Agreed. I subscribed to Rhapsody last month. I consider $10/month a very reasonable rate for a service that gives me access to a large database of music, with consistent sound quality and a reasonable interface with good search functionality.
My only complaint about Rhapsody is the lack of any Macintosh client. I'll probably be switching to a Mac at work soon, at which point I'll cancel the service.
or does everyone else wish that apple would just say what they're looking into and what they're not looking into?
Apple has never really even hinted that they were considering going to X86, other than by the internal port of OS/X to X86 (which probably took all of 2 man-months). The idea that they should or will make this move is largely an invention of morons who don't understand that Apple is a hardware company.
You're right. They'll make oodles of money, just like Be and NextStep did when they gave up on making their own hardware and instead tried selling an alternative x86 operating system.
The web browsers on that system felt like Mozilla on a 486.
Out of curiosity, which browsers did you try?
I use Win2K on a 1.something GHz Pentium in the office, and OS/X on a G4/450 at home. For a long time, I was inclined to think that OS/X was much slower than Win2k. I mainly felt this way because IE for Windows was so blazing fast compared to any of the browsers I'd tried on the Mac, and, well, I spend a lot of time in a browser.
However, I've just started using Chimera as my browser on the Mac, and it's really sharply improved my general impression of the system's speed; Chimera, while probably still marginally slower than IE on Win2k, is much, much faster and more responsive than any other OS/X browser I've tried.
I still think that OS/X is slower than Win2k, but the gap seems much, much narrower, now. Certainly I don't feel like I'm in that 'twilight zone' you describe, any more.
Let's see, 8 MB is less than 1/25th of one percent of the total HD space on the computer I bought 2 years ago, and will be an even smaller fraction of any computer that anyone buys today.
I travel a *lot* and personally I feel more free and more save in Europe then I do in the states, especially in my home country The Netherlands. And that has nothing to do with the 11th. I've felt like this for years.
"Feeling" free is an awfully vague statement. How many situations have you been in where your freedom was genuinely put to the test? For example, have you ever been charged with a crime in any of these countries?
Partly you feel more 'free' in the Netherlands and in Europe because those places are more like home to you. I'm from the southern US, and I certainly feel a bit more 'free' there than I do in NYC, where I live. While there are some differences in the laws of those two places, they aren't large, and if anything, the laws down south are more restrictive.
As far as QA, I tell you what. If the system is designed correctly, it will need very little QA. I know this because some systems can never get it right, no matter how much QA go into them, because of fundamuntal design flaws.
A good QA process doesn't just test completed code. A good QA process gets involved at all levels of development, and would have at least a fighting chance of catching those fundamental design flaws.
So what? Eating doesn't become a bad habit for everyone, and when it does, it's something that should probably be dealt with regardless of whether the individual is eating low fat or low carb or neither. Snacking isn't an unavoidable behavior, and there are plenty of people like myself who barely snack at all.
The number one key I've found to avoiding snacking is simply not keeping 'snackable' foods around. Most of them work on a sort of addiction/withdrawal basis: Eating one M&M tastes good, but when the initial rush of sweetness wears off, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that I want to remedy with another M&M. Same thing, to a lesser degree with most chips.
And I only find this addiction/withdrawal pattern with snacks that are high in simple carbs: Candy and chips and such. If I instead snack on a couple of ounces of thinly-sliced proscuitto, I'm satisfied and don't crave more. Snacking on fibrous vegetables is frequently difficult, since they usually need some cooking to be really palatable.
I'll give you that one. I was however talking about food primarily and not the ketone bodies produced by amino acid catabolism. As I stated previously, this isn't favorable because of the ammonia build up. My liver doesn't like it, how about yours?
Increased protein breakdown to maintain glucose levels will only be seen in the first few days of low-carbing. After that, tissues like the brain will have mostly switched over to burning ketones. So the need for glucose drops off quite a bit, and thus so does protein breakdown. Ketogenic diets can be quite muscle-sparing, as a result.
Yes, fat contains more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate. But it also contributes more, gram-for-gram, to the pleasurable properties of food, and to satiety. A small meal with a moderate amount of fat will keep you feeling satisfied far longer than a large low-fat meal.
The brain can only use glucose (basic 6 carbon sugar) for food/fuel.
False. The brain can also use ketone bodies (produced in low-carb situations) for fuel. While even in that situation, some glucose will be used by the brain, the bulk of its energy comes from ketones.
Here is my challenge to anyone who disagrees (and I am interested): Find me one elite athlete in any power , speed, or endurance sport who follows the Atkins diet.
