I really wish they would offer that. I've released DRM free music and would love to do so through the iTunes store. I hate DRM myself, and I don't want to inflict it on fans.
I think a lot of artists are open to this idea. It is the one advantage that I have over the big players: I'm not a greedy bastard. I make music for fun, and I'd be happy if just the people who wanted to pay for it did.
Large companies are powerful. Power corrupts. Yes it sounds trite but it's as true as can be.
Of course a company lives for profit, and that is a motivator for the company to make customers happy. But as a company grows, and it has more power, making the customer happy is _not_ the only way to make a profit, and not even necessarily the most efficient.
Most large companies eventually drift away from customer focus, and instead spend their energies on damaging competitors, manipulating customers' expectations, and lowering service quality. I'm not going to waste my energy listing examples as I'm sure anyone reading slashdot is quite tired of the topic.
I believe in the free market. But the free market is not the end-all-be-all solution. It's far too simplistic to claim that free market pressures alone will keep everyone in line. If that were true than there would be no need for any laws at all. But society has found it beneficial to keep, say, the CEO of one company from firebombing their competitors' headquarters.
An extreme example, to be sure, but illustrative: without any regulation things would get out of hand. Good laws _encourage_ the free market. Keeping diversity in the marketplace is _good_ for the free market.
The FCC just blew it.
Re:what did she have to say besides looking good?
on
Aimee Deep Interview
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· Score: 1
Not trying to be argumentative, but why is there so much resentment towards the ladies? Let's say for a second that the interview is totally boring -- it wouldn't be the first such article on slashdot, and I'm sure people would complain in the comments, but sexuality wouldn't enter into it. It's almost like the crowd here likes to penalize "just because somebody's got a set of boobs". And I see this even in the case where there's no sexuality present - only gender.
I agree all the sexmarketing is annoying -- and the tone of the article does capitalize on that to some extent. But what the heck, she's attractive and she's got slashdotesque opinions. Her visibility is probably more based on her father's connections than her gender or her comeliness.
Anyways - I'm not ragging on you in particular. Just noting this slashdot tendancy: any time a female is mentioned on slashdot her gender is a main point of discussion. As a highly geeky guy who somehow ended up with several geeky female friends, the attitude really stands out to me.
Re:what did she have to say besides looking good?
on
Aimee Deep Interview
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I haven't even looked at the blog, so I'm talking out my ass here but...
who on Slashdot could possibly care what an 18 year old poster girl has to say about the legal issues of IP?
When did anyone on slashdot get such pompous standards as to what they read? God bless this site, but for Bob's sake it's nothing but a bunch of 18 year old (physically or otherwise) boys spouting off on the legal issues of IP and occasionally even more weighty topics.
If there's one place that M. Nobody Inparticular can feel free to spout off like an authority on any topic, it's got to be slashdot.
So - not to get too serious - but is the problem that she's a girl?
You're probably right... although I don't see DVD sales dropping either. The original Matrix is the number one selling DVD right now, and I'm sure there's a million and a half downloads of that out there:)
...that there is a strong correllation between the number of downloads and the number of dollars. Doesn't this hold true for all movies?
For me, seeing a small copy of the movie simply gets me excited to see it in the theatre again. I don't think there are many people who would watch it on their computer instead of going to the theater.
So that's the official answer, but I don't buy it.
That is certainly a side effect of them being round, but I highly doubt that is the reason they are round. My best guess is that they are round because the pipes they first used in underground piping were round, as are nearly all pipes. Why the pipes are round probably has to do with structural integrity or manufacturing ease.
Besides, any shape with a flanged edge would not fall down the hole. And in fact, there were square storm drain covers in the streets where I grew up.
So I've never really thought of this question as more than a joke.
Well, yeah. You do know we set him up, don't you? There would be no Saddam today if not for US involvement in the middle east. Not to mention that without our foolish dependance on their oil there wouldn't be any conflict worth dumping or buring oil over anyways? I'm not saying Saddam isn't to blame for his own actions, but that doesn't absolve us.
You'd think it was obvious by now that we aren't disconnected from the rest of the world.
Yeah, and dimplomatic means with Japan worked wonderfully right up until Dec 7, 1941.
That's a pretty strange comparison to draw being that there are virtually no similarities at all. And even in that case, I am a much prouder American because we sought the peaceful solution and Japan revealed itself to be an aggressor. Our attacks from that point forward were fully justified.
