are ignoring a couple of other locations of power loss-- the transmission lines and the battery. I'm no elecrical expert, but I know that electricity loses energy when it travels long distances over wires, and that they lose a *lot* of energy when you stick them in batteries. I don't know how the math works out, but I wouldn't be suprised if these factors added up to a big power hit.
No, more efficient cars aren't around for a very good reason: they make less money for the oil companies and the automobile companies. So they bury the technology or generate FUD about them not being "as efficient".
You say that like there is only 1 oil company and one car company. This is simply not the case. If Ford were to come out with a car that had all the characteristics of a current cars except it had twice the range and had fuel that cost half as much, do you really think they'd "bury it?" On the contrary, they'd develop it to take market share from Chevy and GM.
Don't forget foreign car companies. Even if there was a secret agreement between the American oil industry and the auto industry, it is unlikely they could also get control of auto industries in other nations.
Car companies are fighting tooth and nail for market share. The idea that they are going to refrain from adopting a technology because it might hurt their competition or the oil industry is ludicrous. I wish people would think through the economics of a proposition before shooting their mouths off on/.
Depends on the benefits to society of that research, along with the question as to whether that particular industry is focussed on short-term profit and would benefit from Government-industry partnership.
"Government industry partnership" is a euphamism for corporate welfare, and is also known as fascism. And why would a company focus on "short term profits?" Companies stay in existence for the long term, and it would be stupid of them to focus on short term projects only.
Also, what makes you think governments are immune from the tendency to focus on the near term? What generally happens is that the money goes to successful industry players who don't need it, at the expense of smaller companies with better ideas. The idea that government involvement is going to make for better long-range planning is just plain silly.
Make any calculations you like. With that kind of money, accidents will happen. Nasty accidents.
Exactly what are you saying? That they've sabotaged such projects, and/or killed the inventors? Do you have any evidence for this? And even if this were true, people have been doing research on this stuff for 50 years, and if a good alternative existed, it would've been found several times. Are you now going to tell me that the oil industry is guilty of sabotaging or killing several different research groups, with no one noticing? I think that's bordering on absurd.
True, but I did not say say anything about Jesus of Nazarath. I was simply pointing out that on the Christian calendar (regardless of whether or not it accurately represent's Jesus' birth) the 3rd millenium doesn't start for another year.
It just occured to me that if google is caching every site in the universe,/. could just include a small link to the relevant google site for every link in a story. This could be done with a little word after each link, i.e. link(cached)
I seem to hear this claim about the evil oil industry buying out better technologies a lot, and it is complete hogwash. Let's do the math:
Let's suppose that the oil industry sells 10 billion gallons of gas at a buck a gallon, and it costs 80 cents per gallon to produce that gas. The industry then has an annual profit of 2 billion dollars. Now suppose that a technology comes along that can do the same job, but at a price of 40 cents a share. Let assume that it could do everything exactly as well as gas, so that it will completely supplant gasoline.
What would the patent be worth? Obviously, if you have exclusive control over the technology, and the closest competition is oil, then you can sell your technology at slightly less than a buck a gallon and that gives you 60 per gallon profit. This means that the value of the patent is 6 billion dollars, multiplied times the number of years the patent is in use.
So, the patent is worth more than the entire income of the petroleum industry. Unless the inventor is really stupid, it would be so expensive that it would eat up their entire profit and drive them into debt. The *only* way they could afford to buy it out is if they turned around and started using it.
This sort of analysis can be done on any of the choices that compete with oil, and the conclusion is the same. If a technology were to come out that was cheaper or better than the alternatives, it would be suicide for the oil companies to "buy it out" and sit on it. In fact, the greater profit would be in producing it and growing rich off the fat profit margins. Since this has not happened, it's obvious that no such technology exists.
