Once you realize that God is slave to math and rules, then you must comclude that math is more powerful and absolute than God. Therefore your old notion of a traditional God should be superceeded byt the ultimate one - mathematics.
I think here the problem is your and others limited conception of "God". What if "God" were the union of mathematics and physical space, yet still a conscious entity in and of itself. Then we're all slaves to its rules, no?;)
So, we agree that certain wavelengths of light can be agreed upon to be consistently identifiable as those certain wavelengths of light. But unfortunately, there is no way for us to verify that your perception of the color blue is identical in any way to my own.
I'm awake, and as far as I can tell, this universe is not a rational system. It is a collective agreement.
Coincidentally, I suspect this may be a major topic in the book being discussed in this Slashdot article.
Yeah, except if Microsoft tried to use the name "Winux" in any product they would immediately be sued by the owner of a trademark on which that name infringes: a certain Mr. Linus Torvalds who owns the trademark for a software product named "Linux". It's been said that this Mr. Torvalds is not enamored with Microsoft, either, as they have secretly plotted to harm the software project on which he works that bears this trademark (while intended to be kept secret, this information later became public), and also for their poor software design. While Mr. Torvalds is a single individual who would be litigating a corporate entity of massive proportions, it is well known that he would have significant financial resources to back him in any action against Microsoft if such a need ever arose.
It is ridiculous to believe that a student, who pays a fortune, and makes that university their life, does not have the right to use the Internet connection HOWEVER they feel, as long as it is not illegal.
Aye, and there's the rub. Using that Internet connection to download unauthorized copies of copyrighted material is illegal, is it not?
I'm guessing you probably live in San Francisco or New York City. In which case, you should move either to Vallejo or Trenton. At least you'd cut that rent figure down!;)
What's so good about concerts? I like to own music, so that I can play it whenever it is convenient. I hear this talk all the time about how artists should make money through concerts, but I've never been to a concert in my life and don't understand why I should care to.
Wow. As a musician and human being, I must say I am sad for you. The experience of a live performance is enormously different from listening to a CD, in so many ways that I won't even try to list them here.
Your statement is like saying "Why should I ever bother having sex when I have porn instead? Then I can have an orgasm whenever it is convenient."
It's about the experience. One that is simply impossible to have have in your living room with your CD player.
And while these slick companies faded away, I still have my lovely uber-chic "Big Soft Orange" poster from the CCAC art exhibition of the same name (in 1999, no less), designed and hand-printed by John Santos.
It's a symphony of grey and orange, a print made from 23 different hand-cut pieces of film, each one a slightly different color (of grey or orange). Now it hangs on my wall as a beautiful, permanent reminder of the dot-com era.
Now with his Alienware pC, when inspiration hits him he will be able to make that awesome Neverwinter Nights module he'd been thinking about for days. No matter how cool his Mac is he won't be able to do that...
I've never heard of the Neverwinter Nights module. Is that a new ACPM/software-suspend subsystem? What configuration option to I choose to compile it into my kernel?
YARGH! I swear, people WANT to be stupid. Either that or they think they can catch a disease from the keyboard and not the mouse.
No, what people want is to be lazy. Yes, I know, it's far more work to do all that clicking etc., but that's the way you see it.
As the people who prefer to do all that laborious run-around probably see it, it's far more preferable than the laborious task of trying to remember arcane commands and the syntax and order of arguments. Don't even think about adding flags.
I know that it seems so terribly obvious to you, but methinks you're a little more in-tune with common advanced computer concepts and maybe even know a little programming, yes? The kind of structured logic involved in using the command-line comes easy, yes? Well, it doesn't for other people, and muscle energy is cheap compared to brainpower.
Plus, all that clicking and dragging gets them 5 minutes closer to quitting time without having to actually do any work. So I'm guessing that they really just want to be lazy, because I don't think anybody really wants to be perceived as stupid.
As an aside, people don't seem to mind being 'selectively ignorant'. One of the most brilliant programmers I know, an old Unix hack from way back, has absolutely no idea how to hook up a hard drive or deal with any other aspect of hardware manipulation, and has no intention of ever learning. "That stuff is for sysadmins and support people" - go figure.:)
Because Apple and AMD are friends in some way, at least in the sense that they both are fighting a PR/marketing battle with Intel and "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and all that.
Oh, and go dig up some information on who's involved with the development of the HyperTransport bus. You may find it enlightening.:)
Why should I pay for something that is 10%-25% faster when it costs 30% as much as a PC? I care about value over absolute top performance.