This argument is simply stupid. Most of us aren't elite athletes, and what works for them won't necessarily work for us. If a normal person ate like Michael Jordan, they'd be fat as hell, because they don't get the degree of exercise that Jordan does. High-intensity exercise does indeed need carbohydrate for fuel. But most of us don't care for that sort of exercise.
Oh, and about the second-generation Asians thing: One good friend of mine is an second-generation Chinese girl who has lost something like 80 pounds, a gut, and two chins over the last year. On the Atkins diet.
How do you think those professional bodybuilders get that paper-thin skin look? Roids won't do it
Roids will certainly help, by making it easier to maintain muscle mass during caloric deficit. Other drugs will help, as well.
Bodybuilders may look great, and the self-discipline they display is admirable. But the goal they're pursuing isn't "health", and if that's your goal, you should probably look elsewhere for role models.
The big deal in auto safety isn't in getting the vehicle to withstand a violent impact. It's in making it more likely that the passengers will survive such an impact. Ever hear of 'crumple zones'? The idea there is to sacrifice the vehicle, getting it to absorb much of the energy of the impact, in order to improve the passenger's chances of survival.
Would you want to buy a car that would come away from a head-on collision with only minor damage to the vehicle itself, but that would leave the driver splattered all over the interior?
What's the point of writing a Chinese document when you can only save it as 'abcde.doc'?
To communicate with someone who reads Chinese? A system in which you can compose documents in Chinese but have to name the files using the latin alphabet is far more useful to most Chinese speakers than one in which they can't compose documents in Chinese, but can name files using it.
Your comment reflects a tendency that's common among geeks: We prioritize the operating system over the applications. But for most people, the real value of their computer is provided by the applications, and the operating system is only important insofar as it supports the applications they care about.
The basic problem with this sort of math is that it assumes that every pirated copy counts as a lost sale. That simply isn't the case -- in many cases, the pirate is taking something that he wouldn't have paid for, anyways. A college student on a limited budget who installs an illegal copy of XP probably would have just done without had that pirated copy not been available.
Further, in some cases, piracy may actually contribute to sales, over the long term. A student who pirates software may get in the habit of using that software, and after leaving school, start paying for it -- without piracy, he might not have developed that habit. And there's the "try-before-you-buy" piracy that can help sales, too: many are loath to pay a large amount of money for a piece of software when they don't know whether or not it will do the required job.
WHY people just can't grasp those facts is beyond me - I think it's some kind of mental deficiency that says that it's not ok to steal a Snickers bar from the corner store, but it's perfectly ok to steal software by copying it.
Nonsense. When you steal a Snickers bar from the store, there is one less Snickers bar at the store. When you 'steal' a copy of XP by downloading it from a warez site, MS still has the same number of copies.
Now my point here isn't that piracy is okay. My point is simply that there is a logical difference between stealing physical goods and 'stealing' IP. Conflating the two is an attempt to get an emotional response.
But a conventional LCD, in order to be useful, has to be a certain size, and, for any given resolution, has to have a certain number of pixels.
Everything that you (and Cringely) say will hamper reductions in LCD price could also be applied to CRTs. However, as he points out, CRT prices have dropped a great deal over the last several years. "Moore's law" may not apply in its most formal sense (i.e. the sense that deals with chip fabrication), but it's come to take on a more general meaning that the bang/buck of high tech items tends to improve exponentially over time. And this latter meaning is almost certainly applicable to LCDs.
If Lucas is a greedy as everyone makes him out to be, then it would make sense to release as many different versions onto DVD as possible. This would allow us geeks to get the version of start wars we want, while still appeasing the general public with the digitally modified and improved version.
Not necessarily. Surely there are some fixed costs associated with each version that you want to release. The 'untouched original' version may not sell enough extra copies beyond what would have been sold anyways to recoup those costs. How many people that would prefer the original will break down and buy the modified version if the original isn't available?
Which is most consumers, IE mom and pop, really don't care about infection rates at all. They care about software, price, and ease of use. The very same ease of use that gives ease of infection.
It's not ease of use that gives us ease of infection, it's proliferation of features. This very same proliferation of features is generally bad for ease of use.
Ah, but don't you see, that's the next step: Once the RIAA gets this law passed, they'll buy another one that says that all newborns must be implanted with digital "content reception mediators" that prevent them from hearing any songs that they don't own a license to listen to.
When I apply for a job, they do a background check, including finding out whether or not I've committed any felonies. Why shouldn't I be able to do the same?
When you're applying for a job, you give consent for a background search.
I mean, seriously. What's actually interesting about this? No doubt many people looked forward eagerly to the idea of going up in a plane. But what does it mean now? You sit for a while in a cramped seat in a long skinny room that vibrates. If you have a window seat, you might get a few nice sights. Few people look forward to it.
