Eh, most of your complaints are dealt with, though
- There's an Ethernet USB dongle for a reasonable price - There's a USB SuperDrive if I really need regular DVD/CD access - The battery is replaceable for $129, same price as any other Apple battery (and you won't find it on eBay for $60 unless it's used!) - Portable USB hubs are common and *tiny*, like credit-card sized - EVDO or HSPDA? ROFL! I'd rather use a hotspot, thanks. - Macbook Pros already need you to bring your DVI to VGA adapter, thats the price of going DVI - Few people actually bring 2 batteries with them, it's just too much weight -- only cross oceanic flights I tend to, but on those there's usually a seat DC adapter
Anyway, I'm a power user, I've owned several Powerbooks and a MacBook Pro, and I'm considering the Air. The only drawback I see, frankly, is the hard drive speed.
The problem is more related to revenue recognition with a hardware + software bundle, and is similar to why they charged $2 for the 802.11n enabler.
Basically, software is tied to hardware as a "bundle", but if you provide "extra features" at a later date, then you technically did not deliver full bundle, and should not have recognized the revenue from the original sale. This is because accounting rules try to remove "shenanigans" that have happened in the systems integrators of the past where software was promised but was still being built after the deal had closed & revenue recognized!
So, if Apple were to give away the iPod Touch update for free, they'd have to restate their earnings from back when it was first released, because they didn't technically "sell" the Touch back then, they completed delivery now.
If, however, they charge for the update, at a nominal price, it's considered a set of extras and isn't tied to the original bundle.
The iPhone doesn't have to deal with this because they accrue the revenue over several years.
On the other hand, privacy may just evolve from being "government-supported" into "lassez-faire", where privacy technologies & hacking techniques become a massive consumer market -- way larger than it is now. Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End is coming to mind.....
"Your hack was noticed. Back when I was young, you could have got a patent off it. Nowadays--" "Nowadays, it should be worth a decent grade in a high-school class."
Or, the (government's perceived) common good outweighs your individual right to privacy.
If terrorism gets worse, (i.e. 1 or 2 major attacks on U.S. soil), you can be almost guaranteed that government-sanctioned privacy will have been an interesting theory circa 1990-2015, that was trampled by a need to catch the Bad Guys. In other countries, it may take longer, depending on the level of fear in their media, prior exposure, tolerance of terrorism, and U.S. bullying to fall in line.
I don't think they'll go so far as to outlaw encryption (that would hamper eCommerce too much), but there may be a technology arms race so private citizens can protect themselves. This is already happening to some extent, if you follow the progress of the crypto/security community. Crypto is wonderful... until you have to implement it into software. Then any little tiny defect will be exploited against you.
And I bet there will be watchdogs set up to ensure "appropriate uses" of these powers, though they probably won't have many teeth, especially considering popular support will likely be *in favour* of it in times of fear.
Fast Search is like a competitor to other structured search engines like Autonomy -- they've been around for a lot longer than the August 2007 sale of Convera...
ThinkSecret seems to have lost a lot of the "zest" they used to have before the lawsuit. I don't think his heart was in it anymore: the object of his affection was suing him. I remember the days when TS was bizarrely accurate with the frequency and detail of its predictions. AppleInsider / MacRumors seems to be the best we have now.
Firstly, Marx & Engels ever actually gave any advice on how to implement communism, hence the disconnect. It was an economic theory an political ideology, not a practicable one.
Secondly, most of the "proponents" of capitalism have been harsh critics of corporatism as we see it today, from Peter Drucker (The father of management, who said that the purpose of a business is to create customers; profits were just a means to that end), to Joseph Schumpeter (who felt that entrepreneurship was the lifeblood of capitalism, and eventually the capitalism would sew the seeds of its own destruction).
What we're seeing now is almost socialism: the governments can't let large corporations die, so they prop them up with tax funds (see car companies, airlines, etc.). Investors and owners abdicate their responsibility for a company's wealth producing potential to management. Management pads their wallets & profit is faked.
Beyond this, tt would be a mistake to think that profit is bad: it's a genuine cost, that of tomorrow's innovations, tomorrow's jobs, and calamities and risks. A company at break even is a dying company because it has no tolerance or means to invest in the unexpected future -- it's spending everything on today and yesterday.
Having said this, profits that are diverted to management bonuses that are untied to performance, or short-term-profit thinking driven by Wall Street raiders, is also quite damaging. Which is why we're seeing a shift to private equity, to get out of the quarter-by-quarter reporting mentality.