I see lots of posts around here in the form of "Feature X of my PC is Y% {better,faster,shinier} than on the Mac, so why should I pay the Z% premium?", and rarely do I see good answers. It is a very hard thing to explain. But I will give it a shot. What follows is my (totally subjective) rant about why I prefer Macs:
I've used both Mac and PC (meaning Wintel) systems regularly and equally for almost twenty years now. I used to build PCs and sell them for extra cash years ago, and I've used every Mac from the 512K to the latest G4.
I have to use PCs at my job every day (I am a software engineer). But whenever I buy a system for myself, I always, ALWAYS, buy a Mac.
Why?
It's really hard to convey to someone else, because it's not based on anything specific or concrete but on years of experience using the two systems. There aren't a lot of specific details that I can give you that explain why I always go with the Mac. But after twenty years of using PCs and Macs, I can tell you this: Macs feel good to use in a way that PCs do not. I know this sounds silly, but it really is true. It's not that the operating system or the hardware have specific features that contribute to that effect. Instead, it's almost the opposite: when I'm doing something on my Mac, the operating system and the hardware never enter my mind. They are transparent and I can focus on the work, instead of the tool. There's something about the incredibly tight integration of the hardware with the OS that make it a joy to use, primarily because it never gets in my way.
Well, there's also the fact that everything I want to do with a computer I can do on my Mac. If that weren't true, it would be moot, of course.:)
Believe me, I understand how cheap and easy it is to build a PC from scratch, or how cheap it seems to just upgrade the one part of a PC that is lacking. But I also understand how frustrating it is to try and get everything to work together flawlessly. Personally, I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with problems with the system itself. I get to do that all day at work.:) When I sit down at the computer, there's something I want to do, be it analytical or creative, and the last thing I want to think about is why some stupid driver won't load or why a program I need to run won't start because I installed something new.
The cost issue is irrelevant. As others have pointed out elsewhere, it evens out over time. I bought my current Mac almost 4 years ago, and it will last another year until I get a new one. I have friends who have sunk thousands of dollars into upgrades to their PC in the same amount of time. Certainly as much as I've spent on my system, including the minimal upgrades I've had to make (RAM and video card - total of $200). And I've been saving my pennies and next year I'll buy a new Mac with them, I'm sure.
For me, it just works, and that's all I need to know. The value of that is priceless. If what you have at the moment works for you, then by all means, stick with it. But if you're less interested in the machine than what you can do with it - and I mean creatively, not customizing the UI and such - try out a Mac. You may find it useful. Give it a few months, and if it works out, great. If not, sell it on eBay - they hold their value rather well.
Finally, yes, I've used XP (really, I should say I use XP) and it is indeed an improvement over previous versions of Windows, but I still don't like using it. And again, there's nothing terribly specific to complain about. Instead it is a death of a thousand cuts, and after extended bouts with XP, I tend to get rather irritable. It seems, for lack of a better term, condescending. It seems to treat me as if I am not of sufficient intelligence to be using a compuer, but out of some noblesse oblige it will allow me to do a
Seriously - who needs that much speed in a laptop?
People who use their laptops as their primary machines.
Also, I happen to know several musician/engineers who can max out the CPUs of fairly new machines (PC or Mac) with realtime plug-ins in Logic or Cubase in a heartbeat.
This reminded me of the fact that often times it is management and the "got to get things to market yesterday or we'll never be able to compete and then we're doomed so cram these other features in and don't worry about the bugs we'll fix those in a patch later" attitude that causes software bugs.
Don't get me wrong. Coding quality between coders varies dramatically. But even the very best coder can only do so much when his manager is telling him he's got four days to implement some whiz-bang feature before code freeze or else.
Now even children regularly use it and there's so much "power to the people" that it's as if everyone in the movie theater were given his own megaphone.
I think the point of the article was that your 'personal megaphone' won't mean crap if hugely-conglomerated ISPs start filtering traffic based on content. Then the situation becomes one where turning on your personal megaphone gets you teleported right into your own personal black hole and no one ever hears from you again. And the choice of how and when you get filtered lies in the hands of the ISPs, and there's nothing you'll be able to say or do about it. Online, anyway.
Personal expression, meet corporate repression of speech.
$0.99 a track is a bit steep IMO even for a master track but for a DRM encumbered, non-standard compressed format it simply is not good value for my money. DRM with a crappy format moves the decimal point on what I'm willing to pay at least one digit to the left.