As for Reagan, this is the kind of ignorant nonsense that gives leftists a bad name. Reagan does not have control over private R & D budgets, and so there's no way he could have killed such a technology. And if he killed government research on the matter, I see that as a good thing. I see no reason why taxpayers should be forced to pay for research that can and should be done in the private sector. If the government had such a hot technology in development, the researchers would have had no problem finding private capital.
Baryonic matter is the sort of matter we find in this universe. i.e. stuff made of protons, electrons and neutrons.
Protons and neutrons are baryons. Electrons are leptons. The difference is that leptons are (as far as we know) irreducible particles, whereas baryons are collections of quarks. Baryons are also susceptible to the strong nuclear interaction, which is why they can form nuclei.
I believe there are six leptons: the electron, muon, and tauon, and a neutrino for each. Each of the above also has an antiparticle. I don't remember how many baryons there are, but it's more than just neutrons and protons. Most of the others are rare and unstable, though.
Actually this isn't quite right. The "correct" definition for a hacker according to the people who complain about its misuse is something like "a clever or talented programmer." By this definition, Woz and Linus and others like them are "hackers." People who break into computer systems are (depending on their skill and persistence) "crackers" or "script kiddies".
I really don't care if "hacker" is used "correctly," but that's supposedly the "correct" meaning.
OK, let's try this again. "HTML formatted" obviously wasn't what I wanted.
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place.
I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines.
Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers.
Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place. I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines. Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers. Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
Suddenly, the iMac's galling lack of external storage doesn't seem as important anymore. I'm sorry, but I'm getting tired of people repeating this over and over again. OK, people, the new Macs do not have floppies. Get over it! If you need external storage, get a USB drive. There are several nice ones on the market. I have one and I hardly ever use it. The fact is, there are very few reasons that most users need floppies. Most users use their Macs for games, email, web browsing, and word processing. Non of these activities require floppy drives. Besides, many of us have second Macs, and so you can just hook up an ethernet crossover cable and transfer the files over in a matter of second. So please stop bringing this up. The lack of floppies doesn't seem to have deterred too many customers, and it probably saved Apple some money and brought the price down a bit. Floppies are on their way out anyway, and Apple is just ahead of the curve.
SloppyFocus is the deal where the cursor determines the active window, right? I find this feature extremely ennoying, as it means that I can bump my mouse and end up type in the wrong window. The select to clipboard is even more obnoxious. I often want to copy something, do something else for a while, and then go back and paste. This feature makes this impossible. If I don't paste immediately, I risk accidentally clicking on some text and losing the old selection. This is terrible UI design. It would be different if Linux provided the above features as options and also included the default Mac OS behavior. They don't. This is because good copy and paste requires extra work for developers, and Linux developers in general don't care about the UI. This is perhaps the MacOS's greatest strength: thoughtful, consistent, nazi-esque interface standards that they require of their developers. They do that better than anyone out there, and the result is a more consistent and satisfying user experience than anyone out there.
I think there's a need for Government funding in helping telecommuters and freelancers get support in acquiring a safe work environment at home. Why can't you pay for this yourself? Are you really that helpless/stupid that you can't take responsibility for your own health? Do you really need the government to be your personal babysitter? I don't think this is an issue the government should be involved with at all. Telecommuters are big boys and girls, and they should take responsibility for their own ergonomics. Maybe it's too much to ask for damages with carpal syndrome, severe caffeine addiction, monitor radiation tan and severe loss of hair, but hey. How exactly is any of this the fault of anyone other than yourself? You chose to work the hours you did, and if you were concerned about the above, you should have worked fewer hours or changed jobs. Unless you had an explicit agreement with your employer that you would be compensated for the above, I don't see any reason for you to receive damages.
Personally, I think this reporter is on crack. I watched most of the keynote, and he did not mention this in the parts I saw. He did say that it had a BSD kernal, which was "the same thing" as Linux, and he probably said that Darwin would be OSS, but we already knew that. open sourcing the rest of their OS is simply not in their interest. They are going to make a lot of money selling OS X, and if they allow it to be used on non-Apple hardware, it eliminates one of the biggest advantages they have over the Wintel world. Someone could port the Apple UI to Intel hardware, and Apple can kiss their market share goodbye.