So, I would say that many within the system are well aware of its faults and failings. But you don't change an economic system overnight, and blowing it up doesn't do anybody good.
Normally Telco billing systems are multi-tiered, and one of those tiers is what collects CDRs, as the switches have minimal persistent storage.
Whatever collects the CDRs has to be _rock solid_, so is usually an IBM zSeries, Tandem NonStop, or the like, is what processes and stores the detail records from the switch. They are then batched up, as you suggest, for processing in whatever billing system (Amdocs, etc.) the telco is afflicted by , err I man, uses.
Rumor was that the Gun Registry was implemented with Siebel CRM, a major contractor, and major hardware purchases.
This fits with my theory that large bureaucracies, projects are intended to preserve or shift power structures, not to actually accomplish anything useful beyond a 10% improvement of what came before.
The point is that in large bureaucracies, projects aren't actually supposed to DO anything. They're just supposed to alter the power structure (or preserve it).
This game requires some way to keep score as to who has the power. That would be capital.
"A few lines of Perl code" is not power in a bureaucracy's eye, because it doesn't require capital expenditure. Ninety consultants, over 6 months, with $250k in hardware, and a $50m annual operating expense budget -- now that's power.
Anything that looks to reduce costs or increase productivity drastically is a challenge to the power structure. It must be shouted down as insecure, non-scalable, non-performant, non-standard, and violating export treaties.
So the game of people that want power is to reduce costs and increase productivity "a little bit". 10%. Maybe 20%, if you wanted to be branded "radical". Anything more and you'll be branded a lunatic and shuffled to "special projects".
The above game is played more often in public organizations than private ones, but knows no natural boundaries, particularly when the organization stays afloat due to a perpetual bread-winner (i.e. monopoly product, taxes, etc.) .
The researchers that he cherry picked the data from said it, not me. So, either they're lying or he is.
You've completely confused researchers complaining about cherry picked data from the NY Times article written five years ago and the current book. He's addressed why he cherry picked data for that article: an article has a word cap, and the other side didn't need defending, given it is the status quo.
This current book is over 500 pages and another 100 pages of references, and is very thorough.
I generally find that most communities are very helpful with people that are having problems. Go to Macintouch.com, or to Ars, or Discussions.info.apple.com, or Daringfireball - there is plenty of Apple criticism, complaints, frustrations, and there's very little flaming. There's a lot of discussion of what might be done to make the experience better, fixed, whatever.
When there IS flaming is when condescending puff pieces try to generate anger and ad clicks.
The Mac community has been conditioned to deal with 20+ years of flaming their preferred choice as something that is imminently doomed. It takes a long while to unlearn that habit, especially when flaming on the Intarweb is the #2 sport after World of Warcraft. Not even the Linux community has to deal with that (The Mainstream Linux Desktop is perpetually "tomorrow", not "never"). The only analogy I could think of what the Mac community is like is the old Team OS/2.
Before you call bullshit by invoking thermodynamics, be sure to recognize that there's more than one law of thermodynamics.
Independent of Taubes' argument, I note a number of people are making the "Calories In - Calories Burned = Calories Stored" equation, invoking the Law of Thermodynamics, as if people that disagree with this equation were a bunch of lunatics.
But before you're going to invoke this line of argument, please read up on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. No machine, even the human body, is completely efficient. Some energy will be lost to Entropy.
The second law implies that there is at least the possibility of metabolic advantage of some forms of calories (e.g. glucose) over other forms of calories (e.g. ketones).
Incorporating Taubes' hypothesis, that fat accretion is a hormonally regulated process, and you get a very different picture of why people gain weight, one that is worthy of further study.
Right, the human body is so complex that the laws of thermodynamics no longer apply.
That's not what he is saying; he is saying that it is more complicated than you might think. He's also saying that it's a hypothesis - not fact.
The argument against a rational, science-based approach to the problem strikes me as inane. Yes, it does simplify things a bit. But fundamentally, it's true, and that's not something that can be said about many other theories on diet.
Funny, that's exactly the same thing Taubes is arguing: high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations are not based on rational science. They're based on a hypothesis supported more by politics than by sound controlled clinical trials.
I would not dismiss this book - prominent doctors are endorsing it as well-argued and cited, worthy of further consideration, even if they don't agree with his hypothesis yet.
Christianity is responsible for a certain flavour of ethics, one that was very personal -- a marked difference from Greek or Roman ethics on civil society. Machiavelli pointed this out, which earned him eternal scorn.
Millions of companies use Windows mail servers with no problems or complaints.