Well, nobody said you had to listen or pay. But don't spread FUD, please.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
2. AAC is a standard compressed format: http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg 4aac/stan dard.html
Personally, I think Apple has gone a lot further than anyone else to put high quality music in people's hands at the right price and deserves some credit for that.
And one of your major beefs is a straight-up dream (at least for the foreseeable future): face it, no company wants to pay for the bandwidth of potentially hundreds of thousands of users making downloads of uncompressed audio.
Why would we give human rights to a technological construct? We don't give human rights to machines, why would we give them to some other technological invention, like GM humans?
Oh never mind, we've already given human rights to corporations. Guess it's all over, then...
Technological progress is often useful but is never inevitable, by the way. I really wish everyone would stop treating all technological innovation like it's some irresistable force. Like, for example, if some invention of ours could kill us all off. We've managed to do a decent job with atomic weapons (hey, only 2 dropped so far!) so why not with other dangerous technology?
Well, I guess we have to make our mistakes first before we can learn from then.
The more likely scenario, however, based on how apple has done releases of new processors in the past, including several iterations of the 7400 family, is that more information is being withheld until Apple releases a system featuring this processor. Then the floodgates will open.
Or alternatively, that information will be withheld not until Apple releases such system, but announces they'll be making such systems.
IBM is an 1800-lb gorilla that makes its money these days by tantalizing potential OEMs with the specs of new products to get them to sign on to manufacturing contracts months in advance of the actual release, and having an 80-lb chimp like Apple telling it not to talk about the 970 probably sounded like a real annoyance to IBM execs who only see the bottom-line income generated by these multiple partnerships. And when one partner gets out of line, they tend to whack back. Especially when its already doing that one partner (Apple) a huge favor.
Anyone consider that maybe that's the reason why Apple moved WWDC to June and to Moscone Center in SF? That IBM can't stand sitting on the specs of these new chips and is forcing Apple to go public with the details so they can start selling them to other people?
I just want to see better games in general - games which are more thoughtful, more provocative, more interesting, with better character design.
Yes, well, I think this is a more general issue for most females. Try replacing 'games' with 'guys' in the above sentence and you'll see what I mean.;)
Hi, my name is Bill Gates. I switched from using a Macintosh about 3 years ago, when I was finally able to kick enough ass in my engineering department at Microsoft to make an operating system that didn't suck ass so completely that it was a pain to use. Heck, now with the economy like it is, when I go down to visit the engineering department most of my higher-level engineers just automatically assume the position when they hear me coming down the hall.
Of course then that nasty Steve Jobs came out with those lovely Titanium Powerbooks and OS X. So I twisted some arms over at Sony and they gave me one of those nifty new Vaios, and 'convinced' my engineering department to put a shiny new interface on the next version of Windows, Windows XP, so that it would be just like using a Mac with OS X. I can barely tell the difference, they're so similar! It's great! We even gave the interface a cool new name, Luna, like the Mac's Aqua!
The reason I switched is because I simply can't stand for anybody not to be using Microsoft software for all their computing needs! If I could just get you last few people to switch over I could finally control all web and network standards and squash that pesky IBM like the annoying mosquito it is, and with IBM out of the way, there will be no one left with enough power to stop me! And who does IBM think it is anyway, supporting OPEN-SOURCE software? If they thought that little OS/2 thing was painful, then they have no idea what's in store for them! DO YOU HEAR ME, IBM?
And once I control all the web and network standards, all other computer companies will bow down before my might! YES! THAT MEANS YOU, STEVE! BETTER GO BUY SOME KNEEPADS! CUZ YOU'RE GONNA BE MY BITCH! NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! WE'LL SEE WHO WOWS THE CROWDS NOW, STEVIE-BOY! YEAH!! Yeah... yeah...
I'm Bill Gates and I own a computer software company.
-----
Re:Here's a real math mystery
on
ECCp-109 Solved
·
· Score: 1
the theory first suggested by Beavis that "the angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the beat"?
Um, first off, that's directly proportional. And this hypothesis was first proposed by Funkadelic in "Jimmy's Got A Little Bit Of Bitch In Him" from the classic album Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On. Not by Beavis.
Jeezus - doesn't anybody study the classics anymore??
Ahem... a bit of reflection... ---- Here is why Slashdot reader Edmund Blackadder doesnt like the Tom Friedman - because Friedman makes his opinions seem irrelevant.
See Edmund has this really unimportant job where he has time to sit around and post to Slashdot telling people what to think and deciding what information they should know.