Please don't presume that because a computer is involved that the person is rich enough to be treated civily.
The issue is the same for poor workers, it's just more ridiculous for poor workers. But I support the right of poor workers to accept any kind of job they like just as I accept that right for wealthy workers.
Farmed-out low-paying data processing will grow enormously. Let's start the laws now so we can develop useful ones. Contracting will soon be not just the employment of those with initiative.
True, but the issue will be the same. These ergonomic benefits will not come for free, and there may be many workers who would prefer to forgo them in exchange for other benefits or higher pay. This regulation will prevent them from doing that.
However, the only OS that would run on this chip would be Linux, unless AMD forked Microsoft some cash to port NT.
Why not? If you combine the growing Linux server market with upcoming release of an NT-based consumer product, that should be plenty to sustain the chip. I've read that NT is designed to be a cross-platform product, and if so it should be feasible to port NT to K8 without too much trouble.
OS support is the biggest reason the Apple-style emulator approach wouldn't work in the PC world. DOS still does matter, There are a couple of PC-emulators available for the Mac. If you had a mostly-native version of NT, you could easily write an emulator for DOS and most apps.
The key would be to get Microsoft to support (and app developers to ship) "FAT" binaries of their apps. AMD would probably need to provide compiler companies with engineers to write K8 support into their compilers. The idea is that you'd need to make it so that Joe Sixpack could run any Windows app without having to do anything special. Apple did this with the PPC. I see no reason in principle why the same could not be done for an AMD chip.
If the above could be achieved, I don't think the other problems would matter. A K8 version of Windows with most apps running natively and the rest under emulation would be useful as a consumer PC chip. Without the need to support legacy x86/MMX/3Dnow/whatever baggage, it could be a smaller, faster, cheaper chip. It could very easily take the laptop market by storm. And if they pulled it off, it would give them a big advantage over Intel, and probably would force Intel to make a K8 clone.
Just my $.02. The big question would be whether the resulting technical advantages would be worth the money it would cost to get MS to write the OS and emulator and compilers to support it. The G4 is a fast chip, but so far it hasn't been fast enough to convince too many people to switch. Maybe
Coal miners? Nuclear plant workers? People whose job is to type into a computer all day at home for $6 an hour?
What about them? They need to take responsibility for their own health too.
What I often wonder about with these anti-government/anti-worker types is what do they think THEY get out of it?
Freedom. As a worker, I want the right to decide which benefits are worth demanding from my employer, and which I would prefer to do without. If the government sets a standard for telecommuters that doesn't include the chair I have (even if I'm perfectly happy with my existing chair) it is quite possible that my employer will simply prohibit me from working at home to prevent a lawsuit. This sort of thing occurs all the time. For example, I have been explicitly told not to work overtime because my employer is no willing to pay time-and-a-half. I would be perfectly happy to work at the normal rate, but because of that law, I am prevented from doing so.
Laws designed to "protect" workers simply force employers to give employees things that the employees my or may not want, and those things often come out of the worker's other benefits or paycheck. Workers (even coal miners) are not helpless victims of "the system." In a free society they have the option to quit at any time. That they don't is their choice, and they should take responsibility for that choice.
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The Rev A and Rev B iMacs (the non-fruity ones) did indeed have an IR port. The Rev C and since (the fruity ones) do not.
While using electricity, as you say, "...shift[s] the pollution to the power generation stations," that at least centralizes your work in improving energy generation. Say in ten years we figure out how to power engines with angel sneezes. Would we rather retrofit millions of automobiles, or thousands of power stations?
But you are ignoring a couple of other locations of power loss-- the transmission lines and the battery. I'm no elecrical expert, but I know that electricity loses energy when it travels long distances over wires, and that they lose a *lot* of energy when you stick them in batteries. I don't know how the math works out, but I wouldn't be suprised if these factors added up to a big power hit.