Space tourism will be the same. Once they get past the basic novelty and the nice views, most people are going to be bored in space. The interior of a spaceship will be a considerably less interesting place for a tourist than a cruise ship. And the food will suck, too.
I agree completely. (begin sarcasm) But also, my tax dollars help pay for the space shuttle, so I should be able to ride in it. Also, my tax money helps pay for government cars and farm subsidies, so I should be able to drive any government car, and eat for free.
May I ask that someone clarify why this is any different?
How much does it cost to send up the shuttle? Millions of dollars.
How much does it cost to burn a CD full of taxpayer-funded software? A few bucks.
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Agreed. I subscribed to Rhapsody last month. I consider $10/month a very reasonable rate for a service that gives me access to a large database of music, with consistent sound quality and a reasonable interface with good search functionality.
My only complaint about Rhapsody is the lack of any Macintosh client. I'll probably be switching to a Mac at work soon, at which point I'll cancel the service.
Apple has never really even hinted that they were considering going to X86, other than by the internal port of OS/X to X86 (which probably took all of 2 man-months). The idea that they should or will make this move is largely an invention of morons who don't understand that Apple is a hardware company.
You're right. They'll make oodles of money, just like Be and NextStep did when they gave up on making their own hardware and instead tried selling an alternative x86 operating system.
Out of curiosity, which browsers did you try?
I use Win2K on a 1.something GHz Pentium in the office, and OS/X on a G4/450 at home. For a long time, I was inclined to think that OS/X was much slower than Win2k. I mainly felt this way because IE for Windows was so blazing fast compared to any of the browsers I'd tried on the Mac, and, well, I spend a lot of time in a browser.
However, I've just started using Chimera as my browser on the Mac, and it's really sharply improved my general impression of the system's speed; Chimera, while probably still marginally slower than IE on Win2k, is much, much faster and more responsive than any other OS/X browser I've tried.
I still think that OS/X is slower than Win2k, but the gap seems much, much narrower, now. Certainly I don't feel like I'm in that 'twilight zone' you describe, any more.
Let's see, 8 MB is less than 1/25th of one percent of the total HD space on the computer I bought 2 years ago, and will be an even smaller fraction of any computer that anyone buys today.
That's how it's light weight.
"Feeling" free is an awfully vague statement. How many situations have you been in where your freedom was genuinely put to the test? For example, have you ever been charged with a crime in any of these countries?
Partly you feel more 'free' in the Netherlands and in Europe because those places are more like home to you. I'm from the southern US, and I certainly feel a bit more 'free' there than I do in NYC, where I live. While there are some differences in the laws of those two places, they aren't large, and if anything, the laws down south are more restrictive.
A good QA process doesn't just test completed code. A good QA process gets involved at all levels of development, and would have at least a fighting chance of catching those fundamental design flaws.
So what? Eating doesn't become a bad habit for everyone, and when it does, it's something that should probably be dealt with regardless of whether the individual is eating low fat or low carb or neither. Snacking isn't an unavoidable behavior, and there are plenty of people like myself who barely snack at all.
The number one key I've found to avoiding snacking is simply not keeping 'snackable' foods around. Most of them work on a sort of addiction /withdrawal basis: Eating one M&M tastes good, but when the initial rush of sweetness wears off, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that I want to remedy with another M&M. Same thing, to a lesser degree with most chips.
And I only find this addiction/withdrawal pattern with snacks that are high in simple carbs: Candy and chips and such. If I instead snack on a couple of ounces of thinly-sliced proscuitto, I'm satisfied and don't crave more. Snacking on fibrous vegetables is frequently difficult, since they usually need some cooking to be really palatable.
Increased protein breakdown to maintain glucose levels will only be seen in the first few days of low-carbing. After that, tissues like the brain will have mostly switched over to burning ketones. So the need for glucose drops off quite a bit, and thus so does protein breakdown. Ketogenic diets can be quite muscle-sparing, as a result.
No, it isn't.
Yes, fat contains more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate. But it also contributes more, gram-for-gram, to the pleasurable properties of food, and to satiety. A small meal with a moderate amount of fat will keep you feeling satisfied far longer than a large low-fat meal.
False. The brain can also use ketone bodies (produced in low-carb situations) for fuel. While even in that situation, some glucose will be used by the brain, the bulk of its energy comes from ketones.
This argument is simply stupid. Most of us aren't elite athletes, and what works for them won't necessarily work for us. If a normal person ate like Michael Jordan, they'd be fat as hell, because they don't get the degree of exercise that Jordan does. High-intensity exercise does indeed need carbohydrate for fuel. But most of us don't care for that sort of exercise.