I believe that the price we paid at Perl Harbor was a small price to pay to keep America in the right. Japan should be ashamed for that attack, as should any country that launches an attack without provocation.
Well, if we did not invade, I suppose that we would be to blame for Saddam continuing to slaughter Iraqis. I'll take the war, any time.
If this war brings an end to slaughter then I am in full agreement. And I hope with all my heart that it does.
However I have a very hard time being confident in that outcome since this is not the first time we've been involved with Iraq (or second, or third...) and we've as of yet had no positive impact on the stability. In fact one might argue that our attempts have done nothing but further destabalize the region.
You really think diplomatic means were EVER going to work?
There was no simply no hard evidence one way or the other. It is my belief that we should have waited until we had a more decisive answer from the inspectors. They are the only ones who had any real information. They felt that the Iraqis were cooperating (albiet reluctantly).
Maybe war would have proven necessary, maybe not. But now that they're under attack I bet they wished they hadn't cooperated at all. Good message for the next nation we turn our attention to.
I'm just waiting for the environmental groups to step up to the plate and show their support for this war. Has anybody caused as much deliberate environmental damage as Hussein?
Not to be a pain - but as an environmentalist and a proud American, I would say that we (and the war) are also to blame for his lighting the oil wells. We knew he would do this (Bush mentioned it in his address) and we still gave up on diplomatic means that were slowly proving effective (according to the people who were actually there).
That said - I hope the war now underway goes quickly, I hope Saddam's party is dethroned, and I hope we have the conviction to follow through on an effective rebuild.
Basically it's because two candidates on "side one" of the fence will lose to one candidate on "side two" even if a substantial majority prefers the first side of the fence.
Plurality vote tallying doesn't work with more than two candidates. Enforcing only two candidates doesn't make much sense. This hurt the republicans when Perot ran, and it hurt the democats when Nader ran.
but nobody can say Counter-Strike involves social interactions...
Sure they can. I've played both ways: online and just with bots (in CS and in other games). Despite the shallowness of the social interaction, there is quite a lot of it when the players are human. The way that you form quick non-verbal alliances with teammates to get a certain thing done. The way vendettas come and go. The brainless voice commments...
But that's just it - it's _not_ brainless. I mean, it certainly isn't what one might call intelligent, but it's very human. In fact it's so human that we think it's brainless. But I've yet to see any AI that provides even a dash of the thrill or depth of going against humans - even in a flashy action game.
Nothing wrong with the flashy graphics in and of themselves, but I bet even you would prefer - over the long term - a satisfying game with average graphics to an empty game with flashy graphics.
I think this makes sense. For example, lets say you have dual band stations. Here they are:
Station 1 transmitting at 1 mhz and 2 mhz. Station 2 transmitting at 2 mhz and 3 mhz. Station 3 transmitting at 3 mhz and 4 mhz.
Well at this point we're using four bands for three stations, which doesn't help much. But what if we also add
Station 4 transmitting at 1 and 3 Station 5 transmitting at 1 and 4 Station 6 transmitting at 2 and 4
Now you've got six stations transmitting on four bands. I imagine the logic to pull a clean signal out of two frequencies wouldn't be that hard assuming the interference was completely different.
Obviously we have more than four frequencies, and I think there's a cumulative effect here. Plus you can probably do greater overlapping if you use three frequecies per station rather than two. I don't know - I'm no engineer and I suck at math... (not to mention I'm at work!) Does anyone have the smarts/time to come up with a formula for this?
Assuming I'm not missing something terribly obvious (a risk for sure) it sounds like we really are wasting our radio bandwidth terribly by using such simplistic receivers.
I am an American, and I love America, but I would like to see a world where there there is a little more balance of economic power. Would that be so bad for the average American?
It probably would be a great thing for America. There's some great game-theory research that shows there is little reason to assume that another's benefit is your loss. Because of our trade and cooperation, it's not necessarily a zero-sum game. Think how much the advancment of American technology in the past has helped the economies of other nations.
I think the image of nations as opponents springs too easily to mind. A much more accurate model is probably to think of us as cooperative participants in a game against decay.
I was pretty excited about the Apple music service that was mentioned this morning... but this article indicates some patents on an AAC DRM technology. If they go that route, to hell with them. I don't have a single illegally acquired song on my laptop, desktop, or ipod. But if I they think I'll pay for a song if it won't work on all of my computers without any hassle whatsoever then they are terribly stupid.