*COUGH* *HACK* ahh, um... how to put this....
Are you FUCKING kidding me?
I mean, yes, it's much more stable than some might say, but "NO PROBLEMS OR COMPLAINTS"?
It's only linux fanboys that think that Windows keeps crashing.
Well, sure, Windows doesn't crash as often as people think, but... - security holes? - patch instability?
I've NEVER EVER seen a modern Windows server crash or lock up.
Either you have had next to zero experience running a large data centre, or your hardware is completely infallible.
Has it occurred to you that the OP wasn't speaking about "crashes" but was speaking about - security holes & exploits - corruption - management nightmares etc.
Particularly with the most common Windows mail server, Exchange. Yes, there are alternative Windows servers, and yes they're solid ones. And yes, there's plenty of holes on the UNIX side too. But recognize that you can't just point to *NIX and say "that would take too long for me" and assume it would take the same amount of time for everyone. Skills and experiences vary.
And recognize that the most common Windows mail server in "millions of companies" is not some alternative to Exchange. It's Exchange.
Season 4 fares well on DVD, I find. It flows like a novel, the Angel v. Connor thing comes across as more tragic. It's a bit too downtrodden at times (like Buffy S6).
Nope, you've got to turn on Personal Web Sharing; the firewall page's Personal Web Sharing box is greyed out, as are all other built-in features on the Services tab.
Rather counter-intuitive. I know OS X 10.5 has fixed this, however.
Slashdot Mirror
The X3100 integrated graphics will run Wow around 2-3x better than the older MacBooks with 950 GMA. Which isn't saying much.
Basically expect ~18-25fps in 25 mans or BGs. Playable, but don't expect wonders. My MacBook Pro with X1600 Radeon averages 25-38 fps in comparison.
Err, try to get a regular person to set up backups. Or a lazy techie. Versus "1 click" time machine. I know I'll back stuff up more with this.
As for the iPhone, I wouldn't say these are lousy updates; I've been using the new GMaps and it's fantastic.
I have an XBox 360. They don't have much of a movie library, at least compared to what they're saying iTunes is going to have by eo-February.
Oh, and all the MacBook Pros are made of aluminum.
Headless Mac Desktop might be nice, agreed, but not sure the market is big enough (Curious PC switchers wedded to their monitors?)
In a word: lolwut
Eh, most of your complaints are dealt with, though
- There's an Ethernet USB dongle for a reasonable price
- There's a USB SuperDrive if I really need regular DVD/CD access
- The battery is replaceable for $129, same price as any other Apple battery (and you won't find it on eBay for $60 unless it's used!)
- Portable USB hubs are common and *tiny*, like credit-card sized
- EVDO or HSPDA? ROFL! I'd rather use a hotspot, thanks.
- Macbook Pros already need you to bring your DVI to VGA adapter, thats the price of going DVI
- Few people actually bring 2 batteries with them, it's just too much weight -- only cross oceanic flights I tend to, but on those there's usually a seat DC adapter
Anyway, I'm a power user, I've owned several Powerbooks and a MacBook Pro, and I'm considering the Air. The only drawback I see, frankly, is the hard drive speed.
The problem is more related to revenue recognition with a hardware + software bundle, and is similar to why they charged $2 for the 802.11n enabler.
Basically, software is tied to hardware as a "bundle", but if you provide "extra features" at a later date, then you technically did not deliver full bundle, and should not have recognized the revenue from the original sale. This is because accounting rules try to remove "shenanigans" that have happened in the systems integrators of the past where software was promised but was still being built after the deal had closed & revenue recognized!
So, if Apple were to give away the iPod Touch update for free, they'd have to restate their earnings from back when it was first released, because they didn't technically "sell" the Touch back then, they completed delivery now.
If, however, they charge for the update, at a nominal price, it's considered a set of extras and isn't tied to the original bundle.
The iPhone doesn't have to deal with this because they accrue the revenue over several years.
...that terrorism works, at times.
On the other hand, privacy may just evolve from being "government-supported" into "lassez-faire", where privacy technologies & hacking techniques become a massive consumer market -- way larger than it is now. Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End is coming to mind.....
"Your hack was noticed. Back when I was young, you could have got a patent off it. Nowadays--"
"Nowadays, it should be worth a decent grade in a high-school class."
One word: Terrorism.
... until you have to implement it into software. Then any little tiny defect will be exploited against you.
Or, the (government's perceived) common good outweighs your individual right to privacy.