Oh, and about the second-generation Asians thing: One good friend of mine is an second-generation Chinese girl who has lost something like 80 pounds, a gut, and two chins over the last year. On the Atkins diet.
Why in the world do you consider this factoid important or relevant?
Oh really? How much fiber is in a hershey bar? Fruits vary a bit in fiber content, but most of them have at least some.
Roids will certainly help, by making it easier to maintain muscle mass during caloric deficit. Other drugs will help, as well.
Bodybuilders may look great, and the self-discipline they display is admirable. But the goal they're pursuing isn't "health", and if that's your goal, you should probably look elsewhere for role models.
The big deal in auto safety isn't in getting the vehicle to withstand a violent impact. It's in making it more likely that the passengers will survive such an impact. Ever hear of 'crumple zones'? The idea there is to sacrifice the vehicle, getting it to absorb much of the energy of the impact, in order to improve the passenger's chances of survival.
Would you want to buy a car that would come away from a head-on collision with only minor damage to the vehicle itself, but that would leave the driver splattered all over the interior?
To communicate with someone who reads Chinese? A system in which you can compose documents in Chinese but have to name the files using the latin alphabet is far more useful to most Chinese speakers than one in which they can't compose documents in Chinese, but can name files using it.
Your comment reflects a tendency that's common among geeks: We prioritize the operating system over the applications. But for most people, the real value of their computer is provided by the applications, and the operating system is only important insofar as it supports the applications they care about.
You just stole $1,691.00 from Microsoft.
The basic problem with this sort of math is that it assumes that every pirated copy counts as a lost sale. That simply isn't the case -- in many cases, the pirate is taking something that he wouldn't have paid for, anyways. A college student on a limited budget who installs an illegal copy of XP probably would have just done without had that pirated copy not been available.
Further, in some cases, piracy may actually contribute to sales, over the long term. A student who pirates software may get in the habit of using that software, and after leaving school, start paying for it -- without piracy, he might not have developed that habit. And there's the "try-before-you-buy" piracy that can help sales, too: many are loath to pay a large amount of money for a piece of software when they don't know whether or not it will do the required job.
WHY people just can't grasp those facts is beyond me - I think it's some kind of mental deficiency that says that it's not ok to steal a Snickers bar from the corner store, but it's perfectly ok to steal software by copying it.
Nonsense. When you steal a Snickers bar from the store, there is one less Snickers bar at the store. When you 'steal' a copy of XP by downloading it from a warez site, MS still has the same number of copies.
Now my point here isn't that piracy is okay. My point is simply that there is a logical difference between stealing physical goods and 'stealing' IP. Conflating the two is an attempt to get an emotional response.
Everything that you (and Cringely) say will hamper reductions in LCD price could also be applied to CRTs. However, as he points out, CRT prices have dropped a great deal over the last several years. "Moore's law" may not apply in its most formal sense (i.e. the sense that deals with chip fabrication), but it's come to take on a more general meaning that the bang/buck of high tech items tends to improve exponentially over time. And this latter meaning is almost certainly applicable to LCDs.
Not necessarily. Surely there are some fixed costs associated with each version that you want to release. The 'untouched original' version may not sell enough extra copies beyond what would have been sold anyways to recoup those costs. How many people that would prefer the original will break down and buy the modified version if the original isn't available?
It's not ease of use that gives us ease of infection, it's proliferation of features. This very same proliferation of features is generally bad for ease of use.
Ah, but don't you see, that's the next step: Once the RIAA gets this law passed, they'll buy another one that says that all newborns must be implanted with digital "content reception mediators" that prevent them from hearing any songs that they don't own a license to listen to.
When you're applying for a job, you give consent for a background search.
I mean, seriously. What's actually interesting about this? No doubt many people looked forward eagerly to the idea of going up in a plane. But what does it mean now? You sit for a while in a cramped seat in a long skinny room that vibrates. If you have a window seat, you might get a few nice sights. Few people look forward to it.
Space tourism will be the same. Once they get past the basic novelty and the nice views, most people are going to be bored in space. The interior of a spaceship will be a considerably less interesting place for a tourist than a cruise ship. And the food will suck, too.
I agree completely. (begin sarcasm) But also, my tax dollars help pay for the space shuttle, so I should be able to ride in it. Also, my tax money helps pay for government cars and farm subsidies, so I should be able to drive any government car, and eat for free.
May I ask that someone clarify why this is any different?
How much does it cost to send up the shuttle? Millions of dollars.
How much does it cost to burn a CD full of taxpayer-funded software? A few bucks.
That's how it's different.