I certainly hope they realize that the technology has to be _better_ than what's currently available. I can buy a used CD for $8, rip it, and never worry about compatibility. Any step backwards is going to fail.
People who are comfortable pirating are going to pirate anyways. They could care less about some stupid DRM. Those people are lost consumers as far as the record companies are concerned. Why they insist on designing safeguards into the systems that will be used exclusively by non-pirates is beyond me. It's such a waste. Their system is already more expensive than the pirate service - and they want to make it less functional too? There's a business model for you...
My prediction: if Apple uses meaningful DRM the service will fail. I can already beat their system in price performance with current tools. If they don't use DRM, they may have a hit.
nature is dominant, even for odd behavioral traits.
I've heard a little about the twins -- more info would be appreciated. My feeling has been that they may like many of the same things and have similar quirks (I could say this about a lot of my friends) but on a deeper level, they must be able to act differently... have some different preferences... hold different values?
Genes are turned on and off all the time in your brain
Sorry - what? I've never heard of this. Can you give more information? When I think of genes I think of hardcoded DNA in every cell of the body matching up. What are the changes you are referring to?
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I very much like your theory that genes affect only chemistry. Admittedly, you can do some pretty wild things with chemicals, but it doesn't change you fundamentally.
This lines up with my experience, too - in that I can often feel chemicals (of the natural variety) surging in a given situation and pushing my mood a certain way, but I've usually been able to conciously control how far I let that go. So perhaps the chemical rush is a genetic thing, but I (whatever "I" is) still have control.
I just worry sometimes that people might get the idea that genetics explains it all, and draw hasty conclusions about others and themselves. I believe things to be far more complicated than that. I mean, just for example, there's no way the genetic code can begin to describe the complexity of a developed brain... so that must come from somewhere else.
I still lean towards nurture myself, but there is obviously a lot of complexity that we'll need to unravel before we know exactly where the balance lies.
The thing that worries me most about tagging personality to genes is that it gives some scientific justification for being racially prejudiced. I mean, if a certain genetic pool is genetically predisposed to a certain personality trait, then it only makes sense to assume that people of that group are likely to have the same traits. There's unlikely to be any hard tie between appearance and a trait, but any limited pool will harbor all traits equally, I think.
One could argue that "nature" gives rise to a similar argument - that a given culture is predisposed to give rise to certain personality traits. This even seems quite likely. So what's the difference between being prejudiced against a genetic family or a culture?
Well, to me the difference is critical. I can't escape my genetic makeup, but I can escape my culture if I choose to. (And personally this is something I've done, to an extent). Criticizing a culture is not as damning as criticizing a gene.
In any case, I do still lean towards nurture being the prime factor, and I feel that much of the research in neural networks supports this. I certainly hope we're not doomed to live out our genes. My guess is that genes provide the interface to the world, but the mind interprets it based on experience.
I can't find the article right now, but if I remember correctly the academy refused to give TRON a special effects nomination because they "cheated" by using computers:)
Sounds like they're often a bit behind the times to me.
As has been pointed out time and time again in this thread: releasing the virus was a felony. Witnesses to a felony are obligated by law to report said acts. Symantec broke the law. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Not that they'll ever get punished - our society is so proud of it's moral relativism that we've come to appreciate corporations treating us like garbage even if the same actions would get an individual thrown in jail.
Cheers
Safari already has SLOW tabs
on
Safari Beta Updated
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, sort of. There are such a large group of people who don't want anyone in the world to have tabs that you'd think that tabs or anything like them were abhorrent.
But as far as I can tell any criticism that can be aimed at tabs can also be aimed at Safari's bookmark bar. Across the top of the brower there are a bunch of horizontal text buttons that let me select different documents to view in the same window. Or in other words, tabs.
The big differences are that the bookmark bar doesn't have the "tab look", it doesn't keep the page in memory, and to add one from a link you have to option-click, select "add bookmark" then click "OK". So they are basically a slow and inconvenient tab system. Although they are persistent across browser sessions, which is kinda cool.
Yes, I understand that they can't really be used efficiently that way, but that's not the point. The point is that as a UI concept Safari's current bookmark bar and the proposed (and much maligned) tabs are cousins anyways. So anyone spouting that tabs are an inconceivably bad UI design is just reacting to surface characteristics and religion
Slashdot Mirror
I really wish they would offer that. I've released DRM free music and would love to do so through the iTunes store. I hate DRM myself, and I don't want to inflict it on fans.