But the internet has been here a while and people do not need to go to Slashdot and their free fuscking registration to get information. And people can gasp form opinions on their own. Well then Edmund Blackadder's post is kind of useless then aint it? Running a ministry of truth while you have free information exchange is very pointless, noone will listen to you.
But the internet makes Edmund Blackadder angry and dangerous, because he reads stories about people who see palestinians being beaten on cable!!! Now really, Edmund dont you think that would be less of a problem if palestinians werent getting beaten by israelis soldiers all the time?
But its out of context!!! Well and what is the alternative? Slashdot will provide the context? Of course not. Slashdot will just not report it.
See thats the great think about the internet. Edmund Blackadder can provide their context. They dont need other Slashdot readers to provide the context for them (ie tell them how to interpret the news).
but with the internet Edmund Blackadder find other bad people with like views. Big fing deal. He will always choose freedom of information over propaganda even if freedom of information provides speech to some bad people with his same views. It is not suprising that almost every oppressive and racist regime tightly controls information exchange, between its people. Cults and extreme groups, much like Edmund himself, also have real trouble keeping their memberships up when they cant control what information their members can access. isnt ironic that Edmund complains about people who are in general are not very likely to be hooked up to the net?.
Saying the internet spreads hate is stupid. Does he think that all this hate is due to the internet? Is it the gulf war with all its victims the internets fault? are the terrorist attacks and the bombing of afghanistan the internets fault? Were the israeli attacks on palestine the internets fault? How about terrorism?
There is adifference between the internet and the readl world that Edmund has to grasp. The internet will usually reflect a distorted version of the real world. ---- There's some reflection for you, Edmund.
When we talk of overpopulation, what we are really saying is 'there are a class of people who should not be allowed to reproduce.' That is a dangerous and evil thought... Feel free to tell me I'm wrong!
Yes, I'm sure there are some people that do indeed choose to interpret 'overpopulation' in a eugenics/genocidal fashion.
However, I don't think that the original poster was harboring any negative thoughts towards any particular subset of the human race. I believe that the original poster was thinking from an environmental, rather than social standpoint, and simply meant 'overpopulated' in the sense that the world is a place of limited resources, and we're already stretching the boundaries of what it can take.
At some point, the human race will have to face the fact that it simply CAN NOT BECOME MORE POPULOUS. There will not be enough fresh water, arable land, and clean air left to breathe. If the human race continues to grow indefinitely, while our natural resources remain fixed, it's not going to take too long before those natural resources are incapable of supporting the burden of our consumption of them. In fact, this is already happening in several aspects, as we drive other species to extinction and turn rainforest into crop land and then wasteland.
I think the original poster's call for better contraceptives is an important one. But far more necessary, in my opinion, is the need for a general change in the human race's dangerously self-centered conception of itself as the most important creation on the planet, with the rest of the planet here to 'serve our needs'. It takes both spiritual and mental will to realize the very real nature of the problem and simply say 'enough is enough'. But no one seems willing to do that. In fact, I've brought up this very issue with people, and their reactions tend to range from apathy to fierce denial. Occasionally someone will say 'yeah, but what can I do about it?'
There are lots of things you can do about it. Support Planned Parenthood. Teach your kids about sex, and more importantly, safe sex. But what we really need to do is spread awareness. Support an environmental organization, preferably one that recognizes the problem, and encourage others to do the same. Talk to people about it. The problem is that it's hard to reach a large number of people at one time and make them think about the problem. That move certainly will never come from our government, which has a vested interest in us squeezing out more babies and expanding it's base for collecting taxes, not to mention encouraging our consumption of any available natural resource, so that it can tax that consumption as well. There is a way a lot of people could be reached at once, and my next comment is sure to cause a few flames, but it has to be said: petition the Catholic church to change it's position on contraception. The Catholic church could reach 1.3 BILLION people right now and teach them about responsible parenting instead of irresponsible consumption. That's enough people to affect a serious change and start us down the path of solving the problem.
The human race ISN'T an actual race to see which group of us can use up all the natural resources on the planet first, but we sure as hell act like it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Once you realize that God is slave to math and rules, then you must comclude that math is more powerful and absolute than God. Therefore your old notion of a traditional God should be superceeded byt the ultimate one - mathematics.
;)
I think here the problem is your and others limited conception of "God". What if "God" were the union of mathematics and physical space, yet still a conscious entity in and of itself. Then we're all slaves to its rules, no?