No, more efficient cars aren't around for a very good reason: they make less money for the oil companies and the automobile companies. So they bury the technology or generate FUD about them not being "as efficient".
/.
You say that like there is only 1 oil company and one car company. This is simply not the case. If Ford were to come out with a car that had all the characteristics of a current cars except it had twice the range and had fuel that cost half as much, do you really think they'd "bury it?" On the contrary, they'd develop it to take market share from Chevy and GM.
Don't forget foreign car companies. Even if there was a secret agreement between the American oil industry and the auto industry, it is unlikely they could also get control of auto industries in other nations.
Car companies are fighting tooth and nail for market share. The idea that they are going to refrain from adopting a technology because it might hurt their competition or the oil industry is ludicrous. I wish people would think through the economics of a proposition before shooting their mouths off on
Depends on the benefits to society of that research, along with the question as to whether that particular industry is focussed on short-term profit and would benefit from Government-industry partnership.
"Government industry partnership" is a euphamism for corporate welfare, and is also known as fascism. And why would a company focus on "short term profits?" Companies stay in existence for the long term, and it would be stupid of them to focus on short term projects only.
Also, what makes you think governments are immune from the tendency to focus on the near term? What generally happens is that the money goes to successful industry players who don't need it, at the expense of smaller companies with better ideas. The idea that government involvement is going to make for better long-range planning is just plain silly.
Make any calculations you like. With that kind of money, accidents will happen. Nasty accidents.
Exactly what are you saying? That they've sabotaged such projects, and/or killed the inventors? Do you have any evidence for this? And even if this were true, people have been doing research on this stuff for 50 years, and if a good alternative existed, it would've been found several times. Are you now going to tell me that the oil industry is guilty of sabotaging or killing several different research groups, with no one noticing? I think that's bordering on absurd.
True, but I did not say say anything about Jesus of Nazarath. I was simply pointing out that on the Christian calendar (regardless of whether or not it accurately represent's Jesus' birth) the 3rd millenium doesn't start for another year.
It just occured to me that if google is caching every site in the universe, /. could just include a small link to the relevant google site for every link in a story. This could be done with a little word after each link, i.e. link (cached)
I seem to hear this claim about the evil oil industry buying out better technologies a lot, and it is complete hogwash. Let's do the math:
Let's suppose that the oil industry sells 10 billion gallons of gas at a buck a gallon, and it costs 80 cents per gallon to produce that gas. The industry then has an annual profit of 2 billion dollars. Now suppose that a technology comes along that can do the same job, but at a price of 40 cents a share. Let assume that it could do everything exactly as well as gas, so that it will completely supplant gasoline.
What would the patent be worth? Obviously, if you have exclusive control over the technology, and the closest competition is oil, then you can sell your technology at slightly less than a buck a gallon and that gives you 60 per gallon profit. This means that the value of the patent is 6 billion dollars, multiplied times the number of years the patent is in use.
So, the patent is worth more than the entire income of the petroleum industry. Unless the inventor is really stupid, it would be so expensive that it would eat up their entire profit and drive them into debt. The *only* way they could afford to buy it out is if they turned around and started using it.
This sort of analysis can be done on any of the choices that compete with oil, and the conclusion is the same. If a technology were to come out that was cheaper or better than the alternatives, it would be suicide for the oil companies to "buy it out" and sit on it. In fact, the greater profit would be in producing it and growing rich off the fat profit margins. Since this has not happened, it's obvious that no such technology exists.
As for Reagan, this is the kind of ignorant nonsense that gives leftists a bad name. Reagan does not have control over private R & D budgets, and so there's no way he could have killed such a technology. And if he killed government research on the matter, I see that as a good thing. I see no reason why taxpayers should be forced to pay for research that can and should be done in the private sector. If the government had such a hot technology in development, the researchers would have had no problem finding private capital.