I think a lot of artists are open to this idea. It is the one advantage that I have over the big players: I'm not a greedy bastard. I make music for fun, and I'd be happy if just the people who wanted to pay for it did.
What is with the bias against large companies?
Large companies are powerful. Power corrupts. Yes it sounds trite but it's as true as can be.
Of course a company lives for profit, and that is a motivator for the company to make customers happy. But as a company grows, and it has more power, making the customer happy is _not_ the only way to make a profit, and not even necessarily the most efficient.
Most large companies eventually drift away from customer focus, and instead spend their energies on damaging competitors, manipulating customers' expectations, and lowering service quality. I'm not going to waste my energy listing examples as I'm sure anyone reading slashdot is quite tired of the topic.
I believe in the free market. But the free market is not the end-all-be-all solution. It's far too simplistic to claim that free market pressures alone will keep everyone in line. If that were true than there would be no need for any laws at all. But society has found it beneficial to keep, say, the CEO of one company from firebombing their competitors' headquarters.
An extreme example, to be sure, but illustrative: without any regulation things would get out of hand. Good laws _encourage_ the free market. Keeping diversity in the marketplace is _good_ for the free market.
The FCC just blew it.
Not trying to be argumentative, but why is there so much resentment towards the ladies? Let's say for a second that the interview is totally boring -- it wouldn't be the first such article on slashdot, and I'm sure people would complain in the comments, but sexuality wouldn't enter into it. It's almost like the crowd here likes to penalize "just because somebody's got a set of boobs". And I see this even in the case where there's no sexuality present - only gender.
I agree all the sexmarketing is annoying -- and the tone of the article does capitalize on that to some extent. But what the heck, she's attractive and she's got slashdotesque opinions. Her visibility is probably more based on her father's connections than her gender or her comeliness.
Anyways - I'm not ragging on you in particular. Just noting this slashdot tendancy: any time a female is mentioned on slashdot her gender is a main point of discussion. As a highly geeky guy who somehow ended up with several geeky female friends, the attitude really stands out to me.
I haven't even looked at the blog, so I'm talking out my ass here but...
who on Slashdot could possibly care what an 18 year old poster girl has to say about the legal issues of IP?
When did anyone on slashdot get such pompous standards as to what they read? God bless this site, but for Bob's sake it's nothing but a bunch of 18 year old (physically or otherwise) boys spouting off on the legal issues of IP and occasionally even more weighty topics.
If there's one place that M. Nobody Inparticular can feel free to spout off like an authority on any topic, it's got to be slashdot.
So - not to get too serious - but is the problem that she's a girl?
Cheers.
You're probably right... although I don't see DVD sales dropping either. The original Matrix is the number one selling DVD right now, and I'm sure there's a million and a half downloads of that out there :)
...that there is a strong correllation between the number of downloads and the number of dollars. Doesn't this hold true for all movies?
For me, seeing a small copy of the movie simply gets me excited to see it in the theatre again. I don't think there are many people who would watch it on their computer instead of going to the theater.
So that's the official answer, but I don't buy it.
That is certainly a side effect of them being round, but I highly doubt that is the reason they are round. My best guess is that they are round because the pipes they first used in underground piping were round, as are nearly all pipes. Why the pipes are round probably has to do with structural integrity or manufacturing ease.
Besides, any shape with a flanged edge would not fall down the hole. And in fact, there were square storm drain covers in the streets where I grew up.
So I've never really thought of this question as more than a joke.
Cheers.
Well, yeah. You do know we set him up, don't you? There would be no Saddam today if not for US involvement in the middle east. Not to mention that without our foolish dependance on their oil there wouldn't be any conflict worth dumping or buring oil over anyways? I'm not saying Saddam isn't to blame for his own actions, but that doesn't absolve us.
You'd think it was obvious by now that we aren't disconnected from the rest of the world.
Cheers.
Yeah, and dimplomatic means with Japan worked wonderfully right up until Dec 7, 1941.
That's a pretty strange comparison to draw being that there are virtually no similarities at all. And even in that case, I am a much prouder American because we sought the peaceful solution and Japan revealed itself to be an aggressor. Our attacks from that point forward were fully justified.
I believe that the price we paid at Perl Harbor was a small price to pay to keep America in the right. Japan should be ashamed for that attack, as should any country that launches an attack without provocation.