So, we agree that certain wavelengths of light can be agreed upon to be consistently identifiable as those certain wavelengths of light. But unfortunately, there is no way for us to verify that your perception of the color blue is identical in any way to my own.
I'm awake, and as far as I can tell, this universe is not a rational system. It is a collective agreement.
Coincidentally, I suspect this may be a major topic in the book being discussed in this Slashdot article.
So I made you kick me in the shin. So what? Sometimes I'm a real jerk, even to myself. ;)
Yeah, except if Microsoft tried to use the name "Winux" in any product they would immediately be sued by the owner of a trademark on which that name infringes: a certain Mr. Linus Torvalds who owns the trademark for a software product named "Linux". It's been said that this Mr. Torvalds is not enamored with Microsoft, either, as they have secretly plotted to harm the software project on which he works that bears this trademark (while intended to be kept secret, this information later became public), and also for their poor software design. While Mr. Torvalds is a single individual who would be litigating a corporate entity of massive proportions, it is well known that he would have significant financial resources to back him in any action against Microsoft if such a need ever arose.
It is ridiculous to believe that a student, who pays a fortune, and makes that university their life, does not have the right to use the Internet connection HOWEVER they feel, as long as it is not illegal.
Aye, and there's the rub. Using that Internet connection to download unauthorized copies of copyrighted material is illegal, is it not?
I'm guessing you probably live in San Francisco or New York City. In which case, you should move either to Vallejo or Trenton. At least you'd cut that rent figure down! ;)
What's so good about concerts? I like to own music, so that I can play it whenever it is convenient. I hear this talk all the time about how artists should make money through concerts, but I've never been to a concert in my life and don't understand why I should care to.
Wow. As a musician and human being, I must say I am sad for you. The experience of a live performance is enormously different from listening to a CD, in so many ways that I won't even try to list them here.
Your statement is like saying "Why should I ever bother having sex when I have porn instead? Then I can have an orgasm whenever it is convenient."
It's about the experience. One that is simply impossible to have have in your living room with your CD player.
Ah yes, grey and orange!
And while these slick companies faded away, I still have my lovely uber-chic "Big Soft Orange" poster from the CCAC art exhibition of the same name (in 1999, no less), designed and hand-printed by John Santos.
It's a symphony of grey and orange, a print made from 23 different hand-cut pieces of film, each one a slightly different color (of grey or orange). Now it hangs on my wall as a beautiful, permanent reminder of the dot-com era.
Now with his Alienware pC, when inspiration hits him he will be able to make that awesome Neverwinter Nights module he'd been thinking about for days. No matter how cool his Mac is he won't be able to do that...
:-P
I've never heard of the Neverwinter Nights module. Is that a new ACPM/software-suspend subsystem? What configuration option to I choose to compile it into my kernel?
These programs, Kazaa, Nuttela, etc, were written specifically for the purpose of illegally downloading music.
Coulda fooled me. I always thought they were for downloading porn...
oh wait, never mind, if I download porn then it's still infringing someone else's copyright, isn't it. DAMMIT, you just can't win.
----
YARGH! I swear, people WANT to be stupid. Either that or they think they can catch a disease from the keyboard and not the mouse.
:)
No, what people want is to be lazy. Yes, I know, it's far more work to do all that clicking etc., but that's the way you see it.
As the people who prefer to do all that laborious run-around probably see it, it's far more preferable than the laborious task of trying to remember arcane commands and the syntax and order of arguments. Don't even think about adding flags.
I know that it seems so terribly obvious to you, but methinks you're a little more in-tune with common advanced computer concepts and maybe even know a little programming, yes? The kind of structured logic involved in using the command-line comes easy, yes? Well, it doesn't for other people, and muscle energy is cheap compared to brainpower.
Plus, all that clicking and dragging gets them 5 minutes closer to quitting time without having to actually do any work. So I'm guessing that they really just want to be lazy, because I don't think anybody really wants to be perceived as stupid.
As an aside, people don't seem to mind being 'selectively ignorant'. One of the most brilliant programmers I know, an old Unix hack from way back, has absolutely no idea how to hook up a hard drive or deal with any other aspect of hardware manipulation, and has no intention of ever learning. "That stuff is for sysadmins and support people" - go figure.
Why no mention of AMD or Opteron at all?
:)
Because Apple and AMD are friends in some way, at least in the sense that they both are fighting a PR/marketing battle with Intel and "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and all that.