If terrorism gets worse, (i.e. 1 or 2 major attacks on U.S. soil), you can be almost guaranteed that government-sanctioned privacy will have been an interesting theory circa 1990-2015, that was trampled by a need to catch the Bad Guys. In other countries, it may take longer, depending on the level of fear in their media, prior exposure, tolerance of terrorism, and U.S. bullying to fall in line.
I don't think they'll go so far as to outlaw encryption (that would hamper eCommerce too much), but there may be a technology arms race so private citizens can protect themselves. This is already happening to some extent, if you follow the progress of the crypto/security community. Crypto is wonderful
And I bet there will be watchdogs set up to ensure "appropriate uses" of these powers, though they probably won't have many teeth, especially considering popular support will likely be *in favour* of it in times of fear.
Fast Search is like a competitor to other structured search engines like Autonomy -- they've been around for a lot longer than the August 2007 sale of Convera...
Anyone like World in Conflict? It received very positive reviews, but I haven't seen many play it. I'm waiting for the XBOX 360 version.
ThinkSecret seems to have lost a lot of the "zest" they used to have before the lawsuit. I don't think his heart was in it anymore: the object of his affection was suing him. I remember the days when TS was bizarrely accurate with the frequency and detail of its predictions. AppleInsider / MacRumors seems to be the best we have now.
So, Kudos TS.
No thanks, I prefer ONE standard for smart people, XHTML v2, and just to kick out everyone who isn't qualified.
You realize that by saying this you are dooming XHTML v2. A technology that excludes the masses will be eventually trampled under.
Firstly, Marx & Engels ever actually gave any advice on how to implement communism, hence the disconnect. It was an economic theory an political ideology, not a practicable one.
Secondly, most of the "proponents" of capitalism have been harsh critics of corporatism as we see it today, from Peter Drucker (The father of management, who said that the purpose of a business is to create customers; profits were just a means to that end), to Joseph Schumpeter (who felt that entrepreneurship was the lifeblood of capitalism, and eventually the capitalism would sew the seeds of its own destruction).
What we're seeing now is almost socialism: the governments can't let large corporations die, so they prop them up with tax funds (see car companies, airlines, etc.). Investors and owners abdicate their responsibility for a company's wealth producing potential to management. Management pads their wallets & profit is faked.
Beyond this, tt would be a mistake to think that profit is bad: it's a genuine cost, that of tomorrow's innovations, tomorrow's jobs, and calamities and risks. A company at break even is a dying company because it has no tolerance or means to invest in the unexpected future -- it's spending everything on today and yesterday.
Having said this, profits that are diverted to management bonuses that are untied to performance, or short-term-profit thinking driven by Wall Street raiders, is also quite damaging. Which is why we're seeing a shift to private equity, to get out of the quarter-by-quarter reporting mentality.
So, I would say that many within the system are well aware of its faults and failings. But you don't change an economic system overnight, and blowing it up doesn't do anybody good.
Normally Telco billing systems are multi-tiered, and one of those tiers is what collects CDRs, as the switches have minimal persistent storage.
Whatever collects the CDRs has to be _rock solid_, so is usually an IBM zSeries, Tandem NonStop, or the like, is what processes and stores the detail records from the switch. They are then batched up, as you suggest, for processing in whatever billing system (Amdocs, etc.) the telco is afflicted by , err I man, uses.
Rumor was that the Gun Registry was implemented with Siebel CRM, a major contractor, and major hardware purchases.
This fits with my theory that large bureaucracies, projects are intended to preserve or shift power structures, not to actually accomplish anything useful beyond a 10% improvement of what came before.
The point is that in large bureaucracies, projects aren't actually supposed to DO anything. They're just supposed to alter the power structure (or preserve it).
This game requires some way to keep score as to who has the power. That would be capital.
"A few lines of Perl code" is not power in a bureaucracy's eye, because it doesn't require capital expenditure. Ninety consultants, over 6 months, with $250k in hardware, and a $50m annual operating expense budget -- now that's power.
Anything that looks to reduce costs or increase productivity drastically is a challenge to the power structure. It must be shouted down as insecure, non-scalable, non-performant, non-standard, and violating export treaties.
So the game of people that want power is to reduce costs and increase productivity "a little bit". 10%. Maybe 20%, if you wanted to be branded "radical". Anything more and you'll be branded a lunatic and shuffled to "special projects".
The above game is played more often in public organizations than private ones, but knows no natural boundaries, particularly when the organization stays afloat due to a perpetual bread-winner (i.e. monopoly product, taxes, etc.) .
The researchers that he cherry picked the data from said it, not me. So, either they're lying or he is.