Well, if we did not invade, I suppose that we would be to blame for Saddam continuing to slaughter Iraqis. I'll take the war, any time.
If this war brings an end to slaughter then I am in full agreement. And I hope with all my heart that it does.
However I have a very hard time being confident in that outcome since this is not the first time we've been involved with Iraq (or second, or third...) and we've as of yet had no positive impact on the stability. In fact one might argue that our attempts have done nothing but further destabalize the region.
You really think diplomatic means were EVER going to work?
There was no simply no hard evidence one way or the other. It is my belief that we should have waited until we had a more decisive answer from the inspectors. They are the only ones who had any real information. They felt that the Iraqis were cooperating (albiet reluctantly).
Maybe war would have proven necessary, maybe not. But now that they're under attack I bet they wished they hadn't cooperated at all. Good message for the next nation we turn our attention to.
I'm just waiting for the environmental groups to step up to the plate and show their support for this war. Has anybody caused as much deliberate environmental damage as Hussein?
Not to be a pain - but as an environmentalist and a proud American, I would say that we (and the war) are also to blame for his lighting the oil wells. We knew he would do this (Bush mentioned it in his address) and we still gave up on diplomatic means that were slowly proving effective (according to the people who were actually there).
That said - I hope the war now underway goes quickly, I hope Saddam's party is dethroned, and I hope we have the conviction to follow through on an effective rebuild.
I don't think there was a conspiracy, but I do think that our plurality voting system is terribly flawed, and can account for a 5% margin of error. Here's an article about why our voting system sucks mathematically.
Basically it's because two candidates on "side one" of the fence will lose to one candidate on "side two" even if a substantial majority prefers the first side of the fence.
Plurality vote tallying doesn't work with more than two candidates. Enforcing only two candidates doesn't make much sense. This hurt the republicans when Perot ran, and it hurt the democats when Nader ran.
Read the article. Things could be a lot better.
Cheers.
but nobody can say Counter-Strike involves social interactions...
Sure they can. I've played both ways: online and just with bots (in CS and in other games). Despite the shallowness of the social interaction, there is quite a lot of it when the players are human. The way that you form quick non-verbal alliances with teammates to get a certain thing done. The way vendettas come and go. The brainless voice commments...
But that's just it - it's _not_ brainless. I mean, it certainly isn't what one might call intelligent, but it's very human. In fact it's so human that we think it's brainless. But I've yet to see any AI that provides even a dash of the thrill or depth of going against humans - even in a flashy action game.
Nothing wrong with the flashy graphics in and of themselves, but I bet even you would prefer - over the long term - a satisfying game with average graphics to an empty game with flashy graphics.
I think this makes sense. For example, lets say you have dual band stations. Here they are:
Station 1 transmitting at 1 mhz and 2 mhz.
Station 2 transmitting at 2 mhz and 3 mhz.
Station 3 transmitting at 3 mhz and 4 mhz.
Well at this point we're using four bands for three stations, which doesn't help much. But what if we also add
Station 4 transmitting at 1 and 3
Station 5 transmitting at 1 and 4
Station 6 transmitting at 2 and 4
Now you've got six stations transmitting on four bands. I imagine the logic to pull a clean signal out of two frequencies wouldn't be that hard assuming the interference was completely different.
Obviously we have more than four frequencies, and I think there's a cumulative effect here. Plus you can probably do greater overlapping if you use three frequecies per station rather than two. I don't know - I'm no engineer and I suck at math... (not to mention I'm at work!) Does anyone have the smarts/time to come up with a formula for this?
Assuming I'm not missing something terribly obvious (a risk for sure) it sounds like we really are wasting our radio bandwidth terribly by using such simplistic receivers.
Thoughts?
I am an American, and I love America, but I would like to see a world where there there is a little more balance of economic power. Would that be so bad for the average American?
It probably would be a great thing for America. There's some great game-theory research that shows there is little reason to assume that another's benefit is your loss. Because of our trade and cooperation, it's not necessarily a zero-sum game. Think how much the advancment of American technology in the past has helped the economies of other nations.
I think the image of nations as opponents springs too easily to mind. A much more accurate model is probably to think of us as cooperative participants in a game against decay.
I was pretty excited about the Apple music service that was mentioned this morning... but this article indicates some patents on an AAC DRM technology. If they go that route, to hell with them. I don't have a single illegally acquired song on my laptop, desktop, or ipod. But if I they think I'll pay for a song if it won't work on all of my computers without any hassle whatsoever then they are terribly stupid.