Oh, and go dig up some information on who's involved with the development of the HyperTransport bus. You may find it enlightening.
Why should I pay for something that is 10%-25% faster when it costs 30% as much as a PC? I care about value over absolute top performance.
:)
:) When I sit down at the computer, there's something I want to do, be it analytical or creative, and the last thing I want to think about is why some stupid driver won't load or why a program I need to run won't start because I installed something new.
I see lots of posts around here in the form of "Feature X of my PC is Y% {better,faster,shinier} than on the Mac, so why should I pay the Z% premium?", and rarely do I see good answers. It is a very hard thing to explain. But I will give it a shot. What follows is my (totally subjective) rant about why I prefer Macs:
I've used both Mac and PC (meaning Wintel) systems regularly and equally for almost twenty years now. I used to build PCs and sell them for extra cash years ago, and I've used every Mac from the 512K to the latest G4.
I have to use PCs at my job every day (I am a software engineer). But whenever I buy a system for myself, I always, ALWAYS, buy a Mac.
Why?
It's really hard to convey to someone else, because it's not based on anything specific or concrete but on years of experience using the two systems. There aren't a lot of specific details that I can give you that explain why I always go with the Mac. But after twenty years of using PCs and Macs, I can tell you this: Macs feel good to use in a way that PCs do not. I know this sounds silly, but it really is true. It's not that the operating system or the hardware have specific features that contribute to that effect. Instead, it's almost the opposite: when I'm doing something on my Mac, the operating system and the hardware never enter my mind. They are transparent and I can focus on the work, instead of the tool. There's something about the incredibly tight integration of the hardware with the OS that make it a joy to use, primarily because it never gets in my way.
Well, there's also the fact that everything I want to do with a computer I can do on my Mac. If that weren't true, it would be moot, of course.
Believe me, I understand how cheap and easy it is to build a PC from scratch, or how cheap it seems to just upgrade the one part of a PC that is lacking. But I also understand how frustrating it is to try and get everything to work together flawlessly. Personally, I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with problems with the system itself. I get to do that all day at work.
The cost issue is irrelevant. As others have pointed out elsewhere, it evens out over time. I bought my current Mac almost 4 years ago, and it will last another year until I get a new one. I have friends who have sunk thousands of dollars into upgrades to their PC in the same amount of time. Certainly as much as I've spent on my system, including the minimal upgrades I've had to make (RAM and video card - total of $200). And I've been saving my pennies and next year I'll buy a new Mac with them, I'm sure.
For me, it just works, and that's all I need to know. The value of that is priceless. If what you have at the moment works for you, then by all means, stick with it. But if you're less interested in the machine than what you can do with it - and I mean creatively, not customizing the UI and such - try out a Mac. You may find it useful. Give it a few months, and if it works out, great. If not, sell it on eBay - they hold their value rather well.
Finally, yes, I've used XP (really, I should say I use XP) and it is indeed an improvement over previous versions of Windows, but I still don't like using it. And again, there's nothing terribly specific to complain about. Instead it is a death of a thousand cuts, and after extended bouts with XP, I tend to get rather irritable. It seems, for lack of a better term, condescending. It seems to treat me as if I am not of sufficient intelligence to be using a compuer, but out of some noblesse oblige it will allow me to do a
Seriously - who needs that much speed in a laptop?
People who use their laptops as their primary machines.
Also, I happen to know several musician/engineers who can max out the CPUs of fairly new machines (PC or Mac) with realtime plug-ins in Logic or Cubase in a heartbeat.
What do you run on Macs nowadays that needs this speed?
The Finder.
No, seriously, there seem to be four primary apps that are crying out for this kind of processor speed and for which the Mac is commonly used:
- Music production
- DVD production
- Image processing
- all things 3D
no cramming features in weeks before ship
This reminded me of the fact that often times it is management and the "got to get things to market yesterday or we'll never be able to compete and then we're doomed so cram these other features in and don't worry about the bugs we'll fix those in a patch later" attitude that causes software bugs.
Don't get me wrong. Coding quality between coders varies dramatically. But even the very best coder can only do so much when his manager is telling him he's got four days to implement some whiz-bang feature before code freeze or else.
Now even children regularly use it and there's so much "power to the people" that it's as if everyone in the movie theater were given his own megaphone.
I think the point of the article was that your 'personal megaphone' won't mean crap if hugely-conglomerated ISPs start filtering traffic based on content. Then the situation becomes one where turning on your personal megaphone gets you teleported right into your own personal black hole and no one ever hears from you again. And the choice of how and when you get filtered lies in the hands of the ISPs, and there's nothing you'll be able to say or do about it. Online, anyway.