You've completely confused researchers complaining about cherry picked data from the NY Times article written five years ago and the current book. He's addressed why he cherry picked data for that article: an article has a word cap, and the other side didn't need defending, given it is the status quo.
This current book is over 500 pages and another 100 pages of references, and is very thorough.
I generally find that most communities are very helpful with people that are having problems. Go to Macintouch.com, or to Ars, or Discussions.info.apple.com, or Daringfireball - there is plenty of Apple criticism, complaints, frustrations, and there's very little flaming. There's a lot of discussion of what might be done to make the experience better, fixed, whatever.
When there IS flaming is when condescending puff pieces try to generate anger and ad clicks.
The Mac community has been conditioned to deal with 20+ years of flaming their preferred choice as something that is imminently doomed. It takes a long while to unlearn that habit, especially when flaming on the Intarweb is the #2 sport after World of Warcraft. Not even the Linux community has to deal with that (The Mainstream Linux Desktop is perpetually "tomorrow", not "never"). The only analogy I could think of what the Mac community is like is the old Team OS/2.
Before you call bullshit by invoking thermodynamics, be sure to recognize that there's more than one law of thermodynamics.
Independent of Taubes' argument, I note a number of people are making the "Calories In - Calories Burned = Calories Stored" equation, invoking the Law of Thermodynamics, as if people that disagree with this equation were a bunch of lunatics.
But before you're going to invoke this line of argument, please read up on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. No machine, even the human body, is completely efficient. Some energy will be lost to Entropy.
The second law implies that there is at least the possibility of metabolic advantage of some forms of calories (e.g. glucose) over other forms of calories (e.g. ketones).
Incorporating Taubes' hypothesis, that fat accretion is a hormonally regulated process, and you get a very different picture of why people gain weight, one that is worthy of further study.
Energy doesn't just disappear into thin air; when you consume it, you either use it or you store it.
You, sir, are a moron.
Unless, as I just stated, he's cherry-picking the data that agrees with him and discarding the rest. he is, so his conclusion is useless.
He is not. Have you even read the book?
Right, the human body is so complex that the laws of thermodynamics no longer apply.
That's not what he is saying; he is saying that it is more complicated than you might think. He's also saying that it's a hypothesis - not fact.
The argument against a rational, science-based approach to the problem strikes me as inane. Yes, it does simplify things a bit. But fundamentally, it's true, and that's not something that can be said about many other theories on diet.
Funny, that's exactly the same thing Taubes is arguing: high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations are not based on rational science. They're based on a hypothesis supported more by politics than by sound controlled clinical trials.
I would not dismiss this book - prominent doctors are endorsing it as well-argued and cited, worthy of further consideration, even if they don't agree with his hypothesis yet.
Christianity is responsible for a certain flavour of ethics, one that was very personal -- a marked difference from Greek or Roman ethics on civil society. Machiavelli pointed this out, which earned him eternal scorn.
Millions of companies use Windows mail servers with no problems or complaints.
...
*COUGH* *HACK* ahh, um... how to put this....
Are you FUCKING kidding me?
I mean, yes, it's much more stable than some might say, but "NO PROBLEMS OR COMPLAINTS"?
It's only linux fanboys that think that Windows keeps crashing.
Well, sure, Windows doesn't crash as often as people think, but
- security holes?
- patch instability?
I've NEVER EVER seen a modern Windows server crash or lock up.
Either you have had next to zero experience running a large data centre, or your hardware is completely infallible.
Has it occurred to you that the OP wasn't speaking about "crashes" but was speaking about
- security holes & exploits
- corruption
- management nightmares
etc.
Particularly with the most common Windows mail server, Exchange. Yes, there are alternative Windows servers, and yes they're solid ones. And yes, there's plenty of holes on the UNIX side too. But recognize that you can't just point to *NIX and say "that would take too long for me" and assume it would take the same amount of time for everyone. Skills and experiences vary.
And recognize that the most common Windows mail server in "millions of companies" is not some alternative to Exchange. It's Exchange.
Season 4 fares well on DVD, I find. It flows like a novel, the Angel v. Connor thing comes across as more tragic. It's a bit too downtrodden at times (like Buffy S6).
Nope, you've got to turn on Personal Web Sharing; the firewall page's Personal Web Sharing box is greyed out, as are all other built-in features on the Services tab.
Rather counter-intuitive. I know OS X 10.5 has fixed this, however.
Here are the pictures from the Toronto bash. iPhone quality (i.e. 'meh'). Around 40 showed up. Great time.