(I guess) it was just so overused in the early part of the last century of the last millennium (heh heh, didn't used to able to say *that*)
You still can't. We are still in the second millenium, and still will be for some 350 days. The new millenium doesn't start til january 1, 2001
Someone didn't pay attention in physics...
Baryonic matter is the sort of matter we find in this universe. i.e. stuff made of protons, electrons and neutrons.
Protons and neutrons are baryons. Electrons are leptons. The difference is that leptons are (as far as we know) irreducible particles, whereas baryons are collections of quarks. Baryons are also susceptible to the strong nuclear interaction, which is why they can form nuclei.
I believe there are six leptons: the electron, muon, and tauon, and a neutrino for each. Each of the above also has an antiparticle. I don't remember how many baryons there are, but it's more than just neutrons and protons. Most of the others are rare and unstable, though.
Actually this isn't quite right. The "correct" definition for a hacker according to the people who complain about its misuse is something like "a clever or talented programmer." By this definition, Woz and Linus and others like them are "hackers." People who break into computer systems are (depending on their skill and persistence) "crackers" or "script kiddies".
I really don't care if "hacker" is used "correctly," but that's supposedly the "correct" meaning.
Defend and fight in cyberspace? You can't tell me that that doesn't sound nauseatingly Hollywood. Work it into ninety minutes and shop it around.
:)
It's been done. It's called "The Matrix".
Um, Carbon is an API, not a UI.
Standard oil sold oil at less than cost until other companies died off, then jacked prices up.
Do you have evidence for this?
Three words: Get a Mac. :)
Yes, that's flamebait. Moderate me down if you must.
What did Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel do that was bad?
OK, let's try this again. "HTML formatted" obviously wasn't what I wanted.
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place.
I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines.
Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers.
Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place. I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines. Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers. Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
Suddenly, the iMac's galling lack of external storage doesn't seem as important anymore. I'm sorry, but I'm getting tired of people repeating this over and over again. OK, people, the new Macs do not have floppies. Get over it! If you need external storage, get a USB drive. There are several nice ones on the market. I have one and I hardly ever use it. The fact is, there are very few reasons that most users need floppies. Most users use their Macs for games, email, web browsing, and word processing. Non of these activities require floppy drives. Besides, many of us have second Macs, and so you can just hook up an ethernet crossover cable and transfer the files over in a matter of second. So please stop bringing this up. The lack of floppies doesn't seem to have deterred too many customers, and it probably saved Apple some money and brought the price down a bit. Floppies are on their way out anyway, and Apple is just ahead of the curve.
SloppyFocus is the deal where the cursor determines the active window, right? I find this feature extremely ennoying, as it means that I can bump my mouse and end up type in the wrong window. The select to clipboard is even more obnoxious. I often want to copy something, do something else for a while, and then go back and paste. This feature makes this impossible. If I don't paste immediately, I risk accidentally clicking on some text and losing the old selection. This is terrible UI design. It would be different if Linux provided the above features as options and also included the default Mac OS behavior. They don't. This is because good copy and paste requires extra work for developers, and Linux developers in general don't care about the UI. This is perhaps the MacOS's greatest strength: thoughtful, consistent, nazi-esque interface standards that they require of their developers. They do that better than anyone out there, and the result is a more consistent and satisfying user experience than anyone out there.
I think there's a need for Government funding in helping telecommuters and freelancers get support in acquiring a safe work environment at home. Why can't you pay for this yourself? Are you really that helpless/stupid that you can't take responsibility for your own health? Do you really need the government to be your personal babysitter? I don't think this is an issue the government should be involved with at all. Telecommuters are big boys and girls, and they should take responsibility for their own ergonomics. Maybe it's too much to ask for damages with carpal syndrome, severe caffeine addiction, monitor radiation tan and severe loss of hair, but hey. How exactly is any of this the fault of anyone other than yourself? You chose to work the hours you did, and if you were concerned about the above, you should have worked fewer hours or changed jobs. Unless you had an explicit agreement with your employer that you would be compensated for the above, I don't see any reason for you to receive damages.