Personal expression, meet corporate repression of speech.
$0.99 a track is a bit steep IMO even for a master track but for a DRM encumbered, non-standard compressed format it simply is not good value for my money. DRM with a crappy format moves the decimal point on what I'm willing to pay at least one digit to the left.
g 4aac/stan dard.html
Well, nobody said you had to listen or pay. But don't spread FUD, please.
1. The file itself is not DRM-encumbered. iTunes places the restrictions on burning, streaming, etc. They are not built into the file in any way. There are plenty of other tools you can use to manipulate the files, because...
2. AAC is a standard compressed format:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpe
Personally, I think Apple has gone a lot further than anyone else to put high quality music in people's hands at the right price and deserves some credit for that.
And one of your major beefs is a straight-up dream (at least for the foreseeable future): face it, no company wants to pay for the bandwidth of potentially hundreds of thousands of users making downloads of uncompressed audio.
Why would we give human rights to a technological construct? We don't give human rights to machines, why would we give them to some other technological invention, like GM humans?
Oh never mind, we've already given human rights to corporations. Guess it's all over, then...
Technological progress is often useful but is never inevitable, by the way. I really wish everyone would stop treating all technological innovation like it's some irresistable force. Like, for example, if some invention of ours could kill us all off. We've managed to do a decent job with atomic weapons (hey, only 2 dropped so far!) so why not with other dangerous technology?
Well, I guess we have to make our mistakes first before we can learn from then.
The more likely scenario, however, based on how apple has done releases of new processors in the past, including several iterations of the 7400 family, is that more information is being withheld until Apple releases a system featuring this processor. Then the floodgates will open.
Or alternatively, that information will be withheld not until Apple releases such system, but announces they'll be making such systems.
IBM is an 1800-lb gorilla that makes its money these days by tantalizing potential OEMs with the specs of new products to get them to sign on to manufacturing contracts months in advance of the actual release, and having an 80-lb chimp like Apple telling it not to talk about the 970 probably sounded like a real annoyance to IBM execs who only see the bottom-line income generated by these multiple partnerships. And when one partner gets out of line, they tend to whack back. Especially when its already doing that one partner (Apple) a huge favor.
Anyone consider that maybe that's the reason why Apple moved WWDC to June and to Moscone Center in SF? That IBM can't stand sitting on the specs of these new chips and is forcing Apple to go public with the details so they can start selling them to other people?
I just want to see better games in general - games which are more thoughtful, more provocative, more interesting, with better character design.
;)
Yes, well, I think this is a more general issue for most females. Try replacing 'games' with 'guys' in the above sentence and you'll see what I mean.
-----
Hi, my name is Bill Gates. I switched from using a Macintosh about 3 years ago, when I was finally able to kick enough ass in my engineering department at Microsoft to make an operating system that didn't suck ass so completely that it was a pain to use. Heck, now with the economy like it is, when I go down to visit the engineering department most of my higher-level engineers just automatically assume the position when they hear me coming down the hall.
Of course then that nasty Steve Jobs came out with those lovely Titanium Powerbooks and OS X. So I twisted some arms over at Sony and they gave me one of those nifty new Vaios, and 'convinced' my engineering department to put a shiny new interface on the next version of Windows, Windows XP, so that it would be just like using a Mac with OS X. I can barely tell the difference, they're so similar! It's great! We even gave the interface a cool new name, Luna, like the Mac's Aqua!
The reason I switched is because I simply can't stand for anybody not to be using Microsoft software for all their computing needs! If I could just get you last few people to switch over I could finally control all web and network standards and squash that pesky IBM like the annoying mosquito it is, and with IBM out of the way, there will be no one left with enough power to stop me! And who does IBM think it is anyway, supporting OPEN-SOURCE software? If they thought that little OS/2 thing was painful, then they have no idea what's in store for them! DO YOU HEAR ME, IBM?
And once I control all the web and network standards, all other computer companies will bow down before my might! YES! THAT MEANS YOU, STEVE! BETTER GO BUY SOME KNEEPADS! CUZ YOU'RE GONNA BE MY BITCH! NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! WE'LL SEE WHO WOWS THE CROWDS NOW, STEVIE-BOY! YEAH!! Yeah... yeah...
I'm Bill Gates and I own a computer software company.
-----
the theory first suggested by Beavis that "the angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the beat"?