I certainly hope they realize that the technology has to be _better_ than what's currently available. I can buy a used CD for $8, rip it, and never worry about compatibility. Any step backwards is going to fail.
People who are comfortable pirating are going to pirate anyways. They could care less about some stupid DRM. Those people are lost consumers as far as the record companies are concerned. Why they insist on designing safeguards into the systems that will be used exclusively by non-pirates is beyond me. It's such a waste. Their system is already more expensive than the pirate service - and they want to make it less functional too? There's a business model for you...
My prediction: if Apple uses meaningful DRM the service will fail. I can already beat their system in price performance with current tools. If they don't use DRM, they may have a hit.
nature is dominant, even for odd behavioral traits.
I've heard a little about the twins -- more info would be appreciated. My feeling has been that they may like many of the same things and have similar quirks (I could say this about a lot of my friends) but on a deeper level, they must be able to act differently... have some different preferences... hold different values?
How "dominant" is nature in these studies?
Genes are turned on and off all the time in your brain
Sorry - what? I've never heard of this. Can you give more information? When I think of genes I think of hardcoded DNA in every cell of the body matching up. What are the changes you are referring to?
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I very much like your theory that genes affect only chemistry. Admittedly, you can do some pretty wild things with chemicals, but it doesn't change you fundamentally.
This lines up with my experience, too - in that I can often feel chemicals (of the natural variety) surging in a given situation and pushing my mood a certain way, but I've usually been able to conciously control how far I let that go. So perhaps the chemical rush is a genetic thing, but I (whatever "I" is) still have control.
I just worry sometimes that people might get the idea that genetics explains it all, and draw hasty conclusions about others and themselves. I believe things to be far more complicated than that. I mean, just for example, there's no way the genetic code can begin to describe the complexity of a developed brain... so that must come from somewhere else.
Cheers.
I still lean towards nurture myself, but there is obviously a lot of complexity that we'll need to unravel before we know exactly where the balance lies.
The thing that worries me most about tagging personality to genes is that it gives some scientific justification for being racially prejudiced. I mean, if a certain genetic pool is genetically predisposed to a certain personality trait, then it only makes sense to assume that people of that group are likely to have the same traits. There's unlikely to be any hard tie between appearance and a trait, but any limited pool will harbor all traits equally, I think.
One could argue that "nature" gives rise to a similar argument - that a given culture is predisposed to give rise to certain personality traits. This even seems quite likely. So what's the difference between being prejudiced against a genetic family or a culture?
Well, to me the difference is critical. I can't escape my genetic makeup, but I can escape my culture if I choose to. (And personally this is something I've done, to an extent). Criticizing a culture is not as damning as criticizing a gene.
In any case, I do still lean towards nurture being the prime factor, and I feel that much of the research in neural networks supports this. I certainly hope we're not doomed to live out our genes. My guess is that genes provide the interface to the world, but the mind interprets it based on experience.
Cheers.
Amen brother.
I can't find the article right now, but if I remember correctly the academy refused to give TRON a special effects nomination because they "cheated" by using computers :)
Sounds like they're often a bit behind the times to me.
Cheers.
As has been pointed out time and time again in this thread: releasing the virus was a felony. Witnesses to a felony are obligated by law to report said acts. Symantec broke the law. Morality has nothing to do with it.
Not that they'll ever get punished - our society is so proud of it's moral relativism that we've come to appreciate corporations treating us like garbage even if the same actions would get an individual thrown in jail.
Cheers
But as far as I can tell any criticism that can be aimed at tabs can also be aimed at Safari's bookmark bar. Across the top of the brower there are a bunch of horizontal text buttons that let me select different documents to view in the same window. Or in other words, tabs.
The big differences are that the bookmark bar doesn't have the "tab look", it doesn't keep the page in memory, and to add one from a link you have to option-click, select "add bookmark" then click "OK". So they are basically a slow and inconvenient tab system. Although they are persistent across browser sessions, which is kinda cool.
Yes, I understand that they can't really be used efficiently that way, but that's not the point. The point is that as a UI concept Safari's current bookmark bar and the proposed (and much maligned) tabs are cousins anyways. So anyone spouting that tabs are an inconceivably bad UI design is just reacting to surface characteristics and religion
Cheers