Personally, I think this reporter is on crack. I watched most of the keynote, and he did not mention this in the parts I saw. He did say that it had a BSD kernal, which was "the same thing" as Linux, and he probably said that Darwin would be OSS, but we already knew that. open sourcing the rest of their OS is simply not in their interest. They are going to make a lot of money selling OS X, and if they allow it to be used on non-Apple hardware, it eliminates one of the biggest advantages they have over the Wintel world. Someone could port the Apple UI to Intel hardware, and Apple can kiss their market share goodbye.
Can they adjust or just abuse the hell out of it?
How exactly would one abuse unrestricted access to the web?
Please don't presume that because a computer is involved that the person is rich enough to be treated civily.
The issue is the same for poor workers, it's just more ridiculous for poor workers. But I support the right of poor workers to accept any kind of job they like just as I accept that right for wealthy workers.
Farmed-out low-paying data processing will grow enormously. Let's start the laws now so we can develop useful ones. Contracting will soon be not just the employment of those with initiative.
True, but the issue will be the same. These ergonomic benefits will not come for free, and there may be many workers who would prefer to forgo them in exchange for other benefits or higher pay. This regulation will prevent them from doing that.
However, the only OS that would run on this chip would be Linux, unless AMD forked Microsoft some cash to port NT.
Why not? If you combine the growing Linux server market with upcoming release of an NT-based consumer product, that should be plenty to sustain the chip. I've read that NT is designed to be a cross-platform product, and if so it should be feasible to port NT to K8 without too much trouble.
OS support is the biggest reason the Apple-style emulator approach wouldn't work in the PC world. DOS still does matter,
There are a couple of PC-emulators available for the Mac. If you had a mostly-native version of NT, you could easily write an emulator for DOS and most apps.
The key would be to get Microsoft to support (and app developers to ship) "FAT" binaries of their apps. AMD would probably need to provide compiler companies with engineers to write K8 support into their compilers. The idea is that you'd need to make it so that Joe Sixpack could run any Windows app without having to do anything special. Apple did this with the PPC. I see no reason in principle why the same could not be done for an AMD chip.
If the above could be achieved, I don't think the other problems would matter. A K8 version of Windows with most apps running natively and the rest under emulation would be useful as a consumer PC chip. Without the need to support legacy x86/MMX/3Dnow/whatever baggage, it could be a smaller, faster, cheaper chip. It could very easily take the laptop market by storm. And if they pulled it off, it would give them a big advantage over Intel, and probably would force Intel to make a K8 clone.
Just my $.02. The big question would be whether the resulting technical advantages would be worth the money it would cost to get MS to write the OS and emulator and compilers to support it. The G4 is a fast chip, but so far it hasn't been fast enough to convince too many people to switch. Maybe
Coal miners? Nuclear plant workers? People whose job is to type into a computer all day at home for $6 an hour?
What about them? They need to take responsibility for their own health too.
What I often wonder about with these anti-government/anti-worker types is what do they think THEY get out of it?
Freedom. As a worker, I want the right to decide which benefits are worth demanding from my employer, and which I would prefer to do without. If the government sets a standard for telecommuters that doesn't include the chair I have (even if I'm perfectly happy with my existing chair) it is quite possible that my employer will simply prohibit me from working at home to prevent a lawsuit. This sort of thing occurs all the time. For example, I have been explicitly told not to work overtime because my employer is no willing to pay time-and-a-half. I would be perfectly happy to work at the normal rate, but because of that law, I am prevented from doing so.
Laws designed to "protect" workers simply force employers to give employees things that the employees my or may not want, and those things often come out of the worker's other benefits or paycheck. Workers (even coal miners) are not helpless victims of "the system." In a free society they have the option to quit at any time. That they don't is their choice, and they should take responsibility for that choice.