Um, first off, that's directly proportional. And this hypothesis was first proposed by Funkadelic in "Jimmy's Got A Little Bit Of Bitch In Him" from the classic album Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On. Not by Beavis.
Jeezus - doesn't anybody study the classics anymore??
Ahem... a bit of reflection...
----
Here is why Slashdot reader Edmund Blackadder doesnt like the Tom Friedman - because Friedman makes his opinions seem irrelevant.
See Edmund has this really unimportant job where he has time to sit around and post to Slashdot telling people what to think and deciding what information they should know.
But the internet has been here a while and people do not need to go to Slashdot and their free fuscking registration to get information. And people can gasp form opinions on their own. Well then Edmund Blackadder's post is kind of useless then aint it? Running a ministry of truth while you have free information exchange is very pointless, noone will listen to you.
But the internet makes Edmund Blackadder angry and dangerous, because he reads stories about people who see palestinians being beaten on cable!!! Now really, Edmund dont you think that would be less of a problem if palestinians werent getting beaten by israelis soldiers all the time?
But its out of context!!! Well and what is the alternative? Slashdot will provide the context? Of course not. Slashdot will just not report it.
See thats the great think about the internet. Edmund Blackadder can provide their context. They dont need other Slashdot readers to provide the context for them (ie tell them how to interpret the news).
but with the internet Edmund Blackadder find other bad people with like views. Big fing deal. He will always choose freedom of information over propaganda even if freedom of information provides speech to some bad people with his same views. It is not suprising that almost every oppressive and racist regime tightly controls information exchange, between its people. Cults and extreme groups, much like Edmund himself, also have real trouble keeping their memberships up when they cant control what information their members can access. isnt ironic that Edmund complains about people who are in general are not very likely to be hooked up to the net?.
Saying the internet spreads hate is stupid. Does he think that all this hate is due to the internet? Is it the gulf war with all its victims the internets fault? are the terrorist attacks and the bombing of afghanistan the internets fault? Were the israeli attacks on palestine the internets fault? How about terrorism?
There is adifference between the internet and the readl world that Edmund has to grasp. The internet will usually reflect a distorted version of the real world.
----
There's some reflection for you, Edmund.
Yes, I'm sure there are some people that do indeed choose to interpret 'overpopulation' in a eugenics/genocidal fashion.
However, I don't think that the original poster was harboring any negative thoughts towards any particular subset of the human race. I believe that the original poster was thinking from an environmental, rather than social standpoint, and simply meant 'overpopulated' in the sense that the world is a place of limited resources, and we're already stretching the boundaries of what it can take.
At some point, the human race will have to face the fact that it simply CAN NOT BECOME MORE POPULOUS. There will not be enough fresh water, arable land, and clean air left to breathe. If the human race continues to grow indefinitely, while our natural resources remain fixed, it's not going to take too long before those natural resources are incapable of supporting the burden of our consumption of them. In fact, this is already happening in several aspects, as we drive other species to extinction and turn rainforest into crop land and then wasteland.
I think the original poster's call for better contraceptives is an important one. But far more necessary, in my opinion, is the need for a general change in the human race's dangerously self-centered conception of itself as the most important creation on the planet, with the rest of the planet here to 'serve our needs'. It takes both spiritual and mental will to realize the very real nature of the problem and simply say 'enough is enough'. But no one seems willing to do that. In fact, I've brought up this very issue with people, and their reactions tend to range from apathy to fierce denial. Occasionally someone will say 'yeah, but what can I do about it?'
There are lots of things you can do about it. Support Planned Parenthood. Teach your kids about sex, and more importantly, safe sex. But what we really need to do is spread awareness. Support an environmental organization, preferably one that recognizes the problem, and encourage others to do the same. Talk to people about it. The problem is that it's hard to reach a large number of people at one time and make them think about the problem. That move certainly will never come from our government, which has a vested interest in us squeezing out more babies and expanding it's base for collecting taxes, not to mention encouraging our consumption of any available natural resource, so that it can tax that consumption as well. There is a way a lot of people could be reached at once, and my next comment is sure to cause a few flames, but it has to be said: petition the Catholic church to change it's position on contraception. The Catholic church could reach 1.3 BILLION people right now and teach them about responsible parenting instead of irresponsible consumption. That's enough people to affect a serious change and start us down the path of solving the problem.
The human race ISN'T an actual race to see which group of us can use up all the natural resources on the planet first, but we sure as hell act like it is.